Review: Saving Savvy: Smart and Easy Ways to Cut Your Spending in Half and Raise Your Standard of Living and Giving

Saving Savvy: Smart and Easy Ways to Cut Your Spending in Half and Raise Your Standard of Living and Giving by Kelly Hancock
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I seem to read a book every year or two on couponing. They all seem to share the same basic information on clipping and using coupons. I found this one added on some more recent advice on organizing coupons and using web sites that catalog available coupons and coupon books. And there’s scripture added, along with the author’s repeated suggestion to donate from the bonuses you save via couponing and bulk/sale buying. If you haven’t read a couponing book and don’t mind the religious tact, this is a fine introduction. For experienced deal mongers, it’s a reasonable reminder or update.

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Review: The Builders

The Builders by Maeve Binchy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having read many of Binchy’s earlier novels, I wondered what I would find in what looked to be a short story, where she didn’t have the luxury of many pages to weave her tale. She didn’t need it. Binchy tells the story of a housing contractor who visits the neighbor lady to the house he’s working on, and they develop a relationship. You meet the lady’s family and understand her story, and there is a plot tying the families together. While the basic story seemed quite similar to bits of others of Binchy’s novels, this worked well as a complete, stand-alone story. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed the way that Binchy told this story in a very simple manner, without much flowery language. I didn’t realize until after I finished that this was written for an Irish literacy project, providing stories by Irish authors to help people learn to read. Wonderful idea, and well done.

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Review: Chicago's Wrigley Field

Chicago's Wrigley Field by Paul Michael Peterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If you have a friend that has visited Wrigley Field many times in the past, and like to show you slides of his trips, you've had a preview of what this book has to offer. This is one of those books with plenty of photos. And you get mostly what you expect here - pictures from around Wrigley Field, mostly of the stands. While there are some historic photos, and some pictures of baseball professionals (players, and Bill Veeck), a good percentage of these photos are like family photos from trips to the park. My interest waned while going through this and seeing pictures aimed not at the park but at someone's kids. I'd have liked to see more of the behind-the-scenes locations within the park, like the press boxes, the ramps, the restaurants, the grounds crew storage. I don't recall even seeing a picture from inside the scoreboard here, and they show that a lot on TV. Hit and miss.

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Review: Arkansas

Arkansas by John Brandon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just a strange trip careening through the lives of cornpone country drug kingpins and their affected underlings. What made this strange is the use of the kinds of characters you see in small towns, the go-getter, the guy with the odd hobby, the quiet tough, the guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and who must listen to opera/NPR. Lots of trailer parks and thrift stores, gas stations and old cars. There’s action, and plot, but it hangs very loosely together. Entertaining, but not entirely enjoyable.

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Review: Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean

Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean by Joshua Bernoff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author suggest not wasting your reader's time with extraneous stuff, and taking an active voice. Another suggestion - daily practice. Not too surprising, with plentiful examples (perhaps over-plentiful). Good for a refresher - you already know these things.

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Review: The Design of Future Things

The Design of Future Things by Donald A. Norman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Short, readable musings on the design of technology to help people and to replace people. Norman exposes some basic limitations of technology in automating human thoughts and actions, including inferring reason. He often looks at these issues through the lens of an automotive designer working on self-driving cars, but discussions on kitchen appliances also are in abundance here. This was written more than a decade back now and the thoughts expressed are more common now than when written. Nevertheless, the conversational, pop-science tone and understandable explanations makes this of interest.

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Review: The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew by Donald Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fun second book. If you have expectations set from listening to/reading the first book in the series, this meets those expectations. Action involving the other side’s spies, women and men to distrust, politics, the cowboy mentality, shadowy characters from Helm’s past life, and plentiful ruminations by our lead character on topics ranging from girdles to film photography. Helm is a Western American everyman, who is smart, skilled, occasionally aroused, and ready for action. And, as you'd expect, he's a bit dated. The audio version I listened to was narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, who sounds correct as an action-hero spy. I will listen to more.

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