Review: Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I occasionally feel the need to read a motivational book, with the intent to renew my spirit. That sounds new-age but it is more pedestrian. I read to find things that hit me at just the right time. It’s great when what hits me is a big concept that takes pages to read about and allows me to simmer while learning. But most often, it’s the turn of a sentence that lodges in the memory and gets mulled over. Which leads me to this book. Kleon has written a book intended to be motivational to creative folks. He divides his book into 10 ways to staying creative, including thinking about the seasonality of what you are doing, dealing with work by days, and more. I found the organization and topics fresh compared to most of what I’ve read recently. Kleon includes a some text on the topic that he authored, as well as a number of quotes and text snippets, pictures, and handwritten charts/chapter headings. And he keeps repeating pictures of pages of other books mostly blacked out, leaving just a few words that form a sentence on the subject at hand. Not the best use of space. There’s a lot of white space. I enjoyed the writing. The pieces Kleon wrote were short, a good length for what he is doing here. But I most enjoyed his selection of included quotations. I’d pick up another of Kleon’s books for a quick motivational jolt.

I won a copy of this book in a contest from Kleon's publisher, I believe. This did not influence my review.

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Review: A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics

A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics by David Stipp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s math. And it’s history. And philosophy. But mostly math.

I found the math descriptions well simplified. I thought I would get a lot of math knowledge out of this book. Or at least I would be reminded of a lot of math from my courses decades ago. There was a little faint recognition. I appreciate the job the author did in jogging my memory on e. But I found the history, especially the story of Euler, more interesting here. When I reflect on this book a week after reading, I most remember not the math, but the Euler stories, especially about his family. I noted while listening to this audiobook that the last quarter or so was more philosophical, about the meaning of beauty. This discussion was a bit overdone and didn’t add to the story as much as I would have hoped. Go for the math, stay for the history.


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Review: Last Night at the Lobster

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I haven’t worked a restaurant job, my friends have, and I remember helping out at closing time with the reward of drinking a beer with the rest of the crew in the closed dining room afterwards. I’ll remember the casual camaraderie with people I might not have ever talked to before. It wasn’t like the work friendships of an office job, it felt more real. O’Nan captures this feeling. In this case, the restaurant is a chain restaurant, Red Lobster, and this is the story of one on its final day. The style was interesting, kind of a faux documentary following around the restaurant manager through his day, but with incredible detail of events and thoughts. It was a lot like O’Nan wrote a book to go with a documentary on that restaurant closing, following the manager around, revealing his inner thoughts through a kind of documentary-style monologue/voice-over. I could imagine this on Front Line or on HBO. I enjoyed the style. The novel is somewhat short, so that also felt like documentary-length. There was nothing extraneous. Nicely done.

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Review: Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously

Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously by David Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are looking for the story of how the owners of Hobby Lobby fought healthcare regulations on religious grounds, taking the lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court, this is the story that begins this book. You learn of the life of the author, David Green, growing his hobby empire and building a family run business. Beyond the lawsuit story, most of this book is focused on the history of Green’s Hobby Lobby business and on how Green involves his family in the running of the business. I read a lot of business histories, and this was not particularly revealing in the business aspects. But on family ownership, Green grows his business to involve three generations in the business, from working in the stores to management to board membership and voting on strategic issues. It was a story you only hear about in some of the large family-run businesses. I read this book more to see a personal story of gratitude and philanthropy, given the title. It isn’t that. Good for background and an example of family business involvement, but of limited repeatability if you aren’t growing a big business and a big family to go with it.

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Review: Fools Rush Inn: More Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom

Fools Rush Inn: More Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom by Bill James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bill James is fun to read. Personal opinion, based on his pithy comments on baseball and his use of numbers to wrestle out a story. This collection was more hit and miss. There are a few non-baseball opinion pieces, kind of funny, but kind of the quality of small town newspaper columnist. The baseball pieces are a mix of long, research intensive writeups and shorter baseball stories. James is at his best with the math driven baseball analysis, and my favorite here was his attempt to categorize baseball into different eras. Categorization is something I'm interested in for work, so I found this quite informative. I also appreciated his take on managers in the Hall of Fame and his estimation of the chances of current managers to make it. Fun, but not as much as his earlier collection.

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Review: The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated

The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated by Helaine Olen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For a short audiobook on simplifying personal finance, this does the job. Do I agree with all the rules and all the additional detail that is contained within this book. Not totally, but I can easily see this being a go-to book for those otherwise uninterested in personal finance and saving/investing for retirement. If you have no background, this would be a good introduction. What might I quibble with? Only things that many more personal-finance-aware folks already understand and possibly do differently. For instance, the black and white insistence here to never buy individual stocks would preclude employee purchase plan stock buying and the realization of the discounts that can apply. Might this kind of investing be hurtful? It might. Have many people done well with this kind of investing? Yes, but it's no sure thing. There is also a leaning toward getting professional help with investing which I cringe when I read, thinking back on my impressionable youth and how following this advice would likely have lowered my returns. YMMV. I was pleasantly surprised by the final tip provided by the authors, to lobby for social security. I've only seen a couple of books that acknowledged the role of changing laws and regulations on retirement and government benefits. While one can argue the specifics of the policies and their impact on one's retirement, the regulations and the changes that come about on a regular basis are worth understanding. A slight wording change on a bill relating to, say, IRAs, or Medicare might have a bigger impact on your personal finances than the best investment advice you can buy. Broaden that to include everyone impacted and you can imagine altruistically lobbying for or against some changes. Reasonable big-picture advice.

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Review: Strange Worlds

Strange Worlds by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I listened to the audiobook version of this short story collection, I kept thinking back on variety shows like the old Carol Burnett Show. I was surprised I didn't think of The Twilight Zone. The stories were more appropriate to The Twilight Zone, certainly, with sci-fi and mystery and comedy and fantasy covered. But I think why I thought of The Carol Burnett Show was the extremely good narration of Ray Porter. Porter was able to inhabit the different roles in these very different genres with unique character. Porter did an excellent job as these stories Lyle Waggoner. The stories, in all their variety, were fine entertainment -- not unlike watching a good television show episode. My favorite was the take off of Plan 9 from Outer Space. I also appreciated the author aping the styles of the other stories, especially the John Carter of Mars story. This was quite like what you would read in those original stories, I believe.

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