Review: Cave of Bones

Cave of Bones by Anne Hillerman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was enjoyable in that you get to visit with some of the Tribal Police from earlier books by Hillerman and her father. But this didn’t have the feel of the earlier books in the series, especially the early Tony Hillerman books. What made the earlier books interesting was the unique characters from the tribal areas, the descriptions of the sparsely populated land, and the plots that greatly borrowed from American Indian traditions. While you get some of the old characters here, they don’t sparkle. The land is well described, but the highlight of this book is lava fields in Winter – not the most cinematic location. The “Indian content” just didn’t seem that interesting here. I had found that the books Anne has written were getting better as she gained experience, but this wasn’t a better one. I already have her next one, and hope it rebounds. I listened to the audiobook version of this, narrated by Christina Delaine. I liked the narration, except for when Officer Manuelitto’s sister calls Chee “Cheeseburger.” She’s being a brat when she calls him that, and the continuing teasing is grating.

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Review: Assault: Thoroughbred Legends

Assault: Thoroughbred Legends by Eva Jolene Boyd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I work my way through the Thoroughbred Legends series (one left!), I found this one broke the mold, in a good way. Most of these stories are very formulaic, telling the history of the breeder, owner, trainer, and main jockey, and following the horse through its training, races, and breeding, with a heavy dollop of ancestry and progeny name-dropping. When you combine all those elements in what are generally short books, you don’t get very deep into any kind of compelling story. Add on the fact that most of these champion racehorses are owned by old-money families from East of the Mississippi and you find many of these stories feel similar. This one, though, was different. Assault was a horse against the odds. He was small, and damaged one foot when young, enough that he had to run in special shoes throughout his racing life. He was bred by a major Texas rancher, quite unlike most other breeders and owners in this series. And Assault was a bust as a stallion, so the progeny section was quite short. Of all the horses in this series, Assault was likely the one with the fewest races run as the favorite. He was certainly a winning underdog and a great subject for a racing biography. Given this wonderful material to work with, the author weaves a story that holds interest all the way through. Well done.

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Review: Machine Learning

Machine Learning by Ethem Alpaydin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this a good re-introduction to machine learning. By re-introduction, I’m using my perspective based on experience, having worked in AI and neural nets twenty years back, but keeping up through pop science magazine articles and such since then. For me, I was reminded of many of the methods I knew, and a few I hadn’t heard of. Short. Nice description, just what you want.

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Review: On Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Story of George Orwell’s Masterpiece

On Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Story of George Orwell’s Masterpiece by D.J. Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of a book like 1984 begins with the story of its author. “On 1984” describes the life of Orwell, from birth to death, including many of the events that shaped his thoughts and writing. Orwell’s biography fills at least a half of this book. The remainder covers some analysis of the book and a history of the book, subsequent films and other media, and its impact on society. I found the author biography to be most interesting, to learn of Orwell’s previous writings and his time in Spain.

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Review: The Cuban Comedy

The Cuban Comedy by Pablo Medina
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s a story that seems to be leaning to becoming a magic realism story but never really gets there. Then it seems to be becoming a romance, but it never really gets there. Then it seems to be a story about the revolution, but it never really gets there. There are bits of humor throughout that kept it interesting, but in the end I didn’t find much memorable.

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Review: Inside Pee-Wee's Playhouse: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Unpredictable Story of a Pop Phenomenon

Inside Pee-Wee's Playhouse: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Unpredictable Story of a Pop Phenomenon by Caseen Gaines
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I graduated from college, I got a job in the big city. To prove I was a grown-up, I opened a checking account in a bank in one of the tallest buildings in the world, same building I worked in. And to whom did I write the first check from that highfalutin bank? The Pee-wee Herman Fan Club. This would have been in the middle of the run of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”, one of my favorite get-away-from-it-all shows that I rarely was awake to see. For my hard-earned dollars, I received a single one-page newsletter from the fan club. Seemed a little stingy.

I got the same impression about Pee-wee from this book. He is described here as creative at all costs, especially when it comes to dealing with people. He was always firing and occasionally rehiring the people that made his show unique. But in addition to the human resources rollercoaster, you get the details of the production of the show, with plenty of additional info on Pee-wee’s movies, shows, talk show appearances, and future plans. Most interesting were the many pictures of the production of the Playhouse, the behind-the-scenes stories about the production of key pieces of the Playhouse, like the short films, and the various characters like the King of Cartoons. The plentiful pictures of the cast and crew really were an interesting glimpse into what it must have been like working on that show. The last quarter of the book is an episode guide, with some great insight into the details of the cartoons and filmed parts, the guests, and the bloopers. Overall, I enjoyed this book. I hadn’t heard most of these stories before – I guess I wasn’t as much of a fan boy as I thought.

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Review: The Little Book of Big Dividends: A Safe Formula for Guaranteed Returns

The Little Book of Big Dividends: A Safe Formula for Guaranteed Returns by Charles B. Carlson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed Charles Carlson’s books over the years as I introduced myself to investing. I read this book, now ten years old, to see if I could learn something new or to get a reminder of the right way to invest in individual stocks. The thing is that the world has changed in the past ten years. There are now more ETFs and mutual funds that have a variety of dividend-based investing that embody something akin to Carlson’s algorithm. That’s for those that will consider these kinds of investment choices. This is now the era of index investing for many investors, limiting their interest in these kinds of sub-optimizing methods. It seems there’s less of a case to be made to use his website to help chose specific investments. Another difference is the lowering of stock purchase transaction costs to near zero. This fee reduction, along with fee additions and even cancellation for some DRIP programs also hurts Carlson’s thesis that DRIPS (dividend reinvestment programs) are great investments. And Carlson has a habit of providing specific stock advice which never ages well over a decade. So overall, while I liked reviewing Carlson’s take on evaluating stocks based on a variety of value and accounting measures, I’m not feeling the need as much as in past decades.

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