Review: The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interesting, good but not great story of a young woman who attempts suicide, only to find herself in a purgatory, if you’d call it that, of a library containing volumes of books each reflecting different life choices. The library concept was used, it feels, to draw in a certain type of reader, one who is keen on libraries. The library is a major part of the plot and our main character ends up there many times. The description, initially like the in-between world described in “The Magicians”, ended up being a bit of comic relief through the efforts of the librarian and a catastrophe. I found the many different lives the main character tried out to be quite interesting. I especially appreciated that the author made the main character a student of philosophy, so you get some deep thoughts on what was occurring and major life decisions that had quite different and unexpected impacts on everyone’s lives. Overall, fun to think about these philosophical concepts and how they relate to life, but at times a bit too comic book.

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Review: I Should Have Quit This Morning: Adventures in Minor League Baseball

I Should Have Quit This Morning: Adventures in Minor League Baseball by Kathy Diekroeger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed a number of books on the minor leagues of baseball over the years. I find the hopes and promise of lightly tested players matched against each other to learn while competing for limited openings at a higher level leads to many compelling stories. I also appreciate that the minors often are played in towns and villages that are not your well-known metropolises, but are often held in third tier towns, the ones people have heard of, but might not know where they are on a map. Minor league teams have an outsized importance to their towns, compared to the majors where there are plenty of entertainment offerings on a typical summer day or night. I found “I Should Have Quit This Morning” to be an excellent review of the first perspective I mentioned, but not so much on the second.

The book is an edited compilation of interviews of a number of (former) minor league players. The author has gathered together interview snippets based on topics, but loosely based on a baseball season. The book begins with players telling of how they are drafted and came to be on their team. There is a lot of variety here, with highly ranked players as well as “just barely made it” players who tell their stories and explain how this process works. I found this a very interesting beginning. The book then focuses on spring training, and continues the a minor league season and, in some cases, the call up or the letting go. There is a lot of anecdotal detail here. You understand the things that are important to the players after you read this, including things you might not have thought players would spend much time thinking about. For me, learning about the differences in food between the minors and majors was interesting, as was the constant issue of short-term apartment leases and revolving roommate issues. You really get a feel for what a modern minor leaguer deals with on a day to day basis in this book. Well done.

Given that this book was focused on players, you don’t get much about the teams. There’s not really much baseball action, and you don’t hear from the managers (although you hear about them and other staff, especially the stadium attendants). And you don’t hear about the fans or the towns, much, outside of some glowing description of host families. I missed this, mostly because a number of the players played for the team of my hometown, the Quad Cities River Bandits, and I enjoy reading about the area. But given how detailed the player stories are, I can’t complain. I found this a very good book on the player’s perspective on a minor league team, and I would look favorably to more books on the topic by this author.


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Review: Fortitude: American Resilience in the Age of Outrage

Fortitude: American Resilience in the Age of Outrage by Dan Crenshaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not quite what I was expecting. I thought this would be all political and memoir. And some, if not most of it is. But Crenshaw turns his life's hardships and learnings into a self-help book about half way through. That wasn't expected. I found the personal story the most interesting, especially dealing with his war injuries and his Navy career overcoming issues with his injuries until he is, in effect, laid off. His thoughts on conservatism and society are familiar and overall are well presented. But the lessons on working on your own positive character traits, like fortitude, based on overcoming adversity, were a nice addition. Was it something I've read before? Yes. But Crenshaw's personal story led credibility to these suggestions.

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Review: The Archer

The Archer by Paulo Coelho
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I got this in large print for my father-in-law to have something to read, yet it was still a very skinny book. There's not much here. The story, such as it is, is of a fellow finding out another fellow he knew was an archery expert, and he asks how he gets to be an expert. You get a lot of short chapters showing how different aspects of archery are like life, with minimal but interesting illustrations on many pages. You get bits of story as you realize this expert is full of himself. Can you be a minimalist pontificator? It seems so. Nice pictures, story was interesting but very small part of the book. Nothing new, nothing told in a refreshing way.

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Review: Dick Francis's Gamble

Dick Francis's Gamble by Felix Francis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was Dick Francis’ son Felix’s first solo writing effort after working for and with his father on earlier Dick Francis horse racing mysteries. And you can sense the relationship. Dick Francis books, and I’ve read many, all had a kind of formula. They all had characters somehow related to the racing industry. And the plot usually required author research into some other area that must have interested the elder Francis, like publishing, computer viruses, or art glass. This book contained those elements. The lead character is an injured jockey turned financial advisor. And the plot hinged on questions of financial legal compliance and record management, obviously involving some research by the author. Oddly, I am involved in record management, and I found this part of the plot interesting. All mysteries should delve into records management. I found the mystery unexpected enough to make the story interesting, and enjoyable in the racing content. Felix has the basics of his father’s formula down pat, but I thought the story was missing something. I believe Dick’s main characters were almost always identical in some character traits, like a need to go it alone, and a high moral code. Dick’s characters seemed like brothers. But here, Felix’s main character didn’t seem to have that same feel. He felt more like a cousin than a brother to Dick’s leads. But given this was Felix’s first solo endeavor, I know this gets better. Nice start.

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Review: The CEO of Technology: Lead, Reimagine, and Reinvent to Drive Growth and Create Value in Unprecedented Times

The CEO of Technology: Lead, Reimagine, and Reinvent to Drive Growth and Create Value in Unprecedented Times by Hunter Muller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was just like reading an extended issue of CIO Magazine. The topics were the same as those often covered in that magazine, the style was similar, the structure of the stories was familiar. At times while listening to the audiobook, I found myself focusing on some aspect of the discussion that was missing, and, without fail, the author covered that missing topic later on. I found the specific discussion on actions to be most interesting. I usually find the anecdotes by company CIOs/technologists to be most interesting in these kinds of books, but these, while plentiful, interesting, and the right length, tended to not be much different than what I’d previously read. I found the author’s habit of writing long, glowing bios of the people he interviews and quotes at length was a bit over the top. I also noticed that the author truly gushed over every company he mentions for being ahead of their peers, more innovative, etc. Except for two companies. The author points out at length that IBM has greatly underperformed other competitors, and also mentions Xerox in passing as being a bad example of integrating technology. It seems like IBM and Xerox are always fair game at being bad examples in business and technology books, and this book plays along with the safe evaluation. Overall, I liked the book, but found it very similar to topical reading on CIOs and technology over the past decade or so.

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Review: How I Learned to Understand the World: A Memoir

How I Learned to Understand the World: A Memoir by Hans Rosling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My prior experience with Hans Rosling has been watching a couple of his TED talk videos and putting his audiobook “Factfulness” on reserve at the library. I wasn’t sure I would like or appreciate his memoir, but thought I would give it a shot, having received a free copy for review from NetGalley. I ended up enjoying many of his stories. I especially enjoyed stories in two parts of his life. I found his recollections from running a hospital in Africa as a fresh-from-school doctor was enlightening. He faced many issues, learning to be a doctor while also learning how to work in this new-to-him society, with people he often didn’t understand. What he shares in these stories are the various times he has to learn from the people he worked with. You can sense the admiration he has for his co-workers who helped him succeed at times, and to survive at other times. These are great fish out of water stories.

The other parts that I enjoyed were near the end, when Rosling describes how he happens across a way to explain a topic to his students that finally gets them to understand a difficult concept. He explains this to his son, an artist, and the son builds computer tools to further refine this framing of the issue at hand and to expand the ways it can be illustrated. Rosling explains that this way of handling explanations becomes the basis for his consulting, and allows him to grow in stature as a scientific explainer. This was a wonderful example of career serendipity, moving from medical doctor to world renown scientist and futurist, helped by an artist.

An interesting book on an interesting life. After reading this, I look forward to reading “Factfulness” and will be focused on understanding how he illustrates his concepts and statistics.


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