Review: Selected Shorts: Baseball

Selected Shorts: Baseball by Symphony Space
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m used to reading books about baseball. As an audio-only release of their “Selected Shorts” series, NPR has chosen a few shorter pieces on baseball. I found these mostly hits, in terms of content. The readers mostly were reporter types, and perhaps didn’t have the experience of fiction or poetry reading. Not that they were bad, just not polished. And this was a live recording in front of an audience, so no redo’s. Entertaining was the live banter with Bart Giamatti and Roger Angel, they were enjoying themselves and you could tell. My favorite stories were the two longer bits – both of which I had already read. I have John Updike’s article on Ted Williams in its Library of America hardcover. You really get the feel of the times. The other excellent short story was W.P. Kinsella’s “The Thrill of the Grass”, which I read a few decades ago. I’m glad I ran across this again as an older baseball fan, as the story revolves around how older fans feel about the game. Highly recommended here or in Kinsella’s short story collection of the same name.

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Review: Metadata Essentials: Proven Techniques for Book Marketing and Discovery

Metadata Essentials: Proven Techniques for Book Marketing and Discovery by Jake Handy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My career for many years focused on the use of document metadata, so I thought this book on “Metadata Essentials” might speak to me. It did, but more so from the way publishers and retailers tag books. I found this quite interesting (and if I didn’t find it interesting, I suspect no one would find it interesting) in the descriptions of the competing taxonomies used by different sources of books, especially internet retailers Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The book described the expected data for each metadata field required by retailers (as of when the book was written), followed by analysis of the different requirements between retailers and schemes. For those who search for a living, this provides insight into which book retailer might have more searchable and more useful details for searching, most often related to requirements or lack of requirements for topical information. A well put together book on the subject.

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Review: Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia

Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia by Adam Lerner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve been a Devo fan since I ran across their first album back in the late 70s and their videos on “Night Flight” on cable. But I wasn’t really a fanboy enough to learn much about the band. I learned quite a bit about Mothersbaugh from this volume. Two things surprised me. One is that Mothersbaugh is older than I expected. He was at Kent State during the troubles during the Vietnam War, making him about ten years older than I expected. Second, he’s an artist in a large variety of media. This book is about his art, in many varieties of media. And there is a lot of it - dozens, or hundreds of pieces. For a glimpse into his art, this was a very good book. There were multiple writeups, I believe by different authors roughly covering different times and topics. But you will notice quite a bit of overlap. Some details are mentioned many times. Nevertheless, for a good retrospective of a prolific artist of the last 4 decades or so with street/punk cred, this was quite interesting.

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Review: Pulse

Pulse by Felix Francis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dick and son Felix Francis write horse industry related mysteries where the protagonists generally are smart, capable men who find themselves in some kind of pickle which they figure out through brains, a little brawn, and a dogged determination to get to the bottom of whatever mystery they are entangled in. I’ve found all his heroes to be likable characters. This was different in that the protagonist is a woman doctor with mental issues that really wasn’t that likeable. I’m more than halfway through reading the combined output of these authors, and so far this was the one I liked least. The doctor felt too much like a stereotype character from a TV series. I was surprised that this was a more recent book by Felix and not one of his first ones, since I tend to like the newer ones so far.

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Review: What's Your Future Worth?: Using Present Value to Make Better Decisions

What's Your Future Worth?: Using Present Value to Make Better Decisions by Peter Neuwirth
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Throughout my career I used net present value for various projects when analyzing project economics and while creating sales cases as a technical seller of software. I also have used present value calculations in reviewing my personal finances. I am familiar with the concept through use. I naturally think that way. I’d say this is a good book for those who are not familiar with the concept of present value and the time-value of money. The author introduces the concept, but mostly steers clear of the difficult math aspects. Much of the use here is describing some aspects of two alternatives and talking through which seems on a casual analysis to have the best value for a person. From my experience, this way to look at alternatives isn’t obvious to many people, so I do applaud the attempt this book makes in opening up this logical world to others. But for those familiar with the usage of such tools and ways of thinking, the book is not as interesting. Mainly, as the author described some examples of using present value analysis, I kept finding aspects the author ignored to simplify the story but that really gnawed on me as I read. If you already approach life with the tools of financial evaluation in mind and have that kind of latent obsessiveness that I sometimes exhibit, you could avoid this book. But if this is a new concept, this book is an interesting introduction, with the bonus of learning what an actuary does. There are plenty of anecdotes and personal reflections along the way, so it reads easy. But I didn’t find all the examples to best illustrate the points the author was trying to make.

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Review: Novels and Essays: Vandover and the Brute / McTeague / The Octopus / Essays

Novels and Essays: Vandover and the Brute / McTeague / The Octopus / Essays by Frank Norris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An author cannot live on dreary, depressing novels alone. I listened to the audiobook versions of Frank Norris’ three novels in this Library of America collection over the last six years (reviewed separately), and found every story to be well written but depressing at its core, mostly dealing with greed, stupidity, and downright foolishness leading to a downfall. The Library of America included a number of magazine articles written by Norris, and I read those recently. With the articles you get an entirely different view of the author. Norris wrote literary criticism that had an edgy feel. His writing was modern. The topics seemed chosen to cause readers to be provocative to the literary crowd. I got the feeling that he was writing to reach a word count in most of these articles, as parts seemed there just to fill space. It was interesting to see this different perspective on the author, but unless you are a Norris scholar, these articles aren’t necessary. Overall, I am very glad I read Norris’ novels in this collection, and will likely read his other popular novel, “The Pit”, after I build up some positive reserves to counter the likely depressing story.

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Review: Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life

Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dying with no money left, having spent it all on living. It sounds like an interesting concept – if money, a proxy for time, is a resource, can you optimize its use down to the last cent? The engineer in me was curious. I believed before reading this book that the only way to do that was to know for certain the date of your own death. After reading this book, I’m still of the same opinion. Perkins suggests that a person buy insurance and/or annuities to spend that last dollar, while doing any planned legacy giving while still alive, and while living life to the fullest. I don’t believe the insurance products he suggests all exist except in a theoretician’s mind, so practicality is a problem. As is risk. The author doesn’t always discuss additional risks taken while trying to limit a risk, like for instance your insurance company fails after you’ve paid for your annuity or insurance product. I found this disheartening in this book, as the author is an engineer who made his fortune in financial trading. I thought I found a kindred spirit.

And I did, in a way. The author begins the book describing his thinking being influenced by the book “Your Money or Your Life”, which explained how your time, or life energy, is traded for money, and you can think of your purchases as really being a chunk of your limited time on earth. He takes the concept to the conclusion that to be optimal, you should not waste time on making money that you won’t spend, hence the title of the book. But it ends up that the author isn’t done there. He continues down the optimization path by suggesting that life experiences and the memories they provide are what is really important in life, and to maximize these memories, you should spend on experiences while you can. For example, if you want to say you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, it’s best to do that when you are younger and abler than risk not being able to do it later in life when you may not be able to physically. This seemed to be the main thrust of the book, not quite what the title leads you to believe.

There were two things I didn’t like about the book. One was the bragging. The author is wealthy and enjoys spending his money. He threw himself a birthday party right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, flying friends to a Caribbean island and having a private concert. He is not psychologically opposed to spending. I tend to be, so I found this over-the-top example a bit too much. He used these examples to make his point, and he did.

Another thing I felt while reading this is what I would call “go-getter privilege”. There are risks that people who have generated wealth will take that other people will not. It is like there is a built-in insurance in the mind of a wealth generator, where they believe they can rebuild their wealth should any risk reduce their financial situation. I felt this strongly about the author, a multi-millionaire energy trader, as I read this book. It would be interesting to see if the author would have the same perspective if he was, say 20 years older and considering his wealth-making capabilities, facing age discrimination and no longer having his industry contacts, having followed his own advice and given away or spent most of his fortune. I think it would be quite a different book.

In summary, if you find yourself wealthy and want some logic behind upping your spending, this book is for you. For others, it is still a very interesting book, more a personal philosophy book than a finance book, making you think about your physical and financial capabilities at different times in your life and trying to make the best use of each.


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