Review: Redhead by the Side of the Road

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As an aging tech guy myself, I saw parts of myself and my friends in Micah. It was an enjoyable experience reading how Micah handled some surprises and was able to review and start to rethink his life.

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Review: Jonathan Winters is Terminator 3

Jonathan Winters is Terminator 3 by Jonathan Winters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You can picture Jonathan Winters at home with an old tape recorder, thinking up a bit, then hitting record and riffing on some odd premise. Here, all his bits are a minute or two, and are as if he left a message on an answering machine. All were different characters, a few impersonations of famous people, but mostly just really odd prank calls. For example, one is of a phone company employee named Bell (who goes on about his name for some time) leaving a message telling the receiver that he doesn't make enough outbound calls, so the phone company can't make any money, so they're cancelling phone service. Winters humor is often in the explaining...

It's only 50 minutes, so quite a nice change of pace, funny as odd.

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Review: Miranda Hart's Joke Shop: The Complete First Radio Series

Miranda Hart's Joke Shop: The Complete First Radio Series by Miranda Hart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I had never seen the TV series, or even heard of it, I enjoyed the radio series, in all its radio-ness. Well done, and the kind of humor that works well on radio.

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Review: The Pearl

The Pearl by John Steinbeck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes, you have to leave IMMEDIATELY.

And keeping your mouth shut only works if you do it from the beginning.

Life lessons from Steinbeck.

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Review: Gratitude

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well written and short. And, as expected, sweet, yet melancholy.

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Review: The Four Doors

The Four Doors by Richard Paul Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nice little motivational book, about thinking through your choices. Nothing new, nice repetitive message.

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Review: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War by Jerry Della Femina
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed reading books on advertising in the past, and this one was another good one. What struck me was the playfulness that the author put into the writing. Also, I found his descriptions of selling advertising campaigns to be so very similar to my work selling enterprise software. In Della Femina’s case, he was pitching a concept, but what sold the concept was the team behind the work. It was really the team that was being bought. In my case, we were also selling a concept, one that would require massive time and energy commitments from management to make the benefits come to fruition. And often the project would get reduced along the way. So the customer was buying the idea, as well as the team to implement that idea, the team that could drag a project over the bumps in the road. Idea sales for business has some similarities.

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