Review: Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures by Jennifer Romolini
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am probably not the audience Romolini had in mind for her book. While I believe I would certainly fit the title and subtitle callouts, I am an older male. The author, and quite a few of her stories, are aimed at women at work, generally young women at work. How can I tell? The book includes advice and anecdotes on working while nursing and on when to wear a bra, among other things. But I still found this a fun-to-read book, filled with stories of a unique person as well as some advice on working and careers. I didn’t find the career advice sections all that earth shattering, but there were bits that were aimed at untraditional advice relating to career, such as sleeping with co-workers. These kinds of advice really just made me feel old, but helped me to understand the generational changes in the approach to work and careers. I most enjoyed the stories of Romolini’s life including her work history with a series of low paying jobs before she got serious on getting a career. There’s a definite turning point in her work life, and this could have been further analyzed. Quite interesting.

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Review: The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I thought I was pretty well rounded when it comes to the use of social media for my work, I realize after just a few minutes of listening to this audiobook that I’m just a layman. I learned a number of things, and only ran across a few things that were obvious. There’s a mix of content that is evergreen and content that might have a shorter shelf life, including lists of companies offering content. I will find value in both. I am torn over how I feel about the audio version. There is good list-based information and plentiful web site links, and I feel that having a paper or digital book for reference might be of more value, but the audio is a quick way to understand what you don’t know. Overall, I really enjoyed this and may be looking to get the paper version.

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Review: You Don't Have to Drive an Uber in Retirement: How to Maintain Your Lifestyle Without Getting a Job or Cutting Corners

You Don't Have to Drive an Uber in Retirement: How to Maintain Your Lifestyle Without Getting a Job or Cutting Corners by Marc Lichtenfeld
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m getting to the age and having the right mindset for this book to capture my attention. The author plays on the nagging suspicion that fully retiring from the workforce and living off of savings might be too risky, and alternative forms of income or cost savings might be useful. The author provides a number of ideas for income generation and cost savings that are relatively current. Topics covered by the author regarding income are: long-term dividend stock investing, covered calls and puts, personal and peer-to-peer lending, buying tax liens, working for Uber and the like as a contractor, optimizing social security, and funding health savings accounts. The cost saving ideas are: optimizing Medicare, medical tourism, pharmacy discount programs, rarely used tax deductions, using discount brokers, buying cheaper cars, and travel discounts and points programs. There’s also a chapter on small ideas for cost savings which includes discounted gift cards, rewards purchasing sites, and cheap or free classes. The author concludes with a few pages on why annuities and life insurance besides term tend to be bad ideas.

I really liked the mix of topics. But understand that this is a short book, and most ideas are discussed with only a few pages of text. This is more of a tickler – if you find good ideas look into them yourself. Also, although this is quite current, I noticed a few sections were not. Some of the points programs described rules that changed years ago, for instance. I also noticed that in the authors paring down of content, he often spent time talking about the pros of an idea and disregarded the cons. For instance, buying gift cards from third parties is rife with fraud, including at least one of the services he recommends. I suspect the author hasn’t actually tried every service he touts here. Again, caveat emptor. Another glossing over of cons was his discussion of reinvested dividends. His quick economic comparison to other savings options failed to take into account required taxes on dividends, but did take taxes into account in the alternatives. Taxes made appearances only when it furthered the basic tactics he was suggesting. Keep an open mind that additional research will be required.

Overall, I liked the mix of topics, hitting income and costs with many different ideas. You don’t often see, say, covered calls mentioned in the same book as buying discounted gift cards and peer-to-peer lending sites. The author hit on a good collection of what I’d call “retirement money hacks” that didn’t include some of the traditional ideas, like selling stuff on eBay. And I appreciated the understanding he provided about driving for Uber, despite the title. This is written in a conversational style, and is easy to read. But I would recommend if you find an idea you want to incorporate into your financial life that’s more involving than, say, signing up for MyPoints, do additional research.


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Review: World's Best Life Hacks: 200 Things That Make Your Life Easier

World's Best Life Hacks: 200 Things That Make Your Life Easier by Sara Devos
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you've been on Facebook at all over the past couple of years, you've probably seen a video showing you non-obvious uses of toilet paper rolls, or binder clips, or something else. This is a series of pages with 200 "life hacks", short write-ups with an illustrative, and often amateur, photograph to illustrate. I was able to go through this while sitting having lunch at McDonalds -- it's not a long nor an involving book. I'd say I have seen a majority of these suggestions previously, often on Facebook or other sources like the LifeHacker website. Most of the new-to-me suggestions were not of use to me, perhaps involving entertaining young children. You can tell this was written by mothers of youngsters. But the value here is if you find a handful of things you could immediately put to use. I did find a couple of suggestions that I might try. I'll give this 3 stars as I think it may be more useful to others with younger children, but for me it was probably more a 2 star read.

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Review: Yestermorrow

Yestermorrow by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many of the essays in this collection are about urban design, mainly written in the 70s and 80s. Bradbury is lobbying readers to recreate old, Midwestern town centers in new towns and in different districts of large cities. He writes of promenading, and visiting bookstores and tiny movie theaters, and town fairs and farmers markets. He dreams about the people watching opportunities this would enable. He complains about cars and traffic, and determines that his urban centers would ban vehicles to the outskirts. This reads like an advertisement for Disney’s Celebration, Florida development and EPCOT. And as Bradbury worked with Disney, this might actually be the case.

The concepts are interesting, but are told in multiple essays written throughout the years. Bradbury’s of the Henry James school - his writing is flowery and excessively metaphorical. And he even writes about metaphors in this collection. The writing makes this a difficult but illuminating read.

While I enjoyed the multiple essays on urban planning, I understood the concept from books I read in the 70s and 80s. I most appreciated his essay on Bernard Berenson, an early mentor in Bradbury’s writing career. Unlike all the other essays about bringing humanity to a city, I most appreciated the story Bradbury writes about himself, looking for acknowledgement and wisdom, and finding it in a mentor turned friend.


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Review: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the prompts in the Read Harder Challenge for 2018 is to read a children’s classic from before 1980. I had recently completed reading Ian Fleming’s Bond series, so his “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” came to mind. I always liked the movie, and I wanted to see how far from the book it was. Ends up, quite a bit was changed. The first obvious change I noticed in the book was the lack of Truly Scrumptious. Truly could have been the name of a Bond girl, and she was inventor Pott’s love interest in the movie. But in the book Potts is married. Also missing in the book was the grandfather and his iconic potting shed. Another difference was the memorable dance number at Scrumptious Candy. I figured this would not be in the book, but that dance number was actually described, rather succinctly, in a paragraph or so.

And then came the adventures. Chitty on the sandbar was pretty much identical between book and movie, but after that early episode, the movie had the adventurers in a Bavarian kingdom with child snatchers and robot dolls and such. But the book had a more basic adventure involving a British gun runner and a little kidnapping. This was totally different and quite a bit underwhelming when compared to the movie.

Between the book and the movie, I liked the movie much more than the book. But the book does its job of introducing the characters and setting up the adventures, and made Chitty more of an independent, magical being, one capable of smiling and blinking, and some kind of ESP. And there are additional books in the series which might capture the magic of the movie. I may give them a shot.


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Review: Another Place You've Never Been

Another Place You've Never Been by Rebecca Kauffman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I listened to this on audio, and I found the stories washed over me, enjoyable at the time, but ultimately, they left little impression. That’s not bad, especially if that’s the feeling you are looking for. I enjoyed the vignettes of interrelated stories, although I found myself looking for the relationships as much as listening to the story. The first story, about the swimmers, was the most intense. The rest were more tame. I suspect this one is better read than listened to. I would consider reading more by Kauffman.

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