Review: Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal about the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing

Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal about the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing by Ben Blatt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I work in software, with systems created to manage electronic content and to handle eDiscovery and searches. One of the capabilities of these kinds of systems is the ability to make content available for analysis through analytics. I’ve seen users of these system do some interesting things in evaluating their content to, for example, find relationships between emails, but I hadn’t seen many good uses of text analytics for researching regular, old documents. That’s what this book does. There are dozens of examples described analyzing mostly books, comparing, for instance, uses of different words over time, and comparing different authors in word usage. The first example, analysis of the Federalist papers to determine the original author based on word usage, was a great introduction to how this kind of analysis can impact our understanding of history. Many of the other examples didn’t aim quite so high, providing ways to compare authors to others, or compare an author’s early work to their later work. There were also examples comparing the size of an author’s name on book covers compared to their co-writers or compared to their own books as the author became more popular. Along the way, you learn that Danielle Steele and James Patterson’s writing stands out for, to me, unexpected reasons. I found this an interesting book if you are interested in books and authors.

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Review: The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present by Eric R. Kandel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting book starting with a review of “the scene” in Vienna prior to WWI, describing the art scene and Freud and his research. After this overview, the book turns into a somewhat pop-science review of brain science and psychology. It concludes using the learnings of the Viennese to illustrate the science, and to further discuss creativity. I found the first part, the history, quite unexpected and interesting. The author described how artists discovered new ways to present their art using new thinking about human perception. These perceptual cues are then described from the perspective of brain science and psychology. Quite deep. There have been quite a few books that covered the science that this book covered in the past year, and it seems I’ve read more than a handful. This came across as a deeper technical discussion than those pop-science books, and it had a unique angle of relating it to art and early psychology. It was still quite readable.

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Review: Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech

Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech by Cyrus Farivar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this a fascinating and well-written book. I work in IT dealing with eDiscovery, records management, and archiving. I have an interest in how the laws on privacy impacts the electronic traces we leave behind in the world, often hidden in the corporate repositories I work with. And, I have some history reading mysteries and watching Perry Mason, so there’s an interest in the law. “Habeas Data” provides details on the issues I face at work, and does it in an approachable style, a mix of “Perry Mason” and Malcolm Gladwell. The author discusses a number of legal cases in the history of privacy and surveillance in the US. Some I had heard of, some not, but all are told as stories. Also, because the issues in privacy are being caused by the indelible march of technology, the author describes the technology of the time of each case, and also reflects on how that technology has changed since the original case. The oldest cases covered are a few decades old, the newest just a year or two – relatively fresh out of the headlines (think 2016 elections). It seems that a big issue, perhaps the biggest issue enabled by this march of technology is the incredible volumes of information we now routinely carry. Court decisions that allowed, say, search of the photos in the pockets of a suspect back in the 50s now don’t (or may not) allow search of photos in an iPhone in the pocket of a suspect, in part because there’s just too many photos for a person to consider searchable, and too much of their life enclosed in that piece of metal, plastic, and glass. While the increasing issues of privacy are troubling, “Habeas Data” provides the background to understand how changes in technology have driven changes and new definitions in law. If you have an interest in the topic of the legal aspects of privacy and surveillance in our modern world (from the American perspective), this is an excellent book.

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Review: Stories for Work: The Essential Guide to Business Storytelling

Stories for Work: The Essential Guide to Business Storytelling by Gabrielle Dolan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"These days, employees want fewer facts and less information, and more emotion and meaningful connection."

Ah, the post-fact world...This seems very true in my experience, for many employees, at least for employers that don’t have a history of not telling the whole story. And that is just one target audience (employees, especially those in a corporate change program or being “indoctrinated” with company vision and values) Dolan describes in “Stories for Work”. Dolan teaches how to find personal stories, how to tell those stories, and how to use them for presentations, sales, coaching, job interviews, and basic getting-to-know you conversations, in addition to the change and vision uses previously mentioned. Dolan’s suggestions are relatively concise and useful. There is more ink used on examples than on the procedures she’s recommending, and the examples are useful and interesting to show the format of stories and the emotional content. Key learning: make ‘em short – stories should be two minutes or less. I was concerned that this would be one of those books by consultants that are just an advertisement to sell her services, but this appears to be useful without hiring Dolan. Note that she really wants you to hire her, as most of the examples are from former students of her classes or from her consulting clients. And she includes many mentions of her consultancy throughout the book. Despite the advertising, I found the content useful and interesting, and I would consider reading another book by Dolan.

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Review: The Feather Merchants: A Novel

The Feather Merchants: A Novel by Max Shulman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For me, Max Shulman’s “The Feather Merchants” was a trip to the past. But not the past you’d expect, given this is a satire about a WWII soldier on leave. The trip to the past for me was back to my own younger days reading National Lampoon magazine in the late 70s or early 80s. This book has the style of writing I recall from some of the Lampoon stories, and it could easily fit into the magazine. Typical of some of those stories, “The Feather Merchants” include dozens of goofy, made up names, a far-fetched story line, and a bit of a sudden ending. For this kind of heavy satire, I find less is more – I’d rather read a short story than a short novel. But this was interestingly written, and I thought worth the effort. As I’m a Dobie Gillis fan, I’ll be reading more by Shulman. Note not PC for this era, but pretty common for its time.

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Review: All That Is

All That Is by James Salter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this on a whim, having never before heard of the author. I hoped to find something of interest, something that grabbed me. This both did and didn’t. In the details, the sentences, the book was very good. I remember reading, or rather listening to sections and realizing the descriptiveness was very well done. As to the overall message of the book, I didn’t think as much of it. I write this a week after finishing it, and I realize the overall plot didn’t really lodge in memory, and neither did any of the vignettes that this consisted of. Sometimes this happens based on the mood I’m in instead of the writing. I admit to lazy reading at times. And sometimes this feeling is because of the writing – being depressing. This was, quite often, depressing. So I’d read more of this author, counting on the sentences being good and hoping that there was a reason behind all the writing, or at least one more obvious.

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Review: Exoplanets: Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System

Exoplanets: Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System by Michael Summers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This short science book really tells a story about the planets that exist, or theoretically exist, in the universe, and describes the science behind the descriptions and the history of the discovery of these planets. Two signs of a good pop-science book are vivid descriptions and analogies that simplify the story for lay readers. Both happen in this book. I will remember “hot Jupiters” and how they came to be the first kinds of distant planets discovered. And I will remember the description of diamond worlds, with diamonds thrown from volcanoes. This is a great read about planetary science advances over the past ten years or so.

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