Review: The End the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving

The End the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It seems like I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books, of the genre I will label “pop-urban planning”. Most all have taken a thesis and provided convincing arguments that their thesis is correct. This is of the kind, and takes the popular pro-urbanization tact. In this case, pro-urbanization is anti-suburb, at least in the title and most of the rhetoric. Yet the author also includes anecdotes that describe possible paths forward for those suburbs, including high-density faux urban centers. I’m seeing that in the suburb I live in, with highrise mixed use developments replacing the empty one-story retail centers within 2 blocks of our commuter train station. The dream is a suburban lifestyle without required car ownership, and that seems possible in many places with mixtures of commercial and residential land uses -- just like the big city. I dislike this book’s title, because that is not the entire story revealed in the book. Suburbs aren’t ending, but are, and will continue to be, reconceptualized and rebuilt to meet the changing needs of the population. I found this a good book to bring up some of the issues and the opportunities in suburban development, with good anecdotes illustrating the authors investigations. The answer I saw here wasn’t just flight back to city center, but rebuilding a “change-urb”.

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Review: American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus

American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus by Lisa Wade
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author began the book with a discussion of the actual statistics of hooking up. It’s nowhere near as prevalent as the media and as the millennials you know lead on. After that brief introduction, the author spends the rest of the book describing the activities of her students, many active in hookups, but most impacted by what the author calls “the culture” surrounding the hookup. In other words, there are lots of hunters but few kills, and most brag of trophies. The bragging is the purpose. I’ve read books including “Missoula”, by Jon Krakauer, that shed light on this culture. “American Hookup” starts there, but doesn’t dwell on rape and justice. This book adds some details and anecdotes but shows the state of “the hunt” and the issues those ways cause still exist. Think less romance, more process, more checklists to mark off. It doesn’t seem to be about sexual freedom, like the stereotype of the mores of the sixties. My biggest takeaway from “Missoula” was that many young men have not generated their own moral compass when it comes to respect of others, or even “the golden rule”. From “American Hookup”, I see that that can be said of the young women the author has taken stories from as well. Parental and societal fails abound.

But does this represent a failure? For those in the older generations, changes in mores compared to the beliefs you were raised with generally appear to be failures. But progress also can seem like a failure at first blush. Is this progress? The author presents enough stories with no real benefit for the parties involved, in fact portraying injury and loss in some cases, to imply that this part of modern culture isn’t what you’d call progress. Overall, enlightening to a point.


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Review: I Killed Pink Floyd's Pig: Inside Stories of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

I Killed Pink Floyd's Pig: Inside Stories of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll by Beau Phillips
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve always wondered what radio promoters do. It seemed like quite a life, hanging out with creative musicians, hustling the details of deals, seeing where the money goes. And this book shows that it’s what I was thinking, and more. There are plenty of stories of the author’s time working promotions and other jobs at a rock station in Seattle and later at VH-1. From the stories, I’m not sure if the national spotlight would be considered the big league – it seems the local radio stories are just as cool and interesting, if not better. Lots of band name-dropping and stories about the ones you know. Most show the wild side of rock. The best, in my estimation, were the ones that showed the humanity in rock, the stories about Eric Clapton and the Make-a-Wish story with Paul McCartney. Another favorite – the everyone-gets-a-tux Tom Petty concert. From a business perspective, this gives some great ideas for promoting products, or in this case stations. And it gives examples of failures as well – always check that you’ve got the right album name before printing thousands of buttons. But it’s best for the stories about the big rock acts over the past 30 years. The author mixes stories about things he did with stories about things he’s seen, and that’s a great combination here.

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Review: A Barista Spills the Beans: A Dark Roasted Tale About My Time At Starbucks

A Barista Spills the Beans: A Dark Roasted Tale About My Time At Starbucks by P.N.M.I. Jameson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This isn’t “How Starbucks Saved My Life”, the rise from the ashes book by Michael Gill. The author clearly states it isn’t in the beginning of her book on working for a Starbucks in a tony part of MSP. But I don’t know about that. These books were cut from the same cloth, so to speak. Both are fish out of water stories, but that mostly revolved around being older than the normal Starbucks worker. While Gill is trying to figure out a new way after a late career layoff, Jameson describes herself in a way saying this is just another in a long progression of similar jobs, this one promising health insurance. And Gill uses his Starbucks experience to learn about himself through friendships with his co-workers and through repeated and monotonous job processes, Jameson actually does the same. Although, once again, she doesn’t admit this. By the end of the book, she has learned a bit about herself. Her detailed, humorous descriptions of her co-workers are the bulk of the book, and she has cataloged them well. There were way too many co-workers over the summer Jameson documented to keep track of them all. I blame store location and management and the fickleness of many young denizens of barista nation. And so does she. In reaching a similar age as the author, I have thought of becoming a semi-retired barista, but this is yet another book that dissuades me from the world that shows the job as an awful lot of work for often questionable management. Jameson starts her story describing her prior job in a gift store for older ladies. I found this to be very funny. Jameson tells stories well, but she has a voice, or more an attitude, that can rub the reader wrong at times. It comes across as very real, and on the whole I enjoyed her story. I would read more by Jameson.

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Review: The Jealous Kind

The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this James Lee Burke story revolves around a high school kid in the early 50s in Texas, it is no less serious than one of his Robicheaux stories. And the word serious could be capitalized here. The teen, Aaron Broussard, gets involved in theft, murder, suicide, terror, insanity, the mob, hitmen, Nazis and old spies, multiple gangs of bad guys, a lost million dollars, and a pretty girl. Or two. It was kind of like a story of a teen aged Robicheaux, with a goofy best friend ala Clete Purcell, getting into the same kinds of messes that Robicheaux routinely got into in his stories, but with a teen’s way of looking at things. The seriousness was a bit overwrought for the story, I thought. The story had a few too many parts to the plot that didn’t add much. And this wasn’t as moody as Robicheaux stories, mainly because 1950s Houston isn’t as much of a character as New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Burke’s other mysteries include the location as a kind of character, but here the location didn’t matter much to the story. Without the mention of icehouses and rodeos, this could have been about anywhere else. Looking forward to Burke’s next one.

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Review: A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing

A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing by Jim Rogers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The famous investor wrote this book to share his life advice with his young daughter. There is another review on Goodreads that outlines Rogers’ advice, and that is a large majority of what he has written. What isn’t on that list but is in the book?
- Rogers’ repeated commentary relating his infatuation with China.
- Some stories about his upbringing that are interesting in a homespun way.
- More love of China.
I would love to see what Rogers would have written now, 11 years after the initial publication, after having lived in China. I wonder if the infatuation is still there, and if the investing advice to his daughter, high on China and Brazil, continues or has been modified. The investing advice in particular seemed of its time.

Overall, enjoyable for the guidance given to Rogers’ daughter, with anecdotes as well as investing advice mixed in with the life advice.


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Review: Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!

Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week! by Phil Town
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I’d call this a blue collar investment guide. It is aimed at people early in their stock investing, ones that haven’t spent a lot of time and effort investigating and managing their investments. Given the author’s stories, he’s looking for those that threw some money at a stock or fund without much thought and got burned. The author even positions himself as “one of the guys”, repeating stories about his being a river tour guide and not mentioning more than in passing his career in hedge funds. The advice itself is typical of an investment guide from the 80s, think “One Up on Wall Street” with a bit more math. This runs counter to much of the recent and common investment practice of focusing on matching the market through buying market-spanning funds or ETFs. Instead of that tact, “Rule #1” suggests researching individual stocks. The author includes some basic fundamental company and stock price analysis, mixed with a dollop of subjectiveness based on a person’s familiarity with the stock or industry. The author then suggests market timing using simple technical analysis, buying and selling stocks on a regular basis.

A couple of things I didn’t like about this book. First, in the 9 disk CD audio version of this book, the author spends the entire first disc “teasing” the suggestions he gets around to making afterwards. This can be entirely skipped without missing anything of value. Second, like many books that suggest a process, this starts off very easy – Rule #1 is the only rule. But then you find additional steps are involved, then you find each step consists of more steps. It is a very involved process. And during the teasing part of the book, the author states it’s only 15 minutes a week to make all this money. Only near the end of the book does the author start to mention the hours of research that precede the period where you spend 15 minutes a week. And while there are plenty of opportunities to prove through data analysis that the process being suggested actually works, the author totally avoids providing proof of his partially objective process. After reading this and understanding the process being presented, I find that the way the story is told feels more like it is being told by a salesman, not quite telling the whole truth while ingratiating himself with his audience, than by an advisor just setting out the story. I tend to avoid books with this voice, and I tend to discount what they are (over) selling.

I am a bit of an old school investor. I feel there could be ways to invest in individual stocks and beat the market at times. So I’m primed for the story in this book. But I don’t appreciate the salesman tone, and I feel the lack of data shows the author cannot prove his process works. Nice for a step back to the 80s, though. We’ve come a long way as investors.


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