Review: Affirmed and Alydar: Thoroughbred Legends

Affirmed and Alydar: Thoroughbred Legends by Timothy T. Capps
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As I read my way through the Thoroughbred Legends series, I sense a bit of a formula for these books about great racehorses. This one breaks the mold in a couple of ways. First, it covers two horses instead of just one. There's good reason for this - these horses were tied together by age and by results. Second, possibly because this covers two horses, the race coverage is not as detailed as in other books. Here, at times, you get just a paragraph or two describing some of the lesser races. I found this refreshing. Instead of filling space describing less consequential races, the author chose to cover the head-to-head races and the races with unexpected outcomes a bit more. Good choice. Thirdly, this one spent about a third of the pages describing the progeny of both Alydar and Affirmed, to really make the case that while Alydar was the lessor racer, he was the better sire. This was quite overwhelming in terms of listing offspring by season, and in many cases drilling down (and up) the family tree to make a point. The point was made, but with an almost Biblical listing of names that wasn't all that fun to read. That dropped my score down. Perhaps a graphic would have done a better job here. Beyond that choice, I found this one of the better ones in the series, although I already was an Alydar fan, and had read of Calumet's issues and Affirmed's demise in Ann Hagedorn Auerbach's Wild Ride: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., America's Premier Racing Dynasty .

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Review: On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance

On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A history of the Harlem Renaissance. You expect to read about how the Harlem area became the home to many Black Americans, and here you get a history of the circumstances and the landlords who made this possible. You expect to read about the culture, and here you read at length about the writers and the musicians who were center stage at this time. And you don’t expect to read about basketball. But it ends up Abdul-Jabbar makes a good case that basketball should be part of that story. He tells of the beginnings of professional basketball in Harlem, sponsored by large ballrooms and often played on the slick ballroom floors between band sets. He tells of the Rens and the Original Celtics, and the Chicago team called the “Harlem Globetrotters”. I found the basketball stories to be very interesting, and mostly new to me. As a pop history book, covering a lot of areas I am interested in, I enjoyed this.

Abdul-Jabbar also interleaves his own story, growing up years after the events portrayed as the Harlem Renaissance, and in a nearby neighborhood. He tells how the people and events of the Renaissance impacted him, often through meeting some of the people mentioned later on. Abdul-Jabbar also claims to be a historian based on writing prior books about his playing days. Seems like a bit of a reach, but OK. I enjoyed this book more than I expected, and will look for more of the same type by Kareem for light reads.


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Review: The Old-Time River Rats: Tales of Bygone Days Along the Wild Mississippi

The Old-Time River Rats: Tales of Bygone Days Along the Wild Mississippi by Kenny Salwey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Salwey writes about a couple of river rat families he knew growing up, back quite a few decades ago, as well as a couple of dogs he had and a couple of family stories from when he was young and living on the hills over the Mississippi. I chose to read this book because I grew up on a hill over the Mississippi a couple of hundred miles downstream from the lands Salwey talks about, but I had noticed the same kinds of folks. I was often called a river rat when visiting other high schools as a fan of our school’s basketball team and I didn’t know what that meant. Ours was one of only two rural school districts to encompass both the Mississippi banks and the Rock River, so there were plenty of river rats in the area. But I lived on the hill. Salwey’s book explains the difference in the people, in part based on the difference in the land and in how the people earned their livings. River rats earned their livings through the river, heavily focused on fish. Hill people were more the typical farmers. Salwey choses some real characters to illustrate river rats, and there are some good anecdotes about them. He also includes good anecdotes about his family and neighboring farmers threshing, or thrashing as he calls it. This must be from before the Second World War. Salwey also includes some stories about memorable dogs he has owned, which fit right in. This is a nice taste of the past, giving these rural folks from upriver of Dubuque and downriver from LaCrosse (sometimes called the Driftless) a voice from a simpler time. I’ve heard similar stories from family from around my part of the River.

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Review: Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act

Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act by Dan Rubinstein
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The author mentions in this book using Google to look things up. As I read through this book of walking and noticed the sections, including sections on the physical and mental benefits of walking, cops walking a beat, walking (more marching) in protest, and more, I found myself wondering if the author had just googled the term “walking” and categorized the results, writing parts of the book based on how popular the categories were. This is a broad overview of the term “walking”, and the sections do not congeal. Perhaps “walking” is too loose a connection between these topics. I think a focus on walking as a method of civic transformation, like the subtitle hints at, would have been enough of a topic to make a fine book. This just reached a bit too far. I enjoyed the voice of the author, and would consider reading more of his work.

I listened to this in the Booktrack audio edition. In this version, the book narration was accompanied by light background music and occasional appropriate sound effects. For instance, when quoting cops walking a beat, car horns and other city traffic noises were mixed in. I had mixed feelings about this experience. I actually enjoyed the sound effects and most music. I felt it raised the feel of the performance to be similar to listening to a well done NPR radio story. However, I noticed a few times while listening in the car that the choice of music was more of a repetitive industrial noise than music, and more than once I thought I had brake problems, or was dragging a metallic object, because of that noise. I recommend the Booktrack folks consider where their listeners tend to be when listening, and try not to send the wrong message with their additions to the monologue.


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Review: What Is Your What?: Discover the One Amazing Thing You Were Born to Do

What Is Your What?: Discover the One Amazing Thing You Were Born to Do by Steve Olsher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have read so many “find your purpose” books, I wonder why I keep going. But I know. It isn’t reading the book, it’s actually doing the work that, purportedly, help you find your purpose. And I don’t have a good track record at doing this work. So I continue, and I notice the differences in these types of books. This is one that is more of a workbook, with lots of fill-in-the-blank sections to work through. I actually found the exercises to be more thorough than many of the books I’ve read, so this was a good thing, but there are also plenty of blanks to fill in, which all require a lot of reflection. Hence more work.

I liked this book. It was ambitious. It had more steps than I was expecting. Although it was set up as a workbook, it’s hard cover – you don’t see that combination often. The font was a size smaller than I expected, and the text covered more of the page than I’m used to, with smaller margins. It felt like the author had a lot to say and wanted to maximize that paper. I wish he had used higher quality paper, though, instead of the typical disposable workbook paper that yellows quickly. Nevertheless, I found the design of the book was interesting and lead to me liking it more that I otherwise would have expected.

Overall, I found this one of the more interesting examples of the “find your purpose” genre.


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Review: Biopunk: Solving Biotech's Biggest Problems in Kitchens and Garages

Biopunk: Solving Biotech's Biggest Problems in Kitchens and Garages by Marcus Wohlsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very enjoyably written set of articles on home-brew biology as it exists in the early 2010s. Reading through this book felt like reading a long pop science magazine focused on this topic. There are lots of anecdotes about the people doing this. It actually starts off quite tame, describing people building diagnostic medical tests to test their own families and building inexpensive equipment or finding expensive equipment for sale second hand. Only as you go on in the book do you see DNA manipulation and the like. The book ends with a discussion of the risks involved.

I just attended a TEDx conference that included a speaker running a local biohacking lab. The talk focused on what they could do, how they share information with other researchers, and how they were using equipment that was home built for cheap or purchased for a fraction of what the functionality cost just a few years ago. Many of the advances talked about came about after this book was written (its copyright date is 2012). The cause of the strength of this area of “non-corporate” research, according to the speaker, is the continued lack of regulations. This continues to be a fast moving area, and on that will get more interest from the general public as time goes by and as “things happen”, good or bad, based on this research. “Biopunk” remains a good introduction.


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Review: Robicheaux

Robicheaux by James Lee Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have listened to the audio version of most of James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux books, narrated by Will Patton. Patton has become the voice of Dave Robicheaux for me, as well as the voice of the bayou country as described by Burke, in a way that can be called atmospheric, if that atmosphere is humid, hot, and kinda menacing. According to Amazon “Look Inside”, the word “mist” shows up 14 times in this book, mostly relating to seeing people appear or disappear. Moody. Robicheaux is having a bad time, more than normal, in this one, making this one of the more depressing stories in the series. The story is very similar to other Burke mysteries, as many of the recent books have seemed. But that doesn’t bother me yet, since what you are getting here is a more than plot, it is a mood that Burke knows how to impart very well. To the good is seeing Dave fall apart but hold it together enough to finish the story – there’s no grave injuries and superhuman recovery so prevalent in recent Robicheaux stories. Also, Clete is well-written comic relief (and is well performed by Patton). And you run across some inside jokey bits where you can sense Burke is winking at the reader, one bit playing off of earlier Robicheaux novel titles. I found this a refreshing entry into the cannon.

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