Review: Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery

Borkmann's Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery by Håkan Nesser
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting Scandanavian mystery in that the police are optimistic on solving the case without much of anything to go on, while wasting time, drinking wine and playing chess. In the few Scandanavian mysteries I have previously read, there's much brooding, a dark and dreary environment, and general pessimism until optimism is warranted. This is a change. I found the interactions, especially among the police, to be interesting to read, and I enjoyed the few humorous bits, mostly showing people who are good at their jobs but who are also jaded. The case itself was a bit gory. I look forward to reading more in this series.

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Review: The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace

The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace by C. Richard Weylman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Simple, short book that says you need to meet customer's needs, not trumpet how good you are. This is motherhood and apple pie in terms of the way many people think, but not always in how they approach business. The author gives examples of companies advertising how popular they are, but not advertising how the meet a customer's needs. Whoops. Although this wasn't anything new to me, it was a good reminder of what to focus on when working on marketing and sales, and was well written with many examples.

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Review: Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell

Vocal Leadership: 7 Minutes a Day to Communication Mastery, with a Foreword by Roger Goodell by Arthur Samuel Joseph
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Authors of books that purport to teach the reader something that also happen to offer consulting or training in the same topic have to walk a fine line. They likely make more money on their day-to-day work than on sales of their book, so they often use the book to introduce the concepts but don’t provide an entire package that would allow the reader to fully embrace the topic without paying for additional courses or consulting. I’ve read quite a few books recently that have provided a lot of value in terms of teaching how to accomplish something without requiring hiring the author to help, and I tend to reward those books with better evaluations. Here, this isn’t the case.

The author provides some very basic processes to work on vocal strength. He does this in two ways. First, there are a series of vocal exercises that he describes. This sounds good, but was a very small part of the book. I listened to this book’s audio version, and that likely helped me understand exactly the kinds of vocal sounds that were for practice. Think Eliza Doolittle’s elocution lessons in “My Fair Lady” – most of the exercises were similar. They were also similar to the exercises I learned in Junior High Chorus. Again, this was only a small part of the text. The second way to “embrace your vocal mastery” was to follow a set of rules. You’ve likely heard many of these rules from your parents. Stand up straight. Breathe. Project when you speak. These rules might have some value, but seemed quite generic.

Most of the book, unfortunately, related anecdotes about “vocal mastery”. I enjoyed some of these, including the author’s retelling of the story behind “The King’s Speech”. But many of the anecdotes highlighted the author, and there were enough of these to make the book feel like a long written advertisement for the author’s classes. The classes are mentioned quite often, so you understand that they are the purpose of the book. In fact the structure of the book is such that the rules and exercises content are surrounded, before, after, and in between, with what seems to be advertisement. This isn’t bad in and of itself depending on the actionable content, but here the actionable content felt a bit lacking. The rules seemed too generic, the exercises seemed incomplete. Good for a taste of elocution lessons, but you’ll need to wade through a lot of sales pitch.


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Review: When Strangers Meet

When Strangers Meet by Kio Stark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I was growing up, I realized my Mom’s hobby was to go to the Hardees at the mall, buy a cup of coffee during non-lunch hours, and sit in a booth with a good view of the mall in front of Montgomery Wards, and to watch people. She rarely talked with strangers, though, and I grew up with that as a base. Going away to college I found myself talking to strangers quite often, and I have kept this up ever since. I was happy to see the suggested exercises in this book really starts with my Mom’s people watching, and continues with some things that I have done, and some things I’ve never even thought of doing (like pretending I am lost and asking someone to draw a map). I found these suggestions quite interesting. I liked the anecdotes presented here, and I appreciated the brevity of the book and of the message. I think being open to interactions is important and valuable in many ways. Worth some thought.

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Review: Chaos Monkeys Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Chaos Monkeys Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio García Martínez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun and inciteful book on the state of startups, morphing with a buyout into a story about working within a FANG. Great business anecdotes, from working with Y Combinator, working with VCs, leaving gainful employment with a declining tech company, getting sued by same former employer, shopping and selling the startup, and working for Facebook until not working for Facebook. Along the way, the author explains how the internet makes money with ads, and how ad capabilities are becoming more “weaponized” through the use of additional user data. In other words, he explains how better ad-serving technology competes with user privacy concerns, from the ad savvy technical side of things. I found some of the explanations very good, and some were confusing, but in total I found I learned some things on modern internet advertising that I hadn’t realized were happening. This is not a how-to book. This is more a business memoir. Very interesting story. I enjoyed the flow. The author was a bit into himself, using the book to lay claims to events, actions, and thoughts along the way. This added interest to the story when presented in small bits, and the author mostly did this, but some passages were a bit too self-serving for my taste. Despite those bits, I found the book overall to be a very nice overview of the “career flow” hitting a lot of typical technology employers – the declining tech, the startup, and the unicorn. This is certainly the dream of many workers in technology or marketing, and the author illustrates how this did happen for him, sharing both good and bad.

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Review: Mister Monkey

Mister Monkey by Francine Prose
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is like a chain of related stories. At times, the chain is a bit tenuous, pulling in a character based on as loose a relationship as sitting next to another character in a restaurant. But as the book continues, you start to see additional relationships pop up, and the author does a wonderful job of showing this inter-relatedness. The story starts a bit oddly, describing a local theater performance of a play based on a children’s book called “Mister Monkey”, a performance that doesn’t go as well as planned. The story then jumps through different characters’, related to the immediately previous characters. As you read toward the end, you realize the relationships have been made with other characters, circling back in effect. There’s an ending that can be best described as “nice”. I liked the book and appreciated the effort to tie these characters together while making them real. I would read more by this author.

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Review: Monologue: What Makes America Laugh Before Bed

Monologue: What Makes America Laugh Before Bed by Jon Macks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book by a former Jay Leno Tonight show head writer quite a lot. I was thinking I might end up rating it a 5 star book. But as I got into the second half, I realized how dated some of the material was. Late night monologues are often politically based, and some of the jokes retold were very dated. If you want to relive some of the punchlines of the late 80s through the early 00s, this is quite a good book. The author tells his own story, coming from the political world, writing ads and speeches, and turning that into a job writing jokes. You get some of the background of that kind of work, and you get a history of late night monologues back to before Jack Parr. His WC “joke” is included in its entirety. While most of the jokes retold are from Leno’s Tonight Show, the author includes many stories and favorite bits from other late night hosts. If you are interested in reliving past late night monologue jokes, are of a certain age to understand the for-the-time topical humor (say 45+), and are interested in the behind the scenes work of a joke writer, this is perfect for you. If you just want the best of Leno’s monologues, this is also a good bet.

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