Review: Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball

Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball by R.A. Dickey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dickey’s book follows his life, from being a youngster to entering the world of professional baseball. The beginning of the book describes the abuse he encountered as a child, which continues to impact his life throughout the book, and which seems to be the impetus for his focus on religion. The bulk of the book covers Dickey’s professional baseball career, and it is more up and down than the average player. Given Dickey’s extensive experience in the minors, I expected this to have that minor league flavor. Instead of getting extended descriptions of the lower leagues (and you do get some of this), you get a lot more about Dickey’s take on his career. It’s a more personal book than I initially expected. Given that it’s personal, the book rises and falls based on how well you like Dickey. In the end, I would consider him in a slightly positive manner, but based on some of his responses to events that seem a bit whiny, his stories about issues with his marriage, and his many anecdotes ending in prayer, he comes across as a bit overwhelming. Interesting book, and great telling the story of learning the knuckleball over the last ten years or so.

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Review: Self-Tracking

Self-Tracking by Gina Neff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Self-Tracking” discusses the uses of self-tracking, focusing on medical uses and the technology that is making tracking easier. Think Fitbits and emotion journals and Instragrammed meal pictures. Much of the discussion centers around the ownership and legalities of the data created by tracking. The book describes current state and weighs in on the future. This was a deeper dive into the topic than, say, a Scientific American article. I found it met my expectations on an interesting topic and I learned a few things, but I found the organization of the book seemed too outline-centric, making it harder to follow in the audio version. This short book might be better read than listened to if looking for retention and organizational cues.

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Review: Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I hadn’t read a book about astronauts since “The Right Stuff”, and I figured this would kind of be like that one. Way wrong, even though “The Right Stuff” makes an appearance here as the book that drove author Scott Kelly to becoming an astronaut. Instead of the 1950s test pilot personalities that populated “The Right Stuff”, Kelly’s autobiography shows that nowadays astronauting is less the man against nature story, and more about man against the complex machine. The anecdotes here are not stories of swashbucklers or lone cowboys, they are the stories of scientists forced to follow procedure or, to coin a phrase, action bureaucrats. The stories in space didn’t really grab me.

What did stand out was the story of Kelly’s schooling and of his rise through NASA. Kelly is likely one of the very few self-professed bad students to work his way through college/academy and into the astronaut program. This part of the book is greatly uplifting, showing a student who didn’t apply himself to his schooling and got bad grades could find a purpose (in that Tom Wolfe book!) that would provide the impetus to become a good student with excellent grades in order to become a Navy pilot and later, astronaut. This was very impressive. The author continues telling of his rise through the Navy and NASA, giving details into the conversations he had when getting promotions or reassignments. I found this very interesting as the story of a career.

I listened to the audio version of this book, read by the author. His voice is very even throughout, perhaps too steady and unemotional. A professional narrator would have made this sound quite differently, and possibly better.

Overall, I liked the career story of an astronaut, from difficult student-hood through academy and military training. I found the anecdotes about his time in space to be surprisingly less intense, but maybe this means that space travel is becoming less the risky world of the explorer and more like the world of the office worker, albeit with plenty of procedures.


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Review: Better Scramble Than Lose

Better Scramble Than Lose by Fran Tarkenton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was written by Tarkenton when he was quarterback for the Giants, in between his tours with the Vikings. His stories are mostly of his time with the Vikings, though. The book appears to be a heavily edited recorded monologue by Tarkenton covering many of the game situations he had been in. He drops names liberally, especially teammates and key opposing players – he knows opposing defensive line folks well. He spends an entire chapter describing how to pick up opponent’s defenses, though you get the idea that this level of discussion is really aimed at student-age readers of this Scholastic Books imprint that are football-knowledgeable – deep but oversimplified. Tarkenton talks about defensive plays and the offensive plays meant to overcome them, including stunts. This really was more detailed than I expected about the game of football as played by the pros in the late 1960s. I learned a lot, not being a big football fan, but I have the feeling that the strategies and tactics described are all quite dated. Beyond the gameplay, Tarkenton describes some of the business aspects of the game, including how the Vikings used him as their second franchise quarterback, and he describes Viking coaches personalities. You can sense respect for most, but not all. Also I noted that the photo section in the middle used some truly awful pictures, some blurry, some just not interesting shots. Overall, I found this a fun book reminding me of the kinds of books I read decades ago when in school. You really could not tell that Tarkenton would later become a network TV show host and CEO of a software company. Quite a dichotomy.

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Review: The President Is Missing

The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Like a Dan Brown book, on steroids, with a plot that makes less sense. There’s a lot of action, and with short chapters, this really goes quickly. Except when it gets to trying to explain the technology behind the threat-to-the-world, it bogs down and gets confusingly written very quickly in an attempt to oversimplify for a mass readership. Technology description is like quicksand here, sounding fake and falsely simple. I was anticipating reading of interesting or believable location or process descriptions about the president and his world, but this was generic D.C thriller. You can’t sense Clinton’s hand on the book here until the tacked-on winner’s monologue at the end of the book – spouting policy initiatives that a president with a high favorable rating could attempt to accomplish. I was quite underwhelmed by the story, but kudos for using Dennis Quaid to read the president’s parts of the audiobook – good casting for a president who’s also an action hero.

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Review: Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom

Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom by Ken Ilgunas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I chose to read this book because it sounded like an interesting story of a young man who decides to live in a van. Given a short look at the book description and subtitle, it seemed this also would discuss getting out of debt. This seemed to be a very practical direction for a book like this to take, as opposed to another tact, a philosophical review of living in a vehicle. That word “Walden” in the title suggested this might be more philosophical and less practical, but the descriptions seemed to lean toward a practical memoir. Approaching the book this way, I was not looking for wisdom, I was just looking for a good story by a young author. That’s what I got. I’ve noticed reviews that pillory the author for being a self-centered person, finding fault with every one he meets. I saw some of that, but I believe that that is how many young people think. In talking to my nephews, of a similar age to the author, I see the same attempts to “figure out” people and situations, often from a self-centered perspective, and often ending with self-satisfaction in the analysis. That’s what I found here, albeit with an interesting story about the author’s jobs in Alaska, none of which involved a van. In fact, beside a short introductory anecdote, the author doesn’t live in a van until the last third of the book. This didn’t end up being about living in a van.

Instead, this is about an almost paranoid response to having debt. The author frets about his (and his friend’s) student loan debt throughout the book. He decides early on to eliminate his debt as quickly as possible and to not take on more debt for continuing education. He does this through cheap living, low-wage jobs, and a rapid debt repayment schedule. By the time the author decides to return to school and live in a van, he has saved enough to only need free housing for a semester, which is where that van comes in. But of course, the van isn’t free, so the reader wonders if living with roommates would have been as inexpensive. The author ends up writing an article about his van living arrangements, and seems to decide he needs to keep the van despite having the resources to rent his own place. This is an odd choice, not well explained, but I suspect he had decided to write a book about his experiences around that time. Another thing that I was looking for but never found was a discussion about taking on debt for home buying. The author never discusses this, but he seems so opposed to the idea of debt that he will never hold a mortgage.

As a story about a young college graduate rapidly eliminating debt while working interesting jobs, many outdoors and in Alaska, this is a very good story. It’s also interesting in a voyeuristic way to see the lengths the author goes through to avoid spending money. I wouldn’t approach the book expecting great wisdom, though, or a commonly repeatable tightwad-like lifestyle. This seems quite extreme and, in the end, kind of silly.


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Review: The 100: Count ONLY Sugar Calories and Lose Up to 18 Lbs. in 2 Weeks

The 100: Count ONLY Sugar Calories and Lose Up to 18 Lbs. in 2 Weeks by Jorge Cruise
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t read diet books, but I found this short audiobook at the library, and thought I would try one. I probably picked the wrong one. The audiobook covered about what I expected. Of the three CDs in the set, the first two went over what the author finds wrong with other diets. The third CD covered the diet, which really was to limit (specific) sugar-based calories to 100 per day. Sounds like a lot of work if you are tracking these things manually. Unfortunately, the publishers of this audiobook decided that three entire chapters would be withheld from audio, and only made available as PDFs. The publishers apparently forgot that people buy audiobooks in order to listen to them, not to read them. While there is certainly some content that is better read than listened to, and in this case that might have been these chapters that actually gave details on how this diet works through recipes and menus, I was left after finishing the audiobook unable to determine if the author had a point or not. For all I know, he could have told you to only eat eye of newt. In cases where the content may be unsuitable for audio, generally where there are long lists, extensive photos or charts, or recipes or Web URLs, publishers would do their readers a favor by providing an audio summary of the extracted content. Authors really should push back if the audio production of their work gets this kind of treatment. The format of this CD set should be listed as partial e-text with abridged audio. Book was going to rate between 1 and 3 stars if I could have listened to all of it, but the audio version gets a 1.

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