Review: Think to Win: Unleashing the Power of Strategic Thinking

Think to Win: Unleashing the Power of Strategic Thinking by John F. Manfredi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a very basic decision-making and planning book. If you’ve seen other decision-making books, or taken strategic thinking classes in college, this will look very familiar. In many of these types of books, there is some verbiage or some steps that make it somewhat unique. This was very vanilla. For example, the most unique step in this planning process was to do a SWOT analysis. Very vanilla. There was also a lot of discussion of holding big meetings to set strategies. This felt dated. You could almost smell the cigar smoke given the descriptions of those meetings. The best part of the book wasn’t the process description but the many examples. The examples weren’t all deep, but were varied enough to provide some interesting discussion. I think this book is best for those who haven’t had business or engineering classes involving decision making, but who are responsible for setting strategies and operating to those strategies. I don’t see this as a primary source for those creating a new strategy process, but I could see it used to add color to your existing strategic processes.

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Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Relationships, in particular friendships within a group, are dissected here by Murakami. Our protagonist is a not so likable guy, a loner who works on his life-long obsession - train stations. We are shown his past life, the highlight of which was being with four friends from high school. Tazaki is the only one that does not have a color as part of his family name, presaging his being forced from the group while in college. The book follows Tazaki’s life through decades, until he is made to reconsider his ostracism decades later, meeting up with the old friends. The book makes you reflect on the differences between friendships in groups, friendship of two people, and dating relationships by describing Tazaki’s thoughts on what went wrong with many relationships and his investigation later in life. You end up liking him more at the end, realizing that he has grown in self-knowledge. I could identify with his situation. I would consider this a “guy’s book” in that if the story was written with a woman main character, the relationships would be much different, and the story wouldn’t have the same conclusions. Murakami’s prose again stands out to me as written by a reasoned, logical person with a poetic heart. He makes architecting and even waiting at train stations sound romantic. This is one of those books that I suspect I'll be thinking about for a long time. A bonus for me was the repeated discussion of a specific CD of Liszt’s music, which caused me to find and listen to the CD. Very nice, and it really does evoke the pace of the book, which was slow and deliberate. The audio version which I listened to also had one of the songs at the end.

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Review: Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This biography of Lawrence of Arabia begins abruptly with a chapter long on action and short on background. The listener of the abridged audio version of this book is thrust into the story midway, and only after this episode’s conclusion is there some context of the situation, early in WWI, mixed in. And only when the bulk of the story is told are we given bits and pieces of Lawrence’s earlier life. The book concludes with what could be considered Lawrence’s second life, that of a lowly soldier and airman, connected and well-off but putting in the hours like the others. The book, and Lawrence’s life, prove how far from the safety of home a man can go, figuratively and metaphorically. And it proves there are second acts, with will, perseverance, and a goal. Note the abridged version that I listened to was over 14 hours long, so I'm not sure how much was cut. The abridgment could have been the cause of the abruptness experienced at the beginning of the book. YMMV. Quite a memorable read, combining real life action, mystery, inventiveness, reward, and, yes, horror.

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Review: An Innocent, a Broad

An Innocent, a Broad by Ann Leary
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading one of Leary’s fiction books and I thought her voice would be entertaining in this more personal memoir telling of her difficult child birth. Her story was quite entertaining. I learned about the British medical system through this book, but I also learned that Leary is like a lot of people, myself included, that read up on a topic and feel that we are smarter than the experts we hire. In this case, Leary time and again worries that these British doctors and nurses don’t know how to do things. We find out throughout the story that, in fact, she was in very capable hands during her extended stay in London after giving birth to a preemie. We also find that with her focus on her child, she missed out on her husband’s increase in fame. You end up seeing Leary as very human. This book evoked some emotion in me, which is rare. I found I wanted to strangle Leary who was showing signs of being a helicopter parent even before her child was born. And I sensed her gradual giving in to the reality of an extended stay in London tied to a hospital. But I also found a few passages caused me to laugh. Well written episode.

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Review: What Comes Next and How to Like It

What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Memoir, with somewhat random reflections on the past, with some self-analysis of the author’s life mixed in along the way. I appreciated that the flow was very much like a daily journaling exercise, and the author has a way to explain things simply, the results of a writer who has spent a lot of time thinking about her life. This shows you how this practice can work to build into a more cohesive story by providing examples of actions and thoughts at different times in the authors life, at different events. It is some attempt at understanding herself, while also acknowledging the bad (like drinking too much vanilla). You are left after reading this considering the author as both very strong and very weak, given how events have unfolded in her life. Her focus here seems to be on relationships with friends, daughters, and dogs. Her marriages didn’t seem to last, so you don’t see as much of that here in the analysis. I enjoyed the audiobook version – it was a nice and calming narration that allowed for personal reflection through comparison.

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Review: Fear of the Dark

Fear of the Dark by Walter Mosley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found myself mildly more interested in this episode of Paris Minton and Fearless Jones than the previous two. The entanglement of family ties, the evil eye, and the continual namecalling of cousin “Useless” was kind of funny. The plot was similar to others in the series, and the book contains interesting descriptions of the times and place – post-WWII LA. Lots of knocking on doors. And some of the action occurs off-stage and is related to the protagonists through a long story. But this felt more polished than the earlier ones in the series, like Mosley is optimizing his writing for the Minton/Jones pair as time goes on. The story, on reflection, was less of-its-time, and more character/personality driven.

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Review: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter by Margareta Magnusson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I expected this to be more of a how-to book than it ended up being. Magnusson mostly tells stories of her life, and of the times she’s had to clean up the houses of people, mostly relatives, that had passed away. Through her often funny stories, I was reminded of the times when my Mother was responsible for her Mother’s house after she passed. I saw the angst, and although it was decades ago, I still remember the weight of the decisions of what to do with every item in the house. Magnusson captures the issue cause by those weighty decisions, and suggests, in persuasive ways like a grandmother would use, to clean up your stuff while you still can, so you don’t excessively burden your relatives and friends after you pass. Nice and short read.

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