Review: The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness

The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nice introduction to Adlerian psychology. The format, a Socratic dialog/debate, lent itself to building a broad base of understanding while allowing some topics to have deeper discussion. Having no prior knowledge of Adler’s thinking, I found this very interesting, and worthy of further investigation. I found the fiction of the discussion, much like Goldratt’s “The Goal”, was not great literature, but succeeded in getting the story across in a readable way. The young questioner was annoying, but not unlike others I have known.

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Review: Financially Forward: How to Hack Your Wallet in the Digital Age

Financially Forward: How to Hack Your Wallet in the Digital Age by Alexa Von Tobel
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I picked this up because it looked like it covered interesting topics, was by someone I had heard of, was short, and was showcased at our local Barnes and Noble. This promised to analyze the current crop of fintech tools. Since I use some of these tools, and I’m always looking for better, this was promising. After reading this, I was a bit underwhelmed. This book meanders all over the place within personal finance. There are basic definitions, some intro to planning, trends in personal finance, pointers on raising financially aware children, and the future of blockchain. Having read quite a few personal finance books, I found that this wasn’t really written for me. I did get something out of it though – the author includes a list of apps and services that are currently available. Some I heard of, some I use. The author also tags the large number of these services where she is an investor. Given she has spread her investments around this arena, you might think this book was written to help “advertise” these services, and there is a feel that this is part of the purpose of the book, given the focus on some of the lesser known highlighted apps. I often don’t appreciate books that are written as advertisements, but given the topic this is interesting and has some value, if only to increase awareness. Probably a better question is whether this book provides value to readers that are new to personal finance and planning. The author covers some of the basics, with advice aimed at the uninitiated, so it probably isn’t a bad book to read early in your learning. So for newbies, not a bad read. For more experienced readers, more of a skim or a skip.

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Review: Planet of Exile

Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the writing, but the story seemed quite minimal. It’s a ‘humans team with aliens to combat others’ story that has great backstory and great descriptions, and a kind of twist in the beginning, but one where the story kind of fizzled. Without that twist, this would have been a very traditional high adventure combat story with heroes and villains, one that Le Guin would have done well with, but not her cup of tea. Instead, we get a tiny bit of a love story that changes planetary history. There is still adventure and battle against overwhelming odds, but it seemed lessened given the arc of the story. The ending seems to have been a convenient way to wrap up the novel quickly. This felt too manufactured. But again, the world-building writing was quite interesting. You felt the story was written in the 60s, with the questioning of a declining society and dealing with inter-speciel (?) relationships. This felt of its time.

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Review: Code Name: Lise

Code Name: Lise by Larry Loftis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A real-life spy story that includes the details and the failures as much as the adventure. In fact, if you look at how the story goes, (view spoiler)[ our spies are captured and deal with imprisonment for almost half of the book. Given that the book begins with the work of convincing Odette and her training, there isn’t all that much “spy adventure” included. It’s more a “love and torture” book. The author somewhat dispels the idea that a spy leads a life of intrigue given the difficult situation faced by our hero. I learned quite a bit by reading this, including about how Allied spies in France operated and how often they were discovered and captured. Spying looks to have been as short-lived a role as early fighter pilots. (hide spoiler)]

The writing reminded me of the youth non-fiction books I would read from the elementary school library, a simple style. The author ended each chapter with a kind of “perils of Pauline” cliff hanger statement. I was hoping for something more refined. Overall, an interesting story, though not what I was expecting, and written in too simple a style. Perhaps this would have been better broken up into 3 books: a love story, a spycraft story, and a separate story of the imprisonment.


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Review: Invisible Ink: My Mother's Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist

Invisible Ink: My Mother's Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist by Bill Griffith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a fan of Zippy, Griffith’s surreal comix character, and I hoped that this autobiographical graphic work would be in the same vein. It is. Griffith tells the story of his mother’s long affair with a well known cartoonist that he didn’t know about. Ends up his mother worked for said cartoonist, and Griffith’s father was a bit of a loner type. Griffith tells the story of finding out about the affair and doing his own detective work to try to figure out how this happened. He also tells, and better, shows what he thinks might have happened if he knew this when he was a young and impressionable cartoonist. Much like a deep-thought Zippy strip, Griffith illustrates in a different style reflecting the teachings of the elder cartoonist. I really enjoyed that Griffith was able to share some of his deepest thoughts about this unknown aspect of his mother’s life, in writing and drawing. Some of the story, like meeting with his uncle at the beginning and end of the book, felt a bit forced, but otherwise, quite an interesting glimpse into Griffith’s head.

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Review: Geophysics: A Very Short Introduction

Geophysics: A Very Short Introduction by William Lowrie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Imagine a science textbook that is chock full of math. Now remove all the math, but leave behind a preponderance of term definitions. That is what you get here. I found the onslaught of geophysics terms to overwhelm my listening to this audiobook. Perhaps audio wasn’t the best medium for this type of book. I quickly lost the connections between, for instance, the variety of named waves rippling through the earth at any point in time, or the counterbalancing twisting that the earth experiences. Were I studying this topic, I can see how this presentation might have helped crystalize meaning, but as a more casual observer I wouldn’t recommend it. I did enjoy the breadth of topics covered, including measurements of earthquakes and volcanoes as well as distances in outer space. A quick read provides some familiarity with the terms and the concepts involved in this branch of science and I suspect would help when starting to study this topic. Interesting bit: the author uses as a measurement of the rate at which huge objects are moving in relation to each other (think tectonic plates or the earth and moon) as “about as fast as fingernails grow”. A great analogy.

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Review: Knots: Stories

Knots: Stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A quick, playful series of stories and bits that loosely related to how people are tied together. I really enjoyed the voice of the author, found the humor in the stories to my liking, and would look for others written by the author.

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