Review: Poised for Retirement: Moving from Anxiety to Zen

Poised for Retirement: Moving from Anxiety to Zen by Louise Nayer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this an enjoyable description of the author’s thoughts and actions prior to retiring, with annual updates for a few years post retirement. I find myself in roughly the same position in my career that the author was in at the beginning of the book. No surprise, I found the author has many of the same questions and worries and aspirations about her upcoming retirement as I have for my future. She provides some of the answers she reached, but also writes about the outcomes of her choices, and of her days in her new routine. I found this comforting. The author is a creative writing instructor, so I got the expected lengthy, poetically descriptive passages. The author also intended this to be a self-help book, so mixed in with her personal narrative are some paragraphs providing suggestions on things to consider or actions to accomplish to help lead to a successful retirement. I found these oddly placed suggestions, usually dropped into a narrative stream, were not very interesting or valuable, similar to many other books and matching common sense. The narrative is the value here. I greatly enjoyed the book. It hit the points I was like talking to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a long while – they meander around the decisions and actions of their lives, sometimes big ,sometimes little, always with reflection.

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Review: The Power of Business Process Improvement: 10 Simple Steps to Increase Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Adaptability

The Power of Business Process Improvement: 10 Simple Steps to Increase Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Adaptability by Susan Page
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I read this, I kept being reminded of those many project management how-to books I’ve read throughout my career. Page describes in detail the process to catalog and define business processes, and puts together a plan on effecting and managing related change. I approached this book as a way to reintroduce myself to the concepts of BPM, and I did recognize much of this from my work with a BPM software vendor. I believe this would be valuable to those approaching a BPM project without an existing framework to use. This provides the framework and samples of plans and processes and assets. Seems like this would be a valuable resource to many.

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Review: A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A classic, but one where I saw the movie first. And then listened to the BBC4 audio adaptation, with multiple actors and embedded musical numbers. Still haven’t read it, but a comment on the story and the audio production. This is one of those stories built around some interesting moral quandaries. While many stories provide nuanced studies of such quandries, I’ve always thought of this as an example of the sledgehammer method of storytelling, one very willing to tell you exactly what each quandary is and what the options are. The best part about this book is that Burgess tells the story so well even with those almost academic constraints.

On the BBC4 production: This becomes something of a musical with this audio play rendition. There are four or five times where music comes up during the story, and there is not so much singing as rhythmic speaking and group chanting along with the music. It is very interesting, but it didn’t work for me. The other thing that set this audio production apart was the number of grunts and heavy breathing. Given there is a lot of violence in this book, this was expected, and the BBC used some of the best grunters and heavy breathers on radio. Overall, this was an interesting production, okay but not great. I believe I would rate the book higher.


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Review: The Crusades

The Crusades by Abigail Archer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very short take on a few centuries of religious warfare. The book covers the largest battles, sieges, negotiations, political intrigue, and other events in the Holy Lands, but also covers the European home front and the political intrigue happening there. While short, there was no shortage of royalty, religious, and military leaders mentioned, and I was confused a few times. There was a good mix of narrative that helped to make this readable and enjoyable. I listened to the audio version. I suspect the paper book would have been more enjoyable here given other reviewers mentions of pictures, and given my difficulty tracking the principals.

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Review: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Album, the Beatles, and the World in 1967

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Album, the Beatles, and the World in 1967 by Brian Southall
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

When I see a book about one album, I expect the book to really be dedicated to that album, providing a lot of behind-the-scenes info that wasn’t common knowledge. You get some of that here, but it amounts to about a quarter of the book. The rest of the book is about the Beatles in general, from beginnings to the end of the group and beyond, with a lot of band member bio mixed in. Also mixed in was a lot on the times - basic pop history of the sixties. I have read a few books about the Beatles over the years, so I found most of this very basic Beatles lore. I could see if a person hadn’t heard much about the Beatles, this would be of interest, but c’mon…

I listened to this on audio. I understand from other reviews that the paper book has illustrations that make it more interesting. You don’t get those with the audio. While the book may well be better, I’d recommend skipping the audio version, and will rank the audio version low.


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Review: Barefoot Boy with Cheek

Barefoot Boy with Cheek by Max Shulman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I can’t add much to the other reviews here. This is certainly over-the-top satire. Shulman’s take on college life has aged quite well, given the multiple generations that have passed since it was written. I recognized many of the types Shulman skewers from my time at college a few decades back, and I see them in the descriptions my daughters have from college in the past few years. The main frat covered is Alpha Cholera, the main sorority Beta Thigh. I’m not sure why that strikes me as funny, but it certainly does. As for the story, ehhh, it’s just there to introduce the satirical bits. And you can see Shulman’s master creation, Dobie Gillis, in the constant falling-in-love of the main character. Also beneficial is the relative shortness of the novel. I found the schtick getting a bit wearing by the end of the book.

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Review: Great Horse Racing Mysteries

Great Horse Racing Mysteries by John McEvoy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this collection of true stories of horse racing “mysteries” a bit uneven, in terms of both the story as well as the writing. But for my intent, a light read between deeper books with horse racing as a subject, this worked well. I found the variety in the types of stories interesting, but noticed that some really didn’t seem all that mysterious. Criminality was the basis for most, if not all of these stories. I thought that the most interesting would be the Alydar story, having read the excellent book “Wild Ride” on Alydar and the downfall of Calumet Farms. Here, the story is a short summary of what happened, with a lot of back story on Affirmed and Alydar. My favorite story in this collection was about Hawthorne burning, because Hawthorne is near where I live and I hadn’t heard this story before. But there’s not a lot to it. Again, I found this an OK book for a casual read involving horse racing (in my case this fit in where I’d normally read a Dick Francis book).

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