Review: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I listened to the audiobook of this, and was surprised that I did't get much out of it. I found the author very self-centered, his deep thoughts yielding some trite advice. The author spends the first two thirds of the book giving examples of where he made mistakes and got depressed, and he analyzes events. On occasion, the author generalizes, but providing his personal perspective. It felt like you were listening to a self-centered friend, going through various topics with a loop of: this happened to me, and this is how I think about it. Often, Parker summarizes his thinking with what could be platitudes. One example, in my words, is that sometimes the past can guide your future. Not that the stories aren't interesting, quite a few were. But the outcome of his life experience is the advice to reflect on where you are and where you've been to help you decide where to go in your vocation. Nothing groundbreaking. I was worried that I missed something given all the excellent reviews of this book, so I re-listened to it a few days after first finishing it. My opinion hasn't changed.

Probably the most difficult aspect of this audiobook is that it is capably narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Rudnicki has a very distinctive voice. He narrated much of Orson Scott Card's Ender series of science fiction books, and those books also discussed some deep subjects. Because of that voice, as well as the content, this felt like a digression of an Ender story, and I kept waiting for the action to begin. This was one of the first audiobooks where I thought a good job of narrating was wasted because of typecasting. I suspect I'm one of a very few that will have that reaction, though. Overall, a very short reminder that you can make life decisions based on what you know and have experienced. There's no need to wait for a sign.

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Review: The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I took on this book as a test of my ability to keep up with something for an entire year. I began the book on January 1, planning to read the short blurb for each day, but with the realization that I would certainly miss days. I created a rule for myself that if I got behind, I would only read two days per day in order to catch up. I wanted to limit my catch up reading because I believed that this book was written to prompt personal thought, and I wanted to spend time on reflection. And this is how I read the book.

“The Daily Stoic” provided a short, one or two page reading for each day of the year. The months were divided loosely into themes. Each day’s reading contained a passage from a famous Stoic writer and a discussion by the author. These prompts for thinking were quite general and workmanlike. They were not religious in any way. And in my case, they did allow me to think about the topics discussed and to learn how the Stoics think. There is an appendix that includes definitions used by Stoics as well as a short bibliography. I would recommend reading this with a little time for reflection around each post.

I enjoyed this daily ritual so much that I intend to start again for this year on or near January 1 with a different book. I found the afterward of “The Daily Stoic” a bit of a killjoy, though, in that it recommends that you now have studied enough, you don’t need excuses to read more, and the Stoic way is in the doing. Hmm.


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Review: Business for Bohemians: Live Well, Make Money

Business for Bohemians: Live Well, Make Money by Tom Hodgkinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was not the target market for this book. While I occasionally think of myself as a Bohemian, I'm far from it, with a business and IT background. I've read plenty of books that are about starting businesses. This is of that kind, but with a twist in that the target is for non-traditional businesspeople. Remember the famous textbook/class "Physics for Poets"? This is the same kind of vibe. Hodgkinson provides some pointers as to how to do things for business, things like using spreadsheets. The book doesn't claim that you need to do all the steps in running a business, but you do need to understand what those steps are so you can understand the experts that you use. I didn't find these parts of the book all that insightful, but again I wasn't the target market. I can imagine your run of the mill Bohemian without prior business training would pick up good pointers here. I really enjoyed the stories of Hodgkinson building his Idler business, though. I found his "war" stories interesting, and often humorous. And I found his website, one I hadn't heard of before, quite interesting in its own right. Glad I read this and would read more by the author.

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Review: Pegasus Descending

Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm going a few years back in the Robicheaux backlist to read the few books that I missed while reading through. While I feel a bit jaded about recent Robicheaux stories, this one felt like a breath of familiar bayou air. Again, the humidity drips off the page. The characters act the way you expect (and don't overreact like it seems in Robicheaux stories of more recent vintage). And the bad guys are the ones you've come to expect - mobbed up guys with Miami ties, small business men gone big due to links to casinos, people linked to movies (again with the movie industry baddies, albeit just a passing mention here). And the atmosphere is vintage Burke. My favorite bit in the book is the description of one of the victims, nicknamed Crustacean Man, and his backstory. You can picture the police using that name when referencing the case, giving it some respectability despite its outlandishness. Some interesting personality here from the police department which is more than I usually notice of the officers Robicheaux works with. In most of Burke's books, the other police officers in his and other departments have much the same rolls as redshirts in Star Trek - nondescript characters known for doing the rote work and often becoming victims. I enjoyed this one, more as a throwback to older Robicheaux mysteries. And as normal, the audiobook narrated by Will Patton, is pitch perfect. To me, Patton delivers the mood of this series defined by Burke.

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Review: Genomics: A Very Short Introduction

Genomics: A Very Short Introduction by John M Archibald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Covers the history of genomics and provides a view into the future given the availability of newer tools and assuming further rapid growth in the industry. I found it hard to listen to the audio version of this book given the acronyms and the industry-specific nomenclature -- this is really a history of technologies. I did enjoy the speculation that concluded the book.

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Review: Chaplin's Vintage Year: The History of the Mutual-Chaplin Specials

Chaplin's Vintage Year: The History of the Mutual-Chaplin Specials by Michael J. Hayde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not quite what I expected. I assumed this was a critical review of some of Chaplin's silent movies, or a kind of movie biography. The book does cover the art in these Chaplin movies, as well as others done around the same time, but that wasn't the main purpose. Instead, we get the business behind these movies. The author provides a well-researched history of the early film industry, including the film creators/studios, but also the distributors and the theaters. These different groups of companies interact in different ways over the early years of the industry, with power moving back and forth over time as new contract terms are developed and spread throughout the industries, and as companies combined through mergers or investments or other agreements. This book follows the flow of ownership of these movies, as well as showing how the money flowed. If you are looking for something like this, it is well done. I was also impressed that the book didn't stop at the end of the silent movie era, but continues to near the present day. I grew up in the Quad Cities area, where there was a company that sold copies of silent movies including these Chaplin Mutual films, Blackhawk Films. I still have a couple of their catalogs from the 70s. I was surprised and happy to see Blackhawk covered in some depth near the end of this book as holders of many of the original copies of Chaplin's silent movies. Overall, I found this enjoyable as a business history revolving around early films. And I appreciated the descriptions of Chaplin's early silent films, including those by Mutual Chaplin.

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Review: Secretariat: Thoroughbred Legends

Secretariat: Thoroughbred Legends by Timothy T. Capps
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a way, these racehorse biographies are limited in what they cover and in many ways how it is covered. They tend to be chronological, starting with ancestry, followed by breeding, training, racing, breeding, and progeny following, and with owners covered along the way. This book was no exception. I found the first part of the book was a bit more confusing, following many, many horses related, closely and tangentially, to Secretariat. This was overkill for this short book. The author turned it around on the rest of the book. The racing stories were well written and held interest, and the story of Secretariat's non-optimal breeding career was well done. Overall, one of the better ones in the Thoroughbred Legends series. Note that I hadn't previously read a book on Secretariat, so the novelty helped in my opinion. Had I already read one of the many books on Secretariat, I may not have rated this one as high.

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