Review: Swan Peak

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One more and I’ve caught up on Dave Robicheaux to date. I’ve enjoyed this series, especially on audio with Will Patton narrating. But perhaps in having listened to more than 20 of these books, I have become a bit jaded. I didn’t find this one as excellent as most. First, instead of taking place in humid rural Louisiana, this one takes place in Montana. In the Louisiana books, the locations really become like a character in the story, and you get to where you can feel the oppressive heat, taste the spicy food, and you expect the Southern accent in conversation. But his Montana stories are much more non-descript. The boring locations didn’t help the story.

The other major difference was the way the story was structured. I recall Burke’s other stories felt very connected. Here, I noticed a number of scenes, some many pages in length, but often without connecting detail. You would be following a story about Robicheaux visiting a crime location, then the next scene he shows up somewhere entirely unexpected. You don’t know how he got there, how much time has gone by, what the intention is, the basics. You end up having to figure it out, often without much help from Burke. It felt like this was the result of a bunch of writing exercises to develop scenes. Or worse, it felt like one of those excessively abridged audiobooks where you know you are missing events and motivation in order to fit the story on two cassettes. Ugh.

And speaking of scenes, this was yet another of Burke’s books that included the casino business and a movie star, although it felt like he just was ticking these elements off of a story checklist. There are casinos and movie stars in a majority of these stories, odd since they aren’t based in hotbeds of moviemaking or legal gambling, but there you go.

Despite the lack of connective tissue between scenes, those scenes are written very well. Both maddening and enjoyable in turns.

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Review: Lincoln's Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy

Lincoln's Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy by Gordon Leidner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What did I learn in this book? I learned that Lincoln liked to reply to a comment or question beginning with “That reminds me of a story…”, and that story was often about a fellow in Springfield. From this book, you get the idea that Lincoln was less of a stand-up comedian, and more of a Garrison Keillor type, a fellow who liked longer stories about people that did odd things, often to illustrate a point or to point out a human frailty. Interesting, but quite repetitive. And don’t expect to learn any jokes here to tell your friends. These tend to work for politics, law, and debating. The author tells Lincoln’s life story, dishing out the humorous (and sometimes not so humorous) stories that he told. I most liked hearing (on the audiobook) the pithy things he said while younger.

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Review: Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I occasionally feel the need to read a motivational book, with the intent to renew my spirit. That sounds new-age but it is more pedestrian. I read to find things that hit me at just the right time. It’s great when what hits me is a big concept that takes pages to read about and allows me to simmer while learning. But most often, it’s the turn of a sentence that lodges in the memory and gets mulled over. Which leads me to this book. Kleon has written a book intended to be motivational to creative folks. He divides his book into 10 ways to staying creative, including thinking about the seasonality of what you are doing, dealing with work by days, and more. I found the organization and topics fresh compared to most of what I’ve read recently. Kleon includes a some text on the topic that he authored, as well as a number of quotes and text snippets, pictures, and handwritten charts/chapter headings. And he keeps repeating pictures of pages of other books mostly blacked out, leaving just a few words that form a sentence on the subject at hand. Not the best use of space. There’s a lot of white space. I enjoyed the writing. The pieces Kleon wrote were short, a good length for what he is doing here. But I most enjoyed his selection of included quotations. I’d pick up another of Kleon’s books for a quick motivational jolt.

I won a copy of this book in a contest from Kleon's publisher, I believe. This did not influence my review.

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Review: A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics

A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics by David Stipp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s math. And it’s history. And philosophy. But mostly math.

I found the math descriptions well simplified. I thought I would get a lot of math knowledge out of this book. Or at least I would be reminded of a lot of math from my courses decades ago. There was a little faint recognition. I appreciate the job the author did in jogging my memory on e. But I found the history, especially the story of Euler, more interesting here. When I reflect on this book a week after reading, I most remember not the math, but the Euler stories, especially about his family. I noted while listening to this audiobook that the last quarter or so was more philosophical, about the meaning of beauty. This discussion was a bit overdone and didn’t add to the story as much as I would have hoped. Go for the math, stay for the history.


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Review: Last Night at the Lobster

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I haven’t worked a restaurant job, my friends have, and I remember helping out at closing time with the reward of drinking a beer with the rest of the crew in the closed dining room afterwards. I’ll remember the casual camaraderie with people I might not have ever talked to before. It wasn’t like the work friendships of an office job, it felt more real. O’Nan captures this feeling. In this case, the restaurant is a chain restaurant, Red Lobster, and this is the story of one on its final day. The style was interesting, kind of a faux documentary following around the restaurant manager through his day, but with incredible detail of events and thoughts. It was a lot like O’Nan wrote a book to go with a documentary on that restaurant closing, following the manager around, revealing his inner thoughts through a kind of documentary-style monologue/voice-over. I could imagine this on Front Line or on HBO. I enjoyed the style. The novel is somewhat short, so that also felt like documentary-length. There was nothing extraneous. Nicely done.

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Review: Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously

Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously by David Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are looking for the story of how the owners of Hobby Lobby fought healthcare regulations on religious grounds, taking the lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court, this is the story that begins this book. You learn of the life of the author, David Green, growing his hobby empire and building a family run business. Beyond the lawsuit story, most of this book is focused on the history of Green’s Hobby Lobby business and on how Green involves his family in the running of the business. I read a lot of business histories, and this was not particularly revealing in the business aspects. But on family ownership, Green grows his business to involve three generations in the business, from working in the stores to management to board membership and voting on strategic issues. It was a story you only hear about in some of the large family-run businesses. I read this book more to see a personal story of gratitude and philanthropy, given the title. It isn’t that. Good for background and an example of family business involvement, but of limited repeatability if you aren’t growing a big business and a big family to go with it.

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Review: Fools Rush Inn: More Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom

Fools Rush Inn: More Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom by Bill James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bill James is fun to read. Personal opinion, based on his pithy comments on baseball and his use of numbers to wrestle out a story. This collection was more hit and miss. There are a few non-baseball opinion pieces, kind of funny, but kind of the quality of small town newspaper columnist. The baseball pieces are a mix of long, research intensive writeups and shorter baseball stories. James is at his best with the math driven baseball analysis, and my favorite here was his attempt to categorize baseball into different eras. Categorization is something I'm interested in for work, so I found this quite informative. I also appreciated his take on managers in the Hall of Fame and his estimation of the chances of current managers to make it. Fun, but not as much as his earlier collection.

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