Review: The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop

The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I believe I’ve read all of Fannie Flagg’s books. I have enjoyed the Southern charm and the reflections on lives that she writes about. The return to Whistle Stop didn’t strike me as much as previous books. Perhaps it’s the charm that wasn’t up to snuff. By charm, I mean nostalgic charm. This book spent a lot of time in the now-a-days, with nursing homes and real estate development and modern conveniences. While there was still plenty of nostalgia, like all her books, I don’t find her writing about modern times as interesting, or charming. Still, Flagg’s books can still bring on that feeling like you are recalling visiting a Southern relatives house when younger, and I’ll keep reading for those kinds of feelings.

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Review: Game Plan: Winning Strategies for the Second Half of Your Life

Game Plan: Winning Strategies for the Second Half of Your Life by Bob Buford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Buford provides some guidance on planning for what you should do with your life after a mid-life crisis. His focus is on successful business-people who, in rethinking their lives, want to consider becoming significant, generally in a spiritual way. He repeats this many times, trading a life of success for a life of significance. He aims this book at successful business-people generally in their mid forties. Even though I am more than a decade past this target, and even though I don't consider myself successful in business, I still found plenty to think about in this book. Having said that, it wasn't so different from other life planning books, especially those with a Christian bent.

I listened to this on audio. Interestingly, at one point the narrator relates that in the paper book at one point it includes a worksheet, or survey, and that it doesn't translate to audio very well. Instead, the narrator suggests contacting the original author of the survey, not the author of this book, and even spells out his email address. I appreciate the effort for the listeners. This seems like a key part of the book, so if you want the entire experience, you may want to avoid the audio version. At least this is a brief audiobook, so your investment isn't high, and the background and descriptions outside of the workbook activities are interesting, although if you want audio you might be satisfied with Buford's other book "Half Time", which covers the same territory without as much "how to".

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Review: Play Nice But Win: A Ceo's Journey from Founder to Leader

Play Nice But Win: A Ceo's Journey from Founder to Leader by Michael Dell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At the beginning of my career, I was charged with helping to decide which PCs my company would buy. I worked for a top oil company, so we bought a lot of PCs, and we chose PCs Limited. This was the early name of Dell Computers. Dell was a couple years younger than I was, so I always wanted to know how he started and grew his company. This book tells that story. He starts his story earlier, regaling the reader with his money making prowess in high school before selling computers. His early business stories are often about risks his company faced, like growing need for warehouse and factory space, personnel issues, money issues, and the like. Quite interesting to this buyer, and had I known some of these things were happening with the company, I wouldn’t have been so positive on the company early on.

I was intrigued by Dell stock early on. I remember having bought some shares in the early 90s, then asking a wiser co-worker what to do when they went up 30% in a couple of weeks. His suggestion – don’t be a pig, sell. I did. About 5 years later, at that co-worker’s retirement party, I told the story that I followed his advice and earned enough to buy a small desktop PC. But had I kept the shares for 5 years, I could have bought my house. Dell touches on the stock’s rise by mentioning his employees creating and wearing t-shirts that said “Dellionaires”. I toured Dell’s laptop factory and saw line workers wearing said shirts in the mid 90s.

I especially enjoyed learning the behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Dell’s various governance and financial engineering passes, taking the company private and buying EMC. I owned the tracking stock and read the various financial statements, and wondered at the time how Dell could engineer more money for his shareholders with each change. And it seems he did. This fills in some of the details missing from those financial statements. It’s not a riveting story, but I found it of interest.

I have read other reviewers who point out that there isn’t much reflection or growth described here. That is true. This is more like listening to Dell tell stories, mostly bragging. If you are in the mood for this, it’s pretty interesting.


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Review: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Godin makes the case that traditional advertising no longer has the impact that it once had, and that the way to get noticed is to do something unique and memorable, hence, a purple cow. I liked that he took the typical Geoffrey Moore product lifecycle and suggested that you really need to focus on the first group of early innovators, selling to those that are vocal about their likes. Godin calls them “sneezers”. This makes some sense. His examples seem appropriate to the argument. Nice, quick read.

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Review: Discrimination and Disparities

Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sowell shows that disparity is not necessarily caused by discrimination. His method is to “peel the onion” of stories that have been published that purportedly show discrimination, showing often a more detailed review of the data shows the opposite conclusion of the popular or reported story, similar to pop econ books like Freakonomics. Well reasoned, but at times you wonder whether peeling back another layer would lead to yet different results. I enjoyed the writing, especially Sowell’s choices of stories. I look forward to reading more about Dunbar High School in D.C, one of his examples.

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Review: To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine

To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Political books age rapidly, so I was taking a gamble on this Gingrich book from now 11 years ago. I was surprised that this seemed, with a few exceptions, that it could have been written this year. The changes that would have been required were the global search and replacement of Obama’s name with Biden. Most of the text would still work. The other big change might be the discussion of election integrity. Here we get more trust in election integrity on the right, whereas we seem to get that much more from the left now. The other thought that I found interesting here is that Gingrich used this book to plaster the label of secular socialist on the Democratic administration. That’s not a term I can recall from recent years, so I guess in this respect the book didn’t meet its objective. Overall, this political book, while showing its age, still has some interesting, though mostly expected, things to say.

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Review: Ignore the Hype: Financial Strategies Beyond the Media-Driven Mayhem

Ignore the Hype: Financial Strategies Beyond the Media-Driven Mayhem by Brian Perry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very similar to other personal finance/investing books on the market, and I’ve read quite a few. I enjoyed the voice of the author here, like he was trying to be a friendly help in getting your financial house in order. I also liked the way he divided up topics, and that he included a section on the foibles of human decision-making, as well as a section on taxes and not putting all your “eggs” in the tax-deferred basket. That decision-making section also took down the financial commentary media, which you don't see authors do often, as it limits the opportunities to pitch your book. Brave, and nicely done.

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