I love self help books of all sorts, but I tend to hate books trying to pass themselves off as Self Help books. The Checklist Manifesto sounds as if it is a self help book about making Checklists. The subtitle is How To Get Things Right. But really, it’s a book by a Surgeon about how to get Operation Rooms right, with a side trip on how to get Airplane Piloting Right, Pick Stocks Right, and Run a Restaurant Right. Most of the stories are about The Good Doctor trying to help the world to be a better place and…
Category: book review
Cleaving
Like reading a sequel to The Wizard of Oz where we follow Dorothy in her new life as a crack whore. Julie Powell was so pissed off that Nora Ephron made her look like a nice person in the movie Julie & Julia that she has gone far above and beyond the call of duty to prove just what an evil bitch she really is. As with Arthur Conan Doyle going a little bit overboard by killing Sherlock Holmes, Julie Powell goes a little bit over board in making her character of Julie pathetic, evil, twisted, and as likable as…
Reading Like a Writer-Improving Your Own Writing
My favorite short story writers are Issac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick. These authors took the impossible and made them seem mundane, then pushed the world off it’s axis at the story’s end. These are fun stories to read, you never know what’s going to happen next, but you always know something is going happen. Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose is about her favorite stories and writers. Like many college educated writers, she is a huge fan of Long Dead…
The Wishing Year
Wish in One Hand and Shit in The Other-See Which One Gets Full First. -one my Mom’s favorite sayings. Noelle Oxenhandler had never heard that saying and was greatly shocked by it. Kind of explains why my Mom never got to many wishes granted though. I like The Wishing Year as it was not quite what I was expecting. This is not a self help book which has a lot of tests to take and a lot of decisions to make. It’s an inspirational story of someone who wants three things-a house, a man, and a soul-and how she goes…
Armageddon in Retrospect
Armageddon in Retrospect is an interesting collection of stories and articles about war and conquest and the like. The audio book of Kurt Vonnegut’s Armageddon in Retrospect is read by Rip Torn, the gravel voiced actor from Men in Black. This is a clear case of a well known film actor getting a bit of Voice Over work when almost anyone else on Earth would have been a better choice. Rip Torn has an extremely unpleasant voice and not surprisingly, he has a hard time doing voices for women and children. The stories are standard issue Kurt Vonnegut. Great stuff.…
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
Erik Larson’s Devil in The White City is right up there with Ken Burns’ Civil War or Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. This is nonfiction that goes beyond the limits of nonfiction. It was a brilliant book filled with uncanny facts and amazing coincidences. Each page brings new depth and new understanding. Thunderstruck follows well in the footsteps of Devil in The White City. The world is one which we are familiar with, the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century. This is a period of time that is perfect for these kinds of non-fiction novels. The world…
My Custom Van by Michael Ian Black
I’m a blogger and I read a lot of blogs. Therefore I have a pretty short attention span. In fact, most bloggers just skipped to the next blog before they finished those two pretty boring sentences. I was a bit surprised by how mind numbingly bad My Custom Van is. This is a collection of essays that is kind of like a collection of blog posts-except that most blog posts tend to make some kind of sense-and My Custom Van makes little to no sense at all. I understand that some comedy takes a bit of getting used to. I…
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive is the kind of book that makes you want to go out and conquer the world, or at least talk it into doing what you want it to do. I think calling it 50 ways to be persuasive is a bit of a stretch. Many of the techniques are just variations of previously mentioned techniques. But 10 Proven ways and 40 Spins on those Ways is not nearly as sexy a title. These are simple things like asking someone to do something-the success all depends on How you ask them. The first…
Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black
Lewis Black is a mean spirited comic who loves the 7 Words You Can’t Say on Television. He is a damned funny fellow. Me of Little Faith had me laughing out loud several times and pausing to think a few other times. The title, Me of Little Faith, means what it says. He doesn’t like organized religions, but he has faith in a Physic Friend and may have meet briefly with the Re-Incarnated Jesus Christ at a Trailer Park. Seriously. Lewis Black has had a few real world religious experiences, but he puts them aside when they are not convenient…
Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
In the future, after another world war or two and after the United States have split into several parts-Genetic Variates are as common as different dog breeds. There are women who are genetically engineered to be great lovers, men who are engineered to do a lot of thinking, and men who are engineered to do a lot of killing. Our hero, such as he is, is a Variant 13-a Superman who is a recreated Human from twenty thousand years ago. Th1rte3n is a long and surprisingly deep book. The idea that bad things happen when you genetically engineer people is…