May 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Book 11 (54): Things I've Learned From Women...
AUDIOBOOK read by the authors
Should I read it? Maybe. A collection of short stories, some do better than others. I enjoyed the audiobook for the most part as the authors read their own stories, but the common theme actually wound up making the collection a little tedious. Often funny, it may be best to pick it up and read the stories over a longer period of time to avoid some monotony.
4 tags
Book 10 (53): Plan B - Jonathan Tropper
Actual Book
Should I read it? Yes, if you’re in you’re between the ages of 28 and 42. In fact, you should read all of Jonathan Tropper’s novels if you’re in that age range. Plan B is a quick read with engaging characters and my only disappointment is that I’ve now read all of Tropper’s books and have to wait until he releases a new one.
April 2012
2 posts
5 tags
Book 9 (52): Super Sad True Love Story - Gary...
AUDIOBOOK read by Adam Grupper and Ali Ahn
Should I read it? Probably. It’s fairly sad, the characters are generally unlikable, and the dialog is at times annoying. But despite those things and my attempts to dislike it, I found myself ultimately enjoying this book. Told through a series of diary entries, emails, and text messages by the two main characters, the structure was fresh and...
6 tags
Book 8 (51): The Steel Wave - Jeff Shaara
ACTUAL BOOK
Should I read it? If you have any love of history, and specifically WWII, then yes. Actually, you should read The Rising Tide first since it’s the first in this trilogy and then you should read this one. I’m a huge fan of Shaara’s historical fiction and highly recommend all of them.
March 2012
6 posts
6 tags
Book 7 (50): Scorecasting - Tobias J. Moskowitz &...
AUDIOBOOK read by Zach McLarty
Should I read it? Only if you really dig statistics and sports. This book is Freakanomics for sports, but unlike unlike its inspiration, I found Scorecasting somewhat tedious and too focused on the numbers. This is more of a problem with the audiobook since you don’t have the ability to skim ahead. In general, the concepts are interesting, but the writing...
5 tags
Book 6 (49): A Red Herring Without Mustard - Alan...
AUDIOBOOK read by Jayne Entwistle
Should I read it? Yes, if you’ve read the first two Flavia de Luce mysteries. Bradley continues his series with the 11-year old protagonist and it is as enjoyable as the first two in the series. The chemistry angle gets a little old, but that is easily overlooked in this quick read. Entwistle does another fantastic job in narrating the audiobook.
4 tags
Book 5 (48): Radical - David Platt
ACTUAL BOOK
Should I read it? Yes. A look at how American Christians have tailored their faith to make it ok to also push for the American Dream, Platt proposes a “radical” faith that pushes taking Jesus’ message into the world. While not everything resonated with me, enough did to make this a worthwhile read.
5 tags
Book 4 (47): Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
AUDIOBOOK read by Rosalyn Landor
Should I read it? Maybe. A difficult story about clones raised for organ donations, the narrative is engaging at times, but drags at others. I also thought that Ishiguro overused the storyteller jumping between the recent past and the distant past. If you like dystopian future stories, this one may be worth picking up. The audiobook was serviceable, but not...
6 tags
Book 3 (46): Life - Keith Richards
AUDIOBOOK read by Keith Richards, Johnny Depp, and Joe Hurley
Should I read it? Only if you’re a big Rolling Stones or Keith Richards fan. There are a lot of great stories and history in this account, and Richards comes off as likable, but the book is too long for anyone other than the biggest fan. The audiobook is a little disjointed as the three narrators seem to switch randomly. If...
5 tags
Book 2 (45): Gentlemen of the Road - Michael...
AUDIOBOOK read by Andre Braugher
Should you read it? No. The story is forgettable and didn’t keep my interest. The audiobook was well read by Braugher, but I’d recommend Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union over this effort.
February 2012
1 post
6 tags
Book 1 (44): A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
AUDIOBOOK read by Colin McPhillamy & Craig Baldwin
Ok, I’m behind on posting some of my latest books as I’ve been travelling. I thoroughly enjoyed A Fraction of the Whole. Toltz’s book follows an Australian father and son pair as the son recounts their adventures through life. It’s a long read, but it’s very well written and quite funny at times. The book...
December 2011
7 posts
4 tags
Book 43: Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King
ACTUAL BOOK
Barring an unlikely reading binge before Sunday, it looks like 2011 will end with 43 books read. And Full Dark, No Stars is a perfect ending book as I received it as a gift for Christmas in 2010 and it took me most of 2011 to finally read the thing. Not that the book was bad, I just had a hard time engaging with it and found myself frequently picking up other books in its place. A...
6 tags
Book 42: The Final Solution - Michael Chabon
AUDIOBOOK read by Michael York
I enjoyed Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, so I picked this book up to see if that was an anomaly, or if I enjoy his writing in general. I’m not sure that I’ve decided that definitively, but I did generally enjoy this book. I think The Final Solution is targeted to young adults as the mystery is not real complex, but it was a quick...
5 tags
Book 41: The Disappearing Spoon - Sam Kean
AUDIOBOOK read by Sean Runnette
This book is perfect if you’re a science geek like me. A look at the periodic table and the fascinating stories around the elements, the book flows nicely and held my attention throughout. Some of the stories are about how some of the elements were discovered, some about the properties of elements, and some just about the odd assortment of people that have...
4 tags
Book 40: Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh
AUDIOBOOK read by Tony Hsieh
I love Zappos. If you’ve never bought anything from them, you really should give it a shot. They offer free shipping both ways, typically upgrade your shipping to 2-day, and go above and beyond to make sure you are satisfied. A couple of weeks ago, I order two different pairs of hiking boots, was upgraded to 2-day shipping, tried both on, selected the pair I...
6 tags
Book 39: The Coral Thief - Rebecca Stott
AUDIOBOOK read by Simon Prebble
This was a pleasant surprise. I can’t remember how I stumbled across this book, but I’m glad I picked it up as I very much enjoyed it. The story takes place in Paris right after the final capture and exile of Napoleon. There is an interesting historical feel to the book as it follows a young medical student who gets caught up with a gang of thieves....
5 tags
Book 38: Children Playing Before a Statue of...
AUDIOBOOK read by multiple readers
I love David Sedaris. I, however, do not much care for his short story choices, apparently. I found this collection to be pretty dull. I listened to this audiobook a month or two ago and can’t remember a single story from it. Avoid this one and grab yourself an actual David Sedaris book. Your life will be better for it.
4 tags
Book 37: Bossypants - Tina Fey
AUDIOBOOK read by Tina Fey
I’m falling behind on my updates and need to get the remaining ones crammed in before the end of the year, so the rest will be short and sweet. 30 Rock is one of my favorite shows and I picked up Tina Fey’s book because of that fact. I wasn’t disappointed as her book was hilarious as well. Somewhat of an autobiography, Fey recounts stories from her...
November 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Book 36: Feynman - Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick
ACTUAL BOOK
I’m a fan of the new trend of graphic novels, especially when more complex information like logic, mathematics, or quantum physics is concerned. I fell in love with the life and stories of Richard Feynman ten years ago when his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman was recommended to me by a coworker. It is one of my favorite books of all time and if you haven’t...
5 tags
Book 35: Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel
AUDIOBOOK read by Mark Bramhall
Ugh. I grabbed this book because I very much enjoyed Martel’s Life of Pi, but that wound up being a mistake. I could give you a synopsis of this book, but you can find that elsewhere. Just know that I found the book to be tedious and really didn’t enjoy any part of it. The audiobook was well read by Bramhall, but the content left much to be...
6 tags
Book 34: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
AUDIOBOOK read by George Guidall
There’s a lot going on in this book. At it’s core, American Gods is a road-trip story that follows Shadow, a man recently released from prison whose wife died the day before he got out. Shadow meets Mr. Wednesday on his way home and accepts a job as Mr. Wednesday’s driver and bodyguard. In the adventures that follow, Shadow learns that Mr....
October 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Book 33: Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell
ACTUAL BOOK
Number 9 Dream was the last remaining David Mitchell book left for me to read, and unfortunately, I may have enjoyed this one the least of all of his novels. I thought that this novel started slow and I had a really difficult time getting into the story. I will admit that once it got moving, the story kept me engaged and by the time I finished I was conflicted about how I’d...
6 tags
Books 30-32: The Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne...
AUDIOBOOK read by Carolyn McCormick AND ACTUAL BOOK
Wow. I will start by saying that I was wrong. Sometimes books get so much hype that I instinctively assume that they are not as good as people are claiming. When the books are designated as “Young Adult”, my apprehension is even greater. This trilogy was recommended to me some time ago and I’ve had the audiobooks on my...
5 tags
Book 29: A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer...
AUDIOBOOK read by Roxana Ortega
I probably waiting a little too long to write my review of this book as it’s been a few weeks and I honestly am having a hard time remembering the details of all of the stories. This book is a series of stories jumping through time with a different main character. The hook is that each main character is a minor character in one of the previous stories, so...
September 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Book 28: Superfreakonomics - Steven D. Levitt &...
AUDIOBOOK read by Stephen Dubner
I love books like this. I get hooked on any sort of book that tells multiple “stories” where the authors dive into a subject or question and provide facts and data that contradict the mainstream “knowledge” of the subject. I read Freakonomics years ago and have enjoyed all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books in the last couple of years,...
4 tags
Book 27: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar...
ACTUAL BOOK
Go read this book. For his first novel, Riggs gathered a number of old photographs, most of which have some sort of photography trick or other oddness. He then built a story around the collection of photographs. I don’t want to give anything away about the story as it is too much fun to discover the whole thing yourself. It’s a quick read (it took me 3 or 4 hours),...
4 tags
Book 26: The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
AUDIOBOOK read by a full cast
The Screwtape Letters was a series of articles written by C.S. Lewis in 1941. The articles were written as a series of letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a “tempter” demon who is trying to secure the damnation of a human. The letters focus on human weakness, and ways in which Wormwood’s taget could be pulled away from...
August 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Book 25: Legacy of Ashes - Tim Weiner
AUDIOBOOK Read by Stefan Rudniki
Wow, this book is scary. A history of the CIA from it’s inception through the post-9/11 agency, Legacy of Ashes is a narrative pulled from thousands of declassified documents. Tim Weiner does a remarkable job of telling a cohesive story from the formation, to the clandestine operations in Central America, Asia, and beyond, to the complete inability of...
5 tags
Book 24: Strengths Based Leadership - Tom Rath &...
ACTUAL BOOK
This book was required reading as part of my Emerging Leaders program at work as we prepare for our “stretch” projects. The basis of the book is an online strengths assessment called StrenghtsFinder 2.0. With the purchase of the book, you get a code to take the online assessment, which returns five strength areas based on your answers. The book has a reference section...
5 tags
Book 23: How to Talk to a Widower - Jonathan...
AUDIOBOOK read by Eric Ruben
Well, I think this wraps up my binge on Jonathan Tropper books. I’ve listened to all of them except one as it’s not available at my library on audiobook. I’ll just have to wait until I have some time to read an actual book to pick that one up. Like the other Tropper books I’ve read, How to Talk to a Widower is well written with plenty of...
July 2011
2 posts
5 tags
Book 22: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -...
AUDIOBOOK read by Simon Vance
I went into this book with low expectations as I had been told by more than one person that the last book in this trilogy was not as good as the others. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I was once again engrossed in Larsson’s world. The third book has less suspense and action, but more storytelling and clearing up of questions remaining from the...
4 tags
Book 21: Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
ACTUAL BOOK
Not unlike one of my favorite books of all time, Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten is a loosely connected collection of nine stories. Each of the stories is an independent tale with references and minor connections to at least one of the other stories in the book. I tend to enjoy this device because it reads like your typical collection of short stories except that you...
June 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Book 20: Everything Changes - Jonathan Tropper
AUDIOBOOK read by Scott Brick
This is my third Tropper book in the last 9 months, and they’re starting to run together a little. Everything Changes follows a similar story path to The Book of Joe and This is Where I Leave You as all three focus on a a main character in his 30s whose life is going through dramatic change. In Everything Changes, Zack King has a job he hates, might have...
5 tags
Book 19: The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart -...
AUDIOBOOK read by Jim Dale
This relatively short fairy tale is told in the first person by a young boy who was born on the coldest day of the year. Due to the cold, his heart was too weak to keep him alive and the tinkering midwife who delivered him attached a cuckoo clock to his heart to keep it beating. The story progresses as the boy grows up, falls in love, gets hurt, goes after the girl,...
5 tags
Book 18: The Book of Joe - Jonathan Tropper
AUDIOBOOK read by Scott Brick
Late last year, I listened to Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You and thoroughly enjoyed it. When that happens, I usually go in search of other books by the author to see if it’s a trend or an anomaly. After reading The Book of Joe, I think I can say it’s a trend. Joe is a writer in his early thirties whose first best-selling novel was a...
5 tags
Failure to Finish 1: Bonk - Mary Roach
AUDIOBOOK read by Sandra Burr
After zoning out for the hundredth time, I finally decided to give up on Bonk about halfway through. Years ago, I read Roach’s Stiff and found it very interesting, so I was excited to start another of her non-fiction research books. Bonk is a look into how science has dealt with sex over the years. While I found some of the items interesting, the monotony...
May 2011
2 posts
6 tags
Books 15-17: Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck, Bite...
AUDIOBOOKS read by Susan Bennett
Vampire books. I know, cliche. In my defense, Bloodsucking Fiends was published in 1995, way before the Twilight fiasco. Over the last year or two, I’ve listened to four of Christopher Moore’s other books (Fool, A Dirty Job, Lamb, and Island of the Sequined Love Nun), and these fit with his typical comedic storytelling. Moore’s vampire...
Anonymous asked: Where do you download your audiobooks from?
April 2011
4 posts
6 tags
Book 14: The Big Short - Michael Lewis
AUDIOBOOK read by Jesse Boggs
Holy crap this book is frightening. I’ll go into some more detail here, but if you have any interest in the financial markets or what happened leading up to the 2007 financial crisis, go read this book. I’ll admit that I’m not the best at keeping up with the news and am typically so disgusted with the newsmakers and newscasters, that I...
5 tags
Book 13: The Bedwetter - Sarah Silverman
AUDIOBOOK read by Sarah Silverman
Are you easily offended? Do you have intellectually stimulating books to read on your list? Do you have sensitive ears? If you answered yes to any of these, then go ahead and stop reading now and pretend that you’ve never even heard of this book. If you answered no and you’re a fan of any of Sarah Silverman’s work, then you’ll...
4 tags
Book 12: At Home (A Short History of Private Life)...
AUDIOBOOK read by Bill Bryson
I have always enjoyed reading Bill Bryson’s books. I think the first one I read was In a Sunburned Country about his travels around Australia. I took a special interest in that book as I read the majority of it on a flight to Sydney in 2001 (you can get a lot of reading done on a 14 hour flight). If you haven’t read that or any of his other travel...
3 tags
Book 11: Our Iceberg is Melting - John Kotter and...
ACTUAL BOOK
This is by far the best book that combines a penguin fable and proper change management that I’ve ever read.
I “won” this book in a raffle at my office (no AppleTV for me). I’ve read Kotter’s work before and his eight steps to leading change are standard reading for most corporations and business schools. Our Iceberg is Melting is a telling of...
March 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Book 10: The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael...
AUDIOBOOK read by Peter Riegert
I tried hard not to like this book, but it kept pulling me in and I ultimately wound up enjoying it. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a novel set in an alternate timeline in Sitka, Alaska. In the novel’s timeline, the Jewish repopulation of Israel has failed and a large number of Jews have taken up residence in a temporary autonomous territory in...
4 tags
Book 9: Do More Faster - David Cohen and Brad Feld
ACTUAL BOOK
Do More Faster is a collection of short essays focused on technology startups by people involved in the TechStars program. Cohen and Feld are the co-founders of TechStars, a startup incubator that has had tremendous success in getting startups off the ground and funded. This book includes essays from both startup founders and mentors to the program across a wide range of topics....
4 tags
Book 8: The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag -...
AUDIOBOOK read by Jayne Entwistle
I don’t remember how I got turned on to Alan Bradley’s first book in this series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, but I enjoyed the book as well as its heroine Flavia de Luce so I was looking forward to the second book. While not quite as enjoyable as the first book, the second book was just as quick a read (or listen)...
February 2011
5 posts
5 tags
Book 7: The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki
ACTUAL BOOK
You’re going to start seeing a theme here. While I’m still listening to audiobooks for pleasure, my actual reading time is consumed with books on startups for my new project. There are a million books out there on all of the things that you need to do when starting a business. Most of them read like textbooks and your eyes start to glaze over after the first few...
4 tags
Book 6: The Unnamed - Joshua Ferris
AUDIOBOOK read by Joshua Ferris
I picked this book up after reading Ferris’ excellent first book Then We Came to the End, a hilarious account of a company and its employees as it gradually goes out of business. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend picking it up. Because of my enjoyment of his first book, I was excited to dive into his second novel only to find a completely...
2 tags
Book 5: Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma,...
ACTUAL BOOK
I received this book for Christmas and was excited to read it since I’m a sucker for odd history and interesting facts. Unfortunately, the author took an interesting concept and mostly ruined it with his commentary and attempts at humor. There are some interesting historical facts here, but the book is too high level for my taste and includes too much filler (places that...
4 tags
Book 4: Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos...
ACTUAL BOOK
This is one of the odder books that I’ve come across. Logicomix is a graphic novel that centers on the life and works of Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest logisticians who ever lived. I was hoping that it would be a great introduction to Russell’s work, and the result is a mixed bag. I found the story to be interesting and I followed most of the logic and...
5 tags
Book 3: Under the Dome - Stephen King
AUDIOBOOK read by Raul Esparza
I am a long time Stephen King fan and have read most (if not all) of his books. I started reading King when I was 16 (The Shining) and can classify all of his books into three categories: Amazing (Dark Tower Series, The Stand, IT, Bag of Bones), Good (Duma Key, Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, most of his short story collections), and Not Bad (Dolores...