The Whiskey Rebels

Not everybody likes historical novels, but I certainly do, and I certainly liked The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss. The story is set 10 years or so after the end of the Revolutionary War, and was inspired by the events of that War and by those of the Whiskey Rebellion of the mid-1790s. One thing I really liked about the book was that the narrative alternates between the stories of a former spy of George Washington's whose reputation has been ruined, and a smart and resourceful frontier woman who, with her husband and their friends, manage to make the best of dismal circumstances by learning how to make superior whiskey. The first hint of the two stories coming together doesn't happen until almost exactly a quarter of the way through the book, and they steadily become more and more intertwined through the end. In addition to these characters, the author used a good number of real historical figures in the book, such as Hamilton, Washington, Burr, Duer, and other names of which you've heard since grade school (OK, maybe not so much Duer, but this is why we read such books!). I thought this novel was very well-written, every bit as informative as it was entertaining, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Afraid

I read Afraid, by Jack Kilborn, on my Kindle 2. About halfway through (OK, at exactly 50% according to my Kindle) I thought I might just quit reading it. I'm not too prudish, but this book is chock full of some pretty sick sadism. It's all part of the story, so it's not gratuitous per se, but I really don't think that this book would be for everyone. I certainly don't think it's my cup of tea. But, I have to give Kilborn some props: he can (and does) pile it on relentlessly, and some of the action scenes truly rocket along. I'm going to look for more of his work.

The Book Thief

OK, I just finished reading Markus Zusak's The Book Thief on my Kindle 2, and I have to tell you I feel it is one of the best books I've ever read (thanks for recommending it, Kelly!). My favorite kind of fiction, where a lot of the time you're really reading poetry instead of prose. The Book Thief is the story of a girl in WWII Germany, narrated by someone you've heard about, and I will tell you no more about it except that it was so well written that I couldn't put it down. I hope you'll read it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Well? Why are you still here? Go read it!

Happens Every Day

After making omelettes du fromage et jambon this morning for my kids and myself, I finished Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story, by Isabel Gillies (which I read on my Kindle 2). This is a quick read, not the kind of nonfiction I usually read but really good, I thought. It's the story of a woman with a storybook life, and how she was robbed of it. It's the best kind of story, in that it's simple, powerful, and so well-told and easy to relate to that it almost seems familiar. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope you will, too.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

The other book I finished while I was on vacation was When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris. You've heard David Sedaris on This American Life (the best show on radio, IMHO), and other places. This was my favorite of Sedaris's books. All of the stories in it were interesting, funny, and memorable. Sedaris has a distinctive voice, and while I'm reading along I sometimes like to have his voice be the voice in my head as I go -- makes it even funnier. Sedaris is a master storyteller, with a wealth of eccentric experiences from which to draw. I hope you give this one a try; you'll enjoy it.

Contagious

While I was on vacation in Florida last week, I finished Contagious by Scott Sigler. Contagious is the sequel to Infected: A Novel, and it's a real sizzler. I couldn't put this one down. Infected was a good read, but Contagious was just awesome. Fun from start to finish. Go read it.

The Slave Ship

Just finished The Slave Ship: A Human History, by Marcus Rediker. One of the more interesting things I learned from reading this book was about myself: I learned that I've had kind of a grammar-school conceptualization of the Atlantic slave trade, and that has not been serving me well in terms of putting that shameful part of the world's history in its proper perspective. I've long known that history is first and foremost a product of whoever writes it (Churchill had a particularly good grasp of this idea), and it follows that the history books we use to educate our children have their particular points of view and biases, and that these in turn can (and do) abuse what might otherwise be a fairly accurate account of what actually happened in the past. Of course, as a historian, Dr. Rediker has his own take on this story, and he is a self-proclaimed activist, but his scholarship here is strong and convincing. I think this book is well worth reading, and I hope you'll read it.

Dr. Rediker won the George Washington Book Prize for The Slave Ship. This prize is given to honor the "most important new book about America's founding era."

Free-Range Chickens

Free-Range Chickens, by Simon Rich, is just a little thing, comprised of short takes on various themes (prehistoric times, animals, etc.). But it's funny all the way through. I had a lot of fun with it, and you will, too.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Just finished reading the novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston, on my Kindle (Kindle 1, still; surely you already know that I anxiously await my Kindle 2). I liked this one for lots of reasons. It was pretty funny in a lot of places, mostly because the main character is an Olympic-class smartass most of the time, and his dialog was hilarious. There was enough action (not too much, and well told), some mystery, interesting characters, and the excellent little quirk of putting it all into the context of trauma cleaning and the people who do that kind of work. See? Now your curiosity is piqued. Go read it, you'll enjoy it.

The Good Thief

Just finished reading The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti, on my Kindle. A terrific book, I thought. An adventure story full of action, mystery, likable rogues, pretty nasty villains, and some imagery that I think will stay with me forever. Every single character was flawed, as all of us are, but it was easy to like the good guys and hope that they found what they were looking for. Read, and enjoy!

Letters of Mozart

Another book I read on my Kindle over my break was The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Vol. I. Turns out that for all his genius Mozart was a real guy, who caught colds and got in trouble from his dad and sometimes failed in doing the things we know him for today, almost 220 years after his death. A fun read -- I'm going to look for Vol. II.

Flood

While I was in California for the Holidays, I read the thriller Flood, by Andrew Vachss, on my Kindle, and was duly thrilled. I believe it was a free download, and boy was it ever worth the price. Nicely done for a first novel, maybe due at least in part to some of the author's real-life experience. I found it to be pretty engrossing throughout, although there was a sort of Gilligan's Island Reunion part toward the end that I found to be a little unlikely, where most of the characters (each of whom is a loner and a misfit in their own ways) get together to do a job. Enjoy!

Brain Rules...Rules!

Last night I finished reading Dr. John Medina's Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. I really enjoyed this one. I'm sometimes a bit skeptical about popular science books, being geeky enough to enjoy the more in-depth works. This book did not disappoint, though. Medina gave us some fun personal anecdotes, and tied them in very well with the latest in brain research (much of which I didn't know about). All of this was organized into 12 rules, which I thought was a nice way to do it. Highly recommended.

I read this on my Kindle (I guess I read everything on my Kindle these days), and I should point out two potential issues. First, there is text missing from the Kindle edition in half a dozen or so different places. I don't think I missed too much, but maybe I did, and it did interrupt the flow. Amazon is aware of this problem, but I haven't heard anything smacking of resolution on this topic from them.

The other issue is that the physical book has a DVD that comes with it. I'd be surprised if the DVD had more than what you find on the Web, but I don't know.

Go read Brain Rules now.

Execution

Just finished reading Execution (which you may have noticed already if you've been following me on Shelfari). And the verdict? Not so good.

I had to read Execution for work, otherwise I probably wouldn't have finished it. It brought to mind a great article I read in 2006 in the Atlantic Monthly (thank you Mike Lawton for turning me on to that excellent magazine), called "The Management Myth." I quote Matthew Stewart:

According to my scientific sampling, you can save yourself from reading about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master this dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we’re talking about!

Execution belongs in the rationalist camp, the idea being that you can't just be a management-strategy guy, you actually have to make sure that stuff gets done. I never would have thought of that. I'm not saying that I, as a manager, couldn't do better at that particular aspect of my job (who of us couldn't?); I'm just saying that I didn't get much out of this book except the impression that the CEO contributors seem pretty pompous (yeah, I have no doubt that employees are carrying your handwritten notes of criticism around and showing them to their colleagues because they're so starstruck to have them from you, from you!) and the feeling that the authors maybe put too much emphasis on the somewhat controversial Six Sigma thing.

A Terrible Glory (and some others)

Quite a while ago, my Aunt Nancy suggested that I write about the books I read on my blog. I love to read, and my taste in books is a eclectic (though it tends to run toward non-fiction, historical stuff), so maybe you'll find something interesting in here. I read almost everything on my Kindle, too, so I'll probably add some Kindle-specific stuff in these kinds of posts.

The last book I read on my Kindle was A Terrible Glory, by James Donovan (mentioned in a previous post). I very much enjoyed it, although it does run long so if you're not interested in this kind of history then you might look for something more condensed. The treatment of Custer's demise is pretty cursory, but when you think about it there isn't much to be done about that; nobody in his regiment lived to tell the tale, so we're all a bit light on the details. The book was filled up with all kinds of interesting insight into the life and times of Custer, Sitting Bull, Inkpaduta, and Crazy Horse. Thumbs up.

Here's a quick summary of the other books I've read on my Kindle since I bought it, and what I thought of them:

The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold: Excellent novel; thumbs way up.

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf: Scary, but a must-read. Thumbs up.

The Ruins, by Scott Smith: A page-turner, as horror novels often are, by an author with a good track record, but... strange. Thumbs up, but maybe in a read-this-on-a-rainy-day-just-for-something-light kind of way.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely: Very cool book about the irrational behaviors we all display when we make various decisions. Lots of "oh yeah, I do that" throughout. Thanks for the recommendation, Enoch. Thumbs up.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic, and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, by Steven Johnson. Excellent book, just the kind of thing I really like, and I couldn't recommend it more highly. Two thumbs way up.

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust. I really thought I was going to like this one, but I just can't say that I did. While it was interesting in spots, I thought it was repetitive, and I thought there was something of an attempt to inject profundity into something that just wasn't that profound. Thumbs sort-of-down.

Dangerous Laughter: 13 Stories, by Steven Millhauser: Delightful book, start to finish. Highly recommend it. Two thumbs up.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam. Very enjoyable book, but here's one where the Kindle falls down a bit. Most of the illustrations (which are kind of important in this book) were a little hard to see, although the author did a much better job of getting the artwork into the Kindle than some others have been able to do. And, when I emailed Dan to suggest making a laminated copy of his codex available on his website, I got no reply. So, with the caveat about the illustrations, thumbs up.

Undertow, by Elizabeth Bear: The rare sci-fi/fantasy entry, and I kind of liked it. Thumbs up.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive, and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath. Great all the way through. Thumbs up.

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan: I learned so much from this book about the Great American Dustbowl that I was able to look past some of the oddities in the narrative (like simultaneously asserting that there was no food to be had and that there was a huge surplus of crops). Fascinating stuff about a huge, man-made disaster right in our own backyards. Thumbs up.

Duma Key: A Novel, by Stephen King: Well, you can tell it's a Stephen King novel, because it was a page-turner (told you about those horror novels); I remember staying up awfully late one night to finish this one. Beware of the usual Stephen King swerve-into-goofiness. Thumbs up.

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote: So? I never read it before! Liked it. Thumbs up.

Pontoon, by Garrison Keilor: The guy is just a genius. Thumbs up.

Got Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens: Excellent work by a very bright author. I would think this book would be more approachable than Sam Harris's phenomenal End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason for most people, so if you're ready to be a little less dogmatic this is a great place to start. Two thumbs way up.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls. Very enjoyable. Thumbs up.

Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't, by Stephen Prothero. And it tells you why we don't, which is interesting all by itself. I enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it; eye-opening, really. Dr. Prothero answers his email very politely and thoughtfully, too. Two thumbs up.

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. Fun! Thumbs up.

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. Didn't turn out at all like I thought it would (which is good!), but extremely well written and engrossing. Thumbs up.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer. It's telling that I bet you can't tell from the title alone which faith this book is about. A head-shaker. I learned a lot from this book. Thumbs up.

I Am America (And So Can You!), by Stephen Colbert: Absolutely hilarious from beginning to end. The illustrations were just about useless on the Kindle, though, which was pretty disappointing. Nonetheless, two thumbs way up for this first book I ever read on my Kindle.

Quarantine, by Jim Crace: A Booker prize finalist, and a really great novel. Thumbs up.

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, by Garr Reynolds: Spectacular. Don't get the Kindle edition (I don't even think you can), as the book is just too beautifully done. Everybody who does presentations should read this, and we should work out a system of fines for those presenters who don't. Two thumbs way up.

Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL, by Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler. A much-needed practical book by two talented authors which should help us get Semantic Web technologies and techniques put to use a bit faster. (Not a Kindle book just yet). Thumbs up.

OK, that's pretty much it. There will be more.

Interviewing

A bit over a month ago, my company announced the closure of my entire site (dig what Josh blogged about it here). This is a drag in a lot of ways, not only for those of us at the site but for a lot of people in the community and for the great state of Michigan as well. One of the unpleasant upshots of this closure is that I'm back in the job market, which means that I have to interview.

It's like being in a beauty contest every day. And it kind of wears on you. The uncertainty is the worst. But I was thinking about a book I read recently, "The Hungry Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression in America," by T. H. Watkins. Maybe I don't have it so bad. I have the luxury of viewing this whole experience as an opportunity, as opposed to a disaster.