Categories
books

Starvation Lake

Every time I read a Chicago Tribune article by Julia Keller I remind myself to read her more often. I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading the Trib regularly so I usually end up catching up with her articles on the net after I actually read the Trib in paper form (although the new iPhone app may change this). I happened to read the Tribune a few Sundays ago and Keller made mention of Bryan Gruley.

Gruley is a 1979 grad from ND who lives in Chicago and writes about a fictional town in northern lower Michigan (one of my favorite places on earth). So yeah, I bought this book that day.

I’m looking forward to reading about his main character, Gus Carpenter, for a long time. Hopefully Gruley feels like churning out these books for a while. This Gus character is pretty cool. He edits a small town newspaper after a fall from grace at a big Detroit newspaper. And he loves hockey. Hockey is a huge part of this book, which is cool with me.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Gruley didn’t shy away from heavy topics in this debut. After about halfway through you could sense we had a pedophilia/pornography issue on our hands (if I had one complaint, Gruley dragged out the “secret” a little too long).

I like the small town setting, I like the main character, I like the potential romantic interest for the main character, and it was a good crime novel. Book two is out and it’s subtitled “A Starvation Lake Mystery.” That’s what I like, a series. I’m on it.

Categories
books

The Lightning Thief

My niece is a big fan of Percy Jackson so I thought I’d give the first book a whirl. After all, I do like a little other-worldly type of fantasy here and there, like Dune. Plus maybe I’ll be able to relate to my niece better. I’m imagining that our conversations will blossom into deep discussions about human nature and life in general. Or not.

I think back to the books that I was drawn to most as a kid. At first, it was the Western genre that grabbed me. This was mostly due to my Grandfather, who was my main reading influence in grade school. The dude read cowboy books exclusively, so I did too. However, as a kid I also dabbled ever so briefly in mythology. I remember loving this book called Thunder of the Gods, which was a compilation of Norse Mythology (Thor, Loki, and such). I recall liking Norse mythology much more than the Greek/Roman mythology (Zeus, Hercules), which provides the backbone for The Lightning Thief.

This makes me wonder; why don’t kids just start reading non-fiction or mysteries or thrillers set in the present day? What is it about this fantastical or historical setting that hooks young readers? And why do most of us grow out if it? I mean, by the time high school rolled around I was reading standard thrillers and now I read very few sci-fi/fantasy books or period-pieces. What gives? Peer pressure? Evolution? I didn’t grow out of heavy metal. Are musical tastes that much different from literary tastes?

Hmmm.

It could be that many grade school teachers read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to their students so kids look for the same buzz. I don’t know what grade it was, but I remember being completely enthralled by that book and couldn’t wait for teach to read more to us. But by high school I was reading Robert Ludlum and Craig Thomas. Maybe that’s it; if it happens during high school, it has much more staying power because we are so much more formative then.

I don’t know. I only have a sample size of one.

So let’s get back on track shall we? I liked The Lightning Thief and I can see how kids could get sucked into this. I know I would have. It’s an adventure story steeped in Greek/Roman mythology set in the present day. Picture Zeus and Poseidon clubbing with mortal twenty somethings and having kids all over America (kind of like NFL and NBA players do). These kids have super powers and gather with others at Half-Blood Hill (on Long Island) to learn how to use their super powers to protect the world. I’ve never read any Harry Potter, but it seems comparable.

This young fellow Percy Jackson is the main character, he’s the son of Poseidon and some down-on-her-luck Manhattanite who wants to be a writer. Percy is short for Purseus, and he faces many of the same trials and tribulations as his moniker. Fun stuff. Safe for youngsters I guess.

Categories
books

Tourist Season

My sister gave me this book in paperback form. I forgot what paper smells like because I’ve been reading only Kindle books for the last few months. It smells nice. Brings back a lot of memories. Ahh, I remember the days of paperbacks and phones that use a stylus and wireless protocol B. Seems like yesterday.

That’s me trying to be funny. Oh to be as witty as Hiaasen. I find just about every word that comes out of his mouth (or off his pen) funny. Some humor just clicks with me and Hiaasen effortlessly touches every nerve I have that translates to laughs.

This book had me laughing a lot. The brunt of Hiaasen’s jokes this time around were:

  • Real estate developers and snowbirds
  • Parents of beauty pageant contestants
  • Terrorists who name causes after days in months
  • Dishonest members of the media and government
  • College football fans, including ND fans

So yeah, he spreads it around a lot. It’s harsh, condescending satire that is very satisfying. And as I’ve said before, he retains some elements of a thriller/crime novel so it’s still exciting and interesting in that respect. I also said before that I would read his golf book next. Well, I just ordered it.

One interesting aspect is that much of the book revolves around a fictional Orange Bowl game where Notre Dame is playing Nebraska for the National Championship. Which is funny because this book was published in 1986, when Notre Dame was a far cry from playing in anything close to a National Championship (Gerry Faust just left, Lou Holtz’s first year). Funny in a sick, twisted way I guess. Which is classic Hiaasen.

Categories
books

Generosity: An Enhancement

This was a fine recommendation that I found in the San Francisco Panorama and from the folks at McSweeney’s. Ever since reading a book about books by Nick Hornby (published by McSweeney’s I think), I’ve had good luck with their recommendations or recommendations by their affiliates. This book also appealed to me because the author is a local guy and it takes place in my neighborhood.

Richard Powers has put together a pretty solid career in literature and I didn’t hear about him until I read a San Francisco newspaper. That’s my fault dammit. What kind of Chicagoan am I? Heck, he won a National Book Award in 2006 for The Echo Maker. I should actually be ashamed of myself, but that would give me too much credit (like I pay attention to the art scene around here). Generosity blew me away. It’s my favorite work of fiction so far this year. And plus, I don’t feel one bit guilty classifying it as literature – the guy won a National Book Award dammit.

It’s the story of five people, really, but most of the story revolves around one of the five. She’s Thassa, a twenty three year old film student from Algiers attending a fictional south loop university. Thassa just may have a genetic predisposition for happiness. I wouldn’t say she’s the main character because you get the perspective of the other four characters (mostly as it relates to Thassa) more than you get Thassa’s. The strange thing is that I wasn’t able to tell who was narrating this book until the very end. Confusing at times, but not in a bad way. In fact, it was confusing in more like a childlike wonder kind of way.

Now I’ve finished and I have some feel for the narrator. But we’ll save that for after the Plot Killer warning. Before we get to that, besides the story, I want to talk about why this book was so enjoyable.

First off, I loved the author’s grasp of Chicago. My wife and I live in one of the neighborhoods that the characters often pass through:

The walk from Logan Square to the South Loop takes hours. He’s healthy, and the hike should be effortless. But he’s winded by Bucktown. On foot, Milwaukee Avenue is another country. He knows nothing about the place where he lives. By Wicker Park, he’s overheard six languages. And all the more recent ethnic groups supposedly live on the other side of town.

And the weather, he has it pegged:

Mid-November, the semester’s home stretch, and the city drops into real chill. The sky molds over, and even the two-block walk from the El to the college cracks Russell Stone’s skin. Now the lake effect begins to work against this place, and the vanished autumn is just a tease that he should have known better than to trust.

Chicago is all over this book. Powers just has captured the feel and tone of the city. He takes us through parts of the north side, the south side, and even a little bit of the suburbs. I found myself constantly saying, “Yeah, that’s right.”

Then there is the underlying commentary on our society and the reliance on technology. It’s a relevant topic today and one I find myself thinking about a lot. Stuff like this:

The price of information is falling to zero. You can now have almost all of it, anytime, anywhere, for next to nothing. The great majority of data can’t even be given away.

But meaning is like land: no one is making any more of it. With demand rising and supply stagnant, soon only the dead will be able to afford anything more than the smallest gist.

Information may travel at light speed. But meaning spreads at the speed of dark.

Also, there is some great wry comedy. One of the main characters (Russell Stone, who doesn’t own a mobile phone or a car) often seeks advice or counsel from his brother, who really shouldn’t be disseminating it:

He calls Robert, who talks him through the steps of renting a car. His brother is shocked to hear his plans. “Are you sure? Canada, man? It’s a parallel universe up there. The queen on the dollar bills. The guaranteed health care. You are aware of the whole French thing?”

And finally, there is a serious intellectual commentary running throughout the book on science and, more pointedly, on the ethics and issues surrounding the human genome and potential manipulation thereof. It makes you think, a lot.

All this great stuff, and I have hardly touched on the story and the characters.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Powers has created this alternate universe a few years in the future. It’s a time when genetic manipulation of embryos is commonplace to insure that children don’t have diseases and such. His universe includes a famous Irish talk show host in Chicago named Oona and popular science TV show called Over the Limit, hosted by one of the main characters. As you can guess, science and the general public are highly interested in this happy woman’s genes. The story is about how the four other main characters deal with the discovery of Thassa’s genetic gift of happiness when it becomes public. Those four people are two of her closest confidantes (teacher Russell Stone and psychologist Candace Wells), a famous scientist (Thomas Kurton), and the talk show host (Tonia Schiff).

Sounds strange, maybe, but it’s not. It’s great stuff. It’s humorous and Powers keeps it light but mixes in plenty of thought-provoking, and often satirical, commentary on today’s society.

I was engrossed in the story. So engrossed, that I never stepped back and thought about how it was structured. I feel like a dumbass, but it really never hit me that the story teller was one of the characters in the story, until the last few pages that is. I felt a little cheated, but not really. The bottom line is, dammit, that I missed this piece of foreshadowing about a quarter of the way through:

Forgive one more massive jump cut. This next frame doesn’t start until two years on. It’s the simplest of predictions to make. Tonia Schiff will find herself on a warehouse-sized plane flying east above the Arctic Circle, unsure what she is hoping to come across at the end of the ride.

I was confused because the book jumps around sometimes, so this plane flight would have made more sense had I noticed that it was two years in the future. Sometimes I wonder how I get through books and enjoy them. I feel like I missed out on a whole bit of magic. It’s like I need to get better at reading. Can I really enjoy reading as much as I think I do when I make rookie mistakes like overlooking key foreshadowing? Answer: Yes! Does a 30 handicapper enjoy golf? Does a runner feel proud after a six hour marathon. Answer: Yes! Enjoyment has nothing to do with skill or ability.

Sorry to go off on a tangent.

It was a great book. I loved the characters. I thought the love story was decent. When I read the reviews on Amazon, Powers seems to take a hit for his character development, but I disagree. Granted, he splits his character development amongst five main characters, so maybe there just isn’t time to tighten every detail. The ensemble worked well for me.

Categories
books

Where Men Win Glory

Krakauer is always a good read. I loved Into Thin Air and really loved Into the Wild. I passed on Under the Banner of Heaven and Eiger Dreams, but I should probably backtrack on those decisions. I liked this book so much that I’ve decided to try and read every word Krakauer has ever written.

You know the story I think. Pat Tillman was an all-star for the Arizona Cardinals who was on track to bask in NFL riches for years to come. But he cut short his career at around age 26 to join the Army, motivated by some sense of duty after witnessing the events of 9/11. He then gets killed in active duty about half way through his three year tour. He gets a hero’s burial, but while his death is being mourned the military is actively trying to figure out how to keep secret the fact that he died from friendly fire in hopes that they can mitigate the horrible publicity that they know will come when the truth is released. It’s sad, really sad.

The book really grabs you just before half way into it. I was reading along about Tillman’s football career in 2001 and all of a sudden he joins the Army in 2002. In the expanse of a few chapters the book transitions from talking about his life as an Arizona Cardinal to his time in boot camp. It’s an especially emotional few chapters because there are extensive passages from his own journal. He expresses sorrow and longing for the first few months of training, then great joy and satisfaction when his wife and best friend come for a 30 hour visit. It’s absolutely gut-wrenching I tell you.

It would be gut-wrenching and emotional reading about any new member of our armed forces who was missing their family and concerned about what was to come. But stories about those not-so-famous young people who join the military never get published. I wonder how representative Tillman’s experience was and how the average enlisted person feels about this story.

This Tillman story is a special case for a few reasons. First, he was famous before he went in thereby resulting in much publicity and a desire to tell the story. Second, he wrote a lot of it down. He liked to keep a journal so there is a fair amount of first person material to describe the events and his feelings towards them. And finally, his brother was by his side almost the whole time to corroborate the story. These things don’t make it any more painful for Tillman’s family than it would be for any family who loses a loved one to war (especially if there’s a cover-up), but it does provide momentum to tell the story.

Besides the sympathy that you feel for the Tillman family, there is an equal and opposite feeling of anger toward the people who tried to cover this up. It felt like a grave injustice was done to the Tillman family, and it was perpetrated by just about every level of the Army and reached into the highest levels of the Bush administration. That is, if Krakauer is being completely truthful with us and telling the story in an unbiased manner. But in the absence of a book telling the Army’s or the Bush Administration’s side of the story, I’m probably going with Krakauer’s version. I should do some research on that.

Regardless, I’m taking a somewhat philosophical point from this book. Let me see if I can make sense of my thoughts. Here goes: there are only a few people in the world that will do right by you; your spouse, your family, and your closest friends. I’m talking five, ten, maybe twenty people depending on the size of your family. The other few billion people on earth don’t give a damn about you. In fact, a large chunk of those other few billion people either want to harm you or will relish any harm done to you. What makes this story so inspirational is that Pat Tillman tried to buck this.

He did right by a much larger portion of humanity than did right by him. He had a soft sport for the under served, was loyal to a fault, and was immune to greed. I think his theory was that if you just do right by the people that do right by you, you aren’t really making the world a better place, you’re only breaking even. So he treated groups like the Arizona Cardinals, the Army, and the United States of America as a few groups that he did right by. And the saddest fact of this whole story is that those groups did not reciprocate. Instead, they cheapened his work product, spread his brains all over a mountain in Afghanistan, and perpetrated lies and half-truths about his death for years. WTF? It’s a sad commentary on humanity.

Pat Tillman passed up a $9.6 million contract to stay with the Cardinals at the league minimum ($512,000) because he was loyal to the team who took a chance on him. They kept him at the league minimum and he didn’t care; he wasn’t greedy. He was famous when he went into the Army but asked for no favors. He wouldn’t even entertain the thought of participating in any Army marketing schemes involving him because he didn’t want the appearance of favoritism. He was a guy who did the right thing. But this did not prevent the guys in his own battalion from concealing the truth from his family. Guys he worked with every day, fellow military men who went to war next to him, didn’t step up and do the right thing. Tillman’s small circle of family and close friends did the right thing. They went to bat for him to find the truth after he died.

If Tillman had survived and a member of his battalion was killed by friendly fire, I’m betting Tillman would have stood up and told the truth. But hindsight is 20/20 right? Who knows. You can’t deny that the nature of Tillman was that he did right by people outside of his small circle of family and friends.

I hope I have the fortitude to expand my “circle of right,” but I fear I’ve failed in this endeavor. I’ve failed to do the right thing for much more of humanity than will do the right thing for me. I’ve failed to stand up for strangers, acquaintances, and groups I disagree with. I’ve failed to be first in line to help regardless of my connection to the people or the problem. Pat Tillman raised the bar in this regard. He was wired differently man.

So where does that leave me? What should I, as an American, be doing to help my country? What should I, as a human being, be doing to help humanity? Pat Tillman asked a similar question and arrived at the idea of serving in the military. He looked at his life and saw how meaningless pro football was and decided to pursue something more meaningful. So what is my moral obligation to finding some higher level of meaning? Is it something as straightforward as just helping people who have less than me? That seems to set the bar pretty low.

Helping people who have less than me seems like it should just get me in the door, but not even in the same door that Tillman got to take. This idea of finding meaning permeated the very fiber of Tillman’s being. Every decision he made had a higher purpose. I’m not saying they were always the right decisions. He certainly hurt loved ones with his decisions. In one sense, his selfishness in pursuit of his own quest for meaning hurt those he loved most. But his intent was noble, so does that make it alright? His wife seems to have come to terms with it.

Anyway, I think the dude was cool. Here are some of Krakauer’s insights into Tillman that I found interesting:

He enjoyed almost everything about getting drunk, in fact: the sound of the Guinness going blub-blub-blub into the glass; the shedding of cares; the heightened sense of interpersonal connection; the swelling euphoria; the way it caused the music to bore a hole through one’s skull; the giddy, fleeting glimpse it seemed to provide into the deepest mysteries of the cosmos. When Pat was lit, recalls Alex, “he’d throw his head back, his eyes would turn into these little slits, and he’d let loose with this booming laugh.

And this:

Although imbibing was certainly one of Tillman’s great pleasures, his favorite beverage wasn’t alcoholic. It was coffee, which ran through his life like the Ganges runs through India, lending commonality to disparate experiences and far-flung points of the compass. And although Pat delighted in the rituals associated with coffee—grinding the beans, mashing down the plunger on a French press, perusing the menu at espresso stands—the coffee itself was really just a lubricant, a catalyst, a means to a particular end, which was stimulating conversation.

And this about journaling stuff:

Explaining his reasons for journaling (something he had never done during previous football seasons), he added, “1) This is a pivotal year for me and by taking the time to put down my thoughts I might just help myself. 2) I think in the future it will be a good thing to have, both to learn from and laugh at. 3) After keeping my journal in Europe, I learned to enjoy it. I realize it’s no good but it’s still fun to put your thoughts together. … Practice starts tomorrow.”

And about reading:

Although Pat spoke self-deprecatingly about his intelligence, and claimed that his academic success in college came from hard work rather than brainpower, his intellectual curiosity was boundless, and he was a compulsive reader who never went anywhere without a book.

This sounds like the kind of guy I want to hang out with. Krakauer certainly feels the same way about Tillman and then some. I wondered at times if Krakauer was truly unbiased during this book. Krakauer does have an axe to grind with our foreign policy regarding Afghanistan. Beware that there is a lot of hardcore political stuff on Afghanistan and how American foreign policy has been botched there.

Great story. It’s the book that sparked the most emotion in me so far this year. Maybe the best book thus far. I’ll start thinking about that.

Categories
books

T is for Trespass

A little different style of book for Grafton this time around, but it was great. Her standard beginning is to introduce a specific mystery and rehash Kinsey’s life story for people reading things out of order. Not so this time. Grafton actually starts the book with some third person narrative about one of the antagonists and returns to it frequently. All this, while Kinsey is working a few non-mystery type of projects.

There are three distinct story lines, but one dominates. I don’t recall Grafton juggling that many big stories. The main story includes one of the most sinister villains that I recall from any of Grafton’s books and she ups the ante with a graphic action scene near the end. The villain is a thieving, malicious home care nurse who lands the job of taking care of Kinsey’s 90 year old neighbor Gus (not Henry, who lives on the other side of Kinsey’s place). No other villain has had quite that proximity to Kinsey and this one really hits close to home.

Listen to me, I’m on a first name basis with these characters and I’m talking about them like I know them. It feels kind of weird, but I’m really engrossed in this series. They just keep getting better.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

I’m not sure I’m all that enamored with how Grafton ended this one. After a very exciting double climax, there were still a lot of loose ends. Oh, she cleaned them up, but she did it on more of a retrospective basis, which at times seem kind of hurried and contrived. It could have ended with some loose ends for all I care.

But listen to me, I couldn’t put it down. Once she got rolling late in the book I just blasted through it. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to wait to read “U.”

Categories
books

San Francisco Panorama

Here’s the deal; I have San Francisco envy in a big way. I’ve only spent a quick two days there during a trade show about 7 years ago, but it spiked my interest. The thing is, I don’t even know what I envy about it. I picture it as this cultural city with unlimited outdoorsy-type opportunities and a strong tech business base. But for all I know, I could be completely wrong.

So Gail and I are making a visit purely for the purpose of tourism. It’s only going to be for four days, but I’m fired up, and I’m arming myself with some local knowledge. Oh, I already have a bunch of local (say regional) knowledge. For example, I own an Apple computer, use Timbuk2 products to haul my stuff around, keep most of my cloud stuff with Google, and own Journey’s greatest hits. So yeah, I’m almost a native. But I need more, so I purchased the San Francisco Panorama and bought the San Francisco Moleskine. So how do you like me know? Let’s light this West Coast candle baby!

The Panorama is a single-issue newspaper published by the folks at San Francisco-based McSweeney’s. The Panorama is somewhat Bay Area-centric, but even a Chicagoan like me felt right at home with the topics. It’s more of a big, informative, artsy set of spiels in classic newspaper format on a wide range of topics, both mainstream and obscure. I posted some Panorama pix on Flickr so you can get a feel. Let me toss out some of my favorite items.

In the Food section, the 58 step pictorial of lambchetta from field to fork provided a lot of fun for Gail and I. We spread it out on a table at an outdoor bar during a long weekend (kind of like a vacation) and poured over it in fascination. I’m still not queasy about eating meat, by the way, despite the slaughterhouse shots.

In the Magazine, the story of a gay couple who went to the Michigan NASCAR event was pretty cool. It ended well and was pretty funny. Also in the Magazine; I loved the article on the Pakistani lawyer who saved a family from having their home foreclosed on by Wells Fargo. I laughed out loud while reading it in the airport, but it was actually more informative than humorous.

Speaking of funny, there was a fair amount of humor in the Panorama. The Comics section ranged from hilarious to bizarre. The one entitled The Christian Astronauts was my favorite. A few of them went over my head. I’ll have to grab McSweeney’s more often to see if any of those comics are regulars.

In Sports, there was a really cool article on Patrick Willis, who has somewhat of an under-publicized story akin to The Blind Side. This story is accompanied by a profile piece on the 49ers GM, Jed York. He’s an ND grad, by the way. The 49ers have had a rough time lately but they seem to be quite an institution. Maybe I’ll grab a 49ers hat when I’m out there. Also in sports, there was a scathing and very funny game-by-game commentary of the 2009 World Series written by Stephen King (Red Sox fan).

One section was devoted to the Bay Bridge debacle. You can see the article here (not sure if this is an official post). I’ll have to look into this public press and spot.us idea of story funding. Evidently the cost overruns make Millennium Park in Chicago look like pennies.

The last thing I read was the Books section. It prompted a few things. First, I have to give Book Forum another shot. It appears a little intellectual for me, but I need to verify that. Also, I purchased Generosity: An Enhancement by U of I grad and Evanston native Richard Powers. It looks like a good book and will go towards filling the literature hole in my reading this year. And finally, I loved the article “Reading Like A Teacher” by Lisa Morehouse and her discussions about visiting the places she reads about in books. Makes me want to read The Outsiders (she made a visit to Tulsa to explore scenes in the book). Great stuff.

This thing was really cool. I’ve only scratched the surface of the content. It took me a few months to read, and I still didn’t get to building the cutout rocket ship or finish any of the crosswords. I wish Eggers would do a Chicago version of this. He has some Chicago roots. I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I think he grew up in Lake Forest and lived in Chicago before moving San Francisco.

It was a big reading experience, equivalent in time and attention to a book. I’ll save the Panorama for a few more months if anyone wants to read it.

Categories
books

The Girl Who Played With Fire

I used to like to space out books in a series, but I’m moving off that trend. The dragon tattoo girl series hooked me on the first one big time. I loved it. So I recently grabbed book two in paperback with a Borders gift card. It was also good and I had trouble putting it down throughout the first half. But in the end, it was not nearly as good as the first one. Not even close, actually.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, I guess. Sophomore efforts rarely meet or exceed stellar first efforts. I was so fired up for book two that there was no way it could live up to my own, manufactured, hype machine. I wonder why I do that to myself. It was still great though.

I can’t really put my finger on the disappointment. Both of the main characters, Blomkvist and Salander, have lost a little of their vulnerability in my view. In this book they are much more in charge. But it’s a natural evolution I guess; they were underdogs in the first book and now they’re rich and famous (or infamous), so where else could it go.

That’s the evolution of the story.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This book picks up right after the last book and ends with a cliffhanger. It also includes an excerpt of the first chapter of book three, so I already know book three picks up just hours after book two. These three books are shaping up to be one epic story broken up into three manageable chunks.

There is a lot of stuff happening. The story is turning out to be so much more than just a mystery with a little international intrigue sprinkled in. There are a bunch of side stories, a huge back story, and detailed character studies. All of these aspects have loose ends and I’m betting not all of them will be tied up given that Larsson died before book one was even published.

The Blomkvist/Salander relationship is probably the biggest loose end. They spend almost no time in each others physical presence for the duration of book two, which is basically Salander’s doing. In fact, many of the loose ends center around Blomkvist and his success with the ladies. He’s bedding his editor and a member of his magazine’s board of directors, but you get the feeling that both relationships could end with very little emotion on Blomkvist’s end. But he’s clearly distraught about Salander’s lack of interest.

Salander is a one-of-a-kind character. She goes superspy in this book, but it makes sense once her back story is filled in.

I’ll be finishing the third in a few months I think. I don’t think I’ve ever read a trilogy in the expanse of a single year. This one seems worthy.

Categories
books

The Chicago Way

I wish I could remember the route I’ve taken to each book in my life. Something led me to find this book on my Kindle, but I can’t recall what. Harvey writes crime novels based in Chicago, so any number of reasons could have been involved. And for some reason it was only $1.59, which plants this squarely in the “no-brainer” category.

I enjoyed it. It was funny and full of detailed Chicago stuff. The mystery was solid also. It’s the story of an ex-cop, Michael Kelly, who’s now in business for himself. He’s in his office one day and a former partner walks in and asks him for some help on an old case that was never fully resolved. Then the former partner ends up dead shortly thereafter.

We have crooked cops and lawyers. We have two strong women, one of whom is a love interest and the other a close childhood friend. And we have a serial killer on death row in southern Illinois with some secrets. We also get a solid twist in the end that I didn’t see coming (probably my own fault).

Kelly is a Cubs fan and at times Harvey tries to make it a little too wry and gritty. But it’s endearing, here’s a scene:

I found my way over to the concession stand, stepped inside, and ordered a red-hot drug through the garden. The Packer fans stood nearby, eating a double of order of cheese fries. Each.

I liked it.

Categories
books

Linchpin

This was a suggested book when I purchased Rework. It asks the question, “Are you indispensable?” Valid question, I guess. Somewhat motivational. Could Seth Godin deliver on the premise that he can help you become indispensable to your employer/clients? Wow, that would unlock untold riches and career fulfillment.

Trust me, I’m not making fun. This is great stuff. I like reading Seth Godin because he has a ton of great things to say and he usually does it in very manageable sound bites. Godin ships stuff. A lot of it. Artists ship! That’s his point, and it’s highly motivational.

So what’s an artist? Godin says this:

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.

That would be you.

But you’re struggling, huh? Godin paints a picture of “stagnant wages, no job security, and lots of stress” for members of the working middle class. The best way to break this cycle is to change your attitude, change how you go to work. Starting shipping great stuff:

Stop settling for what’s good enough and start creating art that matters. Stop asking what’s in it for you and start giving gifts that change people. Then, and only then, will you have achieved your potential.

Godin uses a lot of terms above like ship and art and gifts that don’t appear to fit into a conversation that is supposed to clarify how the average working stiff does great work; but don’t worry, Godin explores each of these in great detail.

Let’s start with this line of thought. Do you remember that book the E-Myth (actually E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber)? I own it. Godin sites a passage in the E-Myth Revisited where Gerber says:

The business model should be such that the employees needed possess the lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended.

Godin takes issue with this, here is his take:

Here’s the problem, which you’ve already guessed. If you make your business possible to replicate, you’re not going to be the one to replicate it. Others will. If you build a business filled with rules and procedures that are designed to allow you to hire cheap people, you will have to produce a product without humanity or personalization or connection. Which means that you’ll have to lower your prices to compete. Which leads to a race to the bottom.

Now I don’t care if Godin misconstrued Gerber’s message or even if he’s taken it out of context. Either way, Godin’s passionate passage above is inspirational and sheds some light on the type of people that Godin terms linchpins. Linchpins are the artists, the connectors, the geniuses in any business that are integral to the success of that business. Linchpins rebel against procedures and rules that eliminate options for creativity. They rebel against stability and continuity to create work-product that they are proud of (to ship art). In short, Godin says, “There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.

You gotta be indispensable.

You know what’s valuable? Godin tells us:

Depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot. Depth of knowledge combined with diagnostic skills or nuanced insight is a worth a lot, too. Knowledge alone, though, I’d rather get faster and cheaper from an expert I find online.

That’s an important point. That gets you on the road to being indispensable. To being someone who gets product out the door, solves problems, and leads.

Godin relates that it was Steve Jobs who said, “Real artists ship.”

When Steve Jobs said that, he was calling the bluff of a recalcitrant engineer who couldn’t let go of some code. But this three-word mantra goes deeper than that. Poet Bruce Ario said, “Creativity is an instinct to produce.”

But producing is hard work. It doesn’t always feel good, and stable, and comfortable.

And so, the conflict. The conflict between what feels good now and what we ought to do. This explains how someone with throat cancer can persist in smoking, or how an obese person who clearly knows better can persist in eating “just one more doughnut.” In the face of greed or fear from the amygdala, an untrained person surrenders.

This sets off one of Godin’s greatest contributions, his idea that you can’t surrender, you can’t give in to the lizard brain that says resist change, you can’t give in to the resistance. This is how Godin does it in his life – his workflow:

By forcing myself to do absolutely no busywork tasks in between bouts with the work, I remove the best excuse the resistance has. I can’t avoid the work because I am not distracting myself with anything but the work. This is the hallmark of a productive artist. I don’t go to meetings. I don’t write memos. I don’t have a staff. I don’t commute. The goal is to strip away anything that looks productive but doesn’t involve shipping.

That, my friends, is a productive artist. Kind of reminds of something Jay-Z says in D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)

I don’t be in the project hallway talking ’bout how I be in the project all day. That sounds stupid to me, if you a gangsta this is how you prove it to me.

Jay-z is an artist, a linchpin.

Godin goes into details also. Here is his formula for being so productive over the years:

  1. Write down a due date.
  2. Brainstorm like a madman.
  3. Organize the brainstorm.
  4. Build the description. It’s a blueprint (Jay-Z ref?).
  5. Get approval from the boss/investors.
  6. Start.
  7. Ship.

There you have it. The formula. Which is something like the project planning method in Getting Things Done.

  1. Define purpose and principles
  2. Envision outcome
  3. Brainstorm
  4. Organize
  5. Identify next actions

I think these guys are on the same page.

And finally, Godin’s drawing of the Quadrants of Discernment is frickin’ priceless. Picture two axes; horizontally it goes from passive to passionate and vertically it goes from attachment up to discernment. Try and figure out where you would put the Bureaucrat, the Whiner, the Fundamentalist Zealot, and the Linchpin. I suggest you read the book to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Thank you Seth Godin for the knowledge combined with insight and judgment.