Tiny Cat Warriors

10 Most Interesting Books I Read in 2008

Looking back over the list of books I read in 2008, I'm realizing now that it wasn't a big year for fiction for me last year - lots of software related books, business books and lots of biographies.  I have some ideas on why I veered that way last year, but I'll save that for another post.  Usually my reading list is predominately fiction and, within that, predominately mystery/thrillers.

Here's my list of the most interesting books I read during 2008 - they're not presented in any particular order and they were not all newly published in 2008.

1. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds - a new way of thinking about preparing & presenting talks.  Powerpoint basically encourages sloppy and difficult to follow presentations via the templates that come with it and bad presentations have almost become an ingrained cultural phenomena in this decade.  Reynolds outlines new ways of approaching communicating ideas.  His blog, PresentationZen, is a great follow up to the book and there he provides lots of additional examples, both good and bad, that he runs across.  This, along with Slideology (see below) helped me tons last year as I was preparing and rolling out a number of new classes at work.

2. Slideology by Nancy Duarte.  Duarte is the founder and co-owner of Duarte Designs, a Bay area-based consulting/graphics design firm involved in designing and preparing presentations.  This is an awesome book with great examples of concepts to keep in mind while designing and giving presentations.  If you've seen An Inconvenient Truth, you've seen their work.

3. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  An intellectually engaging look at risk, probability and how they apply in business and in life.  The book is essentially unclassifiable - part business book, part statistics primer, part autobiography, part fiction - I imagine librarians and book store employees pulling their hair out figuring out where to shelve the book.  I found the book entirely fascinating, maybe the best (i.e., most useful) business book I've read in at least 10 years.  In spite of the author, who comes across as condescending toward nearly everyone else in the entire world - he'd be an interesting dinner guest, but I'm very glad I don't work with Taleb.  Taleb's ego notwithstanding, this book is very very much worth reading.

4. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.  I re-read this book last year.  Again.  I've read this book a number of times now & will, at some point, need to buy another copy.  This is the funniest book I have ever read.  Easily. As you'd expect from a book about the End Times where, via a major screw up, the baby AntiChrist is placed in the wrong home and the baby everyone thinks is the AntiChrist is actually a perfectly normal boy.

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

5. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  This is being made into a movie that will supposedly come out later on this year.  Watchmen is actually two stories being told simultaneously.  The book is difficult to describe - I'll just leave it at that - it is, however, worth reading.

6. The Bloomsday Dead by Adrian McKinty - the final book in the Dead trilogy (at least I think it's the final book and not a quadrology or whatever 4 books are called) this concludes the tale of Michael Forsythe.  The stage (maybe the need) for this book in the Forsythe story was foreshadowed by the epilogue in Dead I Well May Be.  There's tons of discussion on the intertubes about the story of TBD, so I won't repeat it all here.  If you're interested in Ireland, James Joyce and/or finding out what happens to Forsythe if you've read the earlier two books, or just appreciate McKinty's writing (which I do), then this is a must read.  McKinty is a great writer, the weaving of the Joyce homage into the story is seamless & the story (and conclusion) is extremely satisfying. I'm looking forward to McKinty's next book.

7. Keith Richards - the Biography by Victor Bockris.  This is the definitive (at least so far) biography of Keith Richards.  Bockris has done extensive interviews & original research in addition to leaning on earlier biographies and published interviews with Richards.  Make sure to get the updated version of the book, the first edition covered only through 1993, the most recent version covers events up through 2002.  Comparing and contrasting this to other Keef bios (particularly the Kris Needs book - Before They Make Me Run), I think Bockris relied heavily on interviews he did with Anita Pallenberg - not only is she extensively quoted, but the story is very Pallenberg-centric.  In any case, the Bockris book is a fascinating look at Richards and the relationships within the Rolling Stones.

8. The Education of Ronald Reagan by Thomas Evans.  This was a very interesting book about the political education of Ronald Regan during the years he was the television spokesman for GE. 

9. Faces of Ground Zero by Joe McNally.  McNally is a really well known photographer, having done numerous cover shots for magazines including Life, Sports Illustrated and tons of others (you'd recognize any number of the shots in his recent book on photography called The Moment It Clicks, which I also recommend).  Faces of Ground Zero is now out of print, but you can find copies online.  After 9/11, McNally (who's based in New York) borrowed a huge (room-sized) Polaroid camera) and took a number of life-sized photos of people involved in the 9/11 crisis & clean up process.  It's an emotionally hard book to look at, McNally describes each person's story and the part they played.  A really beautiful book.

10.  The Answer to How Is Yes by Peter Block.  An interesting take on asking the right questions in business.  Block discusses how business decision making is (or should be) a process that involves collaborative intelligence and he suggests reframing the common questions that most people ask.  Block discusses that businesspeople often ask six questions in evaluating what direction to take and shows how irrelevant those questions often are.  One of the most thought provoking (at least for me) is a chapter in the book where Block explains how Thomas Jefferson might have answered those same questions in trying to convince colonists to join the Founding Fathers in fighting for independence:

This from Verasage:

"Imagine after Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.  Now he has to convince others to sign it, at great peril to their life and liberty.  Using the six questions Peter Block uses in his book, here’s the questions that would most likely be posed to Jefferson—that is, if our Founding Framers thought like today’s businesspeople:

How do you do it?
How long will it take?
How much does it cost?
How do you get those [other] people to change?
How do we measure it?
How have other people done it successfully?
How would Thomas Jefferson have answered these six questions?

I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Possibly your life.
I don’t know.
I don’t think you can measure Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
No country has ever done it successfully the way we are proposing.  Sign here.
Block suggests two better starting questions:

“What [type of future] do we want to create together?”
“What is the price [we are] willing to pay to achieve it?”
It is simply impossible to know “how to” do something until you attempt it.  In a free market system, it is the leap, not the look, which generates the indispensable understanding and the necessary knowledge to generate wealth."

Review - Dead I Well May Be

I've been meaning to write something about this book for a while. I brought a copy of it with me on our trip to Sydney with the idea of re-reading it again. By Irish novelist Adrian McKinty, it's the first book in a trilogy about Michael Forsythe, a young criminal who moves to New York City and goes to work for an Irish gang.

I won't get into the plot of the book here much since there are numerous reviews on Amazon, audible and other places that go into quite a bit of detail about the plot. The plot is only part of the reason that I find the book amazingly good – maybe the best crime noir (actually, I have a hard time categorizing the book – you'll find it in the mystery section of the bookstore, and there is indeed a surprise plot twist, but Forsythe is about as far from a traditional genre protagonist as you will find) book I've read in the last ten years.

Forsythe is an unlikely main character. While most good fiction has a main character who has at least a few personality quirks that make for a more complicated and realistic character, Forsythe, if you summarize his character, gives you every reason in the world not to like him. A petty criminal and drug addict with a casual indifference to what happens to other people, Forsythe would probably be classified as having anti-social personality disorder if he'd have bothered to sit through an interview with someone familiar with DSM IV.

McKinty's writing is amazing – in my opinion he's one of the most talented writers writing today in any genre, certainly one of the best two or three in mystery/crime fiction. There's a scene in the story the involves Michael staring at the ceiling in his cell and imagining what is going on that is achingly, unbelievably, good writing. [There's another scene involving the Ganges River in another of his books that also comes to mind when I think of amazingly good writing.]

It's a good thing I haven't had to pay on a per use basis for reading the book since I've listened to the audio book 3 times and read the book twice. While I like audio books a lot, this one I'd recommend especially highly. Read by Gerard Doyle, the book comes across not so much as a reading of a book, but as someone telling you a long story over a pint or three in a pub. It's a long audio book – nearly 10 hours if I remember correctly. Some rainy Saturday I'll try to listen to the whole book in one stretch.

Anyway, it's a great book, both the audio and written version. You might as well order the trilogy all at once since you'll be wanting to find out what happens to Forsythe next as soon as you're done with one. Don't read them out of order – each story builds on the previous one, so you'll miss out on some of the import of the plots of the later books if you read them first.

Fair warning: the language in the books is adult language, very adult language. If you're looking for a Miss Marples tea cozy, locked room adventure, this isn't it. And it's a violent story. Very violent. But... McKinty is a really talented writer and reading something that will push you out of your comfort zone might just be the one of the prices you pay to read a story as well written as this. [Interesting thought for another post someday: what does a writer owe to the reader? I'm probably in the “not much besides great writing” camp. Some of the negative reviews of these books on Amazon and audible were obviously written by people in the “don't push me outside the genre I signed on for” camp.]

[NB: I just noticed that Universal claims to be making a movie of DIWMB - here's to hoping they don't fuck it up too badly.] 

10 Books to Read Before You Die

AOL (I don't know why I bother going there), posted a ridiculous list of ten books to read before you die. Here's their list so you won't have to sully yourself going there:

AOL's list
1. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Maybe if you were compiling a list of important American movies GWTW would have a place on it, although arguably it wouldn't even be in the top ten on that list. As a book however, GWTW probably isn't even the most important romance novel ever written (I'll admit that it doesn't actually fit comfortably into the romance category). One of ten books to make sure you've read before you die? Only if you've knocked out everything that should be on the list, have covered a broad range of US lit with other reading and still find yourself with free time. Hey, AOL, why not put Peyton Place on the list?

2. Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien

The entry has some legitimacy in that LOTR ranks as one of the most important works of fantasy ever written not to mention having worthiness as a read for its insights into language, culture, etc. Tolkien was a tremendous scholar & his intellect shows in every one of his books. While I liked the Peter Jackson movies quite a bit, they're not a replacement for having read LOTR while in high school.

All that said, is LOTR important enough that it should be on a list of ten things you absolutely should make sure you've read before shuffling off this mortal coil? I'm not sure. Maybe in place of LOTR, Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces should go on the list.

3. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

OK, I read the whole series as soon as each book came out & I'm as big a fan as anyone, but one of the ten most important reads before you die? Nope. I really like the books, but c'mon, it's entertainment - the only person whose life has changed because of the Potter series is JK Rowling. More power to her, but the series doesn't belong on this list.

4. The Stand by Stephen King

Arguably Stephen King's best work, The Stand is a great book, but one of the ten most important? If a horror fantasy needed to be on the list, probably an HP Lovecraft book belonged here.

5. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

Nope, this book doesn't belong here. A not technically well written but passably good book with a great story weakened by clumsy plotting. And it wasn't like the plot hadn't been done before (hence the lawsuits Brown was a defendant in). The only top ten list this belongs on is the top ten list of modern thrillers using biblical plot lines involving the Knights Templar, where it would squeak onto the list.

6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

OK, dead solid pick on the list here. TKAM was a bestseller when it came out and was undoubtedly part of a larger conversation going on at the time in society about civil rights.

7. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

WTF? Not only no, but hell no. Crappy book, bad plot, clumsily executed - the only thing this looks good standing next to is Predator by Patricia Cornwell, which is probably the worst thriller published in the last forty years. If Cornwell had a shred of decency, she'd buy back every copy of every book she's written since Predator, publicly apologize for ripping readers off everywhere and retire someplace with no telephone or mail service.

Sorry, I got off track there, but Cornwell's crappy abuse of her readers just sends me over the moon. Back to Brown - the only way this book got on the list is if Brown has pictures of someone at Time Warner boinking a German Shepherd. Every week there are probably thirty thrillers that are better written, more important stories than Angels & Demons. Do not buy this book. I'm serious.

8. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Proof that the "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then" truism must apply to AOL. This is absolutely one of the most important books of the 20th century. Arguably, Rand's books of essays are a better introduction to Objectivism, but Atlas Shrugged is on many many top ten lists, deservedly.

9. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Again, AOL got this one right. As unlikable as Salinger appears to be as a person, the book is a right of passage for high school students - "hey, someone wrote down what I've been thinking."

10. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I liked the Adams books, but I wouldn't have picked them for inclusion on this list. As far as science fiction, I'd have picked anyone of several Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein books. HGTTG is an entertaining series, but important? Probably not really. As important as The Foundation series, Fahrenheit 451 or Stranger in a Strange Land? I don't think so.

What about these books?

1. Jefferson & His Time by Malone - a comprehensive six volume set about Thomas Jefferson
2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville - maybe the most important book of the American Romanticism movement.
3. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
4. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
5. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
6. 1984 by George Orwell - or Animal Farm, you pick
7. A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
8. Native Son by Richard Wright - probably only important these days to Lit majors, but an important work of pre-civil rights era politics.
9. Neuromancer - William Gibson
10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
11. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
12. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
13. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett - really the start of the American noir detective novel
14. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
15. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean - perceptive novella about the American west
16. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
17. Silent Spring by Rachael Carson - arguably no book has had more influence on the US environment

Anyway, my point is that AOL pretty much completely screwed up their list, ignoring books that had irreplaceable impacts on western & European cultures. (I've deliberately left out religious books like The Bible, the Koran & the four Vedas, etc.

The Traveler - John Twelve Hawks

While we were in Ireland, I picked up a book called The Dark River, by John Twelve Hawks. Actually the second book in a planned trilogy, I thought TDR was pretty good. I found the first book in the trilogy, The Traveler, as we were waiting in the Dublin airport to leave.

When it first came out in 2005, TT received a pretty glowing review in the New York Times, unusual for genre fiction. If that's what TT is - I'm not sure. Part Neuromancer, part The Matrix, part George Orwell, part Tom Clancy, The Traveler doesn't fit easily into a genre.

Both TT and TDR are reasonably well written, interesting books that depend a lot on the "sticking it to the man" point of view, although they raise interesting questions about the use of technology by the government and the appropriate place for technology in our lives. The books are worth reading & I'll plan on reading the last book in the trilogy when it's available. I'll leave the readers to decide if Twelve Hawks' anonymity is hype or if it even matters - a book's message should stand on its own.

It's probably worth reading Vernor Vinge's True Names first if you haven't already.

Nothing To Lose - Lee Child

I picked up the latest Jack Reacher novel while we were in Ireland (it was for sale in the UK before it was for sale in the US, although it's for sale here now). This is a picture of the UK cover, which I think is a better graphic design than the US version.

I'll preface my review of this book by saying I'm a big fan of the Jack Reacher series, enough that I've gone to see Lee Child read from the books several times here in San Francisco. While I don't think the series is even close to being the best series in mystery/crime fiction (Mickey Spillane sailed the seas in this subgenre decades earlier and more consistently, although Spillane wasn't as complete a writer) or even a contemporary mystery/crime series (Adrian McKinty's Michael Forsythe trilogy is miles and miles and miles ahead of anything Child has done, McKinty may well be one of the best fiction writers of the last 40 years), the Reacher series has been consistently satisfying. I think that is due, in large part, to the Reacher character - Reacher is a wonderfully strong (fiction-wise) and larger than life character. So much so that I think the Reacher character carries some of the books in the series.

Child has spoken often about his method of writing the books - he doesn't plot in advance. It shows in this book and it's the weaker for it. Child is a very good technical writer in that he doesn't write bad sentences, but this book meanders around a lot. And I don't mean that in the sense of obfuscating the plot, I mean that in the sense that I'm not sure Child new what the plot was. Reacher's character is strong enough that the book is still mostly satisfying, but the plotting deficiencies had me constantly thinking that I could have written a tighter and more compelling book - not a good feeling when I'd paid 13 Euros for a paperback.

For fans of the series, this book will be a must read; but for someone who wants an introduction to Reacher, there are a couple of earlier books that would probably be a more satisfying read. The Hard Way is one of the more recent Child books that was excellent. You might also try Killing Floor, the first Reacher novel (I'll apologize in advance for the improbable coincidence at the ending - other than that, it's a strong, well written book).

My last criticism of the book is that Child is wearing his liberal politics on his sleeve here. Detective fiction is largely escapist literature. I don't think authors owe their readers much: I don't think authors should have to do public appearances, I don't think authors should have to continue a series after they've tired of the characters, I don't think authors should have to respond to correspondence from readers. I do think that authors owe their readers a consistency to the norms of the genre. If Child had wanted an outlet for his politics, he should have written a nonfiction book or a mainstream fiction book.

If tough guy crime fiction floats your boat, you might skip this book and look to Robert B. Parker's early Spenser novels - no one is tougher than Hawk. The Judas Goat and Ceremony are both exceptional detective fiction examples. Parker's fiction jumped the shark a few books after Judas Goat and isn't much work following.

Mirriam Webster online has .wav files

Don't know if this is a new feature or one I just hadn't noticed before, but the online Mirriam-Webster dictionary has pronunciations online in the form of .wav files.  Which pretty much rocks.

Book review = oPtions

I just finished this book last week. It's a hilarious commentary on life in the SF Bay area, the computer industry, Apple, and Steve Jobs in particular. If you're a regular reader of Fake Steve's blog, you'll already get a lot of the jokes. Actually, both the blog and the book are probably better if you've read at least one of the biographies of the real Steve Jobs - that will give you more of a sense that the Fake Steve persona probably isn't too far off the mark in terms of what real Steve most likely like, IRL.

I don't remember laughing out loud while reading a book since I read Gaiman/Pratchett's Good Omens a few years ago (which reminds me that I'd like to read that again soon), but I laughed out loud a number of times while reading oPtions. One of my favorite parts told what Fake Steve was thinking as the company attorneys were explaining to him that he posssibly was in deep trouble over the options backdating scandal:

"That's a strange word, incarceration, and after she says it a weird silence comes over the room. Suddenly the air feels really, really cold, and it's so quiet that I can hear the air conditioning whirring in the walls, and I'm thinking to myself, Holy friggin mother of Jesus, I am so going to kill the a-holes who did the HVAC work in this place."

A quick read & for tech geeks, definitely worth the rainy Saturday afternoon it will take to read it. Will make you wish for the financial wherewithal to have both a Moshe and Ja'Red in your life.

Book review = True Names

Finished this book while we were on Lopez Island. It predates Neuromancer by a few years & is fascinating as a historical piece on what Vinge thought would happen to computer technology and society when viewed from the late 1970's. Actually, the 8 or 9 essays the preceed the True Names novella in this reissue I actually found more interesting than the novella, which, don't get me wrong, was really good. The book is definitely worth a read for the essays on cybersecurity, freedom and cryptography.

Book review = Clapton, the Autobiography

I just finished listening to the audio book of this a couple weeks ago while driving back from Seattle. The unabridged version runs 11 or 12 hours, some relatively long amount of time.

I've always liked Clapton, but reading his book makes it pretty hard. From around the time of his first success in the mid-60s until the death of his son (coincidentally around the time he finally quit drugs and alcohol) as a pretty unlikeable guy. Probably due to his weird childhood (thinking this birth mother was actually his older sister and that his grandparents were his parents, never knowing his real father), his relationships with women seemed invariably to have been co-dependent drama fests. My amateur psychoanalysis aside, his girlfriends usually ended up as hooked on drugs or alcohol as he was at the time, pretty much a natural result of spending too much time with a junkie. [Interesting factoid: Clapton admits that his drug habit at one time cost $16,000 a day to maintain - converting from pounds to dollars. That's $5.8 million a year.]

Anyway, I started liking him better after he sobered up. His starting up of the Crossroads rehab center in Antigua seems to have genuinely been selfless. His mid-90s marriage to a much younger American girl marked another turning point in his life as he could finally think about having a family & spending time as a father.

The one constant that runs through the bio is his principled approach to music in general and American blues in particular. Acoustic guitar blues doesn't have a higher profile friend today & the music scene is better for it. All in all, the book is definitely worth a read or a listen, as the case may be.

Incidentally, Brownie, the guitar Clapton played on Layla, is on display at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Definitely worth seeing, if only to see a guitar that someone paid half a million dollars for.

Adrian McKinty

I belatedly discovered the author Adrian McKinty last winter and have now made it through all [three] of his novels.  I discovered Dead I Well May Be immediately after reading Patricia Cornwell's latest tedious installment of her own, I mean Kay Scarpetta's soap opera.  Cornwell's book Predator, it is safe to say is utter and unmitigated trash - a complete waste of time to read.  It would have to be 100 times better than it is to be completely awful.  Hopefully I'm coming through with the message that Cornwell's book is too awful to admit you own, much less read.  If I'm not, here is the summary: if your choice is between spending an afternoon reading Predator and plucking nose hairs (your own), then run don't walk and grab the tweezers.

Anyway, against the backdrop of having just read Cornwell's steaming pile, I picked up Dead I Well May Be, so I wasn't initially sure when I first started reading whether McKinty was truly talented or only seemed good in contrast to Cornwell's self-absorbed navel-gazing cow pie.  After you've read a decent way into the book though, it's clear that McKinty is truly truly talented - easily the best writer I've read in years.  The main character in DIWMB shouldn't be likeable, but the book is completely absorbing.  Completely. 

In most bookstores, McKinty's books are in the mystery section, but they're not mystery books per se.  They do involve crime and are in fact quite violent, but the main character definitely isn't a detective, even in a noir-ish sense.  They're probably better categorized as crime thrillers, although that's not really a good description either.

One of the interesting things about McKinty's writing is that he breaks a lot of rules.  Having a main character that you like in spite of your own sense of morality for one thing.  Another is that he doesn't just break the rule a few times that an author should never foreshadow future events - he breaks it constantly.  And it's damned effective when he does it.  The effect is that you're in a pub listening to an Irishman (and the main characters are all Irish in his books) tell you a long long story and he's getting up to hit the men's room, but as he's standing up he gives you just a little bit, a teaser, of the next part of the story so you won't forget where he was when he gets back.

Anyway, for anyone who has aspirations of fiction writing, McKinty is achingly good - he can really tell a story.  If you're interested, read DIWMB first, then either Hidden River, which has a different main character, or The Dead Yard, which is the third book McKinty's written but has the same main character as the first book.  The Bloomsday Dead, the third book about that same character is due out next spring.