Archives: Book Reports

Don’t ask me to pro­nounce Mihá­ly Csík­szent­mi­há­ly­i’s name but he has writ­ten an excel­lent book about cre­ativ­i­ty. It’s more accu­rate to say that he wrote an excel­lent book about cre­ative peo­ple. Cre­ativ­i­ty in com­mon usage is too vague a word to have real mean­ing. Does it mean inven­tive­ness, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, apti­tude for dif­fi­cult-to-quan­ti­fy skills? Does «cre­ativ­i­ty» mean the same thing to a par­ti­cle physi­cist that it does to a dancer?

Csík­szent­mi­há­lyi cast a fair­ly wide net when select­ing his research sub­jects, … Read the rest

The sev­enth book I read in 2010 was Mal­colm Glad­well’s first book, Tip­ping Point: How Lit­tle Things Can Make a Big Dif­fer­ence. I’ve read (and report­ed on) both of his oth­er books, Blink and Out­liers. Both I thought were excel­lent, so I guessed it would be worth my while to read the book that got Glad­well’s career in hard­cov­er started.

My only com­plaint with Tip­ping Point is that I should have read it first. The oth­ers build on … Read the rest

Clever. It’s a lit­tle bit of a dis­turb­ing prece­dent to set, but nev­er­the­less clever. Here is a nov­el writ­ten as a tie-in to ABC’s tele­vi­sion show Cas­tle. Cas­tle is a show about sus­pense nov­el­ist Rick Cas­tle (played by Fire­fly’s Nathan Fil­lion) who rides along with NYPD homi­cide detec­tive Kate Beck­ett (Stana Kat­ic). The pair comes right out of the tra­di­tion of screw­ball com­e­dy and the show is gen­er­al­ly fun­ny, car­ried most­ly by Fil­lion’s comedic delivery.

Fil­lion’s char­ac­ter, Rick … Read the rest

First, good news. I chal­lenged myself to fin­ish eight books in the month of Jan­u­ary, and I hit my tar­get. Short­ly before eleven PM on Jan­u­ary 31^st I fin­ished read­ing the eighth book of the month. That num­ber eight is sig­nif­i­cant because two years ago in 2008 I only com­plet­ed sev­en books dur­ing the entire year. In Jan­u­ary I beat that num­ber in only one month. That means I can do it if I set aside the time.

I don’t … Read the rest

A few months ago I got an unex­pect­ed pack­age in the mail from my father. It con­tained a paper­back book and a note: «Thought you might like this book.» It took me a lit­tle while to get around to it, as my book-list eyes are big­ger than my book-list stomach.

My only regret about read­ing Redemp­tion Ark is that it is appar­ent­ly third in a series of Alas­tair Reynold’s nov­els with many of the same char­ac­ters and set in the … Read the rest

I’m becom­ing con­cerned that my entire read­ing list con­sists of books I’ve learned about through hav­ing watched the tele­vi­sion shows. I dis­cov­ered the Tem­per­ence Bren­nan nov­els by watch­ing the show Bones, Of course Star Trek needs no expla­na­tion, and now Flash­For­ward, a nov­el I did­n’t know exist­ed until ABC made it into a TV series. Worst of all, as I write this I’m about a third of the way through  Heat Wave «by» Richard Cas­tle, who … Read the rest

I feel a lit­tle bad about all the crit­i­cism I’ve done of Kathy Reichs’ first three nov­els. I hope it’s been clear that despite the short­com­ings I see, I’ve enjoyed read­ing each of the nov­els. In addi­tion to the sto­ries them­selves I’ve appre­ci­at­ed see­ing those short­com­ings dis­ap­pear. Reichs’ pro­gres­sion as a writer has been quite gratifying.

I’m pleased to report that in her fourth Tem­per­ance Bren­nan nov­el, Fatal Voy­age, Reichs’ seems to have hit her stride. The pac­ing and … Read the rest

I loved the recent *Star Trek* movie. There were some jar­ring sur­pris­es and it had plot holes you could fly a star­ship through, but that did­n’t mat­ter. The film brought the beloved fran­chise back intact, and showed a new gen­er­a­tion what some of us saw in the old show. There were changes; it’s not the same old Star Trek. It remains to be seen whether the sequels will bring back the spir­it of the orig­i­nal series, but they’ve done an … Read the rest

There’s noth­ing like a good sto­ry of tri­umph over adver­si­ty, and It’s Not About the Bike: My Jour­ney Back to Life does­n’t dis­ap­point. Arm­strong’s sto­ry is inspi­ra­tional not only because he over­came great odds, but because his set­backs were the foun­da­tion for his vic­to­ries. This is the most basic of human truths, and one which is too sel­dom told: that our pain real­ly can tem­per the raw mate­r­i­al we’re made of, and that peo­ple often reach their high­est capac­i­ty only … Read the rest