Archives: Book Reports

I enjoyed Kathy Reich­s’s first nov­el Déjà Dead enough that, despite its few short­com­ings, I came back for sec­onds. I’m quite glad that I did. 

The short­com­ings I com­plained about in my ear­li­er book report on Reich­s’s first nov­el are still present, but in con­sid­er­ably short­er sup­ply. There were only two instances of com­i­cal­ly forced sim­i­les, and only one that real­ly made me roll my eyes. Her char­ac­ters in Death Du Jour, her sopho­more effort, have more depth than in … Read the rest

I can’t recall when it was that I first read Tarzan of the Apes. I remem­ber enjoy­ing the Tarzan TV show as a young child, and so I’m think­ing I must have read it when I was sev­en or eight. There’s not much in Edgar Rice Bur­rough’s writ­ing that is above the fourth grade lev­el, so that’s prob­a­bly in the ballpark.

What is there to say about this? It’s pulp. I had to take a step back and remem­ber … Read the rest

I’ve nev­er real­ly been much of a mys­tery buff but I’ve been curi­ous about the Tem­per­ance Bren­nan nov­els since I became famil­iar with the tele­vi­sion show Bones. Despite my enjoy­ment of the pro­gram, I was glad to find that any sim­i­lar­i­ty to the show ends with the char­ac­ter’s name and pro­fes­sion. This first of Kathy Reichs’ Tem­per­ance Bren­nan nov­els stands on its own in a way that the TV show cannot.

Fans of the show will find no Agent Booth … Read the rest

There’s been so much writ­ten about David Allen’s Get­ting Things Done that it seems sil­ly to try to retell it.

This book is dense and full of prag­mat­ic advice. I doubt that a sin­gle read-through gives me any­thing like a com­plete under­stand­ing of the GTD method, but a lit­tle prac­tice has made a big dif­fer­ence. Chang­ing habits is not easy, so I’m try­ing to make the changes incre­men­tal and make them stick.

I’ve pur­chased Things, soft­ware for the Mac that … Read the rest

My inter­est in the Supreme Court was rekin­dled recent­ly when I learned just pri­or to his retire­ment announce­ment that Jus­tice David Souter writes his opin­ions with a foun­tain pen, just as I’m present­ly writ­ing this review (the first draft, any­how.) It’s a triv­ial detail, but it moti­vat­ed me to seek more infor­ma­tion about the Justice.

I browsed Books Ink, the store occu­pied by the space where A Clean Well-Light­ed Place For Books used to be. They did not have the book I … Read the rest

I guess I did­n’t get enough cops-and-rob­bers (OK, meth deal­ers and gun­run­ners) when I read William Queen’s *[Under and Alone]([canonical-url:node/715])* four years ago. I was also look­ing for an ebook with which to test out Ama­zon’s Kin­dle for iPhone read­er soft­ware. I want­ed some­thing rel­a­tive­ly light in case I did­n’t like the Kin­dle read­er. I haven’t tried the actu­al Kin­dle but when the Kin­dle read­er for the iPhone came out I fig­ured I ought to try it out.

Jay … Read the rest

The third book I read in 2009 was Mal­colm Glad­well’s Out­liers. I have not read Glad­well’s first book, The Tip­ping Point, but I was very impressed with Blink. When I saw Out­liers on sale and read the infor­ma­tion on the dust cov­er, I snapped it up and brought it home.

Glad­well is a high­ly engag­ing writer. His work is well researched and replete with sup­port­ing anec­dotes as well as a few illus­tra­tive charts and graphs. His style is … Read the rest

As O’Reil­ly books go, this is thin and light. That is par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but nev­er­the­less notable on a shelf next to Perl and Java books, all push­ing a thou­sand pages.

Soud­ers does exact­ly what some­one writ­ing on this top­ic should: he wastes very lit­tle time as he pro­vides clear and prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions backed up by real-world exam­ples of the ben­e­fits of these sug­ges­tions. Not all sites can use all the guide­lines he puts out, but almost all … Read the rest

The first book I fin­ished read­ing in 2009 was Stephen King’s Cell. I picked up the hard­cov­er at Barnes & Noble’s clear­ance table. I went through a peri­od of time in my ear­ly twen­ties when I read sev­er­al Stephen King nov­els. They’ve always done the job for me, passed the time while keep­ing my brain rea­son­ably active. So when Cell caught my eye with a «Bar­gain Priced» stick­er on it, I snapped it up with my oth­er pur­chas­es and tore … Read the rest