Peopleware: Productive Products and Teams

I finished "Peopleware: Productive Products and Teams", by DeMarco and Lister, the other night.  It was a really good collection of "management" essays about how to lead teams of knowledge workers.  It's mostly focused on software developers, but it has some applicability to other fields as well, I think.  One of the more interesting chapters in it was the chapter on Teamicide -- things you do as a manager that make it impossible for your team to jell into a cohesive team.  It was particularly interesting that there's nothing you can do to make a team jell, but there are certainly things that you can do that guarantee it won't happen.

A lot of the strategies and particulars were things that I don't have the authority to influence (yet), but it's a good picture of making teams that work well together and are more productive, and probably more fun to be on.

Next up: "In Defense of Sanity" -- a collection of essays by G.K. Chesterton!

THe Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I just finished up my read of The Hunger Games.   I really liked it and got into it very quickly, also through it very quickly.  Something just kept me wanting to keep the pages turning and reading more.  I enjoyed the characters and also was delighted to read something different than my usual style.  It reminds of the Twilight books where you read and read and read just to get through and when you are done you can’t wait to jump into the next book.  It was filled with action, a little bit of romance and some drama.  A trifecta for a good read.  I look forward to reading #2.

Night Watch

Just finished "Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett. It's one of his later Discworld novels, and as such is part fantasy novel, part political satire, and dryly funny. In this one, Vimes and a madman get thrown back in time, and Vimes has to stop the bad guy before he destroys the past. It's pretty standard fantasy time travel fare, but Pratchett does a great job twisting it around to talk about fate, politics, and revolutions. It's brain candy, but it's tasty.

I am currently listening to a biography of Bohnhoffer on my commute, so I needed a break from Nazis and really deep theology!

Brides of the West - Faith

I just finished Brides of the West – Faith by Lori Copeland a gift Mom had sent me back in February.  My thought after turning the last page was, “Well, at least I finished it!”  It is a tale set in old western times – doesn’t give an exact date - of a mail-order bride from Michigan (Or some northern state) getting placed to marry a man in Texas.  It’s a typical love story.  Woman and man hate each other, woman and man develop secret love for each other but are to scared to say anything, etc, etc, etc.  Needless to say there were no surprises in this book.  I bet if you just let your imagination take over for a minute you will know how it ends.  I liked the idea of the story but execution was poor.  The author is a Christian writer and works VERY hard to not let you forget that.  I try my best to read fiction Christian books but I am yet to be wowed by one.  Just because it is sold as a Christian book doesn’t mean you need to put the words “Jesus, faith, God or pray” in every sentence or paragraph.  I would love any suggestions of Christian fiction that doesn’t do this though!

Brides of the West - Faith

I just finished Brides of the West – Faith by Lori Copeland a gift Mom had sent me back in February.  I was excited about the read and thankful for the gift.  Sadly, my thought after turning the last page was, “Well, at least I finished it!”  It is a tale set in old western times – doesn’t give an exact date - of a mail-order bride from Michigan (Or some northern state) getting placed to marry a man in Texas.  It’s a typical love story.  Woman and man hate each other, woman and man develop secret love for each other but are to scared to say anything, etc, etc, etc.  Needless to say there were no surprises in this book.  I bet if you just let your imagination take over for a minute you will know how it ends.  I liked the idea of the story but execution was poor.  The author is a Christian writer and works VERY hard to not let you forget that.  I try my best to read fiction Christian books but I am yet to be wowed by one.  Just because it is sold as a Christian book doesn’t mean you need to put the words “Jesus, faith, God or pray” in every sentence or paragraph.  I would love any suggestions of Christian fiction that doesn’t do this though!

    Overall, I'd say pass on this read unless you need an easy book that you can read a page of at a time and never get lost in the plot.

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

Finally! I have finished a book. I wish I could say I really liked it, but for me... it was just OK. Meredith left it for me and she has already posted about it, but I will just do my own re-cap as well. The book has several stories going at once and nearly each chapter moves from one to another. The main character is Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's 19th wife. Ann Eliza is a pioneer and crusader to end polygamy in the United States 1875. The book includes a history of her and her family's polygamist life style, as well as her escape from it and her powerful husband. The other narrative unfolds as a murder mystery in present-day Utah centering around a polygamist family. The main man in this story was cast out of his fundamentalist sect but returns to discover the truth behind his father's murder. So I guess this book is part history, part a revelation of the LDS and their polygamist behavior and part love story. I will bring it home and you are free to pass it around. I learned some interesting things about polygamy and was glad to read it, but glad to be done.
(507 pages)

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

I wrapped up "Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void" by Mary Roach last night. Roach explores what happens to the human body during space flight. It's a very entertaining and somewhat educational read. Topics range from early concerns about zero-g (a couple concerns were that the heart wouldn't function and that eyes would deform, rendering the astronaut blind) to food to motion sickness.
     She explores some more taboo subjects as well. The sections on bathroom use was particularly humorous and really painted a picture of the challenges of space. Another brief section covered sex and whether it has happened in flight yet. Not particularly enlightening but it served as to introduce some of the challenges of long duration space flight and the psychological challenges it presents.


Her wit and fast pace make it an enjoyable read. I've read quite a bit about the space program so some of this wasn't exactly fresh to me. It did provide a good amount of history and information about the less glamorous parts of being an astronaut. It actually sounds pretty terrible aside from the fact that you're weightlessly traveling around the earth at 17,500mph.

I've read another book by this author and would recommend it over this one. It's called "Stiff" and tells the story of what happens to the body after you die. It sounds morbid, and at times it is, but it is also very interesting.

I probably won't be posting for a while as I've started book 3 of the "A song of Ice and Fire" series. It is quite long. 

Killing Lincoln

Tonight, I finished Killing Lincoln, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.  This was a good pop-history account of Lincoln's assassination, but it was modeled way too much on a James Patterson mystery paperback for my taste. It has no references, very little background information, and the Notes section is an informal bibliography (most charitably). I had the hardest time with the insinuations that there was "more to the conspiracy than we know", presented without actually saying what the accusation was, or sourcing the accusation. The notes section mentioned a few "controversial" books, but it never said where the most out-there conspiracy theories came from.  It did helpfully note that the source for a lot of the conspiracy theory stuff has been thoroughly discredited by the historical community.

Basically, I thought this book did a good job of telling the story of the assassination, but it's not a useful piece of history writing, and if you'd paid attention in US history class, you'd have heard about 80% of it before. 

TL;DR: Good read, but feels like one of those History Channel shows you watch when you're home sick at 2 in the afternoon.

Moonwalking with Einstein

Last week, I finished Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer.  This book is about memory - how it works, how people train their memories, and what happens when our memories don't work quite right. Foer started it as a "creature feature" on people who compete in memory challenges. Assuming that they were some sort of freaks with photographic memories, he was surprised to discover that they were pretty much ordinary folks who had trained their memories for these specific tasks. As a challenge, Foer decided to dedicate a year of his life to training, and ended up winning the national competition (not a spoiler, as it is on the dust jacket).

Overall, this is a good look at one of the most interesting things we take almost entirely for granted.  The structure of training for the competition is a good frame for a bunch of different aspects of investigating memory.  He describes the memory palace technique that Pastor Oien used to memorize his sermons... As it turns out, that was one of the first recorded techniques for memorizing complex sequences of things, pioneered after a banquet hall collapse in Greece in the 5th century BC.

(As a heads up:  this is an interesting book, but it's not a how-to on improving your memory.)

Peter Pan and the Shadow Thief

A week or so ago I finished Peter Pan and the Shadow Thief the second book following "Peter Pan and the Starcatchers." These are fun kids books. They are quick reads and would make great read aloud books. I think the kids will really enjoy them when they are eight or 9. They are filled with adventure and truly cutthroat pirates.

In this book Peter Pan returns to London to warn his friend of a strange creature that is after the starstuff he helped recover in the first book. Not much I can say without giving away stuff from the first book.

Overall it was fun and I can't wait to read it again with the kiddos. I'm thinking after the Chronicles of Narnia and before Harry Potter.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

About a week and a half ago, I finished "The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo".  It was a really good, really disturbing mystery.  I had picked it up because the main character was supposed to be a hacker, and the author was allegedly really accurate with the hacking info.  Turns out that there was a lot of techno-sounding jargon with nothing actually very interesting.  Oh well.  Other than that disappointment, this was an exciting mystery novel with some crazy twists and turns.  The main characters are kind of unpleasant, and there are some disturbing topics involved, but it's well written and doesn't descend into the tastelessness that it easily could have.

Nothing Finished

Hi all - I am not reviewing any books today as I haven't finished anything in ages. The reason is, I have so many started and I can't seem to get through any one to say, "Completed!" I am in the middle of "The 19th Wife" that Meredith left for me. I am almost done with a John LeClarre that I don't like, have recently started a fun one called "Cat and Dog Theology" and am only in the very beginning of "The Omnivore's Dilema". Also I think I have the first 10 pages read in "The Hobbit". Maybe the problem is that for me, none of them are barn burners! (or I haven't gotten far enough in to say so - except the LeClarre) The month of March will be one of finishing, not starting anything new! How do you guys read so many books at once? Look what happened to me when I gave that a go...

I like Meredith's idea of finding a way to make a lending library. At least our blog will let us know who has what.

Lit

I just finished Lit by Tony Reinke. I think Alex did a great job with his explanation. So I'll just say I really enjoyed it and it was very thought provoking. It did a great job of making me really think about what I'm reading and why I'm reading it. Anyway, kids are asleep and I'm going to bed. Sorry to wimp out on this post.

Books as Gifts - My Recent Fail

Today I wanted to mention something that has nothing to do with a specific book.  I was reminded all to well last month that the Jordan family is into their books! It was Alex and Adam’s birthday in February and since we have been on a big book kick I sent them both a book for their birthday.  I must be spot on in knowing their taste because I got them both books that they already had!  How can that be?!  With that being said, if there is a book you have been wanting but don’t have yet we need to come up with a plan to make this known!  I feel terrible that the excitement of getting a new book was gone because they already had it.  Maybe next year I will be as good as guessing what they would like but pick something they don’t have yet!  I just hope that they are able to return them for a book they don't have yet and they can share it with us here!

Meredith