Thursday, February 28, 2013

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, by Steve Harvey

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment, by Steve Harvey

The best thing about this book is its length: short. Written in the form of a man giving relationship advice to a woman, this may be the most sexist and misogynistic thing I've ever read. Harvey makes Andrew Dice Clay's views seem reasonable! According to Harvey men are driven by who they are, what they do, and how much money they make. If a man doesn't consider himself to be successful he cannot have a solid relationship. "His eye will be on the prize, and that prize may not necessarily be you if he isn't where he wants to be in life." Once a man has his affairs in order, though, he can concentrate on intimacy. "Once he says he cares about you, you are a prized possession to him, he will do anything to protect that prized possession." So we've already seen women described as both "prizes" and "possessions" — and this is in the first two chapters! He goes on to share such wisdom as wives must not have hobbies that aren't shared by their husbands and that men cheat because women stop trying to keep relationships fresh. I shudder to think that people read this and think this stereotypical drivel is actual advice. Steve Harvey is a comedian so it is plausible this entire narrative is intended to be ironic, but frankly he doesn't come across as clever enough to pull that off.

First Sentence:
There is no truer statement: men are simple.

Running With Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs

Running With Scissors: A Memoir, by Augusten Burroughs

This is a troubling memoir of a twelve-year-old boy with mild OCD whose mother gave him away to her bizarre psychiatrist to be raised as a member of his own family. Unfortunately, this new family brings a new meaning to the term unorthodox, where children of all ages have no rules to follow, smoke cigarettes and pot, have sex, and live in a filthy and structurally unsound house. "The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do." Some of the doctors patients periodically move in for extended periods of time as well, including a pedophile. Burroughs begins an intense homosexual relationship with this pedophile that is nearly twenty years his senior, but neither his mother nor his adopted family seems to have any issues with it. The book ends with a now 17-year-old Burroughs headed to New York City without any real plan of where to stay or how to make a living, but generally unconcerned about the situation. "Of course I can make it in New York City. ... Unwittingly, I had earned a Ph.D. in survival."

I'm sure parts of this autobiography are sensationalized but enough of it is clearly true to show just how disturbed some people in this world are. In Golding's Lord of the Flies we see a group of children without supervision devolve into madness; what is more unsettling about Running With Scissors is that there are uncomfortable similarities at times but it isn't fiction. I find it shocking that the only lawsuit that resulted from this was against the author for libel and not against any of the supposed authority figures who let this all happen. It is amazing that Burroughs came out of this squalid home and irresponsible upbringing with enough wit and wisdom to write a searingly honest bestseller. This isn't the sort of book anyone truly enjoys, but it is certainly worth reading.

First Sentence:
My mother is standing in front of the bathroom mirror smelling polished and ready; like Jean Naté, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Camel Club, by David Baldacci

The Camel Club, by David Baldacci

The plot on the surface isn't deep: four political crackpots accidentally witness a murder by rogue government operatives and spend the next 600 pages being chased by a powerful conspiracy with far-reaching goals. Of course, all four witnesses have unique skills and make a few well-placed friends along the way to a climactic showdown inside a secret CIA training facility. After a few predictably ridiculous coincidences, other than the one tragic death of a minor character the heroes all end up "happily ever after." Not the most original story, but it was entertaining and a guilty pleasure.

The undercurrent of politics in The Camel Club shows that the American government has morphed into Big Brother, with all the main intelligence gathering agencies combined under a single command. Considering the recent scandals with government spying this looks at first blush as if Baldacci is prescient (this was written in 2005), but we quickly see that the author is simply writing from a liberal point-of-view when radical Islamists kidnap the President using tranquilizer darts rather than live ammunition against the Secret Service—remember that America is evil here and not the misunderstood terrorists! Interestingly, at the close of the book the governmental espionage organizational apparatus remains in place and all the crimes of the novel are blamed solely on the responsible individuals; the lesson seems to be America isn't evil after all but needs to keep a closer eye on its people: Big Brother is justified!

First Sentence:
The Chevy Suburban sped down the road, enveloped by the hushed darkness of the Virginia countryside.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Code to Zero, by Ken Follett

Code to Zero, by Ken Follett

A man wakes up in Washington D.C. in a public toilet with no memory. He is dressed like a bum and smells like he's been on a bender. He doesn't know his name but discovers he is remarkably skillful at spy craft and staying alive while being chased. If this sounds a lot like The Bourne Identity then you are right—except for without the compelling characters and exciting plot. One dimensional and trite, this is a huge disappointment from a talented writer like Follett. Don't read this—go pick up his Pillars of the Earth instead.

First Sentence:
He woke up scared.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Violets Are Blue, by James Patterson

Violets Are Blue, by James Patterson

Picking up immediately from where Roses Are Red leaves off, Violets Are Blue tells the tale of Alex Cross hunting down his most recent nemesis. The secondary mystery is utterly silly, concerning a cult of people that believe they are vampires, but the reason for reading is the race to discover and capture the Mastermind. And frankly, that isn't a very good reason; rip out the vampire nonsense and tack the remaining fifty pages or so to the end of Roses Are Red and that book would have been much better and this one unnecessary. I guess that would have robbed Patterson of another truck load of money, though.

First Sentence:
Nothing ever starts where we think it does.

Roses Are Red, by James Patterson

Roses Are Red, by James Patterson

It is sometimes difficult to start reading a long series of books by starting in the middle, but that is what I did here with Roses Are Red, the sixth of twenty-one (and counting) Alex Cross novels. Patterson's simplistic writing style and accelerated pacing—we are in chapter ten within the first thirty pages— make it easy to jump in the middle, though. Detective Alex Cross is the hero, chasing an enigmatic villain calling himself the Mastermind while solving a string of deadly bank robberies. The identity of the Mastermind is revealed (to the reader but not to Cross) in the epilogue, setting up the next book in the series Violets Are Blue; the reveal is shocking only in that it seems completely out of character for the individual, although I suppose that is one facet of a sociopath.

I read this book (and the sequel) on a plane trip from Sacramento; as a distraction and a way to pass the time it did the job nicely. If you want a well-crafted suspense thriller, though, check out One Shot by Lee Child or The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte instead.

First Sentence:
Brianne Parker didn't look like a bank robber or a murderer — her pleasantly plump baby face fooled everyone.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B. Crawford

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford

Matthew Crawford is clearly a Marxist. A very funny Marxist that writes and debates well, but a Marxist nonetheless. While normally I roll my eyes at those that expound on the battle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, Crawford takes a particular approach that not only fascinates, but is widely appealing. Shop Class as Soulcraft is a treatise on how the ongoing abstraction of life and the loss of individual tangible skills is leading towards a world where very few actually maintain mastery of anything, and how that is bad for everyone.

In our society children are increasingly pushed to go to college, regardless of their natural bent. If you don't have a degree you are considered to be not quite smart enough to be promoted or even obtain a white collar job. I believe this is utterly ridiculous, but still find myself somewhat propagating the myth with my kids. While I do have a degree, other than the checkbox that gets ticked for certain job applications it didn't really do much to advance me in my chosen field of software development. I'm quite proud of my degree (and I love my Longhorns!) because it was the first thing I'd earned that was due to my effort—nobody forced me to go to class or called my parents if I failed a test; I truly earned the degree because I wanted it. That said, virtually nothing I was taught about computers actually applied to the real world; I wasn't interested in academia and developing software for a living was nothing like the often silly assignments done in class. I did take a "software engineering" course, but the professor was easily the worst one I encountered during my tenure (although I quite liked and respected her husband) and the closest thing to relevance we learned was COCOMO, an even then somewhat outdated estimation model. But I digress. :) Some of the most talented and successful people I've encountered in my career don't have college degrees. Others that have been influential in my professional development have degrees in subjects other than software, such as film. Interestingly, some (but not all!) of the least impressive people with whom I've ever worked have degrees from MIT, to the point where I actually consider a degree from there a point against someone rather than a point in favor. Of course this isn't to say that a college degree is meaningless for everyone not interested in staying inside academia, but with our culture pushing everyone to a university, what do you tell a high school student in today's world? Crawford says, "if you have a natural bent for scholarship ... go to college. ... But if this is not the case; if the thought of sitting in a classroom makes your skin crawl, the good news is that you don't have to go through the motions ... for the sake of making a decent living. Even if you do go to college, learn a trade in the summers. You're likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems." I certainly don't consider college "damaging" and truly do treasure the wide variety of people and views to which I was exposed during my university years, but I do somewhat prefer this advice to what my son's high school counselors seem to espouse. After all, what do you do with a B.A. in English?

Not sure where that college rant came from, I clearly have some unresolved issues there! Regardless, there are many other topics in Shop Class as Soulcraft worth discussing. Crawford covers subjects from outsourcing ("You can't hammer a nail over the Internet.") to modern management techniques. His lament that blue-collar work has devolved from a "craft" molded by tradition and experience to a "process" where anyone can perform complex tasks with minimal training simply by following instructions is particularly heartfelt. Quite a bit of this resonated with me, but at the same time I think he is missing the boat entirely. Crawford believes that a pride of accomplishment is largely absent from corporate America; we are all cogs in a larger machine with the people at the top completely out-of-touch with what is actually built and the people at the bottom unclear on the larger picture. If I'd spent my entire career at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, or BMC I might be able to believe that. These organizations innovate and create by acquiring other, smaller companies and rarely build anything interesting on their own. However, to say pride is absent in those acquired start-up companies where new ideas become reality and everyone from accountants to developers are passionate about what they are doing and aligned on the eventual goal is downright silly.

Clearly this book pushed several buttons for me and I quite enjoyed reading it. As with most treatises it is fairly biased and presents its opinion as "right" and the current social norm as "wrong" which is entirely too one-sided. I believe someone can find job satisfaction sitting in a cube, or pulling wire at a construction site, or patrolling a border in a hostile country. Corporate America isn't necessarily unethical or soul-crushing, but neither is tradecraft necessarily a good choice for everyone. As someone that sometimes struggles when asked the seemingly simple question, "What did you do today?" (or the much harder "Why do you change jobs so often?") I found this an intriguing—and somewhat disturbing—read.

First Sentence:
Tom Hull teaches welding, machine shop, auto shop, sheet metal work, and computer-aided drafting at Marshfield High School in Coos Bay, Oregon.

Search This Blog