Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge
This was a $1.99 Kindle special. It's targeted at guys my age, and since I was starting up my annual attempt to exercise regularly and eat better, I thought I …
Out Of My League by Dirk Hayhurst
Dirk continues the story he started in The Bullpen Chronicles, detailing life as a fringe prospect hanging on as the 25th guy on the major league roster. It’s far more absurd than you might think. The 26th guy is in AAA, living …
Bigger Than The Game: Restitching a Major League Career by Dirk Hayhurst
Bigger Than The game is Hayhurst’s 2nd full season in MLB, which ends up being an entire season on the DL. It’s darker than his previous books, diving into issues of team chemistry when you are …
Posted on 11/20/2016 in misc • Tagged with Books, Music, Baseball
Catching up on a few recently completed book. Or not completed, as the case may be.
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
It’s a much better song than a book. Bruce wrote a book much like his concerts, long and rambling. He desperately needed a strong armed editor on …
Posted on 11/15/2016 in misc • Tagged with Books, Fredericksburg, History
Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church, May 3, 1863 by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White
2nd Fredericksburg and the Battle of Salem Church get overlooked in Civil War history because they were part of the more famous Chancellorsville campaign. This battle is of special …
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
This is another one of those $3.99 Kindle specials that will cost me more as I now have to continue the series. Darrow is a slave, a married 16 year old miner on Mars in the lowest social group on the planet, the Reds …
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman's first book, and damn did he start with a bang. It's a totally engrossing adult fairy tale in which mild mannered Richard, by way of helping what he thinks is a young vagrant, finds himself forgotten in his world of London, and now part of …
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Bradbury does a fantastic job in this book of making the creepiness of the story jump out of the book or Kindle, and infect your soul. It's a fantasy horror story, written 50 years before those became super trendy. It's much better …
Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors by Benjamin Wallace
This is an attempt to take the post-apocalyptic world as envisioned in Mad Max and infuse it with a bit of Douglas Adam's absurdity. It mostly works. I enjoyed the story, even if the ending was telegraphed from about the middle of the book …
Carpet Diem by Justin Lee Anderson
So what if had a magic carpet in your living room that is the final piece of a eternal bet between God and Satan, and their agents are sitting in your living room trying to convince you to hand it over. Then the next …
Stop Thinking Like a Freelancer by Liam Veitch
Liam is a web developer who failed at freelancing, retreated to a cushy corporate gig for a few years, then armed with what he learned about how to run a business, gave freelancing another shot, this timing growing it to a $1 …
Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck
It's a well written and entertaining book, even if it's not mostly true. I'm pretty sure Steinbeck made most of it up, probably while the camper was parked at a luxury hotel where he was writing from a couch with a whiskey nearby. That …
Written in Fire: Book 3 of the Brilliance Trilogy by Marcus Sakey
This is a brilliant (sorry about that) ending to the trilogy. With Cleveland in ruins and the President assassinated, the lack of trust between the normals and brilliants explodes into vigilanty justice and all our war between the …
I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax
Scott Ian's autobiography is entertaining enough. It's not The Dirt about Motley Crue, mostly because Anthrax was never quite that crazy on the road. The most interesting element of Scott's story to me was the thread of financial insecurity that …
The Buy Side by Turney Duff
Turney Duff was a wide eyed and naive Ohio University journalism graduate ready to make his mark in NY as a writer. Instead, when he can’t get a job writing he calls an uncle who works on the Street, and ends up at …
The God's Eye View by Barry Eisler
What happens when the NSA domestic spying program that Snowden didn't know about is on the verge of being exposed, and the NSA director is a megalomaniac sociopath with a squad of trained assassins at his disposal?
This book is fiction, as far …
One Fearful Yellow Eye by John MacDonald
This time we find our hero Travis McGhee in Chicago, at Christmas time, helping out an old (girl)friend whose MD husband drained her inheritance before he died. Travis needs to figure out why, and find the money. This was a return to …
Darker Than Amber by John MacDonald
By far the darkest Travis McGhee novel I've read so far, also my least favorite. The con pulled by Travis on a cruise ship just seemed too far fetched, even for a fictional detective that lives on a boat he won in a poker …
Even Keel: Life On The Streets of Rock and Roll by Ron Keel
It's not the worst rock and roll autobiography that I've read. Ron never really got over the hump to the big time, but it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. A lot of the stereotypical elements are …
The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon
The Challenger Sales confirms something I've long believed, that most "relationship" sales people are full of shit. When you sell high value expensive stuff buyers don't want nice guys. They want answers and solutions. They want people that come in and challenge the status …