Joy Luck Club

Joy Luck Club is a collection of stories of Chinese women who have lived in San Francisco. Some stories deal with life in China, but most deal with life in San Francisco. In one, a mother remarks that she hoped to raise a Chinese woman with all the benefits of America, but instead got an American woman. That becomes a sad theme in the book. In spite of growing up in a large Chinese community, these women have mostly lost their Chinese culture. They live like Americans. When they go back to China, they are clearly foreigners. However, in America, they are often not seen as "true Americans" (In one story, she is mistaken for Vietnamese.) The old culture is lost, but there is not a new culture to replace it.
The Chinese mothers come across as the powerful figures. Even in a culture that placed little importance in women, the mother still became the controlling figure in their children's lives. Once in America, the mothers could continue to rely on some of the "old world" knowledge to see through the trappings of materialism in America to realize that their daughters are not doing as well as they thing they are. Alas, it takes adulthood for the daughters to finally come around. Most of their troubles are those typical of upper-middle class Americans. The Chinese culture helped push them out of the "poor refugee" status, but still left them to struggle with life.

Stones Into Schools

Stones into Schools comes across as a "behind the scenes" tale of the quest to provide education for the "uneducated" in the impoverished areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The focus is primarily on girls, who are often denied education due to lack of resources and cultural restrictions. They hope the education will "set them free" to help achieve their full potential. (However, what they do achieve is still up to them, and may be different than what we westerners would desire.)
In order to help people, it is important to understand them and work with them. There were many rural communities begging for schools. A great deal of success can be had in working with them to fulfill their needs. Something "owned" by the locals will last longer than something inflicted upon them. The author mentions times when the schools were spared the wrath of militants because a local religious leader was involved with the school and another time where the "inspectors" were so thrilled with the playground they had no issues with the school. However, there were also cases of foreign companies donating expensive camping tents to help people after a natural disaster. Alas, the people mad fires in the tents, causing these expensive tents to burn down and eventually to be used primarily as fuel.

Three Below: Floors Book 2

Leo is now the owner of the Whippet hotel. The books starts with his dad marrying his best friend's mother. He now has a brother to lead him on adventures. This time, he needs to go on a quest to get money to pay the property tax bill (while the parents are out of town on a honeymoon.) To make things challenging the former hotel manager is planning on swooping up the hotel property by paying the taxes. they need to act quick. In the process they explore the lower levels of the hotel. Their adventures go further and further into the realm of fantasy. This book is clearly in the realm of children's literature. There are just too many holes and bits of fantasy to keep it believable. (The numbers all seem too low. Even the ridiculously high tax seems low for a block in Manhattan. The subterranean creatures and inventions also go way beyond the realm of our world. And of course, there is Merganser who seems to have nothing better to do than lead boys on a quest and make sure they don't get harmed. As long as you turn off critical thinking, you can enjoy this quick escapist read.

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back

The Undercover Economist Strikes is a humorous primer on basic macroeconomics. Chapters began with quotes - humorous quotes form Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy lead off a couple of the early chapters. Most of the book is in a conversational "question and answer" format. The "pupil" asks a question which the "economist" answers, leading to additional follow up questions. The answers tend to light-hearted anecdotes that provide an exaggerated understanding of an economic condition. Chapters discuss an early macroeconic modeling system that used hydraulics to solve economic differential equations to model a country's economy. (Enterprising economics even hooked the export pipe of one model one model to the import of another to model the impacts policies would have on other countries.) We also have money supply explained using the failure, success, and failure of a capitol hill babysitting co-op. Printing money can be good, unless it leads to hyper inflation, in which case it is very bad. People can be irrational, and be much more concerned with a drop in their salary, even though a small increase in times of high inflation tends to be worse. In classical economic models, prices rise and fall based on supply and demand. However, in the real world, there are many factors which cause the prices to be sticky. This can often lead to negative economic outcomes. (It is difficult to cut wages. Thus, unemployment tends to worsen when the economy is bad - even though many people would be willing to work for a smaller amount of money.)
By using humor, the author is able to provide explanations to both sides of controversial economic policies such as stimulus and inequality remedies without being dogmatic.

Time Travel: A History

Time Travel is a rambling exploration of the history of time travel. It bounces around from treatments of time travel in literature to scientific papers on theoretical physics. Treating time as a 4th dimension came in vogue. However, in our world, we have only been able to move forward. Being able to move backwards seems like a logical possibility. However, why haven't we seen changes in our history? Perhaps the world is in our "best possible world". Or maybe it is just not possible to travel in time. Or perhaps it is just too hard for us to comprehend. Science Fiction stories have explored a number of possible paradoxes that could result from time travel. (What would happen if somebody went back and met themselves? Or what if they killed their ancestors or prevented them from meeting?) The book rambles around to include a history of science fiction with some significant authors (such as H.G. Wells and Heinlein.) It also looks at the treatments by physicists such as Einstein as well as the philosophy of time travel. We also explore the history of "time". (Does the consideration of the "past" separate man from other animals?) There are many interesting parts. However, there is little overwhelming thesis other than "this all has to do with movement through time."

Floors

A young boy works with his dad in maintenance at an exotic and very posh hotel. The owner amassed a huge fortune and felt it was important to make all sorts of wacky inventions. In the course of the book, the boy goes through a quest where he learns more and more about the hotel and eventually discovers who is sabotaging it and what the future will be. He also finds a new friend and prepares himself for future leadership roles. The hotel turns out to be a kid's dreams with rooms ranging from "life size pinball machine" to a recreation of central park (along with many "secret" rooms in between. Ducks are also very important. The story is devoid of extreme drama and engaging for young readers.

Fooled By Randomness

Fooled By Randomness explores the importance of random events in life and society. On the outset, the author states that he wanted this book to be fun to write, and tried to avoid too many citations. He does cite some literature, but more often he helps provide alternate explanations for results. For example, many studies have tried to tease out what makes successful businessmen. Intelligence is not seen as super important. However, the propensity to take risks does stand out. However, if you looked at bankrupt businessmen, you may see similar results, likely with an even higher "risk taker" rating. The highly successful may appear to be average because they are. They just happened to get lucky. The finance world tends to revere the young, successful traders. However, finding the next "big shot" is essentially a crap-shoot. One person may take risks and get lucky. However, many others will not have the same luck. An older trader is probably your best bet, because they have managed to survive for a long time without imploding.
It is very hard for us to separate out the "random luck" from "skill". Today CEOs get paid enormous salaries to lead companies. However, do they really bring anything to the table? It is difficult to precisely quantify the value that they add. It could be that they just happen to be charismatic and happened to be heading a well-run company. Lower level individual contributors tend to produce results that are much more easily quantified. But as you move up the management chain, randomness plays a larger and larger roll. Even companies as a whole benefit enormously from randomness. Microsoft became a mega software company because IBM used DOS and IBM's architecture became the dominant in the industry. A lot of dice rolls went their way and resulted in a mega company. How much of Bill Gates' fortune is due to luck and how much due to skill? His net worth may be a million times that of some contemporary programmers with equivalent talents. (This also brings in to place network and building effects. Due to "randomness", early success may lead to greater future opportunities that can help develop different skills in the future.)
Even when we know the role of randomness, we are still likely to "fall for it." This can sometimes result in self-defeating behavior, as the mental benefit from a gain less than the harm from a similar loss. It takes skill to avoid "distractions" of randomness and live our lives in the best way possible.

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World

The Logic of Life is an economics book in the vein of Freakonomics. It provides logical explanations of seemingly illogical behaviors by people. In many cases, psychological studies tease out logical behavior from seemingly illogical outcomes.
One example was the discussion of racism. "Bigoted racism" would be expected to weed itself out of the business world. If businesses that turn down the best candidates merely because of external characters, would suffer and falter. (A simple example could be seen in basketball where all white teams became at a significant disadvantage compared to integrated teams.) However, "rational racism" is much more difficult to remove because it does provide some "stereotypical" advantage. On average members of certain groups will do better, therefore companies are more likely to hire those in the group. Those in the "out group" still suffer, but companies that practice it are still successful, thus making it more difficult to remove. These groups can also self-reinforce their standing. A Catalan who studies computer science rather than Catalan may be shunned by his community for attempted to do something outside the community. This leads to fewer people being willing to study and succeed and thus an overall reputation of community being inferior. Once the group is deemed inferior, a logical company would prefer the stereotypically better group, and thus perpetuate the inferiority.
Similarly, devolution of areas to isolated ghettos can be explained by a logical behavior. A perfectly integrated community may be functioning well. Each resident likes to have a certain number of similar people nearby, and that balance is properly met. However, if one resident moves out and is replaced by a "different" person, that could upset the balance. Now one person feels they are too different, and move out, this starts the chain reaction which results in the community dominated by a single group.
There are a number of additional examples in other areas of logical explanations for something that seems illogical on the surface. Groups can do strange things when they are composed of individuals doing "logical" things.

The Go-Giver

The Go-Giver uses the common business book trope of a salesman meeting with a "guru" to gain insight in ways to improve his career. Alas, the meetings do not help him to meet his original sales quota, but it does serve as the jumping point to his new career.
The Go-Giver philosophy is basically "give and receive authentically". You must freely give to others without expecting anything in return. You should also let others give to you without making things to difficult. And finally, you should be true to yourself and not come across as fake. The values are anti-narcissistic, yet in the long run paradoxically helps benefit you. It makes personal and business life better as everybody is seeking to help others.

Messenger

Messenger is the third and shortest book in the Giver Quartet. It follows more closely with the second book, and only superficially connects to the first and forth book. The series feels like two separate ones. Giver and Son go together, while Messenger and Gathering Blue are tied together. Had they been marketed as such, the reading experience would be much less frustrating.

Gathering Blue

The end of The Giver left many questions unanswered. You would think the sequel would fill in the blanks. Alas, in that you would be mistaken. (Try "Son", the fourth book in the series.) Instead, Gathering Blue takes us to a totally different area of the same "Giver" world. A young girl has a special gift, but also a physical abnormality. She is brought into the castle to serve with others. She learns that though she is treated well, she is also being "imprisoned" to have her talents used for the benefits of others. She eventually discovers her father and leaves. In some ways it is a repeat of the Giver, with a similar story arch in a very different community. Other than preparing us for the community of the fourth book, the second book is not critical in the Giver series.

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate

Ninety Percent of Everything provides insight into the shipping industry. Today, it is often so cheap to ship things long distances that we think nothing of buying "cheap junk" from halfway around the world. However, things still need to travel across the ocean to get to us. The focus of the book is the ocean travel. The author spends time with a ship crew to experience shipping first hand. Crews typically come from less developed countries, where the wages from life at see can allow their family to live quite well back home. We also get plenty of coverage of the Somali pirates and possible reasons for their behavior. Alas, with the focus on the people at sea, there is not a whole lot of coverage of the whole logistics of the operation.

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

Unexpected "shocks" to the normal way of doing things can often help spark the creativity needed to accomplish something truly amazing. Messy opens with the story of a jazz pianist that was going to walk away from a performance due to the poor condition of the piano. However, as a special favor to the promoter, the pianist performed and produced one of the top performances of all time. The condition of the piano forced the pianist to improvise and go out of the "comfort zone" and produce something great.
Attempts to be fully objective often produce bias in how the "objective" criteria are created. External factors have a habit of rearing their ugly head. APGAR scores for new borns lead to more c sections. Diversity produces benefits when there are true differences. Cities that section every thing off in neat areas not only produce great amounts of traffic, they eliminate many chances of spontaneity that can lead lead to positive growth. Providing too much protection from failure reduces the chances of small problems, but increases the odds that a problem will be catastrophic. (The book gives the example of the Air France jet that crashed over the ocean. The pilots were accustomed to auto-pilot, and had difficulty responding to abnormal conditions. Standardization and protection can lead to us keeping the "same old bad".
Startups help to inject new messiness into the system. Amazon did stupid stuff early on. They would even go out and buy toys at retail, losing money on the transaction to get it to the customer. That messiness allowed them to succeed.
People adapt to meet criteria, even if that hurts the big picture. (For example medical appointments in 2 days mean none available in advance. Surgeon ratings on outcomes lead to more unnecessary surgery. Actually results show little difference in surgeon compared to entry condition of patients.) Being able to rely on some messiness can help the big picture to be better - even if there are parts that are not so great.

Son

After meandering around a few other side stories, the Giver series finally returns to the original story line in the conclusion. Son starts out in the same village as the Giver. We follow the story of a girl who became a birth mother. We gradually learn that she had lived at the same point in time as the Giver. She had a difficult birth and was then reassigned to a different job. However, in reassigning, they had forgotten to give her the "pills" that cut off emotion. She had the yearning to see her son, and eventually found him at the nurturing center. After he Jonas flees with baby Gabe, she ends up boarding a boat and ending up in another village. There she discovers a society vastly different from her own. (It somewhat resembles a somewhat primitive society with little technology, but a degree of learning and understanding.) From there, she builds up strength to climb out and find her son. Alas, she makes a great trade with the Trademaster and loses her youth in exchange for seeing him. She doesn't let him know until near the very end.
You could easily jump from the first book to this book in the Giver series. The two middle ones provide deeper understanding of the world, but are not really needed to follow these plot points. I would have been fine with the "Trademaster" being removed from the book. He seems to be added to allow a "superhero" conclusion where good triumps over evil. However, the supernatural abilities just don't fit well with the rest of the work.

Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy

What are fifty inventions that helped shape the modern economy? This book doesn't attempt to find the 50 most important inventions, but 50 that have had impact. Some of the things are classical physical inventions like the plough and plastic. Others like management consulting and Seller Feedback are modern, abstract innovations that are important to our economy. There are also cautionary tales. Attempts were made to ban leaded gasoline in the 1920s. However, lobbying get it going for another half decade before it was eliminated. What other things in our current society are still being forced upon us by the regulatory framework and inertia. (Cars seem to come to mind.)
The book does a good job provided self-contained stories of individual innovations together with the glue that holds it together. Paper money is in interesting innovation, but the story of how it came about makes it come alive. The Smart Phone has quickly become an integral part of our lives. However, it is an amalgam of technologies produced primarily via government sponsored research. Compilers allow code to be more easily programmed, bringing programming to the masses and allowing higher and higher level programming. The barcode had been "invented" multiple times. The technology was the easy part. Getting producers and retailers to agree on to use it in a standard way was the challenge.
While a number of different innovations could have been included here. The author does a good job justifying the ones included and providing an informative and entertaining work.

A Mind at Play

A Mind at Play deifies Claude Shannon as a renaissance-type genius who is able to make contributions to any field he desires, yet is likely to leave his greatest ideas unfinished. You would have a tough time finding any criticism in this work. He grew up a tinkerer in small-town Michigan. He was super smart, and was great at understanding and applying math. He was also able to pick up domain knowledge of other fields and made great contributions to genetics research (that were only recently "rediscovered"). However, his primary contribution was the theory of information transmission. Alas, only briefly discusses what this theory is, leaving us wondering why he is so important. (Though this may be in part because it seems so obvious today.) He made some of the earliest "thinking machines", such as a "maze running mouse" and chess computers. He lived to see the dawn of the information age, but was suffering from Alzheimer's at the time and was thus barely able to comprehend it.
While I found the book to be a excessively laudatory, I did enjoy the descriptions of the time at Bell Labs. Having a bunch of people turned lose at doing whatever they wanted seems to be one of the advantages of monopolies. Any research that could be tangentially related to phone company business was fair game. The huge number of innovations that arose from Bell Labs validates its value. Imagine if we allowed more researchers the freedom to investigate ideas rather than spend endless hours writing grant proposals or helping the companies short-term bottom line? We see some of that with the big tech companies like Google and Facebook these days. Alas, a lot of the innovation today is in the small startups, and that funding is driven by the ability to appease the venture capitalists.

1984

I remembered 1984 being a lot better. Maybe I am confusing it with other similar books. (It does seem a lot like The Giver in theme. The start of the book is primarily about physical relationships, then rebellion, then torture and brainwashing, then an ending contentment. What does the main character accomplish in the story? His seed of rebellion is quashed and he is back to a "respectable" member of society. He just went through a very painful way of getting there.
The society is very stratified. The senior party officials live like kings and have a right to limited privacy. The lesser party party members are always watched, but live within a rule of law. They are protected, but most adhere to the strict rules. Even history is subject to change. They are always monitored by two-way telescreens. Even their thoughts could turn them in. The lower classes are for all practical purposes ignored. They can get away with anything, but end up punishing themselves with internal crimes. The society is content, but suffering as war continues going on.
Why is the book important today? The stories of fake news do seem similar to what happens in the Oceana of the novel. People are manipulated in to believing what the government wants them to believe. These same people may see their physical comforts diminish as they are cheering on the war's heroes and "hating" the other side. This parallels the left's view of the right-wing reactionaries. However, the left doesn't get off unscathed. The party regularly rewrites history to conform to the the current views. Disgraced people are "removed" from historical accounts. The current enemy has "always" been the enemy. This parallels sure looks a lot like the right's view of left-wing political correctness and revisionist history. The stratification of society can also be adopted by either side to describe modern day America. We have a wealthy elite that control everything. The party, represented by big borther is the corporate entity that has total power over society. The upper party members are those corporate elite that exercise true power. The others are their minions. The lowest classes are meant to rot as being unimportant. (Or depending on political persuasion, they are kept in a sufficient mass to allow the middle class to be oppressed.)
The moral code (with sex restricted solely to procreation as a duty to the party) and torture (strict physical torture to brainwash nonconformists) occupy a great deal of the text, but reduce the power of the novel. A society that actively spends that much effort physically forcing control seems less powerful than one that uses subtlety to get people to exercise the control themselves.

Children of the Fleet

Children of the Fleet takes place after the conclusion of the formic wars. The world is celebrating a great victory. However, they are still not sure if another onslaught is coming. There is some effort made to colonize other planets as "insurance policy". However, most of the world is more concerned about internal affairs. Dabeet Ochoa is child prodigy in the vein of Ender who wants to finagle his way into the "fleet school". He learns that being the smartest kid around will not get him anywhere. He needs to learn how to work with others, both accepting their instructions and helping them to achieve on their own. He eventually gets to prove himself in a real life situation. Like other Card books, the characters just "know" what needs to be done and have elaborate plans to help get other people to do it. It makes for good entertainment, but sacrifices believability. Perhaps as a payback, we get to know about Dabeet's parentage while he has not yet figured it out. (But if he can figure out everything else, why can't he figure this out?)

Leonardo da Vinci

I had always thought of da Vinci as a scientist who occasionally dabbled in artwork. In Isaacson's biography, however, he is presented primarily as an artist. (I guess that goes better with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle companions. In the book he is portrayed as a gay eccentric who has sufficient gifts to allow him to run in elite social circles and get away with eccentric behavior. He loved to tinker and dream. However, he often did not finish his work. (That may be how he gets his reputation. In retrospect, it looks like his ideas were the base of modern inventions. However, that assumes he would have continued down what we now see as the obvious path, which was not so obvious back then.

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

Arcanum Unbound is a collection of short stories in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe. It is presented as a double abstraction, with an in-universe historian providing the background of the planet and the situation, as well as the author providing commentary on the story. Being fantasy, some of the stories are novella length on their own. There are some that focus on characters familiar to readers of other books he has written, while other stories are minor or new characters that have not had any significant appearances. Some served to add background to characters and events in his other novels. Others, were more random ditties. It felt like a fun dumping ground for interesting thoughts and stories that did not fit into the primary novel sequence.

The different titles (from Sanderson's website
“The Hope of Elantris” (Elantris)
“The Eleventh Metal” (Mistborn)
“The Emperor’s Soul” (Elantris)
“Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30” (Mistborn)
“White Sand” (excerpt; Taldain)
“Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” (Threnody)
“Sixth of Dusk” (First of the Sun)
“Mistborn: Secret History” (Mistborn)

Michael Vey 7: The Final Spark

In the final Michael Vey book, the resistance comes close to total defeat. Hatch continues to be portrayed as evil incarnate. He was close to defeat, but manages to enlist the Phillipino navy to capture most of the electric children. He also has a tick up his sleeve - a final "glow" that can take other glow's power. She is able to grab the power of the mind reading and use that to find out who the resistance members are and where their locations are located.
Michael himself seems to be dead, but makes appearances in various dreams. It is almost as if he has been resurrected as a god. He has been learning how to harness his powers, and eventually comes back to lead the good guys to a supernatural victory.
The book suffered from the same storytelling problems of the other books in the series. It spends time building up suspense and difficult situations, but then resolves them too quickly. It felt like I wasted time going through the build up, because it was obvious the solution would be easy.

Rising Tides: Destroyerman 5

Rising Tides is the fifth book in the "Destroyerman" alternative history/science fiction series. Some world war 2 ships end up in some alternate earth filled with sentient animals. There are crazy mean monsters as well as cats that serve as crew. The author is obviously a military buff and spends a lot of time talking the details of military equipment. The plot is confusing with a large number of characters and animals doing various things. The book just had no appeal to me.

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

At the outbreak of World War II, Germany marched into Scandinavia. Norway put up a fight. Denmark, however, capitulated quickly. Businesses were more than happy to earn money from the German "protectors". Germany treated the Danes as a near-equal (they were the right race), and still let them govern themselves. However, the Germans occupied some of the key strategic areas for themselves. While many Danes objected to this, few were willing to take action. Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club were some that did.
They were teenage students that did not like the Nazis. They committed small acts against their oppressors. They stole weapons and vandalized Nazi holdings - often in broad daylight. However, they were primarily upper middle class teenagers and didn't have the heart to seriously injure others. In the book, it felt like they were building up to their big acts of sabotage as they finally destroyed some Nazi holdings. However, shortly afterwards, they were caught and jailed. Half the book details their activities after being caught. They were unwilling to back down. They pretty much forced the government to jail them (otherwise the Nazis would have excuse for taking over the justice system.) Even in jail, they had many a sympathetic Danish ear, and some were able to sneak out of their cell and wreck havoc at night before returning to their cells. Some were moved to German controlled cells and treated much worse. Eventually, they were freed and some were able to participate in the resistance movement at the end of the war. Some of them were able to go back to school and continue on with their lives afterwards. Others were seriously traumatized by the experience. What they accomplished did very little to directly impact the occupation. However, they did provide the seed for the later Danish resistance.
I was initially expecting some bold events in the story. But, in typically Danish fashion, there is very little drama going on in Aalborg. It is the subtlety of the Danes that undermines. The book shows the kids with a strong rebellious defiance, even if they are not able to accomplish much with it.

Wrath of the Storm

The conclusion of the Mark of the Thief trilogy amps up the stakes significantly. Our hero, Nicolas Calva escapes certain death in numerous occasions. He also finally shares his feelings towards the girl he loves (and realizes that his "competition" for her actually has a ting for his younger sister. During the story, Nicolas makes a habit of ignoring the advice of others. This causes him to get into deeper and deeper trouble. However, it ultimately leads to him saving the empire and fending off war among the gods and men. The ending takes perhaps too many turns before it finally comes to its conclusion. I wonder how many of the characters are actually based on real ones, and how many are purely made up for the story.

Rise of the Wolf

Rise of the Wolf weaves together an interesting historical fiction narrative. It is set in a Roman fantasy world where the Roman gods are "real" and magic is just an everyday thing that people use. This second book in the Mark of the Thief series continues the episode of our young hero as he tries to "save" Rome from those that want to create a war among the gods. He learns that other our really his friends. He also finds he has feelings for "the girl" when his friend asks her to marriage as a means of saving her. Most of the book is dominated by his morality. He feels a strong desire to save Rome and save those he loves, while not inflicting harm on others. He feels a kinship for magical creatures (such as the unicorn he meets.) He does not for anyone to be hurt. He has grown more powerful in his magic. However, he has learned to control it better. Sometimes he withholds the use for the greater benefit. He is ostensibly not a slave anymore. However he often seems to be in a battle of wills between his grandfather and the Praetors. A chariot race is one event where he is expected to use his cunning to achieve victory. However, the other sides "cheat" in various ways, and there are numerous twists and turns before the unexpected ending. The book ends as a typical middle book in a serious with everything falling apart and the possible beginnings of a great war.