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Book Review | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

In September of last year, I read Jessica Bruder’s article in Wired magazine about retired people living out of the RVs and working for Amazon fulfillment centers, MEET THE CAMPERFORCE, AMAZON’S NOMADIC RETIREE ARMY. It was a very well written article that greatly intrigued me. Later I found out that Bruder was going to be writing a book about the same subject, furthering the article into something substantial. Nomadland is the result of that work. Nomadland is Bruder’s third book and she has written for many magazines.

The book follows a few of these work campers as the work for Amazon and the park system. The pay is low, most time just above minimum wage, but it is usually just enough to get by with.

many of these wandering souls were trying to escape an economic paradox: the collision of rising rents and flat wages

Plus the RV driving retirees take care of each other, helping out where everything they can. Installing solar panels, sharing a meal, or patching up each other’s RV’s when there is damage. Even though they are retired they still work and they work hard. When working for Amazon they walk up to 15 miles a day putting Amazon products on shelves for other work campers to pick up and package for customers.

Amazon Tour by Flickr User: Maryland GovPics

Life is not a vacation for these senior citizens. Things are tough for those that lost their retirement savings when the market went bust or had to pay for huge medical bills when an unexpected illness struck. The single largest expense we all have is rent or a mortgage. If you can cut this expense by living in an RV or van or car, then the money you make goes a lot farther. Working for minimum wage really is a minimum then. Things are not good but they are doable…just.

This book was an insightful look at how those who get paid minimum wage make things work. Some of them live in RVs or cars because they had to decide if they wanted to eat or if they wanted to have four walls around them. Shelter had to take on another form for them. It works for them but there is definitely a stigma attached to living in your car. You are “house” less if no homeless. Without a real address, there are some real hassles to getting things done. Like having a drivers license even. Bruder did a wonderful job making her article for Wired grow into a very good read! I rate this book 4 stars.

Reading the Books You Already Own

Library by Flickr User Stewart Butterfield

This post goes along with The Purge post I did a bit ago. I read an article by Laura Sackton of Book Riot this morning. In the article, she mentions the exact problem I have. Most of the 706 books left on my Goodreads to-read shelf are books I already own. I just can’t seem to get to them. Sometimes like Laura I pick something up at the library that looks interesting. Other times I buy something from Amazon for my kindle. Still others, I’m given a book to read from a friend or family. Plus there are always books coming monthly from Book of the Month.

With all these enticing things coming my way, my to-read shelf is overflowing. I really want to read all these books! In the article, Laura suggests treating your shelves at home as a library. You have your big bookshelf as the circulation books, main library books. Then you have a hopefully smaller bookshelf with all the books you have on hold. These are the books you will be reading next. I like this idea, but I don’t have my books organized in this way. I’m not sure I can get myself to do it either.

I’ve been trying not to get any more books. When we go to the library now, I stick with the kids and don’t visit the adult section of the library. I stay upstairs where there are only books for children. I’m going to let my book of the month subscription expire for now so I have time to catch up on the ones I have received but not had time to read. The new rule for me is that I always need to be reading something from my own shelves.

How do you keep on top of the books you already have at home? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.

Book Review | Take Risks: One Couple’s Journey to Quit Their Jobs and Hit the Open Road

Another book with a long title and if you look at the actual title as it reads on Goodreads it is really: Take Risks: One Couple’s Journey to Quit Their Jobs and Hit the Open Road (We’re the Russos Book 1), which of course tells us that Joe plans on writing a second book. Joe and Kait Russo are a couple that lived and worked in the Los Angeles area. Like many of us in this area, they worked very hard and their perspective companies expected a lot of them every day.

Living this way grew tiresome to the Russos and one day out of nowhere Kait said let’s just leave it all behind and travel. So began the Russos adventure. The non-fiction book chronicles the Russo’s life while they make their transition. In that year, they start researching their options and start shopping for an RV to live out of full-time. They put their house up for sale and have to get rid of most of their possessions.

Like many others, I watch Joe and Kait’s adventure via their YouTube channel where they post a weekly video covering their adventures. While watching their videos Joe recommended a book called Walden on Wheels. I had already heard of this book and it was on my to-read pile. Whenever someone talks about books I’m instantly interested and Joe just mentioned a book that was already on my list! So, Walden on Wheels went to the top of my to-read list. While I was reading and enjoying that book, Joe revealed to his YouTube subscribers that he had written a book and it was available on Amazon for download on a Kindle. I was sold. I immediately downloaded the book and began reading right after I had finished Walden on Wheels.

Joe doesn’t disappoint. He dived in with detail on their adventure to buy an RV and start their adventure. But just as they begin their journey, the book ends, which brings us back to the beginning of this post, there will be a second book and I will be reading it! While we wait there is always Joe and Kait’s new videos every week on YouTube. Joe’s first book earned 5 stars from me.

Book Review | The Good That Men Do

My first reaction to The Good that Men Do, is that there is very little I can say about this controversial book without it being spoiler-ridden. So with that in mind, this post will be a spoiler.

Alrightly then last chance to turn back we are going to dive into a spoiler post her. I don’t do these often so I have given you plenty of warning. On the show:

In the last episode, when Shran’s former associates track down Enterprise and board the ship, they demand that Archer take them to Shran, but the captain refuses. The aliens are about to kill Archer, so Trip, thinking fast, tells them that he will take them to Shran. When Archer protests, the aliens knock him out. Trip leads the aliens into what appears to be a harmless utility closet — he tells them it is simply a com station and he is going to get Shran to come to them. Trip tells them he just needs to connect a couple of things, but when he brings a pair of conduits together, a massive explosion erupts, taking out both Trip and the aliens. Trip is fatally wounded.

All that is from this Wikipedia entry. I just didn’t want to write all that out. So, yeah Trip is dead or at least we all assume he is. That is where The Good That Men Do is different from that last episode. It continues to tell the story. Instead of dying, Trip goes off on a top secret mission to save the galaxy from the Romulans.

Being a fan of the show I think the last episode was all wrong. And I’m not alone in that. So, while this was better than the last episode because Trip doesn’t die and I don’t remember it having Johanthan Frakes in it, in that whole strange looking back in time thing they did. I think Frakes is awesome, but the whole holodeck reliving stuff was lame.

These are the Voyages, Star Trek: Enterprise

The book moved slow, too slow. It was really long for what it was trying to do, 464 pages, maybe the author was trying to give Trip the ending he deserved and felt pressured to do that and he gets carried away with all the verboseness. The story just dragged. There was some action in it which was a breath of fresh air during a lot of internal dialogs the characters were having.

I gave this Star Trek novel 4 out of 5 stars because I liked the interactions between T’Pol and Trip mostly. I also like that the story continued to be told instead of ending. This was the 11th book in the Enterprise series and the last one that the show actually covered, so I’m very excited to see where things go next in the 12th book Kobayashi Maru.

Book Review | Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between

Yes, I am a fan of the Gilmore Girls. I watched the first show when it was on TV and then later I watched the whole thing through on Netflix just to make sure I had not missed any episodes when it was on TV.

Later I found out that Lauren Graham had written a book, not this book. A book called Someday, Someday, Maybe. I was reading a post online (I forget where) and the author was writing about the best audiobooks to listen to and how great it is when the author of the book actually does the audio part as well. After reading that article I found Someday, Someday, Maybe on audio at my local library and grabbed it.

I really enjoyed that audiobook and realized that Ms. Graham has a real talent for storytelling. Fast forward a few months and I hear the news that a new Gilmore Girls will be launching. I was disappointed to discover that it was more of a miniseries, with only 4 episodes. But at least they did something, and I enjoyed that too. It seemed to me that it was just enough to wet our appetites, but not enough to quench them. Really too bad.

But, reading Someday, Someday, Maybe and watching the new Gilmore Girls on Netflix lead me to of course want to read Ms. Graham’s new book, Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between. I thought this was going to be a biography of sorts, but it really just focused on what it was like to film the first Gilmore Girls and then when it was done how much she missed it. It could have been called the book about Gilmore Girls with a really long title.

She says she was very excited to film the new mini-series with Netflix and talks a lot about that project as well. But again, I was kinda hoping it was going to read more like a biography where we get to learn a little more about Ms. Graham. Although, it wasn’t like that we still get her witty attitude and funny jokes. It was a very enjoyable read and as a fan of the show a win for this reader. I felt this book earned 4 out of 5 stars. Dinged one only because I wanted it to be more biography.

The Purge

KonMari-ing my books by Flickr User: Kars Alfrink

I want to read more. When I get in this mood and I’m totally pumped to get reading more. You would think that I read right? Well, sometimes you can’t. If the kids are all over the place I can’t read, I have to stop every few seconds to do something. Not that I mind. I love my kids, but it is not the best way to get through a book. So sometimes, when I’m psyched to read, but I can’t actually read, I spend time on Goodreads. It is the facebook of reading. The social site for readers.

I have been on there more frequently in the past few days, and I take a look at the number of books read and the number of books I want to read. This is scary. I’m upside down on my numbers. While it is encouraging to know I have no lack of books that I want to read, I would really like my read number to be higher than my to-read number. As things stand now I’m at 717 to-read and 595 read.

This is after a few hours of purging already. I didn’t write anything down, but my to-read number before the purge started was around 760 or 770. That means I purged around 23% of the books on my to-read pile already. What did I drop from the to-read shelf?

My first stop was finding duplicates. I didn’t know that Goodreads had this tool, but it was there when I went looking for it, so no idea how long it has been there, but it made dropping the duplicate books very easy. I had about 25 duplicate books.

Then I started to go through my to-read list book by book. This is the super frustrating part. As I look through the list I keep seeing books I don’t remember adding. Why did I add this? I click on the book to look at the detail page. No friends have read this and like an idiot, I didn’t put anything in the recommended by field. SO frustrating. The next step is the read the synopsis and figure out if I still want to read this book, if not it’s gone.

This is how I’m purging or if you like “pruning” my Goodreads to-read list. I’m about halfway through my shelf now. I’m hoping to get that 717 number down to something that is more manageable. On the bright side, I’m spending so much time on Goodreads that I found this beauty of a 404 page:

Tiny Town of Hobart, New York and it’s 5 Indie Bookstores

Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books by Flickr User: Watershed Post

Above is one of five bookstores in the very tiny town of Hobart, New York. This town of only 400 people has five independent bookstores. The one pictured above, Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books actually has a website! The little town of Hobart with all of its .5 square miles is about an hour west of Albany, NY.

I first discovered about this little town from a post on from Atlas Obscura a great website with lots of really cool lesser known stuff. The exact kind of thing I loved covering when I was producing History Podcast. Atlas Obscura also has a book for you to read, how convenient. I actually discovered the website only after I heard about the book. It’s one of those big tomes that you read slowly and savor. I’m reading it slowly, an article here and there and I also signed up for Altas Obscura’s daily emails with lots of cool stories like this one.

Man, these folks that started the bookstores in Hobart are smart:

help himself unwind, he taught himself classical Greek.

To help himself unwind. Who does that now? I sit down and think, man I need to relax, I’m going to binge on Stranger Things. But those in Hobart relax by teaching themselves to read the Illiad in classical Greek! Geez! I wonder how different the story comes across. Nevermind, it will never happen at least not for me. My Gosh!

This is Diana and Bill the founders of the store above. It gets better though:

translated Hippocrates in his spare time

Yep, in his spare time! Wow! The Atlas Obscura article is a well-written piece on how the town came to have all these bookstores. I recommend it to my readers as I myself enjoyed it very much!

Displaying Books Backwards

My four-year-old daughter often repeats this mantra at the table during dinner,

“I don’t like that.”

She exactly captures my feelings about this newish trend to display books backward. Two things about the image above (you can click on it to see an article from Apartment Therapy on this new trend), first how can you tell which books are in there? Second, these are in a fireplace, my goodness, have some respect people!

I mean there is one level of disrespecting books, e.g. dogearing, and then there is this next level hatred of books we see here. It’s a big deal too this has been going on for at least a year and its a trend. What has happened to my book lovers, you can’t think this is okay?!

Books Backward Bookshelf — The Kissing Booth Blog

I will admit, it looks nice, okay it does, but it still doesn’t make sense. Why hide the books like this. How can you admire the book spine art? How can you find the next book you want to read or re-read? On Neatorama, they did an article and a poll:

And yes my vote was with the 643 votes saying it is an abomination. What are your thoughts? Am I off my rocker? Or are you with me? Brothers and sisters, stand strong, we can fight this awful trend!

Book Review | Breakfast at Tiffany’s

I’m glad to have read Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s because I must admit after watching the movie a few times I was still lost as to who Holly was and what was her deal anyway.

The book is narrated by a man named Fred, who later becomes a friend of Holly’s. Holly is an 18 or 19-year-old young lady who came from a farm simple life. She put herself in New York City and established her self as a high society girl. She “spends time with” wealthy men and gets everything she wants from them because they all find her so desirable.

It’s all pretty grey on if she is a prostitute or as Capote puts it an “American Geisha”. The reader will have to decide for them first. This is another book that I picked up as a quick win in the summer reading contest, as it weighs in at only 140ish pages. Again, though I’m glad I read it as it added a lot of detail as to who Holly was. The movie felt like it was moving along really fast grazing over things that I wish there was more content too. But that is how the medium works always grazing along the top of things that a book can cover so much better.

I enjoyed reading this and gave it 4/5 stars. It is one of those few books I think I can go back and re-read at another time. Maybe things will become even clearer to me a second time around.

2017 in Review

My daily profession is as an analyst, so I’m really into numbers. This is going to be a very number-heavy post. First, I should mention that without my reading log it would take me forever to put this post together. The reading log helps in a lot of ways. It helps me understand what kind of books I’m reading and why. If I am diverse in my reading or not. Links to my reading list are on the left side of the site. I’ve had a reading log since 2015. Let’s dig in.

Something that may not be that important to everyone, but is important to me is how much I spent on the books that I read this year. This isn’t how much I spent on books this year, but how much I spent on the books read this year, an important distinction. The total costs of the books I read in 2017 are $486.36. This is how much it would cost (MSRP) to grab the same book in the same format from Amazon. However, I spent $0 on my 2017 books read. I get a lot of my books from the library, which is a big way that I keep the costs of books down. 43% of the books I read in 2017 came from the library, the single largest source of the books I read. Library savings alone was $295.50.

Another very important but small number is the total number of books that I read this year. That number is much smaller than I wanted it to be this year, only 37. Other numbers that I would consider a miss was on the diversity side of things. Only 24% of the books I read were written by female authors.

I most frequently read on my kindle. This is how many of my friends gift me books. 46% of my reading was done on a kindle.

Audiobooks were close behind. I listened to 5,313 minutes of audiobooks or 89 hours, or 3.7 days. I count pages on kindle as actual pages to make these next numbers easier. I read 7,018 pages in 2017. The average book length was 242 pages. The shortest book I read was 36 pages, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The longest was When Paris Went Dark at 480 pages.

And now the part you have all been waiting for. Here is the full list of all the books I thought worthy of a 5-star rating. Out of 37 books only 11, 30% reached this coveted placement. I’m linking to the review for each of the books below so you can learn all about them before diving in.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin [Buy]
Super You by Andy Walker [Buy]
Wine Folly by Madeline Puckette [Buy]
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn [Buy]
Alight by Scott Sigler [Buy]
Supergirl by Michael Green [Buy]
The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel [Buy]
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde [Buy]
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck [Buy]
Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs [Buy]
Eating Animals by Jonathan Sarfran Foer [Buy]