“In 1964, James Bond’s creator sealed a package containing a manuscript he thought no one would read until fifty years after his death.”

That’s the subtext of the storyline of the novel set in 2005.  The heroine, the granddaughter of a man close to an inner circle of the British government, finds herself in possession of an Ian Flemming’s manuscript that many people are “dying” to get their hands on.  The premise loosely tries to thread together several of the British monarchy’s skeletons including the death of Princess Diana and the abdication of the throne by the Duke of Windsor.  Author Mitch Silver provides some interesting theories in this novel, In Secret Service and differentiates between fact, fiction, and supposition in the Athor’s Note.

This was an Okay novel and I found myself becoming more interested in what parts were true.  It was almost as if the book did not need the “thriller” parts set in the current day and most certainly did not need to open with the death of Princess Diana.  That part seemed to be stuck in for shock and in poor taste.

“Those lucky bastards knew no such thing as a conference room or a frosted-glass door.  We had to suffer such insults, but in recompense, we were given mismatching recreational furniture intended to inspire the creative impulse.”

Joshua Ferris creates some incredible characters and gives us a window into their work lives as the struggle through an employer that is desperate for work and is downsizing because they cannot get any.  Gossip, whining, speculation, drama rules most days for this group.  I found the story enjoyable at first, but the endless dialogues grew somewhat tiresome for me.  Condensing it to a hundred pages less would have made it better for me.  I did learn a great new phrase, “polishing the turd.”

“That was the process known as polishing the turd…people were up and out of their beds today in a continuing effort to polish turds.  Sure, for the sake of survival, but more immediately, for the sake of some sadistic manager or shit-brained client whose small imagination and numbingly dumb ideas were bleaching the world of all relevancy and hope.”

Here’s to all of us who polished a turd or two.

This is the first John Grisham novel that I have read is quite some time and The King of Torts lacked the usual drama of his stories and the ending…eh!  It was an enjoyable book if not gripping as I had come to expect from Grisham.

Author David Poyer buses a multi-country naval force conducting a “routine” training exercise as the backdrop for the story. Throw in Naval backstabbing, a weak president, a typhoon or two, one or two rogue nations, and a major language (and “face”) barrier and you have the ingredients for an interesting read. This may also give some insight into what another conflict in that hemisphere might entail. There is enough “truth” in this novel to make it realistic.

While it doesn’t quite make it to the level of some of the best military fictional pieces, I found Korea Straight thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile reading. You may not want to read it while cruising in the open ocean.  It turns out that this novel in one in a series featuring hero Dan Lenson.  I could tell that there was a history with the character and while it didn’t take away from the novel there were some references to past events that I will probably need to explore (read more books) to find out.

Peter Abrahams’ novel centers around struggling writer Ivy Seidel who supports herself by bar-tending in New York.  An opportunity to earn some extra money propels her into a world of murder and mayhem.  If you read a lot of suspense novels you’ll probably catch on fairly early to the ending.  There are some twists, but nothing huge.  End of Story was a very entertaining book and I did finish it that day.

Drive provided the research explaining “the surprising truth about what motivates us.”  Hint – money isn’t the biggest motivator.  Daniel H. Pink is yet in a long line of authors who has illustrated what a poor work environment I have.  Pink provides a great deal of research in a very readable way that neither detracts from the details nor provides so much detail making the text boring as some of the same genre.  The research to what motivates us surprisingly isn’t all that new and many companies over the years have successfully use non-traditional ways to motivate workers.  In fact research presented proves that standard rewards make things worse,

“Deci began discovering forty years ago, adding certain kinds of extrinsic rewards on top of inherently interesting tasks can often dampen motivation and diminish performance.  Once again, certain bedrock notions suddenly seem less sturdy.”

and some good advice for companies and individual managers…

“Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation.  Use care when applying goals in your organization.”

The hit television series, The Office, had an episode where the manager outline specific sales goals.  The salespeople exhibited the above traits and once their goals were reached they just stopped since there was no longer a reason to continue. 

I would advise caution to any one before reading this if you have a job with an organization using traditional motivators like fear, micromanagement, or rewards.  This book will not make you like your job any better.

As Amazon does so well it made some suggestions for additional products that I might like when I put the pedometer in my cart.  One suggestion that I took was 10,000 Steps a Day which is subtitled “walk your way to better health.”  I had visions of a book full of tips and tricks to help me achieve the 10,000 step threshold.  Author Greg Isaacs spent much of the book offering the typical advise about reducing fat intake, use less salt, exercise more, reducing caloric intake, etc.  Nothing ground-breaking here.  You can probably find similar advise on a thousand websites.  When I bought the book it did come with a free pedometer, but I used the Omron model below.

Click on the photograph to go to Amazon's page for this product

I do LOVE the Omron pedometer that I purchased and now carry it everywhere.  It fits nicely in my pants’ watch pocket.  I am in my first week and am finding my baseline number of steps per day.  The closest that I have come to the goal is 7,787 steps and that day included a long walk in the woods with my family.  I have a long way to go and hope to write about some positive results in a future post.

This is not really a “New Years Resolution”, but since it coincides with the first of the year it will be a good place to start.

“There is no crime that a man will not commit in order to save himself.”

- – Tadeusz Borowski

This book is not really what I expected as the subtitle that “this book will save your life” prepared me for a “how to” book on surviving an apocalypse.  However, Emergency is author Neil Strauss’ journey from an inept, unprepared city dweller to an accomplished, prepared man.  In what began as a selfish (though wise) desire to prepare for disaster ended with a more balanced approach.  The author was able to share his experiences on the journey which made it a very enjoyable book.

I found it interesting that one of the events that convinced Strauss to take action was the re-election of George W. Bush and the anticipation of some major traumatic event.  He got it in 2008 with the financial collapse.  It was interesting as the author waded through the international puzzle to move his money and attempt to get a non-U.S. passport just ahead of, and sometimes behind, our government’s attempts to close those loopholes.  Swiss bank accounts are not what they used to be.  While I have learned that the best way to survive is to have means (i.e. money), but there is a lot that we can do too.

Out of Oz is not nearly as edgy as Wicked, but may be a better tale and I often found myself glued to its pages.  While I think you could enjoy the book even if you hadn’t read the others, it would be a much richer experience if you have the others as background.  It would also benefit you to have seen The Wizard of Oz movie a few times as Maguire sneaks many references to the classic movie.