Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institute

 

I heard about this book in discussions of Netflix's show Orange is the New Black. This book is a collection of writings from women prisoners at a Connecticut prison. The title character is the name of a male writer who held sessions at the prison, helping inmates write their story.

One of the stories is about Diane. She started dating a coworker when she was young. He raped her and eventually became pregnant. Both of their parents agreed the two should get married. On day two of their marriage, Diane's husband was very late to work. When questioned, he said he had to spend time explaining to his second girlfriend that he got married to someone else.

Diane had plenty of other stories to tell. Her father had run away to live with the woman next door. Initially the children and grandma did not believe it. But Diane's mother was adamant. Her mother had the kids wake up early one morning, and spy on the neighbor's house. Diane was put in charge of taking a flashlight and investigating. Lo and behold, her dad was actually hiding in the neighbor's car.

The World According to Karl

This book is a collection of saying by Karl Lagerfeld. He was the a contractor for Chanel. But he was not any old contractor. He served as the fashion director. Karl was known to wear dark glasses, as well as super high collars on his shirts. He wore gloves frequently.

Karl wished for 48 hours days, so he could get everything done. He thought trendy and tacky were very close to each other. He hated rumpled clothing. He spoke English, German, and French. He had a cat he named Choupette.

Karl believed that money should be spent. He spent a lot of money on clothes. He figured he made a lot of money with clothes, so that was okay. He said his best ideas came to him in his sleep. He kept a pad and pen next to his bed to document those ideas.

When Karl was young, a fortune teller told his mom that he would become a priest. His mom was aghast at this. She prohibited Karl from ever entering any churches. He never went to any weddings or funerals when he was young.

The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets

This is book 3 in the Enola Holmes series. Enola, younger sister or Sherlock Holmes, is living by herself in London. She seems to be in hiding from her brothers. Enola finds out that Watson is missing. And she takes the case on.

The first clue is a weird set of flowers sent to Watson's wife. Enola sets up a sting, renting a house across the street from the Watson's. There she spies on a boy delivering similar flowers to the house again. She gives chase, and gets details from the boy on who asked him to deliver the flowers.

Enola sneaks into Sherlock's home and finds an address for disguises. She visits the store, planning to get some items to disguise herself. The owner's wife helps Enola. Later, Enola returns asking for details that the weird flower donor used to disguise themselves. The owner becomes agitated and irate. Enola finds this suspicious.

Eventually Enola spies on the shop owner and finds that the owner's sister disguises herself as a man. And the sister is the one who sent the weird flowers. The sister is also the one to arranged for Watson to be abducted.

Enola decides that it is best if one of her brothers goes to rescue Watson. She also sends an anonymous tip to the cops to collect the guilty parties. Enola decides that this episode confirms that she is detective material. So she poses as the secretary of a detective. But she will solve cases herself. The next case is the next book in the series.

Takedown - The Pusuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick

Shimomura has his computers hacked. He is a self proclaimed security expert. So he tries to find out who did it. He has some trails left behind by the hacker. He needs to go around the USA to get help from other sites used in the hack. He also needs the help from the FBI to perform "the takedown".

This guy is not a likeable dude. He was unable to graduate from high school or college. Yet he thinks everyone is stupid compared to himself. This big headed attitude extends to his views on the FBI. I don't think there is a doubt that his computers were hacked. But the guy lacks credibility. Who knows whether Kevin Mitnick was the one who did it.

Shimomura spends a lot of time trying to describe what is essentially an affair he is having with a girl. This really has no bearing on the hacking story. In the end, the FBI descends upon Mitnick, who is on parole and is already in trouble for some other crimes. As as aside, the book is co-authored by John Markoff, who previously wrote a book and New York Times articles on Mitnick.

Cherub Mission 1 - The Recruit

James lives with his mom and younger sister. The kids at school give him a hard time because his mom is way overweight. His mom runs a crime ring, so James is not hurting for money. James' stepfather comes over often to get cash from his mom. This latest time, he got mom drunk. That messed with her medications and killed her.

James ended up in an orphanage. His sister went with her dad. James was able to extract all the cash his mom had been hiding from her crimes. He starts hanging out with the wrong crowd at school. James is already in trouble to injuring a girl who teased him in his previous school, as well as a teacher that tried to restrain him. His new bad friends talk him into trying to steal some beer. In the end, they turn on him and get him arrested.

Little does James know that the Cherub organization has been watching him. They invite him to join their band of young spies. Boot camp is very tough. James teams up with a girl who failed boot camp previously, so she has a great advantage. James must push through learning to swim very fast. Somehow he makes it through boot camp, and with his partner, passes the final exam.

James gets invited onto a mission with him swim coach, who is years older than him. They infiltrate a group of supposed terrorists who are thought to be planning an attack against leaders of the oil industry. James needs to put his training to work to spy on the group. Turns out there are terrorists amongst them, but the intel was wrong on how they planned to kill the oil leaders.

CoCo

This book is subtitled "The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer". It chronicles the TRS-80 Color Computer from Tandy / Radio Shack. This was the first computer that my family owned. It was created in the 1980s among competitors like the Apple II, Atari ST, and Commodore 64.

The computer has a Motorola 6809 chip as the CPU. It had a cartridge slot on the side. Initially you could load and store programs from cassette tape. It ran at less than 1Mgz. The original version had 4k of RAM. You could upgrade to 16k or 32k. It had Microsoft BASIC in its ROM. There was an optional Extended BASIC that gave you better graphics, and a Disk Extended BASIC for floppy drive access.

My family upgraded to the CoCo 3 later on. This was a computer still based on the 6809 chip. There was more memory (128K by default). Although not all the memory could be accessed at once. The CoCo 3 had an enhanced GIME chip for graphics. Around the same time, an upgraded joystick was released.

The Rainbow Magazine was dedicated to the color computer. There was a host of companies providing third party support for hardware and software. The legion of Radio Shack stores carried the computer and official Tandy software. There was talk about a CoCo 4. But there were delays and not enough demand.

They Both Die at the End

Matteo is a recluse. He lives alone in an apartment. His dad is in a coma at the hospital. He has one friend that is a single mother. He gets a call that he is going to die today.

Rufus is an orphan. He is part of a gang. He wants to beat up the new boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend. His parents and sister previously died in a car accident. Rufus gets a call that he is going to die today.

There is a service for people who are going to die that allows them to meet up with other people. These two guys from really different backgrounds do meet and spend their last day alive together.

The title gives away the ending of the book. There is a nasty surprise towards the end of the book. It seemed out of place based on the background of the two characters that have been developed throughout the whole book. I give this book a thumbs down.

Confessions of a Curious Bookseller

Fawn Birchill is the owner of an old book store in West Philadelphia. She has a couple employees. Her business is failing. As a youth, she was forced to work at her father's general store. Her father is now in the hospital on his deathbed. Fawn will not visit him.

Fawn lives in the bookstore building. She has a tenant Jane who is elderly. Fawn often visits Jane and watches TV with her. Fawn eventually rents a room to Rainbow, a magician who wants to eventually perform in Las Vegas.

Fawn corresponds with a gentleman named Gregory. Fawn pretends to be a rich British heiress when writing to Gregory. Fawn also emails her mom and sister. Her sister is married with children. Fawn is also a frequent poster to a local blog.

Mark opens another bookstore close to Fawn's and became very successful. Eventually Fawn's employees either quit or are fired, and they end up working for Mark. This leaves Fawn running the store by herself until she gets a volunteer named Jack.

Jack is a bit slow. But it turns out his family is rich. Fawn's father dies. While at the funeral, Jack texts her that the store is falling into a sinkhole. Fawn immediately leaves the funeral to find out it is her competitor Mark's store that was destroyed. As Fawn realizes she cannot afford to maintain her bookstore building, she decides to sell it to Mark. Then Fawn takes off to travel the world with Greg, who also was embellishing the truth about himself.

Running for my Life

This is a book about NFL football player Warrick Dunn. His mom was a police offer who was killed while acting as security after hours. This occurred when Dunn was 18 years old. He had many younger siblings who became orphans. He decided to continue with his college plans. He spent 4 years in Florida playing football.

Dunn was a smaller running back. He played for the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He started a charity where they hook deserving families up with new houses. They require the families to do many hours of training. They make the down payment on the house. They also fill the house with all the things a family will need to be successful.

Dunn was for more than 10,000 yards in his career. He won the Walter Payton Player of the Year award. He served as the adult in his family while away at school and in the NFL. His younger brother and grandmother were the on sight guardians of his siblings.

Bad Blood - Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Bad Blood chronicles the tale of startup company Theranos. CEO Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford to start the company. Her premise was to produce a small machine that could produce all kinds of blood tests from a single drop of blood from a finger prick.

Normally you need to take a lot of blood from the body, and have a lab perform tons of tests requested by doctors. Holmes created a machine that in theory could analyze one variety of blood tests. But the machine was faulty. The real crime was putting the testing in production with real patients.

Plenty of employees determined that there was outright fraud going on. All were either fired or quit. They were muzzled by top lawyers for the company. Luckily a Wall Street Journal reported was tipped off and published a series of inditements against the company in his newspaper. He is the author of this book.

The Man Who Quit Money

Danielo Suelo is a guy who refuses to work for money. He does not like the monetary system at all. This does not mean that he never works. He just refuses to be paid for it. This is his way of life.

Daniel has minimal possessions. You might find him living in a cave in the wilderness. But it won't usually be that far away from a town. He likes to get leftover food that stores or restaurants want to throw away. Daniel is also sometime content to live off the land.

Suelo was brought up as a Fundamentalist Christian. He went off when older to find the secrets of God. I think he turned into an athiest. But that was not until surveying assorted religions around the world, and trying some of them out in different countries.

I do give Suelo credit that he is living the life he professes. He does live off the kindness of others, and the generousity of businesses that hand out leftovers. He does face problems when having to pay for things like dentistry or health care.

There were many highlights in this book about Suelo's life. One was when he and a new friend headed North and crossed a frozen lake to become stranded on a private island. Suelo had to swim back in icy waters, and beg the hotel owner who also owned the land for help.

Uncommon Type

This book is the first from Tom Hanks. Compared to the drivel I previously read, this book was top notch. It is a collection of short stories. They each tie in the use of a typewriter into the story. However that is not the main point of any of the stories.

There are recurring characters in some of the stories. There is a guy and his three friends. Two friends are guys who start off working at Home Depot: MDash and Steve Wong. MDash recently became a citizen of the USA. Steve Wong is a bowling prodigy who has multiple confirmed perfect games in a row. The third friend is Anna, who the main guy dates for a while. Anna is too high strung, high maintenance, and high velocity. He is not he man for her. They all remain friends to the end though.

Small Fry

This book is by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. She is the first child of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. She was originally raised by her single mother Chris. Steve Jobs denied that she was his daughter. Chris and Lisa were in poverty. They moved from place to place, sleeping on peoples' couches. They were on welfare in the early years.

Eventually the state sued Steve Jobs to collect the money they were paying. The state also sued Steve Jobs to provide child support. Lisa's mother and father were never married. Lisa's mom did seem to suffer from a lot of mental problems. Eventually, Lisa lived half time with her mom, and the other half Steve Jobs and her stepmother.

Steve Jobs got rich when Apple Computer were public. Rich as in worth hundreds of millions, back in a time when 1 million dollars was a lot of money. He also profited off of Pixar, which he also owned. He owned multiple houses that cost a lot of money. This book shows that he withheld money from Lisa and her mom. It seems like that was done to exert power over them.

This book takes you from Lisa's youngest years up until the death of Steve Jobs. It was quite a read. Lot of disturbing info about the abuse at the hands of Steve Jobs. I did learn a lot about Lisa, who is often overlooked when the story of her father is told.

Still Standing

This book is by Maryland governor Larry Hogan. He starts by recounting how he found out he had aggressive late stage cancer. Then we go back to start where he grew up in Maryland. He went to a local Catholic high school. Then his parents got divorced. He moved to Florida with his mom. Eventually he returned to Maryland.

Larry goes on to recount how he met his wife, who was a Korean single mom with three daughters. He also chronicles how he, a Republican, won the governor race in a state that is around 80% democrats. A couple months after he was elected, big city Baltimore in Maryland had bad riots. He had to step in when the mayor of Baltimore was slacking.

The book goes on to recount Larry's win of a second term as governor. There are times when he seems pitted against Donald Trump as Trump runs and wins the presidential election. And he has to deal with the onset of COVID-19. He uses his wife's connections to purchase 500k of COVID testing kits from Korea.

The Wishbones

This is the second book I bought by Tom Perrotta. The title is the name of a wedding band called the Wishbones. However the book is about Dave, who is a guitar played in said band. He has been dating his girlfriend Julie for 15 years. He describes that time as dating "on and off". Dave is a courier in the New York City. He describes it as a dead end job.

Dave's love is music. The wedding band is a way to get paid a bit to do what he likes. He really wants to be on tour with a better band. But so far, such an opportunity has eluded him. Dave had a tragedy when his girlfriend's parents caught him and Julie naked at their house. He is trying to get back into better standing with those parents.

At one wedding, Dave meets Gretchen. Apparently they had met before. But he does not recall much about her. Gretchen is unlike Dave's girlfriend. She is tall and slender. She lives in New York City. Dave eventually thinks he loves Gretchen. However Gretchen cannot stay with a guy who is about to be married to his long time girlfriend.

The Fugitive Game

Kevin Mitnick is a hacker. He is able to make long distance calls for free. He can listen in on other people's phone conversations. He can read your email. Originally he was caught and sentenced when young. Then before his probation is up, he goes back to hacking.

Mitnick goes on the run. A New York Times reporter and another famous hacker track Mitnick down. The FBI eventually captures Mitnick and arrests him. There is a lot of suspicious activities by the reporter and other hacker. They end up getting deals for a book on Mitnick, movie rights, and even a video game.

The FBI is also a bit suspicious with this case. They bust into Mitnick's apartment before they actually get the search warrant. They also have the civilians along when they are tracking Mitnick. Then there are also shenanigans when Mitnick is tried for his alleged crimes.

The author of this book is somewhat sympathetic to Mitnick. He also has a lot of conversations with the hacker that are recounted in this book. I plan to read another book about Mitnick, from the reporter and other hacker's points of view.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

I have watched author Neil DeGrasse Tyson speak a number of times. He seemed interesting. So did the subject matter. However the guy goes into describing the moments after the Big Bang, spouting out all kinds of vocabulary that he never defines. What a waste. Did he even get a novice to review his writing?

Tyson does make some interesting observations. But they get lost among his discussion of complicated matter that just won't make sense to the average person. Yeah. I get that he has a Ph.D in Astrophysics. That does not mean he should not break complex topics down into understandable prose.

This book was a huge disappointment. I only got one-third of the way in before I gave up. Maybe this guy should hire a ghost writer to help explain physics to the regular person. I even had a couple semesters of physics in college and I could not understand a lot of why this guy was writing.

Little Mix: Ready to Fly

This book has all 4 members of the girl band Little Mix sharing their journey to stardom. They all entered the British X Factor competition. Some of them tried year after year to get in. Initially they were being judged as solo performers. Later they got paired up in groups. Finally they came together as a group in the contest, and won the competition.

The book is set just after Little Mix won the X Factor competition back at the end of 2012. They tell how they started and came to win the competition. They also talk about them going on tour with the X Factor. There are stories about a lot of crying due to stress. They all seem very close with their mothers.

I learned that Little Mix had a coach during the X Factor, who I thought doubled as a judge. Simon Cowell was not one of the judges. But he became involved with them when they won the whole competition. Lots of good pictures in this coffee table style book.

A Perfect Failure - Fante Bukowski Three

Fante is living on his own. He is late on his rent. He wants to break out as a famous writer to prove he is not a failure to his father. We learn that when younger, he went on stage and shared his prose. However he was boo-ed off stage.

Fante gets a gig ghost writing an autobiography for a Disney channel star. This gives him a sizeable advance. Initially Fante just inserts his own history into the book. The publisher balks at this. So Fante has to sell out and write according to the star's history.

Fante's dad has a stroke. So Fante needs to fly back to his hometown. Fante's friend Norma is giving her final live performance that Fante will miss due to this trip. Fante goes to the hospital and, while his dad is knocked out, reconciles with him.

In the end, nobody shows up for Norma's live performance. Near the end of her time slot, Fante shows up to support her. Norma is happy. There is a hint that she may even be in love with Fante. They both share their real names with each other.

Bold and Determined

Victor Pride has a lot of advice for men. His main thesis is to quit the 9-to-5 job and build your own business. He is also a strong advocate for lifting heavy weights in the gym. He advises you to carpe diem and start now. He recommends you eat steaks with lots of butter.

Pride is against going into debt. He has advice to avoid laziness. The most concrete is to have written goals daily and achieve them early in the morning. He says that you should be obsessed about building your business and avoid hobbies.

Pride does think that you need one day off a week to relax. But every other day should be 110% effort towards your goals. I suspect his writing comes from his blog. Each of the many chapters are short stand-alone ideas. I would not mind reading another of his advice books.