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EVEN
THE BUTLER WAS POOR by Ron Goulart is an offbeat
mystery after the style of the Elmore Leonard movie/book
"Get Shorty," but with more spontaneous comic
lunacy than an episode of "Mad TV." Rick Dell's
parting utterance to his girlfriend H. J., "ninety-nine
clop clop," is a cryptic clue that, if figured out,
may allow her to retrieve what she's owed. Her ex husband
Ben Spanner helps, learns of her former infidelities, and
gets involved with blackmailers in the process. The dying
utterance in question involves a joke (about a centipede
with a wooden leg) that leads to H.J.'s searching inside
the leg of a ventriloquist's dummy, among other things,
to identify Dell's killers. Goulart has written many genre
books under his own name and other pseudonyms. Here he displays
his skills at dialogue and descriptions like "the headlights
blossomed to life. . .the Mercedes went rushing by like
a harsh night wind." Narrator Clifton Satterfield
animates the various voices, including female, with distinctive
character so that they can't be mistaken. Only the exposition
narration and the girl are played straight, while the other
characters are allowed more melodrama, like characters on
a vaudeville stage. So if you need a breather between those
cheerless serial killer entrées, this short novel
will enable you to "cleanse your palate" for another
course. |
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RAPT
by Winifred Gallagher shows why attention is such
a valuable yet often wasted source of happiness and identity.
Advertisers fight for your attention because it is the sole
currency available to them, and retaining it for persuasion
purposes, utilizing psychological tricks and cultural memes,
is how they gain market share. When your mind is distracted
and unfocused, you become more prone to errors when making
decisions, and can be easily swayed by various agendas.
Yet there are ways to focus your attention more effectively
than simply letting circumstances or television or internet
surfing dictate your time and experience. Quality of life
depends on paying attention to things that matter, and avoiding
those which don't. Using science and research into how the
creative mind works, Gallagher gives examples of people
in different careers coping with the glut of images and
pleas for time and attention, along with how they create
happier lives through concentration techniques and learning
how to focus. As read by veteran Laural Merlington,
it is an engaging book that should hold your attention to
the end. |
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After
an election costing roughly five billion dollars, politicians
have yet to face the reality that debt ceilings cannot be
raised forever, and fiscal cliffs simply get taller over
black hole status physics. It will become apparent soon
that both politics and sports (perhaps one and the same)
are essentially non-productive interlopers in creating wealth
and jobs for the economy. It is true that, looking at the
short term, these seem to provide wealth, but the immensity
of their great facades and their cultural vibrancy in all
venues of the media is largely an illusion. They thrive
on the backs of taxpayers who produce and provide products
and services via sweat equity. In his book MAKERS,
the editor of Wired magazine Chris Anderson
shows why we must return to manufacturing, and how the future
the new industrial revolution will be individual micro-manufacturers
of small batch, customized products. Rather than huge plants
with massive assembly lines, the market is shifting toward
crowd-funded garage startups and small businesses that use
new strategies to find customers and generate sales. In
the future, more people than ever will run their own assembly
line, and may not need to appear on Shark Tank to survive.
Read by Rene Ruiz, the audiobook reveals
how digital fabrication can utilize online factory services
to generate smaller runs of product without the need of
a big box store. If you have an idea you'd like to bring
to market, this book is a good place to start.
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Rod
Stewart has led a charmed life. He once survived
a flight in which one of the two engines exploded, and the
pilot had just the previous day taken a course on maneuvering
jets with only one engine running. Buzz bombs in London
just missed where he was being born. And the tune that made
him a star, "Maggie May," was one he almost threw
away. ROD
The Autobiography is full of witticisms and
reflections on a life with many ups and downs, albeit mostly
ups (with the "help" of cocaine and sex addiction.)
All the trappings of wealth and fame came to him in spades,
along with the women, when he broke away from one of the
groups he first began with (and wanted to stay with forever),
and set out on his own. His antics on and off stage are
detailed, including how he pioneered swinging the microphone
stand, even hurling it in the air. The signature voice that
stands out is a rarity among all the entries one hears today
on shows like The X Factor and American Idol
and The Voice, but Stewart's is certainly
one of those. As read by the English actor and narrator
Simon Vance, the story of Rod Stewart becomes a
sometimes colorful adventure that has not been repeated
often, as he recalls past friendships with Mick Jagger and
others (who also have new autobiographies out, revealing
much of the same in parallel accounts.)
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Finally,
Neal Stephenson, like William Gibson, is
something of a hero or icon to geeks and SF fans everywhere,
possibly because he validates their obsession with technology
by producing rigorous, analytical arguments for understanding
science and the world more deeply (in addition to producing
true science fiction that is both visionary as well as "cool.")
The coolness factor is important. Just ask Steve Jobs (or,
rather, read his biography.) It keeps you reading or listening,
and in the process experiencing new ideas and thoughts you
might otherwise never encounter (especially if watching sports
is your usual pastime.) SOME
REMARKS is a collection of essays by Stephenson
originally seen in magazines or heard in college lecture halls.
Jeff Cummings reads Stephenson's opinions and responses to
questions, which range from metaphysics to Star Wars to a
future that will be shared with China as our pop culture evolves
along with religion and philosophy. By "some," I
mean 11 hours of insights from the author of some of the most
critically praised visions of the future (and the past) out
there, including Snow Crash, (which I believe was a watershed
in audiobook production, as it introduced a new level of sophistication
and playfulness to the medium, as read by Jonathan
Davis.) Stephenson makes the case that SF is the
only true genre fiction, as all the other classifications
have either gone away or been absorbed into the mainstream.
Science fiction remains unique as a separate entity, and while
some look down their long noses at it in scorn, it is the
one and only fictional type with the most range of new ideas.
"Idea porn," he calls it. Not just an extrapolation
of existing trends, but an anticipation of how new technologies
and knowledge will change how we think and work. It is only
by contemplating these things that we can come to acquire
the "good explanations and knowledge" that David
Deutsch references in his densely realized treatise, "The
Beginning of Infinity," (which examines how progress
is made, and what prevents it.) So if you believe the maxim
"I think, therefore I am," then what are you---or
I---if we don't encounter new thoughts? |
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