Finished reading The Alchemist’s Apprentice by Dave Duncan. The Alchemist’s series features alchemist and astrologer Maestro Nostradamus and his nobly born apprentice, Alfeo Zeno, who narrates with panache. Duncan mixes a vision of old Venice and fantasy to create the world portrayed in The Alchemist’s Apprentice. In the Alchemist’s Apprentice, the first book in the [...]
Finished Once a Runner: A Novel by John L. Parker. Once a Runner tells the tale of Quenton Cassidy, a runner at Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He’s less than a second away when the political and cultural turmoil of the Vietnam War leaks into the school’s athletic department. [...]
Finished reading Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) by Steven Levitt. Levitt argue that many seemingly mysterious events of everyday life aren’t mysteries at all. The events can be examined and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in [...]
Finished reading The Copper Bracelet By Jeffery Deaver. The Copper Bracelet is the sequel to The Chopin Manuscript. The book continues with Harold Middleton as he’s drawn into a terrorist plot to engage India and Pakistan in nuclear war. Travelling between Nice, London, Moscow, and Kashmir to avert a nuclear disaster, Middleton is unaware his [...]
Finished reading Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy. The book asserts that execution is a discipline integral to a successful strategy. Bossidy states it is the business leaders’ responsibility to make execution part of the corporate culture. It contains details of both successful and unsuccessful executions at corporations such as Dell, [...]
Finished reading The Chopin Manuscript by Jeffery Deaver. Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton has a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. Accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins Middleton [...]
Finished reading Brain Rules by John Medina. Brain Rules focuses on the contemporary business buzzword multitasking. In a chapter on attention Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, shows how the brain can really only focus on one thing at a time. Medina presents reputable principles on how the brain works and what we can do to [...]
Finished reading The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. The Accidental Billionaires is about the founding of Facebook and centers on the founders Mark Zuckerberg’s and Eduardo Saverin’s friendship as Harvard undergrads. They each shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. Eduardo struggles for acceptance and finds himself joining one of [...]
Finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is about Howard Roark and his struggles as an architect. Roark combats a successful rival architect, Peter Keating, and a newspaper columnist, Ellsworth Toohey. In the Fountainhead Rand addresses several issues: individual strength, good versus evil, and the threat of fascism. [...]
Finished reading Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Camille Preaker, institutionalized as a teen for self-mutilation, now works for a second class Chicago newspaper. When a girl is murdered and another disappears in Camille’s hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, her editor sends her there for a human-interest story. The police, including Richard Willis, a criminal profiler [...]
