Category Archives: Books

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande is a surgeon who has written this book  about checklists but it is not a book on how to make checklists for shopping lists or planning weddings nor is it a book about productivity. This is a book on using checklists as a tool to deal with modern technology’s extreme complexity to avoid disasters and death.
This came to the forefront with the development of the B-17 Bomber in the 1930’s. The plane was very complex and difficult to fly under the best of conditions. When things went wrong pilots made very obvious mistakes that led to crashes. In response Boeing developed very simple checklists that when used cut down on the number of crashes considerably.
He also talks about modern buildings. The incidence of failure of high rise buildings has been ridiculously low. Much of that is because of the use of checklists during the design and construction of the buildings. Everybody knows that know one person can think of everything in such a project so they depend on codes and lists in order to ensure the safety of the buildings.
Dr. Gawande really blasts his fellow doctors for being so resistant to standards of care and checklists for even the simplest of procedures. Standards and checklists that have been proven to work if followed. The problem is the ego of many doctors to hand power briefly over to somebody else for the briefest of times in order to make sure that the procedure is to be done.
The problem, as almost everyone who has ever dealt with the medical profession knows, is that doctors are treated like royalty and everyone else, nurses, technicians, and other highly educated, trained, and experienced professionals and especially the patients, are there at the doctor’s bidding. I asked a nurse last year when a family member was hospitalized what her number one problem was in her job. She said that, besides the workload, trying to explain to patients and their family members that she couldn’t tell them anything about test results or treatment plans or anything else. They had to wait for the doctor to tell them that and then telling the patients that she had no idea when the doctor was coming by, that in fact he or she was going to come by when they pleased and not a minute before. Further, they could page or call him or her till the cows come home and it would not do any good. She said that the whole floor of the hospital was full of people wondering and waiting when the doctor was going to come.
She said it as pretty frustrating. I think that there has to be a better way.
What do you think?
Oh yeah, I rate this book 2.5 stars out of 4. I mean its a good book but it is still only about checklists. At least  it was short. But really, isn’t 200 pages like a graduate degree in checklists?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sweetie got me a Kindle for my birthday. Amazon has loads and loads of free books you can download to it so I thought I give Pride and Prejudice a try. So I read it and I liked it. There isn’t any sex nor violence in it, no cuss words either. What it does have is sparkling dialogue. The characters talk and talk and talk in whole paragraphs. And the dialogue is dense with lots and lots of information. This is a book that could be read a dozen times and still not discover everything the book has to offer.

Young Elizabeth Bennett, the main character of the book, is quite the woman. She can flirt with the best but when she gets her dander up she lets loose. She blasted Lady Catherine de Bourg when the old hag showed up and demanded that Liza not marry Mr. Darcy. The little teenager sent the royal dowager packing.

Now as far as the great romance between Liza and Mr. Darcy, I don’t get it. Mr. Darcy is one of the most pathetic guys I have ever read about. He shows up day after day all distant and removed. And what is funny to me is that Liza doesn’t see much in him until she goes to his house and falls in love with it. Then she thinks she might be able to tolerate him a little bit.

Oh, well. I’m a guy, I’m not supposed to get the romance. The book is good though. I give it three stars out of four. I’l be reading more Jane Austen.

Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

I had really been looking forward to reading this book and I finally got my library copy. I kept it way past the due date so they are probably going to rip up my library card. But this is supposed to be “the” book about our last presidential election.

Wow, has there ever been an election like the last one. It was fun. First we had Queen Hillary prancing along with King Bill like it was going to be a coronation and then along comes this guy Obama who kicks her butt. I mean bad, from one end of this nation to the other. Along the way John “Hair” Edwards gets shown for what he really is, a creep. Obama swept to the Democratic nomination all cool, calm, and collected. Hillary fought tooth and nail to the very end. At the Democratic convention Hillary gives a great speech. Good enough to get Secretary of State! But hey O, what’s up with Joe Biden? Joe Biden O, is that the best you got?

And then on the Republican side. You had McCain, war hero, POW, and hard working Senator, and the seven mutts. Mitt Romney completely changing his positions to align with the electorate, same with Rudy. McCain starts strong and then runs out of money, goes rogue and low budget and comes storming back. McCain changed all his positions in order to bow, scrape, and kowtow to the religious right. It didn’t do any good, they weren’t buying it. But they aren’t going to vote for Obama, no matter what. But hey this is politics. It’s not about principles anymore, maybe never was. It’s about focus groups, positioning, wedge issues, marketing, and money. Big on the money.

Anyway, McCain is getting his butt kicked good by Obama. Obama is harvesting the money off the internet like nobody’s business and McCain is not doing very well. The old fighter pilot knows that he runs the same old campaign with a predictable running mate he is going to get shot down. So he picks Sarah Palin, who? We had never heard of her but have you ever heard a better convention speech than what she gave? It was awesome! She kicked some butt. McCain got a kick in the polls and the race was on.

The press started checking on Palin. They check thoroughly. What do they find? Well maybe she was not exactly opposed to the “bridge to nowhere,” maybe she didn’t exactly sell the State airplane on ebay. It turns out that a lot of what she claimed just plain was not true. And then what about her experience, mayor of a small town. Ethic investigations in the Statehouse (“Troopergate”). The McCain campaign kept playing catch up with her on various issues.

I’m actually sympathetic to Palin. The book claims that the McCain campaign only spent a couple days checking her out. They are not looking for somebody who is spotless, nobody is. They just want to find all the warts, freckles, and wrinkles so they can develop a strategy for dealing with them. I don’t think she understood just how closely the microscope is that she would be under. So, the McCain campaign kind of threw her under the bus and she had to fend for herself. I also don’t think she understood how grueling a campaign is with every minute scheduled and an army of press ready to jump on you if you make a mistake.

She also just plain wasn’t ready. She still gets mad at Katie Couric for asking such “unfair” questions like “What newspapers do you read?” She is a great communicator. I don’t think we have heard the last of her. Whether it is more gaffes like the whole “death panel” thing or if she uses her charisma in a positive manner is an open question at this point.

Palin was a bold gamble for McCain and it could have paid off. The country was ready for a change and they got one. We’ll see how that works out.

Anyway, the book explains all the ins and outs of the campaign. It is very sympathetic to Obama. Cool, bright, and capable, yet unexperienced. McCain the principled, fly by the seat of the pants fighter pilot who wouldn’t go down without a fight.

This is a great book. If you found the last election fascinating, I recommend it. Four stars out of four from me.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

One Amazing Thing is about a group of disparate people in the basement office of the Indian Consulate on the  west coast. An earthquake collapses the building and traps them in the basement with very little food, a flashlight, slowly rising water, and no hope of rescue. Nerves are raw and they pick on each other and eventually they start fighting each other. They realize they cannot go on so they take somebody’s suggestion to each tell a story about themselves to help pass the time while they wait.
The stories are amazing and help bring these people from widely different cultures and backgrounds together. Hidden resentments between husbands and wives, parents and children, secrets, reasons, they all come out.
I give the book 3.5 stars out of 4 but hey I’m a sucker for a good story. I liked this book. I’ll be reading more by Ms. Divakaruni.

A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

“A Dead Hand” is a murder mystery. Jerry Dalfont, a travel writer with writer’s block, a “dead hand,” is in Calcutta at loose ends since he cannot write. He is summoned by Mrs. Unger, an rich American philanthropist, to solve the mystery of the body of a small boy discovered in the hotel room of one of her employees.

As he works on the mystery Unger works on him. She takes him under wing and teaches him all about Trantric massages and reveals her Hindu side. In the meantime Dalfont works with the local police and pokes around a little on his own.

An interesting part of the book is when Dalfont meets the famous travel writer, Paul Theroux, in Calcutta. Theroux is not too complimentary of himself in the encounter. I had never read a writer writing himself in the story before.

The book was ok but I definitely didn’t love it. It needed a little less Tantric sex and lot more story and character development. The book telegraphs the end pretty far out. I rate this 1.5 stars out of 4. I love Theroux’s non-fiction but I’ve never quite got into his fiction.

Amy Bloom – “Where the God of Love Hangs Out”

“Where the God of Love Hangs Out” is a collection of short stories by Amy Bloom. They are loosely related and tell the story of a family as time goes by. I love short stories and was looking forward to reading it. I didn’t really like it though. The problem is nothing much really happens. I’m not talking about action adventure type stuff with guns, bad guys, and sex. I’m saying that nothing happens. It’s like trying to move through molasses.


I kept on reading though because I liked the characters. That ever happen to you where you don’t like reading the book but you keep doing it because you like the characters. But I just can’t go on any longer. That happens to me all the time. I’m not saying this is a badly written book. I’m just saying that it’s not my cup of tea.


I love short stories but I’m glad this is a library book.


So 1.5 stars out of 4. Sorry.

“The Scarpetta Factor” by Patricia Cornwell

Just finished reading “The Scarpetta Factor.” I wish that I wasn’t so cheap. I get almost all my books from the library and they only let you keep one two weeks if somebody else is waiting for it. So I checked this one out three times over the course of a couple months to finish this book.

There is not a whole lot of action in Patricia Cornwell’s books but there is lots of tension. She really takes you into the heads of the characters as they try to solve the various murders that come to light. It’s just incredible really. I put off reading her for so long because I thought she was just a chick book author. Well my loss, and I’ve got a big backlog to read.

The book is about Doctor Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner, and her posse of assistant district attorneys, detectives, friends, and relatives who chase after evildoers. I give the book 3.5 out of 4. I recommend it, highly.

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler

This book is a novel about Liam Pennywell who studied philosophy but ended up getting laid off from a job teaching fifth grade at a second rate private school. He is at the age where he decides to downsize and moves to a newer, smaller apartment in a different area of town. He goes to bed in his new apartment on his first night and then wakes up in the hospital and has no idea how he got there.

He is very troubled about this gap in memory and sets out trying to find out what happened. And he finds something else.

Liam is a guy who lived his whole life without really engaging with it. I know people like that, do you? This book is about them.

I thought it was very good.  I give it it three stars out of four.

Adult Winter Reading Program

Anybody out there like to read? Do you like FREE STUFF? If so and you live in the Tulsa area then you need to run over to your nearest Tulsa City County Library and sign up for their Adult Winter Reading Program. To lazy to drive? You can sign up online.
All you have to do is read eight books between January 1 and the middle of March, turn in your list and you get a free coffee cup and coupons good for discounts at area bookstores and coffee shops.

Want a Free Amazon Kindle?

I was taking a little break at work. I don’t smoke during my breaks, I want to live a little while longer. Instead I was going through my blogroll and was reading my one of my favorites, JenX67. (Who is fast becoming one of the leading voices of Generation X quoted and interviewed in all sorts of national and regional publications. She says:  “I write about Gen X at the four-way stop of faith, culture, career, and family.”)

She was reviewing a book on the topic and wrote: “I downloaded Kindle for PC on Amazon for free and purchased the book for 99 cents. You can do the same.”

Hey, I’ve been wanting a Kindle in the worst way but I’ve been having trouble justifying it. I mean I hardly ever buy books. I get them from the library and turn them back in. I do however buy inexpensive books. I’ve noticed that Amazon sells lots and lots of decent books for 99 cents. How they can afford to do that, I don’t know. Go to the download page here.

Do you you have an iphone or an ipod touch? There is a Kindle Ap here.

I’ve got books on my ipod touch but I find reading them to be an unsatisfying experience. The reader I use doesn’t give you any sense of where you are in the book. I mean, when you are reading in bed, trying to figure out how many pages to the end of the chapter is important.

Do you have $259 to burn? Check out the Amazon Kindle here.