The Card

Title: The Card: Collectors, Con Men, And the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card

Authors: Michael O'Keefe & Teri Thompson

Pages: 272

Genre: Non-Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: The Card, also known as the Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner is worth millions today.  This book tracks the card from its printing in about 1909 through its mysterious history up into the 2000s.  Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to exist and most of them show the marks of their history with creases, stains, tears and other imperfections that a century can wreak on a piece of cardboard. Only the Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner card appears to have defied the test of time, with its crisp edges, vivid colors and stiff cardboard, so named because at one point even Wayne Gretzky owned the card for a period of time. The card was first discovered in the late 1980's and through a series of sells and purchases, its value skyrocketed from a few thousand dollars to a couple million dollars.  Intertwined throughout the story of The Card, is a history of baseball card collecting through the ages.

My Review: I didn't know too much about the Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner card before I read this book, beyond that it existed as my experience with card collecting only spanned a few packs during a couple years when I was 8 and 9 (Although I do have a complete Topps set of the 1990 Cincinnati Reds World Champions! But, that's all I have...). I love books that take a topic that I never would have considered reading about and make a book out of it that I can't put down.  This is a book that I tried to get at our local library for a couple years (they don't have a copy), before finally buying a cheap lightly used copy on Amazon.com.  

What is the What

Title: What is the What

Author: Dave Eggers

Pages: 560

Genre: Autobiography (classified as fiction)

Grade: B+

Synopsis: This is the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan who was forced to leave his home, village and family when he was 7 years old and civil war broke out in Sudan.  He trekked with many other young boys across Sudan by foot all while being pursued by government bombers, rebel groups and militias and wild animals.  They first temporarily settled in a refugee camp in Ethiopia before being forced out once again and finally settled in a more permanent refugee camp in Northern Kenya.  After many years, Achak was resettled in the United States, where he found freedom along with a myriad of other challenges. Deng and Eggers classified their book as fiction as many of the stories and experiences took place when Deng was very young and while they believe they are true and reliable, they are still subject to the years of Achak's memory.

My Review: This is one of those books that is both hard to put down and hard to continue.  The stories are fascinating while at the same time they are heart-wrenching and disturbing.  I felt especially sad that I was so unfamiliar with the plight of the Sudanese Lost Boys and the violence of the long civil war in that country.  More recently the genocide in Darfur has been in the news and to a large extent it is a continuation of the same violence that started many years ago in South Sudan (which finally gained independence in 2011).

The Very Best of the Feynman Lectures

Title: The Very Best of the Feynman Lectures

Author: Richard P. Feynman

Pages: 6 discs

Genre: Physics, Non-Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Richard Feynman is one of the more famous modern physicists.  He was a long-time professor and lecturer at UC Berkeley and his lectures have long served as a go-to resource for students of physics.  These lectures covered Newtonian physics, Einstein's general theory of relativity, superconductivity, quantum mechanics as well as a couple of other topics.  

My Review: I enjoyed listening to these lectures on CD as the audio is taken straight from his courses in the late 1960's.  The upside was that you got to hear his lectures and it almost felt like you could be participating. The downside was when his lecture included a demonstration or complex mathematical formula that he was deriving on the board.  I was able to use my imagination for the demonstrations, but I got lost during the equation descriptions as they were harder to focus on while I was driving.

Janitors

Title: Janitors

Author: Tyler Whitesides

Pages: 288

Genre: Children's Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Janitors in our schools are far more powerful and important that any of us previously thought.  They are wizards and magicians tasked with fighting toxins in the schools.  Very few people can actually see the toxins as they are magical creatures, but everybody would recognize their effects, especially the effects they have on elementary school children.  They cause children to fall asleep in class, get distracted and uninterested in their school lessons.  However, the Bureau of Educational Maintenance (BEM) has other ideas for the roles the janitors should play in this battle.

My Review: This is another book that took a really long time to read.  As often as I could, Ada and I (and sometimes Kate) would read a chapter from the book.  I was afraid that a lot of the vocabulary would be too complicated for the girls, but like always, they surprised me with their understanding.  Ada really loved the book and is begging to read book #2.  I also enjoyed the book, but the plot was a little too unbelievable at times.

The Skeleton in the Closet

Title: The Skeleton in the Closet

Author: M.C. Beaton

Pages: 6 discs?

Genre: Mystery

Grade: B

Synopsis: Fellworth Dolphin is a pretty simple kid who works hard to pay the bills and support his mother after his father died. The Dolphin's live in a simple house and have never really had anything exciting happen to them.  When Fellworth's mother dies suddenly Fell finds out that he has inherited a sizable sum.  He can't figure out how or where this money came from so he enlists the help of his homely friend Maggie to help him unravel the mystery.

My Review:  This book wasn't great, but I enjoyed it.  I started listening to this book back in January of 2012, but when my car was broken into and my stereo was stolen, the City Library required me to pay for the stolen disc.  At the time I was halfway through the book, it took me this long to find another audiobook and to startup where I left off. The story is unique and the characters each have flaws that help to make them more real. I was glad that I finally got the chance to finish the book.

Sophie's World

Title: Sophie's World

Author: Jostein Gaarder

Pages: 19 discs

Genre: Fiction, Philosophy

Grade: B+

Synopsis: This book is a philosophy textbook disguised as a novel about a Swedish girl, Sophie.  Luckily, I knew that when I started this book or I would have found this book to be very strange.  Sophie is a young teenager who comes home to school one day and find a couple of notes with the questions: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" The anonymous note-sender begins sending pages and pages about the history of philosophy and is essentially running a correspondence philosophy course for Sophie.  As the course progresses, Sophie begins to receive birthday cards for another girl, Hilde.  Sophie works hard to unravel the mystery and must use the things that she is learning from philosophy to understand the mystery.

My Review:  There's no question that this book is strange, but I was surprised the I enjoyed it as much as I did when the end rolled around.  I'm no philosopher, but I think that I understand more of what philosophy is and what philosophers are trying to address.  The course, I mean book, covers everything from Plato and Aristotle to Camus, Kant and Nietzsche.  I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Philosophy during the time of Christ and in the modern day.

In the Skin of a Lion

Title: In the Skin of a Lion

Author: Michael Ondaatje

Pages: 256

Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Patrick Lewis arrived in Toronto in the 1920's from deep in the woods of Ontario, where his father was a dynamiter for the logs that would be shipped down the river.  In Ontario, Patrick works as a searcher for the vanished millionaire Ambrose Small, and in doing so he falls in love with Small's mistress.  In parallel times and stories, there are detailed descriptions about the building of the Bloor Street Viaduct and the huge waterworks plant for the city of Toronto, focusing on the lives of the immigrant workers, who have accepted Patrick as one of their own.

My Review:  I enjoyed this book, and I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to read it over the course of a week or so.  Instead, I was quite busy at the time I was reading it, which meant that I would only get to read it about once a week.  Because of this, I had a hard time following the stories and parallel plotlines. Going back and reading the detailed summaries and synopses online was a big help in understanding and remembering what was going on.  I've read that this is a prequel to The English Patient, however, I have not read that book yet.

The Pale Blue Eye

Title: The Pale Blue Eye

Author: Louis Bayard

Pages: 16 discs

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Augustus Landor is a retired New York City police detective living near West Point Academy.  After a cadet is found hanging on Academy grounds, he is asked to discreetly investigate the incident.  The death becomes even more bizarre when the dead man's heart is savagely removed during the night.  As Mr. Landor begins to investigate the crimes, he enlists the help of a young cadet, one Edgar Allan Poe.

My Review:  The book was an interesting amalgamation of West Point History and the younger life of Edgar Allan Poe.  A poem that Poe has written plays a large role in the course of solving the mystery.  I'm not sure if the author was trying to mimic Poe's style or the style for the time, but it felt like the book was literally written in the first half of the 19th century, and there were times that it dragged on a bit. 

Black Hawk Down

Title: Black Hawk Down

Author: Mark Bowden

Pages: 6 discs?

Genre: Non-fiction, History

Grade: B

Synopsis: This book is the heroic account of a group of  elite US soldiers that were sent into the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia as part of a U.N. peacekeeping operation in 1993.  Somalia was in the middle of a long and drawn out civil war and famine that was partially the fault of Mohamed Farrah Aidid.  The soldier's mission was to capture some of the high-ranking people working for Aidid. Things took a bad turn after one of the black hawk helicopters was shot down, and then another.  The US forces of Rangers and Delta Squads became trapped in the city for around 18 hours before an adequate rescue mission could be launched.

My Review: I've never seen the movie (although I'm interested in seeing it now), but this was a pretty intense account of a battle that did not go as scripted for the US.  From the very start when one of the officers fell out of the helicopter as the teams were being inserted (he hadn't grabbed the rappelling rope properly), the US was fighting an uphill battle.  The amount of shooting and fighting that took place in an urban setting in such a short time was pretty incredible.  The US eventually made it out of the battle, but not without casualties and injuries.

Disclaimer: This is a book about a large firefight, so there is going to be some violence and death.  However, compared to books about other military encounters, the language was less foul and crude.

Jack: Straight from the Gut

Title: Jack: Straight from the Gut

Author: Jack Welch, with John A. Byrne

Pages: 496

Genre: Autobiography

Grade: A-

Synopsis: This is the autobiography of Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric.  During his tenure as CEO (from around 1980 to 2000), General Electric's value rose 4000% (and Welch has been handsomely compensated as his net worth is currently estimated to be around $720 million).  Welch started at GE in 1960 as a junior chemical engineer, with a salary of around $10,500.  From his work ethic and performance, he climbed the internal ladder and was named CEO just 20 years after starting at GE.

My Review:  This book was suggested to me by our own CEO, so I added it to my list.  I found the book at the DI just a couple of weeks later, so I figured it was a sign that I ought to read the book.  I found the book to be an eye-opening look at Welch's career including the highlights as well as some of the decisions that he regretted.  It seems like Jack Welch was an incredible worker and motivator, however, I simply cannot fathom getting much work done while golfing as much as it sounds like he does.

The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues #1)

Title: The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues Book One)

Author: Rick Riordan

Pages: 220


Genre: Children's Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Just minutes before the wealthy matriarch Grace Cahill died, she made a small change in her will for her heirs.  She left them with a choice, one million dollars or a clue.  The Cahill family is the most powerful family in the world and most of the world's greatest leaders are descendants in the family.  However, the source of the world's power has been lost, but many believe that the clues Grace Cahill has left behind will help someone rediscover this power.  Young Amy and Dan lost their parents at a young age and were close to Grace Cahill.  Now they must decide whether or not to take the money or join the search for the clues.

My Review: This book was chosen as one of the monthly selections in Alison's book club.  While clearly a children's book, I enjoy reading this type of book every once in a while.  In typical Rick Riordan fashion, this book was an enjoyable adventure with the kids figuring things out and having adventures that may be slightly unbelievable.

Between Shades of Gray

Title: Between Shades of Gray

Author: Ruta Sepetys

Pages: 338

Genre: Memoir

Grade: B+

Synopsis: As World War II is breaking out in Eastern Europe, a Lithuanian teenager Lina and her family are torn from their home by the Soviets and sent to work in Siberian prison camps.  Just as Hitler is cramming the Jews on train cars and shipping them to concentration camps in Poland, Stalin is doing much of the same to people in his country.  This is an incredible story of survival during difficult, cold times.  Frankly, it is amazing that anybody lived to tell the tale.

My Review:  What I find most amazing about this book and this story, is how little publicity Stalin's genocide has received.  Everybody knows about Hitler and the Jews, but Stalin and his brutality has been far less publicized.  Estimates of Stalin's brutality range from 15 million deaths to 50 million+, but probably most likely in the 20-30 million range.  This book is a tearjerker.  

East of Eden

Title: East of Eden

Author: John Steinbeck

Pages: 21 discs

Genre: Fiction, Classic

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Adam Trask moves into the Salinas valley in California with his pregnant wife where he buys a large plot of land and is looking forward to living out his days as a family man with his wife and twin sons.  Adam and his wife Cathy come from very different backgrounds.  Adam begrudgingly served for years in the army (to appease his father), while Cathy murdered her parents and had been a prostitute (neither fact of which Adam knew).  Adam becomes close friends with Sam Hamilton and others in the Salinas valley.  After Mr. Hamilton helps to deliver the twins, Cathy runs away from home to start another life.

My Review:  It is unfortunate to narrow down a book of this scope and magnitude to a single paragraph synopsis, because there is a whole lot that goes on in the book.  Steinbeck has a particular penchant for describing the characters hearts and desires, so that you feel like you are quite familiar with each of the characters in the book. I'm not terribly familiar with Steinbeck's books (having only previously read Tortilla Flat and The Pearl), but this book went into surprising places and unexpected stories.  I found myself really enjoying it.

Cultural Amnesia

Title: Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of my Time

Author: Clive James

Pages: 800+

Genre: Biographical Essays

Grade: B

Synopsis: This book is a collection of historical biographical essays penned by the author, Clive James.  Preceding each essay is a short biography of 2-4 pages or so about each individual.  The essays are about a wide range of 20th century artists, politicians, entertainers, writers and more often focused upon those who were a part of the cultural scene in Vienna, Austria in the 1920's.  In total there are 106 essays from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, including essays about the following:

Louis Armstrong
Dick Cavett
Chamfort
Coco Chanel
Charles Chaplin
Alfred Einstein
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Charles De Gaulle
Josef Goebbels
Adolf Hitler
Ernst Junger
Franz Kafka
Nadezhda Mandelstam
Thomas Mann
Mao Zedong
Marcel Proust
Margaret Thatcher
Dubravka Ugresic
Isoroku Yamamoto

My Review: This book was too smart for me.  I enjoyed the essays and especially the short biographies, but I was overwhelmed with the scope of the book (and the slowness of my reading of the essays). After I made it through the A's, B's and C's, I ended up only reading the biographies about each person and the essays about the people that I was interested in.  Still, it was a very interesting book and I wish that I was better able to retain the things that I read about.

 From the Book: p. 88, Albert Camus

"Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes" --Albert Camus, The Rebel

"When I first read The Rebel, this splendid line came leaping from the page like a dolphin from a wave. I memorized it instantly, and from then on Camus was my man. I wanted to write like that, in a prose that sang like poetry. I wanted to look like him. I wanted to wear a Bogart-style trench coat with the collar turned up, have an untipped Gauloise dangling from my lower lip, and die romantically in a car crash. At the time, the crash had only just happened. The wheels of the wrecked Facel Vega were practically still spinning, and at Sydney University I knew exiled French students, spiritually scarred by service in Indochina, who had met Camus in Paris: one of them claimed to have shared a girl with him. Later on, in London, I was able to arrange the trench coat and the Gauloise, although I decided to forgo the car crash until a more propitious moment. Much later, long after having realized that smoking French cigarettes was just an expensive way of inhaling nationalized industrial waste, I learned from Olivier Todd's excellent biography of Camus that the trench coat had been a gift from Arthur Koestler's wife and that the Bogart connection had been, as the academics say, no accident. Camus had wanted to look like Bogart, and Mrs. Koestler knew where to get the kit. Camus was a bit of an actor--he though, in fact, that he was a lot of an actor, although his histrionic talent was the weakest item of his theatrical equipment--and, being a bit of an actor, he was preoccupied by questions of authenticity, as truly authentic people seldom are. But under the posturing agonies about authenticity there was something better than authentic: there was something genuine. He was genuinely poetic. Being that, he could apply two tests simultaneously to his own language: the test of expressiveness, and the test of truth to life. To put it another way, he couldn't not apply them."

If the Cup Could Talk

Title: If the Cup Could Talk

Author: Michael Ulmer

Pages: 144

Genre: Non-fiction, Sports

Grade: B

Synopsis: Lord Stanley's Cup is known as one of the most iconic, revered and famous trophies in professional sports.  For more than 100 years, the Cup has been awarded to the best hockey team.  The names of the winning team's players are engraved on the cup for future generations to appreciate.  Each player on the winning team gets to spend a day or so with the cup, sleeping with it, showing it off to friends and families and taking it to their favorite local bars. In the cup's storied history, it has been lost, stolen, vandalized and treating in ways not typically becoming for a trophy. This book tells the story of the cup and stories about the cup.

My Review:  This book has been on my to-read list for years (I'm not sure where it came from), but the book isn't available from the local library, so for Christmas I ponied up the $4 and got a used copy on amazon.  I'm don't particularly care for hockey, but I did enjoy reading about the Stanley Cup.  It probably has the most interesting history of any professional trophy.  Next time I'm in Toronto, Canada I'll have to stop by the Hockey Hall of Fame to take a look at one of the official replicas.