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Recent Book Reviews

One advantage of unemployment is that I’ve been catching up on my reading. That will end next week when I go back to work. Click through for more detailed reviews. Homeland – Cory Doctorow: Disappointing. Almost Perfect – W.E. Peterson: Who knew one of the losers in the word processor wars had such an interesting [...]

American Fencer

American Fencer is the autobiography of Tim Morehouse, US Silver Medalist in Team Saber at the 2008 Olympics. We got this for my son for Christmas, as he is a fencer. He read it quickly and passed to me. I enjoyed it greatly. Tim’s journey from a 7th grader who signed up for fencing because [...]

Cleaning Up the Book Pile

The pile of books on my bedside table was getting dangerously high, so it is probably time to make a few notes here and move them to the bookshelf. Travis McGee Novels by John MacDonald: The Long Lavender Look, The Quick Red Fox, Bright Orange for the Shroud, The Deep Blue Goodbye, Nightmare in Pink. [...]

Pirate Cinema

Pirate Cinema is a ripped-from-the-headlines near future tale in which 16 year old Trent McCauley gets his family’s Internet access blocked for a year because he was downloading movie clips for the brilliant remixes he makes and posts online. The lack of Net access costs his father his job, and makes it very hard to [...]

Steve Jobs

I finished the Steve Jobs biography last night. Nothing I read will motivate me to change my long standing bias against Apple products. In the Gates vs Jobs battle of very closed systems versus mostly closed systems, I stand with the penguin and open systems. They talk a lot about the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion [...]

This Week in ODonnellWeb #2

After two consecutive career related posts – it is time to lighten up around here. And yes, This week #1 was 5 weeks ago. I never actually promised to do this weekly. The week in books: I finished The Hunger Games Trilogy that I started last week. Book 1 was brilliant, book 2 was very [...]

Book Review: Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

I predicted the rise of Twisted Sister long before any of my head banging friends in high school got on the bandwagon. I had You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll and Under the Blade before Stay Hungry hit big and made them famous. So nobody should be surprised that I bought Dee Snider’s autobiograpy Shut [...]

Book Review: I Was Right On Time

I Was Right On Time is the autobiography of Buck O’Neil, Negro League player, manager, and all around wonderful human being. This is a must read for any baseball fan. Buck traces his path from skipping high school because he wasn’t allowed to attend the local high school, through his years playing and managing in [...]

Book Review: The Last Best League

The Last Best League follows a group of college kids that are playing for the Chatham A’s of the Cape Cod League. The Cape Cod League is the premier summer league for college baseball players. Just about every kid playing is a legitimate major league prospect. The season is short, only about 45 games. For [...]

Never Walk By A Red Dress

Another post about Buck O’Neil and The Soul of Baseball. Buck shook his head and looked me in the eyes. And very slowly, with a teacher’s edge in his voice, Buck said this: “Son, in this life, you don’t ever walk by a red dress.” Buck was answering a question about why he (a 94 [...]

The Secret to Marriage

Since we hit the big 20 year milestone last year I’ve been asked a few times about our “secret.” I don’t think we have one, and I usually laughed off addressing that question by saying something along the lines of our secret being that neither of us spent any time obsessing over the secret to [...]

The Irish Americans: A History

Rarely is a book title as perfectly descriptive as this one. The book is exactly as advertised. Written by retired Notre Dame Professor Jay Dolan, it does read like a textbook. It’s not a book that you will sit down and devour in big chunks. It is a book that you will finish though, and [...]

Free Kevin!

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker is Kevin Mitnick’s memoirs of his life as the most notorious hacker in America. For a guy that attracted so much attention from law enforcement, he did remarkably little damage. It reads like a thriller, with Kevin frequently not that far ahead of [...]

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s only published novel was a bit of scandal when it came out over 100 years ago. I’m not sure my pedestrian command of the English language is really sufficient to review such a richly written book. An unexplained event sets young, dashingly handsome Dorian Gray up in a situation where a painting of [...]

Good Eats: The Early Years

This is not a cookbook. It’s the print companion to the first 5 seasons of Good Eats. It does include recipes from each episode, which makes it handy for looking up that thing he did with shrimp in season 3. It’s much quicker than trying to navigate the Food Network website. It’s also includes lots [...]
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