2011 Book List

2011 was another busy year, with a job change, an international change of residence and all of the little commitments that come with a growing family.  Having said that, I managed to read a few books, and here they are:

#	Book	Author	Date Completed
1	Knife of Dreams	Robert Jordan	January 15
2	Good to Great	Jim Collins	February 6
3	First, Break All The Rules	Marcus Buckingham	May 2
4	Death By Meeting	Patrick Lencioni	May 10
5	The Burning Bridge	John Flanagan	May 17
6	The Icebound Land	John Flanagan	July 4
7	The Battle for Skandia	John Flanagan	July 12
8	The Sorcerer in the North	John Flanagan	July 19
9	The Siege of Macindaw	John Flanagan	July 26
10	Erak's Ransom	John Flanagan	August 2
11	The Kings of Clonmel	John Flanagan	August 9
12	Halt's Peril	John Flanagan	August 16
13	The Emporer of Nihon-Ja	John Flanagan	August 23
14	The Book of Mormon	Mormon, et all	November 12
15	The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team	Patrick Lencioni	November 16
17	The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie	Alan Bradley	December 2
16	The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag	Alan Bradley	December 15

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Again, loved it.  As I said in my comments on The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, these books are generally ageless, yet there are a few more adult themes in this book, yet they are left as themes.  You don't find adult scenes or major plot elements.  Concepts such as marital infidelity are still approached from the eyes of 10-year old.  I recommend this book, as I enjoyed it as much as its predecessor.

Question of the day:  What is the real series-wide conflict?  Is it the potential loss of Buckshaw?  Or is it the broken family relationships?  Or Harriet's apparent death?  (Yes, I said apparent.  I held out hope for Harry Potter's parents until Book 3 or 4, so I can afford Flavia the same optimism...)

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two things come to mind when thinking about this book that I love in almost all of my favorite books.  Characterization and agelessness.

Characterization is a big word, so let me use some smaller words to explain what it means to me.  It means that the character is real to me.  They have a past, present and future.  Personality traits color their dialogue and perception of the world.  Acting for their own reasons, they shape the plot in an unconscious way, and yet at no time does the reader find them acting in a way inconsistent with who they are.  It is for this reason that I love the Junie B. Jones books, and with this bias is no possible way that I can't love riding on Gladys's handlebars with Flavia de Luce as she solves mysteries.

Flavia, a precocious 10-year old, is the star of Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and its progeny.  Her actions are consistent, her voice is contagious and her humanity is key to the plot.  I can't say enough good things about Alan Bradley's ability to introduce us to such a unique character.

So the other stand-out quality in this book is its agelessness.  By that I mean that it has a potential audience of anyone who can read a 300 page book.  There isn't a demographic that I can think of that wouldn't find something enjoyable about this plot or cast.  As an adult who favors juvenile literature, I really appreciate a story that can apply to all ages.  It is an art that is lost in many of today's action-oriented thrillers, philosophical book club favorites, and overly graphic love stories.

I must give some small comment about the fantastic nature of Flavia's chemical knowledge.  I don't see this as a character flaw, as much as an oddity of the plot or book as a whole.  Being a fantasy reader, I am ok with these kinds of exceptions to reality, and the passion that Flavia has for the subject carries the day for me.

Solid 5 stars.  Go read it now.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second "fable" by Lencioni that I have read, and I find his books enjoyable and useful for several reasons.

1. The "fable" format works, and I feel a little better about adding them to the Fiction Room blog since they include actual fiction. They are highly consumable and fairly concise. That is what I want in a business book. It is still work, after all, and I would like to get the info I need, along with examples of how to try it out, and then get back to my own recreational reading...

2. The content of both 5 Dysfunctions and Death by Meeting are simple, yet profound concepts that speak to pain points in today's business environment. I don't need multiple studies to prove something that I already know (ie, that most meetings are broken and that most teams don't know how to get results.) I just need suggestions on how to address them that can be tested/implemented fairly quickly.

If I were to include a criticism of this book, it would be that while the story works, the drama/characterization is a little over the top sometimes. Maybe over the top is not what I mean, maybe it is just a weak point in Lencioni's style (we all have weak points.) His creative writing is not bad, but obviously not his first passion.

I recommend Lencioni (it is now required reading for my team) and look forward to products he has to offer.

The Book Of Mormon

So in case you were not aware, The Book of Mormon is a religious book that lays the foundation for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is often referred to as the Mormon church, a name derived from the title of this book.  While I am a member of that church, I have no official spokesperson status.  Just an opinion I will share freely.

The book is comprised of  records of an ancient civilization on the American continent, preserved through the ages by a series of prophets/authors and then consolidated into one volume by a guy named Mormon (thus the name).  Ultimately it was buried for safe keeping, and later discovered in the 1830s by a man by the name of Joseph Smith, per the instructions of an angel.  There are plenty of critics out there for this book, and for the story of its orgin that I just outlined. I can not help them, nor can I respond to them, really.  I can understand that some people may have trouble with the idea of an angel guiding someone to a book.  I have trouble with the idea that the book isn't genuine (I read it, after all.)  So if it is genuine, then it came by angelic instructions.  Im ok with that.

I believe that the Book of Mormon is a true record of a people that really existed.  I can hear the different voices of authorship throughout the book, and I see attitudes and civization changing over time in its pages.  The purpose of the book is to bring people to Jesus Christ, and complements the Bible in that objective.  For me, to attack this book is to attack Christianity as a whole.  Again, this is just my opinion, so I recommend, as I often do on this blog, to read this book for yourself though, and would suggest forming your opinion after that reading, not before.

5 Stars.

The Emporer of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan

The Ranger's Apprentice, Book 10: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So another new country, but this time it is on the other side of the world. We see the Skandians innovating with ship building, we watch Evanlyn and Alyss resolve the last of the love triangle that was never capitalized on, and (my favorite) we get a brief suggestion that perhaps this is not a look at Medieval Europe, but maybe a futuristic European result. I know, I am stretching it a bit there, but it is possibilities like that that add dimension to a story, IMHO. (I base that off of the comments the characters made about the Suez canal stand-in...)

I like the good old-fashioned war that Horace finds himself in the middle of, and the outcome works with our expectations of the Rangers from previous books. I liked seeing Horace at the core of the story. The resolution of the romantic side-stories (they never take center stage, if you noticed?) is a good wrap-up, although it feels very permanent, and I'd like to hear more of these tales. I would like to see Horace's weaknesses a little more. So far he is always humble, never makes mistakes, has become witty, and is even catching on to the basics of Ranger training. What can't he do?

Four stars. I can't help it...

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Halt's Peril by John Flanagan

Halt's Peril by John Flanagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 Stars for the following:
1. Pulling in past characters and developing them further.
2. Letting Halt get hurt (no one is infallible.)
3. Another all-around great story.

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