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This book follows a pair of Irish criminals over a few decades, but specifically at an important point in their old age while they are waiting for the daughter of one of them to appear in Algeciras having gone off to Morocco. All their lives, Maurice and Charlie have engaged in criminal activities to support themselves, sometimes amassing enormous quantities of cash through the international drug trade. But the money never lasted as long as they hoped even after laundering it because of their addictions and other vices. The book spends some time from the point of view of the missing daughter, Dilly, who's been warned off of her father Maurice by her mother in her dying days. Now that Dilly is grown she understands why she should have nothing to do with them, to be free of their control and their malignant influence, and yet they still represent all she has left.

There are flashbacks going back decades that delve into the seamy side of the men's lives. There is one absolutely harrowing scene where they are observed arguing in a tavern late one night which felt electric with tension. Then there are the depictions of them isolated, wandering or on the run, on the edge of despair. The dialogue is often raw and vulgar, tending toward the violence, but it can also be profoundly evocative. The way Maurice talks about Dilly falls into a line of patter over and over again, like the refrain to a tune. The writing is not infrequently beautiful. There's a bit of a supernatural element regarding an purported ancient curse associated with the spot of land that Maurice and his wife chose to put up a housing development. It makes you think about whether their paths in life are determined by elements greater than themselves.

From the men's point of view, you can see strong emotion here, which may be love for the one they seek, in part, but also guilt and shame. These men are portrayed as bad men who have each done hateful things and yet they are in their own way compelling. That is why they wait night after night on a sliver of hope. The two men are friends, but the connection is fraught with betrayal and suspicion. Each wears scars from their association. There is no assurance that they expect some kind of forgiveness from Dilly, if she does arrive on the boat from Tangier. And yet it hangs out there. Maybe some part of them just wants a quiet reconciliation as though the worst things never happened.

An Irish story talking about two men who are waiting for a third invites comparison to Waiting for Godot. The boat of the title is ever uncertain, there are continual rumors about its status, so it's easy to see parallels. I didn't pick up a clear reason why they thought they had to carry on this vigil, but I feel like I could understand their bleak lives and why the author had to write about them.

This is another one of those books describing how to find values that are meaningful to you in life. But the big difference is the experience the author had when his daughter was born with a congenital heart defect and how that played out over decades. It was a condition that even the medical experts had problems coming up with really very reliable prognosis for the treatment. So over an extended period of time the author's family went through a series of episodes of despair and hope regained and some normal stretches of time which were interrupted by declines. Although his daughter did outlive the first estimates given by the doctors she did eventually succumb to her illness, leading her father to rediscover meaning in life afterwards. He describes a dramatic story of a time when he had lost all sense of life being worth living, which culminated in an almost mystical experience that made him change his mind.

The author works as a professor of public health, but beyond that, he took his renewed mission in life to help people discover what the true important things in a worthwhile life. By getting to know this author as a person it is easier for a reader to understand the familiar advice books of this kind tend to advocate. These include advice to avoid those illusory pleasures and things that take us away from lasting contentment, to find the value in deep relationships with others, to take care of your own health even though you know it is not something that will last forever. To use money instead of letting your money control you, to really get to know yourself through meditation and mindfulness techniques - these represent the wisdom of the ages. Nothing in the way of new ground is being broken here, but it's all valid and it's good to hear.

The author got to know spiritual teachers and ask them direct questions about what happens at the time of death. He has some useful tips on how to keep up with a commitment to daily meditation. By the end, a long time after the loss of his daughter, he takes on a hopeful tone describing a new sort of happiness. I would recommend this book for anyone who has either experienced or anticipates having to cope with grief and desolation.

This book goes all the way back before jazz itself was a genre up to the 2010s, providing an overview that even most aficionados are unlikely to be familiar with. The author writes with enthusiasm about the things a newcomer would want to know - where jazz had its stat, who was influential in changing the direction it would go, the kinds of audiences that listened to early jazz both live and recorded, the waves of re-creation it went through during the mid-century decodes as new players reacted to what went before. The author is a well known music journalist whose articles and books have won him a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Journalists Association. He has performed himself on piano and writes here about the struggles a practicing musician typically finds keeping up with ever increasing new ideas in the art form. He does not dive deep into music theory beyond a description of the most prevalent song forms. Nor does he try to be an encyclopedic source, concentrating on getting the newcomer excited about what they will be able to find. Nearly all the greats of jazz are mentioned by name and a brief sketch of their important contributions is provided for the reader to explore further through listening.

I had been hoping the audiobook version would have had some audio segments to go along with the points the author was making, but no such luck. There isn't an official companion recording with all the suggested listening, but when I looked I found many of them on streaming sites in the form of playlists users have compiled. I think that reading this as a physical book or ebook along with the downloadable pdf list of recent musicians worth paying attention to would actually be more convenient that the audiobook format.

I don't recall how this self-help book got on my to-read list, unfortunately. I am not in the stage of life where I can apply the principles being taught here, which are intended for a young person trying to get established. I would say that now happiness is not tied to a paycheck now but self-actualization is important. So the advice to do your research, aim high, make a stab at doing something on your own, refining what you deliver until you find traction are all familiar but not super relevant.

I was a little unnerved at the beginning when he spoke about some people whose fans make me nervous: people like Robert Kiyosaki, Marianne Williamson, Scott Adams, Robert Greene, Scott Adams, and Peter Thiel. But to his credit the author specifically disavows any claim that the road to success is easily attainable or within anyone's grasp. He even warns against the "hustle culture" which is more likely to lead to burnout than to a unicorn startup. Mainly he argues against beginning with a defeatist mindset which is a quick path to giving up prematurely.

He is mainly talking about his own experience at leaving the wage slave life in favor of becoming a self-made entrepreneur and aspiring vision leader. While this can be a good place to start, I don't feel he adequately acknowledges those life situations that can put the brakes on forward progress in this manner: no access to capital, being a caregiver, health issues, substance addiction, victims of violence. Sure, there are ways to start a blog or mailing list without putting money down, in between other responsibilities and challenges, but it seems to me to be a fragile house of cards that can fold up after the individual experiences a couple bad days. And just like everybody else in the advice business, he doesn't propose a way to manufacture good luck, which can be the most important thing, more than a rational, Stoic mindset, good as that may be.

The book is written in a good writing style that I think probably appeals to people receptive to its message. It is part of a crowded field of non-fiction advice literature with lots of famous names and might not be a standout among them.

The main trouble I had with this novella was visualizing the locations the action took place within at the failed terraforming operation where it was set. There was a transport shuttle, the station, the terraforming facility with a tractor array and some number of pods connected by transport tubes, a zipper spacecraft, and maybe I didn't catch along the way. Murderbot does not give a detailed description of these places (which would be unnatural), except when the precise layout would affect the action or decisions being made. So, with a fairly large cast of humans and robots it was tough keeping straight who was doing what where. Following the dialogue, both spoken and transmitted wirelessly on feed channels, was a little easier, though fairly intricate owing to various falsehoods and acts of double dealing. It felt more like the second book as a whole than the first one partly because of the number of things the reader needed to juggle mentally. I think it would benefit from a second read-through.

The best part was the Murderbot viewpoint character who was required to meter out information and to take action with limited knowledge about the trustworthiness of the others it was thrown together with. It was clear what the motivations it had going in (to gather information on the corporation established as the antagonist in the first book, to keep secret how it was a SecUnit with a disabled governor module) but slower to establish those of the other players. There were bursts of action interspersed with the tension, which I liked. The ending delivered a couple of emotional hits to close things out quickly.

We got to see some other autonomous constructs in the fictional universe and to understand their capabilities and limitations. There was no one quite like Murderbot among them, but there would be quick flashes of this or that trait it would recognize it had in common, which I think helped cement the reader's identification with the character. The SecUnit wasn't the biggest, baddest fighter on the scene this time which forced it to use other talents to make up for physical shortcomings in a matchup.

The recorded entertainment channels Murderbot hoards played a less prominent role in the course of this tale but did peek forth a few times to good effect. There wa reference to lingering legal and moral issues left over from previous installments and I thought this lent a feeling of authenticity to the world. Less time was spent speculating about just what made Murderbot unique but you did get reminders that this whole issue was still out there, potentially able to cause grief later.

This book holds a special place in science fiction for its unusual take on a first contact situation without the aliens themselves. The authors had a hard time getting it past the Soviet censors and bureaucrats even though it seemed obvious to them that the story was a harsh condemnation of rapacious capitalism. It's hard to know how much the story had to change in the process, but to me the climactic ending really did seem like a surprising paean to utopian communism. The criticisms of the black market in alien artifacts and the stifling bureaucracy could have been uncomfortable for the authorities during a time when the West was pulling away with a strong economy and great technological prowess.

The strongest feature of the story was the sense of uneasy dread permeating the zone that seems more important than the plot. The characters are three dimensional, especially the stalkers who venture into the cursed zone left behind by the aliens. The items they bring back are like totemic mystery objects obtained at great price. To me, the sacrificial imagery of the ending hits with metaphysical impact.

I listened to the audiobook version of the book that came out last year and found the narration enhanced the story. This isn't a long book, but it lands hard.