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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.

This was a much talked-about short story I read a few months after it came out, which amazed me because of how it committed to the alien body horror topic and left me with questions about the moral aspects of what happened. In a survival situation, basically a lifeboat scenario, how much loss of autonomy would you put up? And if you don't have any actual choice in the matter, how does it change how you picture yourself afterwards? Would you start to think of your body as something that can be hacked from the outside like some mechanism, or is that too hard to separate so easily from the idea of self? The story should be fenced around with trigger and content warnings for readers who might be set off by scenes of sexuality and possible violence.

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.

It took me a few months to get my hands on a copy of the second novella in this series and I'm glad I succeeded. I liked how it really focused on its protagonist while introducing one other significant actor in the drama. This was the intelligence running a transport ship which Murderbot refers to with the nickname of ART. It was recognizably different from Murderbot's personality, with its own rule and preoccupations.

Murderbot is set on revisiting the scene where they first experienced the failure of the governor module which had been imposing brakes on their behavior some time back, in the process being thrown together with a group of humans who were themselves in a desperate situation. It was ingenious how the intertwined motivations of Murderbot and those who became their clients led to a tense confrontation that could easily have lead to the demise of all of them at the hands of their antagonists. The disembodied influence of ART played key roles along the way, even though that ship mind seemed to lack any direct stake in the outcome, which felt intriguing.

This story was more tightly plotted than the first one, but the memories of Murderbot regarding the individuals in the earlier story helped to clarify what was motivating Murderbot this time around. So I am giving it a high rating even though I don't think it is really a story that can easily stand on its own.

This was a book I came so close to abandoning early on when the wretched Southern California excesses of one of the characters were dominating the story. But I pressed on and through a couple of long cringe sections to reach the surprising epiphanies of the last 20% of the book. This felt like a reward for persistence. I no longer felt overwhelmed with the muck once I was allowed to see what it was all intended to mean. Every character in the Fletcher family is a mess in a Jewish-American way I can only just imagine but we are led to appreciate what these privileged and damaged individuals have to tell us about the story of American assimilation.

I liked the author's earlier novel Fleishman Is in Trouble but this one seems more complete. If there were a way to tell the story without the stretches of grossness I don't know what that would be lie. In the end the loose ends are all tied up so neatly I was made aware of the author shaping the story. I think it was not a high priority of hers to make the plot flow in a super naturalistic way the way things happen in real life as much as she wanted to convey a message.

A prospective reader only has to do a little searching around to find the salacious backstory to the title. I encourage those who need content warnings to work this out, in a self-service fashion.

I listened to the audiobook, always solo, increasingly drawn in to the storytelling. It might not be for every listener, but I do think that it will have earned its place in letters over time.