Books for November, 2011

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was reading about Amazon’s new lending feature for Kindle, and thought I would find a fun fiction piece for my day off; this was one of the titles on the first page, and while I had never thought of reading it, I had heard of it (and that a movie of it is on the way). Why not?



I was pleasantly surprised all around. it’s a good story, well-told, and with a nice back-and-forth flashback style of telling. The story is full of rich detail, revealing the author’s good work in researching the book, and a great glimpse into a part of the world (circus life) that has always fascinated me but about which I have known little.



As a nice bonus, there’s an interview with the author in the back, as well as study group discussion questions.



Letters to Steve: Inside the E-mail Inbox of Apple's Steve Jobs by Mark Milian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was a fun little book, and an interesting approach. It is peppered with clips and samples of e-mail exchanges, though not nearly as many as the title led me to believe. It gives a decent, if thin, account of the career of Steve Jobs, especially during his second time around with Apple Inc., and it does this with the e-mail correspondence at the center.



I wouldn’t highly recommend this book, and it’s probably not anything close to the quality of biography on Jobs as the others that have come out. But if you don’t know much about the man and his work leading Apple, this one would serve as a fair introduction to that.



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