Used Books Blog

How To Draw Uglydoll by David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim is a very funny book with great inspiration for young artists. Uglydolls are visually appealing for kids (and the kids inside all of us) and the text is appropriate for both kids and adults. Like a less commercial Simpson’s or updated Bugs Bunny, the comedy works on two levels.

This isn’t the usual type of book I review but I’m passionate about kids and art. I bought my daughter two Uglydolls when she was a baby and I look forward to giving this book to her in a few years.

What I really enjoy about How to Draw Uglydoll is that it’s not really a how-to-draw book. Sure, there are step-by-step instructions to drawing your favorite Uglydoll, but it’s made clear that you can (and should) draw any dang way you please!

…IMAGINATION! Don’t just follow the rules in this book! (You may not even find any.) If you feel like drawing the characters in a certain way, go for it! If the book tells you to make three eyes and you want to make 100 eyes, PERFECT! That’s what UGLY is all about!

I get pretty irate when I hear parents or teachers “correct” a child’s artwork. Talk about a quick way to squash a kid’s personal expression and self-confidence! That’s why How To Draw Uglydoll is as much about teaching the parent as it is the child.

What does UGLY mean? Ugly means unique! Ugly means special! Anyone can be beautiful, but it takes originality and a lot of bravery to be yourself.

Maybe it sounds preachy and sappy to you but I think this is an important life lesson - for kids and adults.

I get the sense that Horvath and Kim were somewhat hesitant to put out a how-to-draw book. The title is actually not How To Draw an Uglydoll or How To Draw Uglydolls. Instead it’s How to Draw Uglydoll: Ugly Drawings In a Few Easy Steps. It’s a artistic philosophy. So for every step-by-step instruction there is text that tells you to ignore the guide because there’s no such thing as a bad drawing.

It’s not subtle. In cartoon terms, they’re dropping an anvil on your head again and again and again.

If you haven’t stumbled on Uglydolls yet I encourage you to pick up a copy of How To Draw Uglydoll, check out Ugly Town and, for those of you on the cutting edge, follow Uglydolls on Twitter.

After The Beep by Kathleen Heck is an amusing look at corporate communications run amok and delivers bite-size stories using modern technology as the framework. No, it’s not Hemingway’s “For sale: baby shoes, never used” but the vignettes poke fun at many of the stereotypes that nearly all of us have encountered at some point in our life.

There’s the persnickety accountant who (among other things) demands that all receipts be scotch taped on white 8.5×11 paper; the demanding micro-manager who is never satisfied; the Pollyanna corporate communications types who try to put a smile on any situation; and the high-maintenance spouses who need multiple calls a day to comfort them about trivial problems.

The novel is composed entirely of corporate memos, voicemail messages, automated phone systems, and a few text message exchanges. It’s an interesting look at how communication has evolved with the advance of technology. Are we better at communicating with these new forms of communication? Or has it simply made it more complex and frustrating? I am reminded of a recent AT&T rant on the reign of error blog.

The speed of communication certainly plays a big part in many of the stories. There are many instances of a rush to judgment before having all the facts. Indeed, it’s easy in today’s society to get an email and fire off a reply before you’ve had time to take that proverbial breath.

However, I found myself wanting more cutting edge material since my days are filled with blog posts, comments, IMs and updates via Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, Friendfeed and others. It made me realize that I’ve worked at start-ups for most of the last 8 years!

After The Beep brought me back to my corporate past; interning at an insurance company and de-bugging BASIC code on rates in my spare time; temping at PBS headquarters; working on a government account at my first advertising agency; and spending 5 years at a public university. I found humor in After The Beep because I had these experiences and now, frankly, do my best to avoid them.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the author contacted me, sent me a copy (for free!) and asked me to read and review After The Beep. Ms. Heck was also kind enough to share her thoughts and experiences in self-publishing After The Beep via iUniverse. This is a topic I hope to explore in the near future.

After The Beep by Kathleen Heck is a light, easy book (good bathroom reading) that will bring a smile to anyone who has worked in a corporate setting.

What do you use as a bookmark? Do you have one you’re attached to or do you change them like windshield wipers? I thought I’d share my bookmark and, once you see it, you’ll understand why it’s a used bookmark.

Yes, I laminated an American Airlines plane ticket from 2000 with a Dharma Bums pricing sticker on it. If you look closely you’ll see it’s actually my wife’s ticket. We flew round trip from San Francisco to Philadelphia through O’Hare, leaving 1:10pm and sitting in seat 15E.

It’s my lucky bookmark I guess. I can trace it back to it’s ‘birth’, it has a history and I can think about all the books it’s been wedged in since.

So what do you use as a bookmark? Can you top my bookmark lunacy?

Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs is an over-the-top memoir that walks the tightrope line between magnetism and repulsion, between curiosity and the desire to know more and the impulse to shout ‘too much information’ and cover your ears while loudly singing ‘la la la’.

There’s a lot to like in Burroughs’ writing and in areas you feel like you’re making a connection with the author, that it is a true memoir. The topic of whether a memoir is ‘real’ has been a hot topic lately. Starting with James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, bouncing off of David Sedaris and now squarely on Augusten Burroughs, the idea that memoirs are factual is highly subjective. In fact, reality is highly subjective which is why two memoirs of the same event could be and most likely are very different.

So, I don’t ding Burroughs for writing through the filter that is his mind and experience. All good writers do this and no one should be surprised at the differing views on a subjective experience. But is it evocative and effective for the reader? I’m still inclined to believe that fiction is a better proxy for relating real life experience than the memoir format. I definitely subscribe to the axiom that there’s more truth in fiction.

I enjoyed most of Magical Thinking, though being a Sedaris fan it’s difficult not to draw some comparisons between the two. And I’d choose Sedaris hands down. I find Sedaris to be more steady and even in his most shocking, there’s something … else going on that anchors his text.

Burroughs starts out strong, with back-to-back winners about his childhood with ‘Commercial Break’ and ‘Vanderbilt Genes’. These are quirky, insightful pieces that are both hard and tender at the same time. He scores again with ‘Debby’s Requirements’ a very interesting story about relationships and work life balance. ‘Holy Blow Job’ walks the line but works; ‘Ass Burger’ is another gem and isn’t at all what you think it might be about. Finally, ‘Life Cycle of the North American Opossum’ and ‘Magical Thinking’ are both excellent vignettes. See, there’s a lot to like!

But then there’s ‘The Rat/Thing’ which is just a bit too ugly and drawn-out. It was clearly traumatic, but honestly, I don’t want to hear about it. I’d cozy up and ask an exterminator to tell me his greatest hits (pun intended) if I wanted this type of story. There’s also ‘I Dated an Undertaker’ which is more shock-and-awe, and feels like a poorly done Six Feet Under spin-off.

There are references to a very disturbing childhood and a laundry list about his love life and personal habits which make him seem quite shallow. In some ways, reading Burroughs is like hanging around after a fire or a train wreck. You’re interested in seeing how it all turns out and asking officials how it happened. But you don’t do this in real life, instead you move on and give people their space and feel better for doing so.

Burroughs shines when he doesn’t grandstand and when he’s not over-seasoning his text with shock value. At times he presents himself as a card-board cutout, when what I really want is his real-self invested in the pages. All at once, Burroughs complains and promotes this type of over-sharing shock-value material with his reference to Dr. Pepper. I won’t relate the details here since the story will attach itself to the drink for a long time. I can’t help but flash on the topic when gazing into the drink case.

I recommend Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs but only for those with an iron-cast stomach.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis is not your typical sports book. Indeed, as I read the back of the book now, I notice that it’s classified as Sports/Business. I’m a sports fan, but haven’t ever gotten into sports books. I watch enough sports (my wife is quick to point that out) so I couldn’t see really doubling up and reading about it too. I’ve read a few bicycling books including the fantastic The Rider by Tim Krabbe. I also read and enjoyed Seabiscuit. (I caught a bit of the horse racing bug when I lived down in San Diego and took a shine to the Del Mar Fairgrounds.)

Moneyball is another fringe sports book, and is more business, numbers and statistics than sports. That, in a nutshell, is the plot of the book. Lewis follows the Oakland A’s Billy Beane as he brings rational, fact-based decision making to baseball. Now, let me preface the rest of my review by saying that I like numbers and statistics. Segmenting a database? Sounds fun to me! Running baseball statistics through a regression analysis? I’m intrigued! Now I’m not saying that you need to like numbers to enjoy Moneyball, but I think it helps.

It also helps that the A’s are one of my local teams. Living in the Bay Area you have the A’s and the Giants. I like both, but force my hand and I’d go with the A’s, even more so after reading Moneyball. I’d heard about Moneyball but just didn’t think I’d really dig a sports book. A former colleague at Alibris (now at Linden Labs aka Second Life) said I’d definitely like it. He sat in the cube next to me and clearly understood that this was a perfect blend of sports and numbers.

Sure enough I sped through this book - 4 round-trip sittings on BART - and was amazed that numbers weren’t used more in evaluating baseball talent. How could all these teams simply trust their gut? How could they see potential in a guy and ignore what was in black and white? How could they ignore the numbers because they didn’t look like a typical ballplayer? The idea that past performance indicated future performance was slightly foreign to many of the ‘old school’ baseball executives.

There’s another layer in the book, about the mental part of the game, about expectations and confidence and how they all get warped by the sport of baseball. And yet another about the ex-jocks and hangers-on in baseball who are threatened by the ‘nerds’ who bring a greater amount of clarity and accountability to their profession. Lewis was wise to include these more human elements so that the nuts and bolts of OBP and why walks were so valuable and stolen bases over-rated don’t overwhelm the book.

If you have any interest in how the A’s continue to win with one of the smallest payrolls, or enjoy reading about people who introduce a disruptive force in an old and inefficient system, then read Michael Lewis’ Moneyball.

Joel Sternfeld’s Stranger Passing, a collection of sixty photographic portraits, is an art book worth buying. This is high praise for me, since I generally find art books useless. Bought with the best of intentions, they usually wind up unopened and coated with a layer of dust. Besides, they’re over-sized and don’t fit on any of my bookshelves.

To pull off the art book thing you need to have an Architectural Digest type living room with an attractive smoked glass coffee table. It’s not that I might not like a Van Gogh art book, but why get one when I can have a print on a wall where it can truly be appreciated. Heck, I can buy a calendar and marvel at a different masterpiece each month.

Stranger Passing is not the typical art book because you can’t find anything like it in your local mall. I discovered Sternfeld’s work by accident during an Ansel Adams exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). I quickly realized that I’d seen too many Adams prints in dorm rooms, hung by co-eds striving for culture, and that while striking, each of his photographs contained the same stark-nature-of-beauty theme. I’m not saying you can’t appreciate every tree in the forest but … I’d had my fill.

Clogged with people and unsatisfied I wandered into a room with huge nearly life size portraits, which upon closer inspection turned out to be photographs! I was immediately drawn to the detailed, quirky, gorgeous images that showcased people and landscapes from all walks of life. One would convey the harsh realities of the homeless while another would poke fun at American excess.

While Adams evoked a mood, Sternfeld provoked thought. Who were the people in these photographs? What were they thinking? What had brought them to that specific time and place? Each of Sternfeld’s photographs tells a rich story.

The cover photo of Stranger Passing is titled ‘Young Man Gathering Shopping Carts’ and portrays a teenager, standing in a parking lot cluttered with pink shopping carts, against the backdrop of an all too familiar generic strip mall. You can feel his repetitive discontent and nearly hear him grumble in a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure accent as he collects the carts … again.

Some of my favorites in the collection include a young shirtless man standing in front of a colorful demolition derby car, newlyweds posing in a backyard with a flipped over kiddie pool and a colorful sari wrapped middle-eastern woman pumping gas.

You don’t need a guide to help you understand these photos. No pompous, overly academic explanations about brush strokes or f-stops are required. Vivid, accessible and fascinating, Stranger Passing is a sprawling collection that documents the changing American landscape through the experiences of Sternfeld’s subjects.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell is a compilation of essays, stories and anecdotes with a theme of liberal politics and history. I’d been meaning to read Sarah Vowell for a while. She’d been mentioned in the same breath with David Sedaris whom I find hilarious and I’d seen her titles on a co-worker’s bookshelf. She’s got good taste which helped sway my thoughts. Throw in some love from Jon Stewart and it seemed that what I was really missing in my life was reading Ms. Vowell. (And what a great name for a writer eh?)

I enjoyed The Partly Cloudy Patriot, though I’m not sure everyone would, particularly if you have a conservative mindset. No, she’s not anywhere near the Augusten Burroughs nor David Sedaris in the out-in-left-left-field department, but she’s not really a moderate either. Let’s face it, she trekked to the Bush inauguration to show her displeasure for the way in which he was elected. Don’t get me wrong, I lean that way heavily myself and in some ways admire those who have the time and inclination to partake in the political discourse. But … I have things to do too.

Ms. Vowell is witty and amusing, but her writing feels more like she is sitting there telling you about this. That you’ve settled down into a non-corporate coffee shop drinking fair trade lattes and are getting the download direct from Sarah. Sometimes this works, and at others, it just doesn’t translate that well to the page. The historical and political vignettes are strong and fall in line with my politics, but I far more enjoyed some of her personal revelations and observations including her love of Pop-A-Shot and or detailed views on Tom Cruise (no it’s not what you think.)

There are real gems within the pages, in particular ‘Underground Lunchroom’ a discourse on the strange battle over an underground lunchroom in Carlsbad Cavern National Park. The Partly Cloudy Patriot is a satisfying read for any left leaning reader who enjoys politics, history and social commentary.