Review: The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is probably the top business book that has been recommended to me since I joined a startup. Now that I have read it, I can understand why - it ought to be required reading for anyone coming from a big company into a fast-paced startup. I had many a "a-ha" moment reading this, like "Oh, that's why we are shipping a product that seems incomplete...it's on purpose!"

The concept of Lean Manufacturing grew out of the Toyota Production Systems innovations of the mid-20th century. This comprised the idea of constantly improving systems, measuring more important things, and driving organizational learning. In grad school, I remember learning about this, and about its influence on the software industry. Agile/scrum development seems to have its roots in Lean.

So all this forms the backdrop for the ideas in this book - that companies and projects in general can use a lot of the same concepts that have fundamentally improved Manufacturing and Software Development. There's a real focus on learning and structuring the product development process to increase the speed with which everyone learns. (And it is worth pointing out that like Innovator's Dilemma, this is relevant for innovative parts of big companies, not just startups.) Two items stuck with me the most:

1. Vanity Metrics - Ries argues strongly against using vanity metrics when evaluating a change to a product. He says that too often metrics are chosen that look like improvements when really they aren't, like number of downloads (without number of repeat customers) or number of repeat customers (without number of paying customers.) He says you really need to know what you are measuring and why.

2. Experiments - Ries gives several examples of how you want to run experiments about your product in real life with real customers. If your audience is big enough, A/B test actual features. Release great products without all their features to see if you have Andreesen's elusive product/market fit. Ask focus group customers the right questions, not question your existing assumptions.

It's his examples that I liked the most - they were perfectly relevant and constructive. He's delightfully honest about how hard it is to learn this way by sharing his experiences at his company IMVU. In any case, this is a MUST-READ for people interested in the model for success in technical innovation in the next decade. It's in my mental bookshelf next to "Innovator's Dilemma" "Good to Great" and "Crossing the Chasm."



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Review: The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a really interesting book. I saw it at Trident Cafe and bought it on a whim.

The story is about a young author (Marcus) whose author mentor Harry Quebert is accused of murdering a young woman. Marcus, who is having difficulty writing the followup to his best-selling book, puts his life on hold to help Harry clear his name in a small town in New Hampshire.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a classic mystery - with Marcus, I was figuring out what happened, among a cast of quirky, colorful, odd characters. I kept being surprised by twists in the plot, and I kept wanting to know what would happen next. I liked how some of the story was told through a book Harry wrote, and some of the story was told through a book that Marcus wrote.

While I did find a few sections in the middle a little slow, overall this book kept my attention and I enjoyed it.



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Review: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Michael Lewis never, ever (ever) disappoints. And this book was no exception.

Released with little pre-press lead-up, this book starts with a detailed description of a fiberoptic cable being laid through the Alleghany Mountains. *Through*, not *around*, being the operative word - because going through the mountains reduces the computer latency between NY and Chicago by a couple of milliseconds, and this is how people make money.

Lewis looks into this dark, weird, shady part of the financial industry, called "high frequency trading" that basically exploits unnatural benefits like millisecond differences in who has information when. His narrative follows some guys at Royal Bank of Canada who figure out what is going on and set out to find a different way to more fairly operate a stock exchange. As usual with Lewis, the characters were well-developed and appealing to follow.

Though the book was heavily criticized by insiders as being everything from entirely untrue to being a sales pitch for this new exchange, I think it's a case where criticism is indicating concern on the part of the incumbents.

As a stockholder, I was horrified by this book. As a reader, I was enthralled.



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Review: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I first heard Jillian speak on an episode of The Moth, on NPR. Her story - that of being a theater school dropout who interviews with a "casting director" for what turns out to be a gig "entertaining" the younger brother of the Sultan of Brunei - caught my attention.

It was the People Magazine-reading part of me that thought this would be an appealing story, and it was satiated at that level of quality. This was a fun read, a quick read, but not a high quality Jeannette-Walls read. I liked reading about her time with the other women in Borneo, and I was fascinated by her relationship with the Sultan and his brother. And I'll admit, I was more than a little curious reading about a harem and its goings-on.

But I didn't find the book uplifting, or the author particularly likable. She comes across as victimized but really made a lot of choices at a lot of junctures to get her where she ended up. Her brief forays into her personal life growing up and as a young adult didn't change my mind about her either, and seemed kind of choppy in the narrative.



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Review: Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession by Apostolos Doxiadis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A new friend at work recommended this book to me, and it was one of those things where you appreciate new book friends who expose you to books you wouldn't otherwise know anything about.

This novel was close to my heart in that it was about a mathematician who spent his life chasing an elusive proof of a difficult problem. The story is told by his nephew, who also pursues mathematics. I really liked the storyline itself as well as the glimpses of math. There is a pivotal plot element based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which I spent several courses at school studying, so that was fun, too.

My only complaint was that the writing and the character development weren't great. And I think you really had to be a math person to read this That said, I'm glad I gave it a try!



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Review: Crow Lake

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Terry recommended this book to me years ago and I just go around to reading it. It was wonderfully written - very sad but great.

The story follows Kate Morrison and her two older brothers (Luke and Matt) and younger sister Bo. Growing up in Ontario, her parents are tragically killed when she is a child. Her older brothers sacrifice their own futures to keep the family together and the book follows the children into adulthood.

The writing in this book was superb. I could feel what the characters were feeling (heartbreak, yearning, hope) and see their surroundings. The characters were very likable, although imperfect, and the epiphany the protagonist goes through towards the end is one of the most striking I can remember reading recently.

Definitely recommend this book and look forward to reading another by the same author.



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Review: The Middlesteins

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a really, really weird book. Meredith recommended it to me.

The story is about a woman who is obese. When her husband leaves her right as she's facing a medical emergency, there are ramifications for the entire family. The story jumps around in time, tracking her weight gain from when she is a child, through her career as a successful lawyer, through becoming a mother, and then as a grandmother. The story is told through many different perspectives, including her daughter-in-law, her children, her boyfriend, and even a unique chapter representing a group of couples that she and her husband knew socially for years through the synagogue. Some people try to help her lose weight, others enable her to continue gaining weight, and others just find her disgusting.

I thought the writing was really good in this book - simple and direct, but created moods and characters quickly and eloquently. All the characters were very well-developed, and the setting was too. Glad I read it.





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Review: Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital

Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I don't remember what list I originally found this on, but I thought it would be like reading the New York Times' "Well" column - clever and interesting anecdotes about a doctor at a large city hospital with quirky characters.

Not even close.

Manheimer is the Medical Director at Bellevue hospital, which is the oldest public hospital in the country, and yes, the one that has the psych ward featured on Law and Order. The stories he tells are much more complex politically and socially than I expected; they are less than about the medicine. There are illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, families with generations of obesity, convicts in Rikers Island, and even the author himself. (Manheimer suffered from throat cancer.) He and his wife have a house in Mexico and an affinity to Central America - and he uses that expertise with many of the patients who are Latino.

The book was significantly longer and more complex than I expected, but I really liked it.



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Review: Once We Were Brothers

Once We Were Brothers by Ronald H. Balson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I had very mixed feelings about this book that Jo recommended.

It was billed as a "legal thriller", and opens in the present time when a senior citizens accuses a prominent civic leader and philanthropist of being a Nazi war criminal. The story is told in the present time, but large sections of it are flashbacks to Poland in the 1940's, as the senior citizen is telling his lawyer the story. It is, like many stories about the Holocaust, both a very individual story as well as that of a whole nation. Jews in Poland begin the war optimistic, then end up in some of the worst conditions known to humankind.

This book read as if it were a YA book. If it is designed to be a pedantic piece of historical fiction, then it did a good job. But as a modern novel, or even a thriller, its characters were not well-developed and the plot was pretty transparent. Something like [b:The Book Thief|19063|The Book Thief|Markus Zusak|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1390053681s/19063.jpg|878368] was a YA book but so uniquely written that it had wide appeal. This book was not that - I was caught up in the story (at least the story of the war) but not the writing or the book itself.

As an aside, it was a good reminder of the importance of continuing to remember what happened during the Holocaust.



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Review: February

February by Lisa Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Found this book in the "Globe and Mail" list a few years ago and finally got around to requesting it from the library. It was very sad but I'm glad I read it.

The story is about a woman who loses her husband when an industrial rig sinks. She has several young children, who she raises on her own. The book toggled between current day, where one of her sons finds out he is about to become a father, and the months around when she lost her husband. The characters were very well-developed, and while the story was tragic (and the description of the drowning devastating), I enjoyed reading it. The main character was in particular was incredibly complex - she does a lot of reflection on what her life could have been or what may have happened, and accepting that she did the best she could.

I'd definitely read something else by Lisa Moore in the future.



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Review: Ordinary Grace

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Jo recommended this book to me. I am not sure - I think maybe the first chapter had been excerpted somewhere because it was eerily familiar. Either way, I liked it.

The story is about a minister's family, told from the point of view of 13-year-old Frank. He has an older sister and a younger brother, and the story unrolls over a summer. At the beginning of the summer, a young boy is killed and Frank goes with his father to learn more of the details. Throughout the summer, there are more people killed and the small community struggles with grief, racism, and accusation.

What I liked most about this book was that it was a coming-of-age story more than it was a mystery. Both Frank and his younger brother are shocked by the events of this summer and grown into young men. The story was really well-written, the characters sympathetic, and the story interesting.




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Review: The Shoemaker's Wife

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



My mom and sister both recommended this book, and for the most part, I really liked it.

It starts in Italy in the early 20th century, with two young people who meet under sad circumstances. Ciro is effectively an orphan, sent to live in a convent, who gets a job digging the grave of a child who has just died. That chid is the youngest sister of Enza, a large family's eldest daughter. Through various turns of plot, both CIro and Enza end up in America many years later, where they cross paths again, a few times, but often with bad timing in other relationships.

The first two-thirds of this book was great - I loved reading about their small towns in the mountains of Italy, their immigrations to the US, and their first few years getting settled and established in America during the 1930's and 1940's. He becomes apprenticed to a shoemaker, while she tries to find work as a seamstress. Ultimately they do end up together, which seems inevitable, but it is still fun to read about how that happens.

Where the book disappointed me was the ending. I found it to be too neat, too many loose ends all tied up. Not that everyone lives happily ever after (they don't) but a few coincidences are too coincidental at the end, and time speeds up too quickly. I'd read something else by Trigiani, because she really has that novelist's ability to transport her reader, but hope for a more well-developed conclusion.



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Review: On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Meh. This book was ok, not that good. I enjoyed McEwan's longer, more complex books much more.

This book mostly takes place all in one night - the wedding night of Edward and Florence. They are a refined, repressed young couple who have a proper courtship, a proper wedding, and are facing their wedding night with different sorts of panic. Florence, dreading the act, and Edward, not being able to wait for the act.

This is a short book, maybe 200 small pages, but McEwan fits a lot of character development into those pages. I did enjoy hearing about the characters' backgrounds and their courtship. The tension he builds during their wedding night dinner was very well-crafted. But after that I was kind of bored - their is a haphazard attempt at coupling, followed by a conflict, followed by a long multi-year denouement of the after-effects.

All in all, kind of a sleepy book.



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Review: Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book. Having just started a new job in Kendall Square, it was really fun to be reading a book about innovation and in many ways that is what this book was about.

The title and subtitle of the book made it seem like it would be a hacker-like story, kind of like [b:The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage|18154|The Cuckoo's Egg Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage|Clifford Stoll|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1385177918s/18154.jpg|19611]. And there definitely were parts that were exciting and had the characteristics of a thriller like that. But the book was really two stories - one was about the people who figured out loopholes in the phone system to make free calls, the other was about the phone company itself and how it developed.

See, to understand the hacking, you really have to understand the entire system and Lapsley did a great job interweaving the story from Alexander Graham Bell to the breakup of the local phone companies decades later with that of the hackers. Each time the phone company changed their technology to expand or offer new services, the hackers found new loopholes, some by technology and some by social engineering.

This book is definitely one of my recent favorites - but really only suitable if you are a geek. You'll appreciate Lapsley's writing style which is somewhat informal and irreverent, as well as the early hacker pioneers who he profiles very closely.



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Review: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really liked this book! I bought it at the end of my hiatus between jobs and it was the first book that I read on my "T" commute.

This is a memoir - part "Eat Pray Love" and part "A Walk in the Woods", It follows Cheryl as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail (think Appalachian Trail but less well-traveled) alone, as a single woman. Through the book, she tells the story of her childhood, failed first marriage, descent into drug abuse, and circumstances that led her to decide to do the hike.

Also chronicled is the real-time experience of hiking - the blisters, the companions, the frustrations, the gear, the weather, the solitude, the miscalculations of difficulty and finances (and boot size), and the challenge of it all. As someone who has camped and hiked a handful of weekends, I was amazed that she took this 1,000 mile hike on.

This book really held my attention. I was fascinated by her stories, both the past and the current.

I'll be very interested to see how Reese Witherspoon captures her in the movie adaptation.



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