Reviews and Comments

If I wasn't already a loyal Discount Tire customer I would be pretty upset that I just spent a week reading a 200 page ad for Discount Tire™. It was still mostly an ad, but I'm not very upset about it.

Bruce Halle probably isn't the absolute saint that his biographer claims, having not raised his voice since his 20s, and always putting his employees first.

I have first hand seen many of the company practices that are mentioned in the book, including free flat repair for everyone and free tires given to folks down on their luck.

At times I found the Stories of his practices of sending money to store employees who had sick family members and of the organizing team member hardship funds incredibly enduring, but then I'd think about it again and thought that if they had a union they wouldn't need hand-outs and could just get paid enough to cover stuff.

15-20 years ago when I thought "true capitalism" was the savior of us all, before capitalism at me alive, I probably would have absolutely loved this book. Now its all-in-all something I didn't NOT enjoy, but I did see more of the "skill" of the author who frequently would say the same thing he did a chapter or two earlier "Mr. Halle continues to give $1,000 to every employee who gets married" for example.

I've only got like 2 CDs left and it really feels like it is not going anywhere. The ending is going to make or break it.

I really really liked Syrup. I finished in only 3 days, but it wasn't as long as the 294 pages would lead you to believe what with huge margins and so many stylized paragraph headers. Maxx Barry's style of corporate humor started here, and backstabbing, and is it romance is it not, kept it moving. I never thought advertising could be anything but soul crushing. He even did a great job at portraying the nerds in editing, and the artists in film.

After reading Syrup I tried watching the movie but I turned it off not even half-way as it was so bad. Maybe having it not be Coke in the film made that much different? It just seemed weak sauce. So read this one and keep the DVD on the shelf.

I really liked Robinson Crusoe. Much more than I expected to. It had a much deeper spiritual component that I had not expected, though maybe religion was just always part of life for Europeans of the 1700s. Robin(son) was a disobedient young man, even if "a good guy" in the eyes of the world. When he was shipwrecked and landed on his island of despair he went from not caring about Religion, to being mad at God, to knowing God never existed, to praying for his needs, to celebrating a sabbath, to being thankful that he had survived, to actually reading his Bible, to a true personal relationship with Jesus to bringing the only man he met to the same, and struggling how to live as a Christian in the world God put him.

At one time I thought it may have been the best Christian Fiction I ever read, it felt so much more real than dumb stories like the Left Behind series or radicicolous stories like the Amish Romance series, until the last third or so of the book when it got kind of racist and violent, and adamantly anti-Catholic. While there are many racist and violent people who call themselves Christians now-a-days I don't believe that was ever the plan of the prince of peace, and the Catholic Church is the Church He founded.

But even with all I am amazed how much Defoe kept me "turning the pages" of my audio book in a very interesting story, told almost completely without any additional characters. I have a hard time believing the claim that this was the first ever English novel, but it would make sense why all of the older stuff we read in school were plays (which were meant to be seen not read) and not novels.

Above all what I learned most from this book is that Donald Trump has always been a peice of trash.

The United States Football League started with a fervent idea. Americans love their football so give them more of it in the spring. When Dixon defined it he was able to get support by showing desire from fans, and the key to making it a success was marketing well while keeping costs, particularly salaries, low.

After the first week end had amazing TV ratings and attendance the rest of the owners decided they knew better than Dixon. By the end of the year everyone had gone way over the spending goals and way under TV ratings, with the only team to have made a profit was the only one that followed the plan.

By the next year they wanted to expand, and the future president of the United States deciy he wanted in on the deal and immediately took to trying reshape the league in his own image.

Long story short a lots of egos, no one able to keep their mouth shut not to mention a desire to believe all good rumors and ignore all bad rumors, they followed Trump's lead off the end of the world. They sued the NFL on anti-trust wforfs & won, for which the court awarded them $1 in damages.

I was somewhat disappointed in 20,000 leagues. It was much more hard science fiction and not so much action adventure. Nothing particularly against hard sci-fi its just not so much my preference. I'm also disappointed not in Verne by any means, but in the public libraries that keep putting these very much adult oriented books in the children's section because they are "classics" which I guess is their way of saying kids should read the classics.

This might be two classic audiobooks in a row that I think the movie was better. Like Black Beauty, the Disney version of 20,0000 Leagues was a childhood favorite of mine. Though I've probably only seen this one a dozen times. In the film it always felt like a surprise around every corner, while in the book it was a scientific discovery. While that's certainly a kind of surprise, it's not giant monster attack.

I am sure at its time it was a amazing, but in the 21st century nothing to write home about.