It's Monday, so time for a review of what I've been reading. I finished two books last week.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - Isaacson's biography of the co-founder of Apple Computers is a LONG read, over 600 pages. Isaacson does a good job of portraying Jobs fairly, as both a fantastic visionary who could motivate people to reach for and achieve higher goals, and a manipulative jerk who was extremely self-centered, lied to get what he wanted, and never hesitated to go for anyone's weak spot. A former girlfriend believed he had borderline personality syndrome. The negotiations and product launches are described in excruciating detail and I found myself skimming those parts. Both compelling and repelling, it's a fascinating portrait of one of the visionaries of our age, who is gone too soon, partially due to his own arrogance.
Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone - it's African American History Month, and I always try to read a little in the genre that the library is featuring. McKinney-Whetstone's story of a close-knit African-American community in south Philadelphia spans the decades from the 1930's to the late 1950's. Noon and Herbie are a young married couple who find themselves with a ready-made family when first an infant is left on their doorstep, and then a few years later, an acquaintance leaves a little girl with them to raise. It's a story of family and friends, growing apart and coming back together, loss and redemption, and the final realization that sometimes a community is greater than its parts.
Tomorrow: Missing Tuesday
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