From the onset, we know Roberta is already dead. The book is really two intertwined stories leading up to her demise.

The first story involves her travels with her off-kilter, ex (?) butcher Ray Rohbeson, "the father," with an unhealthy obsession for all-Navy. You immediately hate him because he's unstable, abusive, pathological liar, always with a hidden agenda. As this story unfolds, the eleven year old Roberta is on a cross-country trip with "the father" who's out for vengeance because he didn't inherit the family slaughterhouse.

The father is contemptable. He refers to Roberta as "Clyde" because he can't cope with her being a girl. He demands Roberta not talk with others and tells them "Clyde" is a mute with a Mongoloid disorder. The father ultimately ends up at Knocking Hammer Bar, a slaughterhouse fronting for mob murders. In other words, even creepier folks.

The rest of the story ends up tying into the present-day Roberta (the second story), who has remained silent the last five years about her mysterious appearance in the desert. After an encounter with the blow-hard Vicky, their hippy acquaintence, "The Turtle," and a drug called "creeper," each story unfolds further, eventually tying together in the end.

I read the entire book on a recent flight to Copenhagen. What was appealing was the viewpoint *felt* like it was from a sixteen year old girl. The story itself has some extremely darkly humor, like knives named "Little Debbie" and "Sheila," addressing her parents as "the mother" and "the father," or candid observations like "A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect."

Although not for everyone, it's a very well told story.

FACMU provides an excellent introduction into the world of Financial Accounting. Unlike most textbooks I've seen, FACMU introduces cash flow analysis fairly early (Chapter 4) in the course. (The importance: What do Boston Market and W.T. Grant have in common? Both filed for bankruptcy after operating profitably for most of the years prior to their filing.)

Stickney and Weil make a concerted effort to illustrate how financial accounting is done outside of the US. At the end of most chapters are a couple of pages how a particular topic is viewed by the International Accountign Standards Committee (and, occasionally, how industrialised countries may differ). For example, in Great Britain, firms can place a valuation on their brand names. (Here, they generally can't.)

Each chapter is contains abundant examples and practice exercises, many culled from real companies' financial statements. (W.T. Grant is especially interesting.)

Summary: a good introduction to financial accounting. Don't wait for the movie :-)

The premise of Pfeffer's book is that companies' success is directly correlated to the quality of people and their management. This seems like common sense. After all, many companies proclaim "people are our biggest asset." In practice, however, it's uncommon sense: companies often lack the deep conviction necessary to follow through. It's much easier to take a "tough love" approach to "management," cut training and lay off 10% of the workforce than it is to focus on the long-term people issue.

Based on his research, Pfeffer offers several HR practices that are common in effective organizations. Among them:

* Maintain a sense of employment security. Psychologically speaking, people will work more effectively when they can focus on doing their job rather than worrying about keeping it. Similarly, if employees are your company's hugest asset, then it behooves you to ensure they're not working for your competition. This is common sense. More companies practice uncommon sense and get sucked into the peformance death-spiral. For example, we frequently read where a new CEO is brought in and his first action is to initiate layoffs. (Apple Computer is an often-cited case study of this.) With their sense of security threatened, the remaining employees will become less motivated. Profits begin to sag, so the company reacts by cutting training. Employees may have more accidents, and customer service is affected. The spiral continues until it or the company broken.

* Hire selectively - a recurring theme is that to avoid layoffs, you need to be operating efficiently enough not to *have* extra employees.

In a perfect world, we would have a large number of applicants, screen them based on corporate fit and their attitude, then filter them out through several rounds of screening. Senior staff should become involved in the latter part of the process to emphasize the importance of hiring. After hiring, we need to evaluate the success of our hiring practices and adjust them as necessary. This follows the axiom "that which gets measured, gets done." This common sense approach is used by highly successful companies such as Southwest Airlines and Cisco. Companies exhibiting "uncommon sense" may get so desperate to fill the position that they go against their own guidelines. Having made this mistake before, I am very much aware that a bad hire is far worse than no hire.

* Facilitate ownership and responsibility through decentralized decision making.

Assuming you hire the "best and brightest," you should trust them to use their brains. This provides a sense of ownership, challenge, and supports the organization's organic development. We all hope to have the equivalent of the "Post-It" note developed internally by folks taking initiative.

Pfeffer had an interesting comment from Bill Gurley about the effectiveness of stock options. Specifically, they're not really as much a sense of ownership as we'd like to believe because if the market has a violent downswing (as it did in early 2000), employees are almost incented to leave their underwater options.

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Pfeffer's book is an evolution of his previous ideas. What's also interesting in his analysis was seeing that long-term company success was *not* correlated to technology or industry.

Pfeffer's suggestions seem like common sense, but Pfeffer realizes they're not AND is aware of the need to quantify the information. The case studies and quantitative research are very helpful in supporting these ideas. In a few of the cases -- Lincoln Electric springs to mind -- it would be especially helpful to have a more recent examination, perhaps a follow-up.

"I am a Bunny" ranks among our favorite books. The story is relatively simple - we see things Nicholas likes to do during the year. As Nicholas progresses through the year, we have a sense of the changing seasons: initially everything is green and lush, then reddish as the leaves fall, and finally bluish-white for winter.

The illustrations are superbly done, with fine attention to detail. Each leaf, each butterfly, each frog is different and laydbugs abound.

The book itself is bound on very thick cardboard and thus will last for quite a while. It's a very worthy addition to your child's library and will be treasured for years to come.

some of the feelings he or she may be experiencing when a newborn is in the house. The pictures are very strikingly colored and this book will no doubt appeal to your child.

The "plot" is pretty simple: Za Za starts to notice changes in his mom -- he can no longer sit on her lap. Mom goes to the hospital and brings back a baby brother. Mom's tired, dad doesn't have time to read to him, and when the family does go out, they can't get to the toy store because the baby's hungry.

Za za is feeling a little left out, when his mom tells him *he* can play with the baby. He does, and finds it enjoyable. When mom and dad get the baby into bed, Za Za can have his story read and all is well.

Za Za's baby brother is a little more focused than "The New Baby."

In "Work is Hell," Matt Groening, who would later bring us The SImpsons, concocts some very subversive laughs at the workplace with pearls like "The Secret of Success: 1. Get a job. 2. Get a better job. 3. Get an even better job. (repeat if necessary)"

You have to love the titles of the cartoons: "How to face up to your first job", "The 9 Types of Bosses", "The 81 types of employees" (including The Boss's Spy :), "How to Get Along With All The Jerks At Your Crummy Job," "Just How Bad Is Your Job," "How to Get A Raise (or humiliate yourself trying)," "So You Got Yourself Fired" and "How to Tell Everyone Off, Go into Business for yourself, be completely fulfilled and starve to death."

The rest of the book includes cartoons from the Life In Hell series such as "The Road To Manhood" and "The Road to Womanhood" and gratuitous Akbar and Jeff.

If you want to be "An Unrecognized Genius," Groening will help you determine what kind of genius you are, suggest things to hate, and remind you to practice your autograph for your impending fame.

This is an absolutely hilarious book.

professional. However, the biggest pitfall of this book is it's dated. At best, I think the book is useful for when you're (a) desperate or (b) about to throw a broken thing away. For example, if your toaster oven breaks, odds are this will provide enough general information to convince you it's OK to take it apart and fish around, then call the manufacturer (e.g., Black & Decker is great about this) and order replacement parts.

On the other hand, as many appliances are solid-state (e.g., no tubes) AND individual parts are difficult to procure if the manufacturer doesn't support this. [In 1977, when the book was published, you could go to your local Radio Shack and buy a 100 ohm 1/4 watt resistor. It's increasingly difficult to find such things as the business models have changed to the more lucrative cell phones.)

This is a useful book if you want a general idea of how common things work and aren't afraid to use a screwdriver. It's not going to be as helpful as it was 20 years ago, however.

This book is extremely good at presenting a given home repair task to the novice and covers most of what you'll ever need to do to your home.

It gives a general listing of the types of tools you'll use and includes some incredibly useful tricks of the trade like how to hide nail heads (aka "blind nailing") and using wedges of wood to prevent pry bars from destroying more than you want.

I especially like the supplementary material it provides. For example in the electrical section, it talks about how electricity is typically wired in a home. It further offers guidelines on such things as the number of receptaccles per (15 amp) circuit and how a layout of circuits might look around your home.

A minor nit is the book lacks is a way to estimate how appropriate a given task is for you. For example, they talk about installing and removing a bathtub, but don't include any conventional warning like "Are you out of your mind?" or "Maybe you should not attempt this." (Removing and installing bathtubs is considered to be both time consuming and labor intensive.)

Overall, this is a great reference book for the homeowner and provides great diagrams and descriptive text of tasks you may soon need to attempt.

do the work.

This is not a "how to" book as much as it is a "consider the options" book. The "Consumer's Guide" covers the basic home repair and improvement tasks, but offers beter insight into what these costs contracted versus do-it-yourself AND the relative difficulty level.

For example, they examine different options for water heaters: gas and electric, tank and tankless, as well as heat pump. They note that gas heaters cost more to install, but you'll usually save the amount in the utility bill.

They offer insight into add-on options. For example, an insulation jacket (for the above water heater) is worth considering if your exterior walls aren't well-insulated (<R7) or your heater is in a cold area.

"Home Improvement 1-2-3" covers the basic improvement and repair tasks you'd expect. Where it excels is by providing an estimate of how long and what kind of skills would be required for a particular task, any special tools, and whether or not you will need a second hand.

For example, if your toilet leaks at the base, there's a bit of disassembly you'll need to do. Most toilets are pretty heavy and you might want help in taking it off the floor and later holding it while you align the floor bolts.

Unless you're paying attention, you'll tend to underestimate the amount of time and effort for a task. For example, the guide lists "installing a standard light switch" as a 15-30 minute item. This doesn't include installing the box (1-2 hours), plus the various tools you'll need (fish tape, optional conduit, wire, etc.).

The book should be viewed as a rough guide for a particular task. You have to make an honest assessment on your skills for these things. In some cases, it will save you grief suppressing your ego and consulting a professioanl.