A Smartly Brief Review of “Smart Brevity”

Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less
by Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz
Workman Publishing, 2022
Amazon | Audible

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The Takeaway: Smart Brevity is fantastic and game-changing for what it is and what it tries to be, though it’s helpfulness is much more limited than its authors seem to realize.

The Big Picture: The authors are the founders of both Politico and Axios. If you’ve ever been to the Axios website, you’ve seen “smart brevity”in action. It’s a way to communicate the most things as briefly as possible to respect the time and limited attention spans of modern readers.

Go Deeper: The book itself (unsurprisingly) follows these principles. It is short, but not shallow. It shows how little time people spend reading things online, and gives simple, clear advice on how to use these principles in different applications and mediums. It also serves as a mini-advertisement of their AI software they built to help businesses use this in their work.

The Upside: They apply these principles to many, many areas–and I’m convinced! For businesses, newsletter writers, marketing and communications teams, social media managers, and leaders and supervisors of all kinds, I see how smart brevity is the way the current world needs to function.

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“Poirot’s Christmas” by Agatha Christie [REVIEW]

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
by Agatha Christie
William Morrow, 1938
Amazon | Audible

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I read this book as part of my church’s amazing book club, “Dusty Tomes”. It was our selection over the holidays, where many of us would be busy, running around, and likely stressed out enough as it is. So why not a charming holiday mystery novel?

And this book did not disappoint. It was my first Agatha Christie mystery ever, and it was so delightful and fun. It was all the things I imagined such a book would be in its psychology, humor, whimsy, and mid 20th-century sense of propriety and scandal.

She wrote this after receiving criticisms that her murders were getting to tame and understated, so she decided to give us a very bloody mess indeed. She obviously had a good time writing this. To wit: the original title for the novel was “Murder for Christmas”.

This book explores the Lee family, which is full of all the characters you would imagine: the dutiful son, the romantic mother’s boy, the prodigal rogue, and their various wives and relations. They’ve all arrived for Christmas at their family home led by the Scroogely, spiteful, and curmudgeonly family patriarch, Simeon Lee. It is in this setting that the crime in question unfolds with Christie’s most famous detective, Hercule Poirot.

Again, this was my first Christie novel and so it was also my first time with Poirot himself. He was not what I expected. He is not a Sherlock Holmes-style show-off who explains his every step and thought process. Nor is he the Columbo-style unassuming bumbling drunken master sort of detective.

“The Fellowship of the Ring” by J.R.R. Tolkien [REVIEW]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
by J.R.R. Tolkien, narrated by Andy Serkis
William Morrow, originally published 1954
Amazon Link | Audiobook Link

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Well, I did it. I finally did it. I finished Fellowship of the Ring. I had tried a few other times in my life and just couldn’t do it. But with some Amazon TV-show inspiration, an adult appreciation for slower narratives, and the help of Andy Serkis’ incredible narration, I did it!

And I really loved this book, especially once I slowed down and accepted it on its own terms. I still think Tolkien could have tightened this narrative quite a bit (many first-time readers have crashed on the rocks of its long travel sections or Tom Bombadil–still a baffling character to me). But Tolkien makes it all worth it in the end and makes me excited for more.

I came with minimal Tolkien or fantasy experience. I read and enjoyed “The Hobbit” as a middle-schooler, and I watched its creepy 1970s cartoon version a bunch. I’ve watched the theatrical versions of the movies once or twice, but mostly forgot them. I grew up hearing bad “Lord of the Rings” sermon illustrations. So if you are like me, what should you know about the book?

“Foundation & Empire” by Isaac Asimov [REVIEW]

Foundation and Empire
by Isaac Asimov
Spectra, originally published 1952
(Amazon Link)

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It’s weird. I think this is a “better” novel than the first, though it is not as “interesting” or impactful as the original Foundation novel, hence the lower rating. I appreciate how Asimov, in this book breaks the formula of his previous book a bit. It doesn’t cover as much time, it’s not as many small stories, but a few larger chunks of narrative. So rather than feeling like a short story collection, it feels more like a proper novel.

In this book, we continue the history of the Foundation–the eponymous organization created in the first book as a haven for human knowledge in anticipation of the Galactic Empire’s imminent collapse.

The first book saw the Foundation come out victorious over several enemies due to the careful planning of the mathematician-prophet Hari Seldon, who anticipated a series of what became known as “Seldon Crises” based on the natural profession of nations. In this book–again, following historical precedence–we see what happens after the Foundation becomes the de facto Empire, having conquered those competing interests in volume 1 to find themselves now looking very much like Empire they hated.

“Foundation” by Isaac Asimov [REVIEW]

Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
Spectra, originally published 1951
(Amazon Link)

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Okay, in preparation of the upcoming television series, I finally read Foundation, Isaac Asimov’s first book in what is widely considered the greatest science fiction series ever written.

As one who usually doesn’t seek out science fiction in his reading, I’ve got to say, this was fantastic, and represents what everyone says about the best sci-fi: the actual science and premise itself isn’t so much the point as it is seeing the human condition play out against its backdrop. On those terms, this book is a masterpiece and success in nearly every way.

“Tenth of December” by George Saunders [Book Review]

Tenth of December
George Saunders
Random House, 2014
(Amazon Link)

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This was my first foray into the mind and writings of George Saunders and it was fantastic.

Yes, I am a little late to the Saunders bandwagon, as his writings have racked up awards, and the audiobook production of his first novel Lincoln in the Bardo had a 166-person cast including the voice work of the other short story writer I feel embodies a similar casual-yet-earnest linguistic style, David Sedaris.

Regardless, Tenth of December, was the collection that put Saunders on the map, and deservedly so; it ought to be everyone’s starting place for his work.

The book is a short story collection, but an odd one. The stories in both theme and at times setting bleed into one another fairly seamlessly, with a generally consistent narrative voice throughout. In lesser books, this would cause confusion and make the entire collection feel like a homogeneous blob; but here the distinctions come from plot and character. The stories are darkly hilarious. He’s never “cute” funny, but existentially so.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro
Vintage Int’l, 1989
(Amazon Link)

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Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day is, as the Amazon product page calls it, “universally acclaimed”. It won the Booker prize the year of its release, and no less a pedigree than Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson graced the screen in its film adaptation. I personally received recommendations for this book from people that both know me well and whom I greatly respect for their taste in literature.

Imagine my surprise, and the depth of my self-doubt and questioning of my own aesthetic inventory, when I read this book and really, really despised it.

“Rick & Bubba’s Guide to the Almost Nearly Perfect Marriage” by Rick Burgess & Bill Bussey [REVIEW]

There are absolutely no surprises in this book, Rick and Bubba’s Guide to the Almost Nearly Perfect Marriage by Rick Burgess & Bill Bussey. Look at the cover. Read the description. You’ll know exactly what you’re getting yourself.

In short, if you’re the middle-‘Murica, somewhat Christian-y, suburban white person this is geared towards (who’s likely the exclusive group that reads this kind of Christian bookstore fodder), you’ll probably enjoy it. But not because you will learn anything. Not because you will grow. Not because there’s anything of substance or depth here. Just dad jokes and dad stories about how gosh-darn knuckleheaded these guys are, how hot their wives are, and how (gasp!) marriage is hard and requires communication and love. 

Along the way to those profound insights are the kind of conservative cultural Christian Evangelical tropes one expects from silly books like this. “Culture” is evil and bad and waiting to suck the Jesus out of you. Women should submit to their husbands and husbands should lead their families (“but not because we’re misogynists! We’re the first tell you our wives are far more capable than we are! It’s just because the Bible says!”). Keep God at the center of your life. Try to eat and be healthy, but also make fun of how obese you are. 

“Lies the Government Told You” by Andrew Napolitano [REVIEW]

“Truth is identity between intellect and reality. A lie is a knowing and intentional violation of the truth.”

With these words,Judge Andrew Napolitano draws the battle lines within which he will fight for the rest of this book, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History. Unfortunately, though, these lines are where the book’s liabilities also fall. 

The book goes through a series of principles on which the American mythos has been built and offers vivid anecdotes, data, history, and musings as to how the American government has not only fallen short of these ideals, but has codified and structuralized the outright denial of those ideals. 

There’s a little something for every political stripe here. For example, the opening chapter, “All Men are Created Equal”, spends most of its time sounding like a Black Lives Matter treatise, recounting the views of slavery by the founding fathers, disillusioning the Lincoln-as-great moral-Liberator myth (arguing that Lincoln freed slaves more out of political calculus than genuine moral courage), and the systemic injustice of Jim Crow. In this, he talks like an activist trying to show how America has never been on the side of black humans. And yet, he ends the chapter by waxing away about how affirmative action is just one more version of “government sanctioned racism”.