Leviathan Wakes

Fun, thrilling space opera with great characters. 5/5 stars.

Inversions

Pretty good.  Book 6 of the "Culture" series, with lighter Deus est machina from "mind" machines.  Good use of stories-in-a-story. 4/5 stars.

The Revenant

Disappointing, especially the last scene.  2/5 Stars.

Sicario

Not bad; 3/5 stars.

the big short

Great film but not nearly as good as the book.  4/5 stars.

Night Will Fall

The best Holocaust film we have seen in a long time, fantastic.  Extremely well-presented.  5/5 stars

Up Jim River

The second book in Michael Flynn's "January Dancer" series starts with a disappointing re-hash of the first book. But the story eventually evolves into a fun mystery thriller and has a great ending. 5/5 stars.  

The last sentence is an obvious sales shill cliff-hanger for the next book that harms the beauty of the story.

Fearless

The second installment of the "Lost Fleet" series is as much fun as the first.  4/5 stars.

Primer

2004 Sci-Fi thriller with fantastic dialog and story line. Thrilling story. 4/5 stars.  I also loved the Carolina culture references and background.  Recommended.

5 elements of effective thinking

Self help books in general are quick-fix fantasy or common sense or at best some interesting sociological insight.  They are almost never actionable, applicable, effective, or truly life-changing. Sometimes they can be helpful or entertaining.  The title of this one had it buried in my reading stack but when it popped up this time after I finished To Kill A Mocking Bird I started reading it in the plane on the way back from San Jose. I could not put it down!  It is fantastic, entertaining, dense, insightful, prescriptive, and fun.  I plan to socialize it privately among other leaders in my teams and in my division.  We can celebrate failure, learn from failures, build on failures, and force ourselves to get better by failing.  Right after finishing the book I pounded out a long, bad draft specification  and it's getting better each time I edit it.  5/5 stars, highly recommended.