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NOOK Book Review: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

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Before I begin this entry, I should probably note that I’m not going to actually write a review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Hobbit. I’ve read The Hobbit over a dozen times and it’s probably one of my favorite books, if not my favorite book of all time. So I’m not going to use this entry as an opportunity to continue blabbering on about how much I enjoy all of Tolkien’s work and how The Hobbit, in particular, is absolutely spectacular.

So do we call these things "Classic NOOKs" now?

Instead, I wanted to use this brief entry to talk about my experience using the NOOK Color to read The Hobbit. You see, The Hobbit was the first book that I purchased on the NOOK Color and the first book that I read from start to finish on the device. And, overall, I have to say that it was a pretty good experience.

There were two features that stood out to me in particular while reading The Hobbit. Here is a brief discussion of those features from my point of view.

Ease of Holding the Device. Look, I’m a book reader. I love reading books. Even when I was a little kid I loved reading books. And, as a long-time avid book reader, I love the entire book reading experience. If you’re a fellow avid book reader, then you know what I’m talking about – the experience of holding a book in your hand and having the thickness of pages in your right hand diminish as the thickness of pages in your left hand increase. You rush towards the end of the book and flip ahead to see how many pages are left and wonder how the author will get to his point before the book is over.

It’s the sensation – the experience – of reading a book that an avid book reader comes to love. Well, with the NOOK Color, you get a different experience, but not an all together bad one.

While there aren’t any pages to flip, the NOOK Color is easy to hold. It sits in your hand comfortably and isn’t too heavy. Plus, all you have to do is touch one side of the screen to flip forward or backward. While this takes away from the traditional experience of reading a book, it does allow the reader to get into a groove with flicking his or her finger to move to the next page. Getting into a groove like that ultimately allowed this reader to get very comfortable reading The Hobbit while laying in bed and not having to move too much to keep the story moving.

Features and Options to Enhance Reading. Not only does the NOOK Color allow the reader to change the layout of the text on each page of the e-book, but after a recent software update you can now change the color of the page, too. I found that this feature came in handy when I wanted to read a portion of The Hobbit before going to bed. Instead of having to keep the lights on in the bedroom, I could turn off the lights and lay in bed and still read comfortably after changing the brightness settings of the screen and changing the color of the page from white to grey. The darker tones made it easier on my eyes before I went to bed – a very nice feature indeed.

One other item that I feel compelled to bring up even though it didn’t directly impact my reading experience is the recent software upgrade for the NOOK Color. You may have read about this software update which essentially turned the NOOK Color into a high-powered, Google Android tablet. Well, I can vouch for how cool of an Android tablet the NOOK Color has become. It has its own app store (though it desperately needs more apps to choose from) as well as built-in e-mail support and a pretty efficient web browser.

Overall, I really enjoyed my reading experience with the NOOK Color. The e-reader sat comfortably in my hand and the ability to change the view, brightness, and color of the pages made the reading experience comfortable for my eyes. If you haven’t tried the NOOK Color yet, then I suggest you head over to your local Barnes & Noble store and try one of the devices that they have on display. It really is that damn good.

Give it a shot – I think you’ll really enjoy the NOOK Color!

Commercial Review: Mass Mutual’s “I Love Dumplings…”

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Sometimes I watch a commercial and go, “What the hell was that?” Recently, there are two commercials that just aggravate the hell out of me. The first is the Weight Watchers for Men commercial featuring the guys talking about how they lost weight and how they interact with their friends. That commercial bothers the hell out of me because at the end, they’re all going, “AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” after one guy says that he told someone else, “I look a lot better than you right now.”

That’s not funny. That’s not a joke. There’s nothing humorous about that statement. Ugh! Horrible marketing.

Anyway, the other commercial that has me at my wits end is the one from Mass Mutual where these business people are in a Chinese restaurant and their waitress doesn’t speak any English. So one of the women at the table speaks Chinese and asks her colleagues if they like dumplings.

Well! The guy sitting next to her has a look on his face that is an interesting mixture of constipation, aggravation, astonishment, disgust, and whatever emotion represents the thought, “What the hell are you, you worthless disaster?” Take a look at a freeze frame of this guy’s face:

Why so angry? Good grief! You're getting dumplings for goodness sake. Cheer up!

I mean what gives?! This guy is going to get some dumplings and yet he has a look on his face like he wants to choke this woman. What’s his problem? He’s about to get dumplings for goodness sake! Cheer up, you dummy! Free dumplings! Gah! Here is a video of the whole commercial so you can see just how creepy and awkward this guy really is in the grand scheme of things.

The punks at Mass Mutual made the video of this commercial “private” so now we can’t enjoy the hilarity of their commercial blunder of a success!

So remember – the next time you’re in a Chinese restaurant and one of your business colleagues manages to get you dumplings… look appreciative!

Quick Review: Smallville Series Finale

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Somebody saaaaave meeee… I’m pretty sure that Remy Zero never would have imagined that their pop hit “Save Me” would wind up being so intrinsically tied to one of the top shows in recent television history. Yet, for ten years fans listened to that cry for help as each new episode of Smallville showed us a little bit more of Kal-El’s journey from a young Clark Kent to Superman.

Smallville: A great show with one of the most powerful series finales in recent television history

That journey ended earlier tonight on The CW in one of the most powerful series finales that I’ve seen in recent television history. In fact, I absolutely did not want to write a recap blog post talking about my thoughts on the Smallville season finale. However, the final episode of this show – and really the final half an hour or so – was so powerful that I felt compelled to jump on the blog and at least give a few brief kudos to the entire team at Warner Brothers as well as the team at The CW for producing such a masterpiece.

But, of course, you can’t put together a television masterpiece without the right cast and Smallville has always had the right cast for this show. For my money, Tom Welling has got to be the best Superman in the character’s television history. No offense to Dean Cain, George Reeves, or even the movie-Superman actors (Brandon Routh and Christopher Reeve), but Welling recreated and gave definition to the psychological base that Superman operates from as a superhero. Welling’s performance over the last ten years was absolutely amazing; though I guess if you have ten years to perfect a role, you’re probably going to get it right!

But Welling was only the leader of an ensemble cast that came together tonight to highlight the entire ten year history of the show. From the persistent presence of both Annette O’Toole and John Schneider throughout the final episode as they reprised their roles as Martha and Jonathan Kent to Cassidy Freeman‘s demise as the ill-fated Tess Mercer to the return of Superman’s greatest enemy – Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor – tonight’s cast gave excellent performances.

And there are still so many more players in the game that made tonight’s final episode great. The freeing of Justin Hartley‘s Green Arrow from the grip of Darkseid, the emotional struggle of Erica Durance‘s Lois Lane, the quiet knowledge and knowing look of Allison Mack‘s Chloe Sullivan, the innately evil portrayal of Lionel Luthor by John Glover – it was all done to perfection. Even the scene where Clark Kent realizes that he has powers beyond his knowledge while watching a flashback of the show’s history was well done. On the topic of artfully performed flashbacks, I also liked the very well done scene where a dying Tess Mercer condemned her brother, Lex Luthor, to a future with no knowledge of his horribly troubled past. So much “happened” in the story of Superman during those two scenes and I think that the folks behind Smallville chose the right paths to bring those critical changes in each character’s history to the television audience.

I haven’t heard about or read any reports of a Smallville movie and, frankly, I can’t imagine that this absolutely brilliant series finale left room for a Smallville movie, per se. Sure, there is a seven year gap presented to the audience at the end of the show, but those seven years aren’t really focused on the story of Smallville. Instead, those are the seven years between the end of Clark Kent’s ascent to truly becoming Superman and his marriage to Lois Lane as well as Lex Luthor’s presidential victory. Is there a story to tell in that seven year period? Of course! Would Smallville fans eat up that movie? Yeah! But to revisit any portion of the Smallville universe (i.e. to go back and add additional information to any of the existing series canon) would do a disservice to the power in tonight’s finale.

Anyway, those are my quick thoughts. And a quick final thought on the Smallville series finale for my fellow long-time fans: how absolutely amazing was it to watch Tom Welling‘s Superman run in slow motion on the roof of The Daily Planet as he tore his Clark Kent outfit off and revealed the Superman suit… with the classic Superman theme playing?! It was awesome! That was an absolutely phenomenal payoff for this Smallville fan!

Well done, Smallville!

Retro Video Game Review: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

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Sometimes you have to face the music. For example, at some point over the last ten years I lost just about all of my video game skills. Gone. Sure, I can play a game here and there, but I can’t dominate them like I did when I was a little kid. I’m just not very good at the high end video games that are produced and released these days. The truth is that I suck at these Call of Duty games, I’m horrible at that Resident Evil stuff, and when it comes to Madden and other sports games – I just can’t keep up!

I suspect that there are many people out there just like me – people who used to be good at playing videos games, but try to play today’s video games and generally find themselves on the short end of the stick. If you’re one of those folks who has been passed by in the current generation of video games, then I’m here to tell you that there is hope thanks to the Nintendo Wii! More specifically, there is hope thanks to Nintendo’s Virtual Console – where you can download hundreds of old games from previous gaming systems.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - A Quick, Fun Way to Spend 10 Hours

Last weekend, I was flipping around the Virtual Console looking for a nostalgic way to spend a few bucks and there it was – Final Fantasy’s Mystic Quest. Frankly, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it on the screen because I didn’t think that Mystic Quest was the type of big-time game that you’d find on the Virtual Console. But there it was and a few bucks and a few minutes later it was downloaded to my Wii and I was ready to play.

Mystic Quest was originally released in 1992 and you’ll be able to figure as much as soon as you turn the game on. The graphics, gameplay, character movement, audio, and sound effects are all straight out of time warp when George H. W. Bush was still President and I was kicking butt playing on the recreation soccer team in Mount Arlington. Good times, but I digress.

It took me about 10 hours of playing the game in order to beat it. Now, I don’t specifically remember how much time I spent playing this particular video game back in 1992, but I have to imagine that it was a number greater than 10! So, while I tend to fail miserably at today’s video games, I think I’ve actually gotten better at yesterday’s video games. Ha! That’s improvement right there, people! And, honestly, I could have beaten the game a little bit quicker, but it took my some time to get my bearings about me (hey, it’s been almost 20 years since I last played the game – give me a break!).

Mystic Quest follows a tried and true formula for Final Fantasy games: something bad is happening in the world, a fabled hero appears, the hero defeats a series of lesser “bad guys” which lead up to fighting the major bad guy, and the world is saved. Hey, if the formula ain’t broke – don’t fix it, right? After you save a bunch of crystals, you’re faced with going through a tower and refighting a different form of each of the lesser bad guys before you come before the Dark King (creative name, right?). After you defeat a few incarnations of the Dark King, Square-Enix (actually, Squaresoft made the game, but since they’re now Square-Enix, I’m using that name) puts together a montage with the hero visiting all of the major locations in this very small land that the game takes place in. The hero gets an update from everyone, borrows a ship from his girlfriend’s father, and goes off sailing around the world with a treasure hunter named Tristam.

And that’s it – the game is over. There’s nothing else going on after you beat the game unlike some of the newer Square-Enix games where you can go through the game from the beginning with a powered up version of the hero. But hey – this game was made in 1992 and the idea of going back through the game at top performance was probably crazy talk back then!

However, better than actually beating a game again, I was able to take 10 hours of my time (broken into an hour here, two hours there) and feel like I was good at a real video game again. So if you’re on Nintendo’s Virtual Console, like role playing games, and are a fan of Final Fantasy and Square-Enix – go ahead and download Mystic Quest. You’ll love it!

Up next from the Virtual Console… Secret of Mana released by Square-Enix in 1993. Awesome!

Book Review: The Effective Executive

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Continuing this week’s focus on book reviews, today I’ll be looking at The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker. Any business student can tell you that Drucker is the father of research in business management and reading this book absolutely reinforces that fact. By the way, here’s a quick fun fact for you – The Effective Executive was first published in 1967. You can tell when you’re reading a good business book when you’re reading information which was published over four decades ago and yet is still extremely relevant to the business world!

This is a fun book to read if you’re the type of person who is constantly observing and making mental notes about the environment in which you work. Drucker provides ample opportunities throughout The Effective Executive to give examples of effectiveness and ineffectiveness in the workplace. And for a guy like me who is sometimes excited to be going to the office and sometimes just fulfilling “the grind” to get the paycheck, I was both enlightened and entertained by the effective/ineffective examples.

For example, Drucker talks about the President of a bank and how he scheduled his time throughout the week. The President of the bank was sure to leave a few mornings open each week just in case something “popped up.” Since I work for a financial intermediary, this story – in particular – made me think about the folks over at my office. Frankly, many of us could use some flexible time during the week for all of those crazy things that pop up out of nowhere. During the same conversation in the book, Drucker writes about how another method used by effective executives to spend time on their work is to schedule a period of time where they’ll work from home each morning.

And it’s this particular item that really sticks in my head after reading this book. For those of you fresh out of college or graduate school and the rest of you that can remember either of these time periods in your life, I think you’ll have to agree that you were most productive as a student during odd times of the day. When I think about how I can be most effective for my clients today, it often skips my mind to think about when I can be most effective. I spent the first 25 years of my life in various schools (and a strong argument can be made that I’m still in some sort of school environment today via the independent study I’m taking at the local college). During that quarter century, I was programmed to complete everything from daily homework to major assignments at odd times of the day – mostly late at night and early in the morning.

Applying Drucker’s research finding that effective executives often spend some time working at their home office in the morning seems like an excellent way to use some of the skills that I’ve inherently created to create a positive impact at my current job. However, as that thought rattled around my head while I was reading this book, I remembered that my office is about an hour from home and that it just wasn’t a feasible option.

And that’s a damn shame for a creative guy like me. Oh well.

The other item from this book that sticks with me is found on the top of page 158 in the version linked above. Here, Drucker writes that the effective executive will not consistently depend on study after study to make a decision. Instead, he will make a decision. Here is the actual text from The Effective Executive:

One thing the effective executive will not do at this point. He will not give in to the cry, “Let’s make another study.” This is the coward’s way – and all the coward achieves is to die a thousand deaths where the brave man dies but one. When confronted with the demand for “another study” the effective executive asks: “Is there any reason to believe that additional study will produce anything new? And is there reason to believe that the new is likely to be relevant?” And if the answer is “no – as it usually is – the effective executive does not permit another study. He does not waste the time of good people to cover up his own indecision.

Those words should be imprinted above the desk of every major decision-maker at every major corporation in the world! I can’t stand when people want to spend additional resources studying something that we already know the answer to; it’s a waste!

The Effective Executive is one of those business books that I’ll definitely be coming back to time and time again. I envision this as a reference book on my bookshelf as it contains the type of information that is timeless for the working professional. If you’re a worker in the business world and you want to better understand the mechanics of the best management practices, then you should pick up a copy of The Effective Executive. The knowledge in this book, if applied and reinforced in your professional life, has the ability to change your status in the business world.