Doug Cornelius .com

Looking for a page-turning crime thriller? Wake Up Dead is violent crime story, full of bad people doing bad things.

With a book title like that you shouldn’t be expecting puppies, ponies and rainbows.

Two meth addicts on the streets of Cape Town decide to carjack a Mercedes. They pull ex-model Roxy and her husband out of the car and shoot him in the leg, leaving behind the gun in their meth-induced haze. Roxy decides on a quicky divorce and uses the gun to end her marriage. “Till death us do part.”

That opening leads us through the steamy underbelly of Cape Town, South Africa. The action is unrelenting as Roger Smith peels back the story like the layers of an onion. The story drives you forward as each vignette has you wondering where it will take you next. The characters are interesting enough to keep you involved. None of the characters are likeable. Each is deeply flawed, if not down-right psychopathic.

This is Smith’s second book. His first, Mixed Blood, has been optioned as a movie. Reading Wake Up Dead, it felt like a Guy Ritchie movie. Criminals coming together because a misfortune of events pulls them together. The murder and mayhem ensues.

The publisher provided me with a copy of the book in the hopes that I would review the book. It was very good, so I am willing to spread the word. The book goes on sale February 2.

If Wake Up Dead sound interesting, you can also read read the first chapter of Wake Up Dead (.pdf) on the Roger Smith Books website.

It’s always tough when your playoff season ends with a loss. It’s really tough when the team lays an egg like the Patriots did today in their playoff loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

That means enjoying the playoffs for the thrill of the competition and thinking ahead to next year. Because there is always next year.

I finished reading Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, the new book from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

Most likely, you are wondering what a “Trust Agent” is supposed to be.

“Trust agents have established themselves as being non-sales-oriented, non-high pressure marketers. Instead, they are digital natives using the web to be genuine and to humanize their business.”

Since I thought the book would have some interest for compliance professionals, I published the review on my professional blog, Compliance Building: Are You Trying to be a Trust Agent? You can read more over there.

Kendall Square in Cambridge has gotten itself organized. The Kendall Square Association has formed itself to “to improve, promote and protect Kendall Square through the collaboration of the organizations based there.”

They put together this logo and the motto: “The Future Lives Here.” The literal interpretation of the logo is a zoomed out view of the actual boundaries of Kendall Square.

I like the logo better than the motto. Mostly because nobody lives in Kendall Square. It represents some of the worst in urban planning form the ’60s, with big faceless buildings and no character. After 6 pm, the streets are lifeless and desolate. Maybe the Kendall Square Association can add some life back to the area.

For the 50th Anniversary of NASA, the Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine has published the Top NASA Photos of All Time, with 50 indelible images from the first 50 years of spaceflight.

Separately, NASA has published its own 50 Images Celebrating NASA’s 50th anniversary.

Of course the anniversary was October 1, 2008, but I just found theses great collections of photos.

Since Jack Vinson published the list of the books he read in 2009, I thought I would too. Although, I left off the dozens (hundreds?) of books I read to my kids during 2009.

Here they are, mostly in chronological order:

	The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The title of the book comes from the observations of Europeans that all swans are white. Much to their surprise, they came to Australia and found their first black swan. My review: Book Review: The Black Swan
	Gods Behaving Badly: A Novel by Marie Phillips
	This book managed to squash any latent desire I had to take up high altitude mountaineering. High Crimes by Michael Kodas My Review: Book Review – High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed
	Joker One is the story of a Marine platoon commander and his platoon’s deployment in Ramadi in 2004. My Review: Joker One Book Review
	Jennifer Woodlief tells the story of the 1982 avalanche at the Lake Tahoe ski resort of Alpine Meadows. My review: A Wall of White – My Book Review
	The autobiography of Lynne Cox – Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer. She is a remarkable athlete with an incredible ability to swim long distances and withstand hours in freezing water. My review: Swimming to Antarctica
	In How Shall I Tell the Dog?: And Other Final Musings, the late Miles Kington offers his observations about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. My review: How Shall I Tell The Dog?
	The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court was written by Jeffrey Tobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a senior legal analyst at CNN. Toobin guides us through the last twenty years of court history by focusing on individual justices and their roles in some of the most controversial cases. Weekend Book Review – The Nine
	In Beyond the Horizon: The First Human-Powered Expedition to Circle the Globe, Colin Angus details his attempt to circumnavigate the globe. My review: Beyond the Horizon: The First Human-Powered Expedition to Circle the Globe
	Beyond Road’s End: Living Free in Alaska
	Cake decorating, humor and a blog sound like an odd combination. Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks manages to mix them all together with hilarious results when professional cakes go hilariously wrong. Now Jen has compiled some of her best cakes and a whole lot of new content into a new book: Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong.
	Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 pulls together all of the bits and pieces that he has said about Enterprise 2.0. Because even if you are familiar with McAfee and Enterprise 2.0, you have not had it all put together nicely in one place. My review: Enterprise 2.0 – The Book
	For a gripping father-son story, try The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My Review: Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
	Chris Anderson’s new book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Given that I am a lawyer, I kept thinking about how his concepts apply to law firms. My review: Free and Law Firms
	Social Networking for the Legal Profession by Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant. My review: Social Networking for the Legal Profession
	I am a little late to the game when it comes to reading some of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, including Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking My review: Blink and Compliance
	Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.
	Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales by Elin Kelsey.
	My review: Mission Flats – A Great Crime Novel for Your Bookshelf
	Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a tale of a complicated international financial fraud and the buried evil past of a wealthy Swedish industrial family. My review: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo – A Swedish Crime Novel
	Cory Doctorow tells the story in the near future of a two hardware hackers who fall in with microfinancing venture capitalists and invent the “New Work” economy, and then find themselves swimming with corporate sharks, fighting with each other, and leading a band of global techno-revolutionaries. My Take on Makers by Cory Doctorow
	SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

That’s twenty-two for the year.

Here are the books I am currently reading.

And the books I have lined up to read.

Cory Doctorow tells the story in the near future of a two hardware hackers who fall in with microfinancing venture capitalists and invent the “New Work” economy, and then find themselves swimming with corporate sharks, fighting with each other, and leading a band of global techno-revolutionaries.

The New Work economy is small groups of entrepreneurs producing their wares. The origination comes from the private equity leader who combines Kodak and Duracell together. But he is not looking to rebuild these manufacturing giants. He is looking to use their platform to enable those small groups of entrepreneurs.

Those entrepreneurs are the Makers in the title. Backyard hobbyists cobbling stuff together, using the internet to make their products more widely available. The two lead makers, Perry and Lester, work in an abandoned mall that has been turned into a junkyard. They cobble together their initial ideas from the stuff in the junkyard.

Doctorow digs into capitalistic corporate economics, social networking, sociology, culture, abundance, waste, and poverty, in addition to the maker culture.

I first ran into Mr. Doctorow in a Harvard Business Review interview.  One of his quotes on piracy or obscurity stood out:

“Of all the people who didn’t buy one of my books today, the majority of them didn’t buy it because they never heard of me, not because someone gave them a free copy.”

I like what he has to say. Unfortunately, his fictional storytelling is not as good. Most of the characters in this book are only minimally developed. I mostly liked Perry and Lester as loveable underdogs. The rest of the characters were very flat.

The story has some interesting vignettes, but seems disorganized. There are lots of ideas and subplots threaded throughout the book. The book is generally entertaining to read, although a bit clunky. I liked it enough to finish all 400+ pages in a few days.

Doctorow also continues the Van Halen myth that their aversion to brown M&Ms in their dressing room was just a wacky display of wealth. The true story is that it was a ploy to test reading directions. (see Compliance, Van Halen and Brown M&M’s)

Here are some of my other recent book reviews:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo – A Swedish Crime Novel
• Mission Flats – A Great Crime Novel for Your Bookshelf
• Blink and Compliance
• Social Networking for the Legal Profession

The Burj Dubai is at least 2,683ft from its base to the tip of its spire. That’s more than half a mile, the equivalent of two Empire State buildings stacked up. Its actual height is being kept secret until Monday, but insiders have hinted it could break the 2,700ft mark.

The tower is more than 1,000ft higher than its nearest inhabited rival, the 1,671ft tallTaipei 101 in Taiwan. It is also 700ft taller than the next tallest man-made structure in the world, the 2,063ft KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota.

The 169-floor building has the highest swimming pool in the world, on the 76th floor, and the most elevated place of worship with a mosque on the 158th floor.

• Burj Dubai, the first superscraper. The world’s tallest building opens for business this week — if it can find any
• What is like on top of the Tallest Building in the World?
• Building the Tallest Building

The Son and I went to see The Princess and the Frog while being snowbound at my in-laws.

It wasn’t very good, but it did get us out of the house.

You can read more in my post on GeekDad: 10 Things Parents Should Know About The Princess and the Frog.

Here are some of my recent posts on GeekDad:

• A Visit to the Patee House Museum
• Go-Go Kidz Travelmate Lets You Go Go Through the Airport
• So Your Kid Wants to be a Civil Rights Lawyer
• Heavy Metal Task Force Brings Big Machines to your TV

Always hoping that the next year is better than the past year.