“Forget About Today” by Jon Friedman

 “Forget About Today” by Jon Friedman (A Perigee Book published by the Penguin Group, New York, August 2012, $15.00).  A self-help book about the music and genius of Bob Dylan.  Who would have thought that this would be the basis for a book by a business author who writes and blogs for a variety of business related publications?

I received the book in the mail from Amazon.com on Monday, August 27 and finished it Wednesday evening, August 29.  It helped that I had time because of a cross country trip by bus and plane but the book is that good.  It is worth reading.

Its subtitle is, “Bob Dylan’s genius For (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Crating a Personal Revolution.”  What more can I say.  That really describes the book.  In chapter after worshipful chapter Friedman praises Dylan’s ability to keep working, to rise against boredom, to ignore advice when his instincts say otherwise, to collaborate, to not look back, and to live beyond the expectations of others.

Friedman keeps going back to several Dylan decisions—to walk off the Ed Sullivan Show when asked not to do a certain song, to go electric when he saw the leveling off of folk music, to refuse to become a dissident leader, to continue the “Never Ending Tour” in venues which are much smaller than what most Rock stars desire, and to refuse dozens and dozens of interviews.  In fact, Dylan even refused to talk to Friedman as Friedman prepared this book.  However, Friedman quotes extensively from Dylan’s books, music, friends and co-workers.

I loved the book except for one chapter in which Friedman bows to our world’s insistence on throwing in some four letter words.  The quotes in that unfortunate chapter, even if they are true and accurate, would be better left unreported. They detract from the author’s point.

I suspect that famous self-help gurus will recommend this book or recommend that people spend time emulating Bob Dylan.  It couldn’t hurt!

Book Review on "Germania" by Brendan McNally

I bought this book at a dollar at Dollar Greentree.  I know.  I know.  I hardly need to buy anymore books.  This book intrigued me a bit because of its premise of a brief German "Reich" for a few weeks which follows the fall of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.  Admiral Karl Donitz was the successor of Hitler and the "Fuhrer" for about 3 weeks.  He ended up serving 10 years in prison for his war crimes.  This part of the book is true and many of the characters in the book are real characters woven in with a historical novel on the four Flying Magical Loerber Brothers who are far from real.  Actually, I found the Loerber brothers very distracting as I read this book.  Albert Speer and his attempts to thwart Hitler's final orders to annihilate German culture and history are an interesting read and (as far as I understand) are the true part of story.  Speer ended up being tried as a war criminal and served his time of 20 years despite the protests of many that Speer should be regarded as a tragic hero for preserving many things in Germany in the final days of World War II.

Getting back to the Jewish Loerber brothers, I found that their "antics" were puzzling and would be puzzling to many Jewish people.  The main brother, Ziggy, strangely enough, is a Jewish Nazi sympathizer if such a thing is possible. The other brothers, Manni (an assassin, Franzi (a triple agent) and Sebastian (who works for the Blood of Israel) have powers that are a bit unbelievable.

Many other true historical characters grace the pages and the history buff will be pleased with many of the references.  At the end the author spends several pages telling the "rest of the story" on the real characters in the book.

However, was it a good book?  Well, I think it was worth the read...but as I said above, I would have been OK if the Loerber Brothers would have had less dialogue and narrative.  If you like World War II books you will probably enjoy it.  I did.