Goodreads

We can all agree balance is important, right?

For the last few years I've had some pretty lousy balance. This weekend Ginger and I took a gigantic step toward regaining some of that balance by finishing a book. It's not that I haven't read in years, but finally I finished a book that was not about Java, Ruby, MongoDB, Groovy, Spring, C#, or Ruby-on-Rails...though it was about the rails of the Central Pacific Railroad and the four people who powered it.

In fact, I was so exicited that I joined Goodreads and posted my first review as well!

Goodreads Review #1

The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California by Richard Rayner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Associates is an entertaining look at one of history's most important endeavors. The book touches on the extensive corruption used to get things done. Rayner covers many of the larger-than-life battles between The Associates and Union Pacific in addition to the lengthy-but-brutal defeat of Tom Scott's Texas & Pacific Railway. We also get to see the links to other important pieces of history, such as Leland Stanford's founding of his university while mourning his son and the role he played in funding the early development of motion pictures with Eadweard Muybridge to answer the age-old question -- if all four of a horses feet left the ground at the same time while galloping.

While very enjoyable, the writing style is a bit exhausting, often crafting lengthy paragraphs out of just a few extremely long sentences.

---

note you can check out Ginger's review on Goodreads too!