Posts Tagged “books”
Ross • 7th Nov 2009 • Learning • books, business, business school, education, harvard, MBA, reading
I have just finished reading Philip Delves Broughton’s book on the topic (called Ahead of the Curve in the US). I loved the book: it’s one of the best reads of my year. It has also made me want to go to HBS. I think that the school comes across as a place that teaches well and broadly, that strives for a balance of the academic and the social, and which, fundamentally, tries hard. It’s a shame that in his subsequent work, Broughton appears to blame MBAs for the failures of the world economic system. Taking such a position turns him from an interesting outsider with a fresh perspective to a caricature of a bitter critic peddling exposé. It’s not clever.
Ross • 27th Aug 2009 • Learning • advertising, books, reading
Over lunch today, I read ad man James Webb Young’s A Technique for Producing Ideas, from the office’s bookshelf. It’s not really a book; it is literally a technique, spread across forty widely-spaced pages. It boils down to this: do your research, think hard about lots of combinations of possibilities, then distract yourself for a while until you have your eureka moment. That this glorified pamphlet has sold millions of copies certainly tells you a lot about advertising, but not in a good way.
Ross • 26th Aug 2009 • Learning, Thinking • books, maths, reading
I have just stopped reading The Tiger that Isn’t by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot – and not because I’d completed it. The book is a primer about the use and abuse of numbers in policy-making and in reporting. While it contained some well-chosen quotations and made some fairly good generic points regarding the appropriate use of large and small numbers, it all seemed fairly obvious. I could imagine this being of value to schoolkids getting to grip with evidence usage in decision-making. For everyone else, it’s rather patronising – “depending on what you’re counting, six can be a really big number” [I paraphrase from memory, I haven’t got the book to hand]. The time I would have spent finishing this book off will now be invested in Marcus de Sautoy’s Finding Moonshine.
Ross • 17th Aug 2009 • Living, Thinking • books, caribbean, films, gonzo, rum
On the way to work this morning I finished Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary. I enjoyed it hugely. The whole book is about the degenerate, alcoholic atmosphere among ex-pat American journalists in the Puerto Rico of the late 1950s, where every meal is rum, ice and hamburgers, and most days start at noon. Layered beneath this is a much deeper theme of hedonism giving way to a sense of more mature contentment, the aging process that prompts this, and the horror that this adaptation brings with it. To understand and describe this process at 22 was a remarkable achievement for Thompson.
I was disappointed to hear that the film of the novel, scheduled for release in 2010, does not include one of the central characters, Yeamon. The only way to remove Yeamon’s character is to partner the protagonist, Kemp, with Chenault, the wanton Conneticut, from the outset. This would remove much of the storyline, a lot of the simmering tensions and jealousy, and much of the point of the novel. Still, I hope the film works – but I’m glad I got through the novel first.
Ross • 28th May 2009 • Living • advertising, books
There is more than a passing resemblance between the cover of Jo Rees’ new book Platinum and the covers of Michel Houellebecq’s and Platform. Same designer? Same model?
Ross • 12th May 2009 • Learning • books, economics, productivity
Tyler Cowen, of Marginal Revolution, is trailing his new book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World, on the infographic blog Wehr in the World. From what I can gather, it seems that the focus of this book will be on organising your mind like an internal economy. This begins to sounds like David Allen’s Getting Things Done (‘GTD’) system. However, one of the obvious benefits of the Tyler Cowen approach is that Tyler’s almost super-human information gathering and processing speed is obvious from his blogging. So there has to be something in it. I’m looking forward to this book.
Ross • 6th May 2009 • Thinking • books, reading, technology
I heard Jeff Bezos discussing the Kindle on Newsnight the other night. Bezos is the archetypal web entrepreneur, spouting the typical web-era creed: ‘newer is better’, ‘most people don’t understand’, ‘the future is upon us’ and ‘this will be huge’. The Kindle, however, just looked like a big white brick.
I would like to use a Kindle, to see what it feels like to use. I am sure I would be impressed by the display – apparently the matt, still appearance makes it look unlike any LCD you’ve seen before. That’s cool. I hope it holds its high contrast in sunlight though – many displays don’t.
Obviously, Bezos wants to hype this device, but to ignore the drawbacks is moronic. What are those draw backs? Well, I think they’d include:
- Dependence on battery power. Okay, so it’s efficient, and it lasts a long time. But it does need charging occasionally, and when it’s not charged, you’re not able to read anything. I’d like to see a solar panel on the back of the device.
- Robustness of the device. I read in the bath, on the beach and laying in parks, among other places. I prop books on kitchen worktops, over the stove. Occasionally, I read in drizzle and rain. I read while planes I’m travelling on take off and land. Would I do this with a Kindle?
- Resale and lending. Part of the pleasure I get from books is in recommending and lending the ones I like to others. I sell books I don’t like. Maybe they’ll work for somebody else. Can’t do that on Kindle.
- Loss and breakage. It’s hard to break a book. Short of dropping it totally in the bath, or ocean, they’re robust. But more to the point, if you break a book, you’ve lost about £5, on average. Break a Kindle and you’re in for a few hundred quid. Plus – who steals other people’s books?
I think Kindle will find its niche – perhaps for technical manuals for the mechanic servicing 30 types of car. For the average reader, I’m not so sure. After the inital buzz, won’t you miss the unbreakable book?
Sometimes low-tech works. I think books are a case in point. After all, if the wonder that is email hasn’t yet created the paperless office, what hope has Kindle of ridding us of paper we hold more dear?
Ross • 4th May 2009 • Thinking • books, business, economics, reading, risk
Last night, over some fish and chips in their new house, I mentioned to some good friends that I was reading Peter L. Bernstein’s Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. I am progressing slowly, but enjoying it a great deal. It has one of the best introductions that I have read for some time. And it has given me the word astragalus, which would make the ideal name for my second hedge fund… after Palomino.
Ross • 8th May 2008 • Living • books, business, ecommerce, Friends, web
Katie, a friend and ex-colleague, has recently launched a business with her friend Viola. Untitled Books is an independent online bookshop. Its USP is that it focuses only on spectacular books, which it reviews fully and sorts thematically, on a tarot-style wheel (above). It’s much more inspiring and personal than the big web book outlets and prices are comparable. I’ve just put in my first order, which should keep me going for a month or so at least.
