Posts tagged book

ACTUAL BOOK

Barring an unlikely reading binge before Sunday, it looks like 2011 will end with 43 books read.  And Full Dark, No Stars is a perfect ending book as I received it as a gift for Christmas in 2010 and it took me most of 2011 to finally read the thing.  Not that the book was bad, I just had a hard time engaging with it and found myself frequently picking up other books in its place.  A collection of four stories, this book goes to some dark areas, even for the likes of Stephen King.  There are so many fantastic King books, this just isn’t one of them.  I’d recommend picking up one of his other collections of stories (Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, etc).   

ACTUAL BOOK

Number 9 Dream was the last remaining David Mitchell book left for me to read, and unfortunately, I may have enjoyed this one the least of all of his novels.  I thought that this novel started slow and I had a really difficult time getting into the story.  I  will admit that once it got moving, the story kept me engaged and by the time I finished I was conflicted about how I’d review it.  Mitchell remains one of my favorite authors, but I’d rate this one in the same class with Ghostwritten; enjoyable, but not on the level of Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

AUDIOBOOK read by Carolyn McCormick AND ACTUAL BOOK

Wow.  I will start by saying that I was wrong.  Sometimes books get so much hype that I instinctively assume that they are not as good as people are claiming.  When the books are designated as “Young Adult”, my apprehension is even greater.  This trilogy was recommended to me some time ago and I’ve had the audiobooks on my iPod for what seems like forever.  My wife read The Hunger Games a few months ago and demanded that I read it, so I finally gave in and started the first book.  A week later, I had finished all three via a combination of audiobooks and the hard copies that we have at home.  I started all three on audiobook via my usual listening method (in the car during my commute), but found myself ditching the audiobook for each of them with about 100 pages remaining and just reading the rest in one sitting at home.  This is by no means a critique on the audiobooks, which were expertly read by McCormick, but a function of the quality and intensity of the story which I couldn’t wait on or drag out.  By now, I expect everyone has a pretty good idea of what these books are about, so I’ll skip the synopsis and just tell you to read them now and enjoy.

ACTUAL BOOK

Go read this book.  For his first novel, Riggs gathered a number of old photographs, most of which have some sort of photography trick or other oddness.  He then built a story around the collection of photographs.  I don’t want to give anything away about the story as it is too much fun to discover the whole thing yourself.  It’s a quick read (it took me 3 or 4 hours), but I found myself quickly picking it back up anytime I put it down for something else.  Highly enjoyable and I hope we get more books like this out of Riggs.

ACTUAL BOOK

This book was required reading as part of my Emerging Leaders program at work as we prepare for our “stretch” projects.  The basis of the book is an online strengths assessment called StrenghtsFinder 2.0.  With the purchase of the book, you get a code to take the online assessment, which returns five strength areas based on your answers.  The book has a reference section where it discusses each strength and what they really mean.  The crux of the whole book is that you should play to your strengths and surround yourself with people with contrasting strengths instead of trying to improve your weaknesses.  Overall, I think the assessment and strength descriptions are informative and could be of good use.  The rest of the book seemed to be more filler and rah-rah stories of how various leaders have played to their strengths.  If you’re interested in the assessment, I recommend just picking up the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book as you can do without the additional stories in this expanded edition.

ACTUAL BOOK

Not unlike one of my favorite books of all time, Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten is a loosely connected collection of nine stories.  Each of the stories is an independent tale with references and minor connections to at least one of the other stories in the book.  I tend to enjoy this device because it reads like your typical collection of short stories except that you get the occasional “a-ha” moment when you recognize a person or an event from an earlier story.  As with most short story collections, some of the individual narratives are better than others.  As a whole, the book flows well and you at least get the sense of an overarching theme, although I’m not sure that I’m smart enough to really understand what that theme was.  As with all of the other Mitchell books I’ve read, I very much enjoyed this novel, though not not as much as Cloud Atlas or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.   

ACTUAL BOOK

This is by far the best book that combines a penguin fable and proper change management that I’ve ever read.

I “won” this book in a raffle at my office (no AppleTV for me).  I’ve read Kotter’s work before and his eight steps to leading change are standard reading for most corporations and business schools.  Our Iceberg is Melting is a telling of Kotter’s eight principles using a fable of a group of penguins and the changes they’re forced to face.  The fable presents the concepts in a more illustrative way that helps the reader to put some concrete examples around why each principle is important.  The book is pretty cheesy, but a good intro to Kotter’s work and I’d recommend it as a entry to change leadership to anyone interested (or forced into) the subject.

ACTUAL BOOK

Do More Faster is a collection of short essays focused on technology startups by people involved in the TechStars program.  Cohen and Feld are the co-founders of TechStars, a startup incubator that has had tremendous success in getting startups off the ground and funded.  This book includes essays from both startup founders and mentors to the program across a wide range of topics.  While not all of the essays apply to my new venture, there were quite a few that are now dogeared in my copy.  The book is a quick read and the layout allows the reader to skim over topics that aren’t of interest and focus on those that are most applicable.  I’d recommend this book to anyone who is getting involved in a startup.

ACTUAL BOOK

You’re going to start seeing a theme here.  While I’m still listening to audiobooks for pleasure, my actual reading time is consumed with books on startups for my new project.  There are a million books out there on all of the things that you need to do when starting a business.  Most of them read like textbooks and your eyes start to glaze over after the first few pages.  Not this one.  Kawasaki has put together a fantastic book that speaks more in generalities, but has an unbelievable amount of insight.  The book is designed to help anyone starting anything (project, business, career, etc), but given Kawasaki’s background (Macintosh and Garage Ventures), it’s tailored to startups that will ultimately seek funding.  Each chapter is well organized, starts with a quick “GIST” of the topic, and ends with a FAQ section.  I imagine I will be reading the book a number of times and highly recommend it.

ACTUAL BOOK

I received this book for Christmas and was excited to read it since I’m a sucker for odd history and interesting facts.  Unfortunately, the author took an interesting concept and mostly ruined it with his commentary and attempts at humor.  There are some interesting historical facts here, but the book is too high level for my taste and includes too much filler (places that could theoretically be states, but have never come close to even attempting to become one).  It’s a quick read, but the good items are just too few and far between.

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