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Currently reading – Reviews, et cetera

   "At first, when you're young, each place you come to is poorer than the place ahead, which you do not yet know. This other is extraordinary, beautiful. So you go on, perhaps for many years. You go on until you realise that the trading was also good, with certain shortcomings, in the city you left behind. Soon younger men say you have lost ambition; older, that you have grown wise. Then, as you settle, there is comfort, and a kind of sadness."
— Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road

My reviews

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James Kalbach, Designing Web Navigation

Although this is the most poorly edited O'Reilly book I've come across, the content itself is valuable enough to make overlooking the editor's sloppiness worthwhile.

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O'Reilly, Sebastapol, 2007

Guy Kawasaki, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition

Just a quarter way into this book and I've already learned much.

   This is what I've learned from this interview [with Michael Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What to Do About It)]. First, I'm not so smart if a company that I invest in succeeds. Second, I'm not so dumb if a company that I invest in fails. Third, you take your best shot at analysis, place your bet on the table, work your ass off, and don't look back. That's how you build a great company.

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Portfolio, New York, 2008

Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

Brilliant! A funny, sobering, sweeping epic.

   It is trite to observe that hackers don't like fancy clothes. Avi has learned that good clothes can actually be comfortable—the slacks that go with a business suit, for example, are really much more comfortable than blue jeans. And he has spent enough time with hackers to obtain the insight that it is not wearing suits that they object to, so much as getting them on. Which includes not the donning process per se but also picking them out, maintaining them, and worrying whether they are still in style—this last being especially difficult for men who wear suits once every five years.

   He has always had a weird, sick fascination with women who smoked and drank a lot. Amy does neither, but her complete disregard of modern skin-cancer precautions puts her in the same category: people too busy leading their lives to worry about extending their life expectancy.

Avon, New York, 1999

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Unabridged audio read by Will Patton

Funny that I've never read this book before. I spent a significant chunk of my younger years on the road, got down to my last few dollars with no backup a couple times, and experienced that exhilarating feeling of moving forward on trust alone, eyes wide open, drinking in unfiltered life.

Yet for as much that I recognized in this story, it made me feel continuously uncomfortable for the careless way the characters treat the precious gift of life and each other. There is a lack of consciousness, a degree of irresponsibility, and a level of selfishness that is simply untenable, and it made me sad. When Sal goes into a ramshackle roadside grocery story, hears the family in the back eating their dinner together, and steals a loaf of bread and some other groceries, he and his cohorts are jubilant that they have the fuel to continue their journey, but my heart went out to the unseen family, a bit poorer for the violation of trust that has been visited upon them.

That said, the writing itself is wonderful, with passion-infused riffs of pure poetry that go on for pages. And Will Patton is brilliant. He doesn't so much narrate the story as sing it, dance it, breathe joy into it. At times it sounds like he can barely contain his enthusiasm at his performance, as though he wants to rush to the end in one long crescendo of ecstasy and at the same time linger over each phrase and thought. This is storytelling at its very finest.

   We had longer ways to go, but no matter, the road is life.

Penguin Audio, New York, 2007

Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

An unflinchingly brutal and startling examination of sexual and corporate malfeasance, with foreshadowings of today's economic collapse.

   Blomkvist's extraordinary absence was part of the media strategy that he and Berger had put together. Every newspaper in the country was looking for him. Not until the book was launched did he give an exclusive interview to She on T.V.4, once again scooping thee state-run stations. But the questions were anything but sycophantic.
   Blomkvist was especially pleased with one exchange when he watched a video of his appearance. The interview was broadcast live at the very moment when the Stockholm Stock Exchange found itself in freefall and a handful of financial yuppies were threatening to throw themselves out of windows. He was asked what was Millennium's responsibility with regard to the fact that Sweden's economy was now headed for a crash.
   "The idea that Sweden's economy is headed for a crash is nonsense," Blomkvist said.
   The host of She on T.V.4 looked perplexed. His reply did not follow the pattern she had expected, and she was forced to improvise. Blomkvist got the follow-up question he was hoping for. "We're experiencing the largest single drop in the history of the Swedish Stock Exchange—and you think that's nonsense?"
   "You have to distinguish between two things—the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skövde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago."
   He paused for effect and took a sip of water.
   "The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy."
   "So you're saying that it doesn't matter if the Stock Exchange drops like a rock?"
   "No, it doesn't matter at all," Blomkvist said in a voice so weary and resigned that he sounded like some sort of oracle. His words would be quoted many times over the following year. Then he went on.
   "It only means that a bunch of heavy speculators are now moving their shareholdings from Swedish companies to German ones. So it's the financial gnomes that some tough reporter should identify and expose as traitors. They're the ones who are systematically and perhaps deliberately damaging the Swedish economy in order to satisfy the profit interests of their clients."
   Then She on T.V.4 made the mistake of asking exactly the question that Blomkvist had hoped for.
   "And so you think that the media doesn't have any responsibility?"
   "Oh yes, the media do have an enormous responsibility. For at least twenty years very many financial reporters have refrained from scrutinising Hans-Erik Wennerström. On the contrary, they have actually helped to build up his prestige by publishing brainless, idolatrous portraits. If they had been doing their work properly, we would not find ourselves in this situation today."

MacLehose, London, 2008 (2005)

Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety 2

A wonderful book, full of generously shared wisdom, by the guy who has been bringing us the amazing TED conferences.

   My expertise has always been my ignorance, my admission and acceptance of not knowing. My work comes from questions, not from answers.

   The notion of learning to walk has lingered in my mind, and I've contemplated the process of teaching someone to walk again. I realized that this process has a lot to do with thrusting a leg out into the terror of losing your balance, then regaining your equilibrium, moving you forward, then repeating with your other leg. Failure as loss of balance, the success of equilibrium, and you move forward. Terror of failing, confidence, regaining your balance—it's a fascinating metaphor for life. Risk is half the process of moving forward. The risk of falling is inherent in achieving a goal.

I also really love his stunningly beautiful book, Information Architects.

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Que, Indianapolis, 2001

Snippets from various books and other sources

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