City of Thieves
Looking for a great airplane read? City of Thieves by David Benioff is based on the Siege of Leningrad in WWII but manages to combine war with thrills, adventure, wit and sex in a compelling page-turner.
People of the Book
It's Passover soon (19 April) and I've been reading Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book.
Here are some pictures of the actual Sarajevo Haggadah and a Book Show interview
You have to read this
I've read some great books lately (I really enjoyed Bill Bryson's biography of Shakespeare) but it was a short first-time novel called Addition by Australian writer Toni Jordan that I told my wife to read straight away.
It has it all: romance, obsession, wit, numbers, science.
Here's a Book Show interview
Words and music: Brisbane Writers' Festival
The Brisbane Writers' Festival brings together an amazing range of people and interests.
So the session on The music - the words was fascinating: panellists Kev Carmody, Richard J. Frankland, James Freud and Andrew Morris agreed that the music came before the words.
Kev Carmody emphasised his Irish/Aboriginal storytelling tradition (in common with all dispossessed people) and the importance of community in his work.
Kev Carmody's approach was that songs should tell stories that are universal.
Richard Frankland also described his Aboriginal background and how that influenced his music, writing and films.
Andrew Morris is in the early stages of his career (but recently won a QSong writing award) while James Freud has written 2 books about his alcoholism and drug dependence following the excesses of the '80s.
Carmody, Frankland and Morris gave short acoustic guitar demo's which helped me understand their music and words.
Fathers and sons: 2 books
The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Romulus, My Father by Raimond Gaita are both about the relationship between fathers and sons, the first from the father's perspective and the second from the son's.
The Road is a novel set in a post-apocalypse world. It tells the story of the efforts of a father and son to survive and describes the thoughts of the father as he approaches death: will he kill his emaciated son or give him the opportunity of survival? Is there hope? The book is intense, harrowing and dramatic.
Romulus, My Father is a memoir. In the son's younger years, the book is mostly descriptive of the breakdown of his parents' marriage but as the father and son age, the book is more contemplative and philosophical (Raimond Gaita is a philosopher). The book has been adapted into a movie.
On my break
I'm back from a short break. I had a chance to catch up on some books and a movie.
I loved Transformers: well written, very funny, great special effects and action. Very entertaining. Take your teenage kids.
I've discovered Michael Robotham's thriller/detective books: I read Suspect and Lost and have his new book The Night Ferry on order. Great characters.
Eat, pray, love : one woman's search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert, is one of the most sensitive self-discovery memoirs I've read for a while. She has a great voice.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon took a while to get into but his alternative world is fascinating.
Anonymous lawyer gets his just rewards!
Anonymous Lawyer is a novel developed from a blog.
It is funny, outrageous, sad, bitter, twisted and perceptive.
If you are or have been a lawyer (or worked in any professional services firm) you will recognise one of the characters.
Well written and worth reading.
Best of 2006
The usual "best of ..." articles are being published.
I thought these were worth noting:
The Echo Maker: brain damage and our identity
The usual stories you read in the newspaper about brain damage discuss the person's change of personality and the burden on the spouse or other carer. Sometimes a story will focus on the "oddity" aspect: such as the SMH story on the man with an uncontrollable sex drive after an accident.
Richard Powers' The Echo Maker focuses on a man who cannot recognise his sister after an accident and his search for his memory, starting with the cause of his accident. Along the way we meet his sister, a neurologist author and the cranes who come to Nebraska each year.
This is a compelling story which shows the frustrations of all involved: the victim, the family, the doctors, the friends. There is a satisfactory resolution but not necessarily on all levels.
Celebrate success
Launching John Trigger's first novel Upshot last night, Jim Soorley (former Brisbane Lord Mayor) made the point that celebrating an achievement is just as important as the achievement itself.
And the publication of JohnTrigger's first novel is an achievement. Congratulations John!
Six word stories
Wired magazine asked science fiction and fantasy writers to write a story in 6 words. The results are great.
A sample: The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.Orson Scott Card
Climate change
The issue seems to be straightforward: we are creating too much carbon dioxide.
In The Threat to the Planet in the New York Review of Books, Jim Hansen summarises the issues in the climate change debate.
More info: The BBC Climate Change site.
Keeping it simple
Every now and then I go on a reading binge but the book that I've enjoyed most lately was one of the simplest and easiest to read: tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
It's about Mitch's relationship with his former professor, who is dying.
One of Morrie's lessons: So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they 're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Is your business really focussed on your customers?
The cliche of the moment is "customer-centric" but most businesses that claim to be focussed on customer satisfaction will only in fact do what the customer wants if it fits within the business' own policies and processes.
Want help? Sure, but not between 1 and 2, that's our lunchtime. Want a fixed meeting time? OK but we might have to keep you waiting for 30 minutes.
I recently saw a presentation by Gail Kelly the CEO of St.George Bank. She said her bank was totally focussed on her customers. How did she know? She said that independent surveys of banks measured how many customers were thinking of switching to another financial institution. Whilst the average was around 18% , the result for her bank was NIL! She described how her bank was structured to achieve that goal. She talked about how she got the right people for the right job.She talked about her role as a leader to ensure the customer focus continued. And of course it reflected in continuing increasing profits.
If a bank can do it, why can't professional service firms?
Matt Homann has 3 great posts by Ron Baker : 1 on what it means to have a customer and 2 on repositioning professional firms (starting with pricing in The firm of the past and The firm of the future) so that they are truly customer focussed.
And even though Baker discusses the need to move from hourly billing to value pricing, it's not just about the money element. It's about looking at things from the customer's point of view: what are they getting from you, not time but a result. Not efficiency but effectiveness. A customer's measurement of satisfaction is different from that of most professional service providers. Until a business's KPI's for customer satisfaction are the same as the customers' how can they claim to be customer-centric?
Book Review: Fat, Forty and Fired
Nigel Marsh's Fat, Forty and Fired is not a "do it yourself" change your life book. But it is a very readable account of the author's attempt to take advantage of a forced redundancy by spending one year not working and helping his family.
What is clear through the humorous stories is that the author understands that to repair his relationships with his wife and four children he first needs to fix himself: by acknowledging his alcoholism, losing weight and changing his priorities.
As an English advertising executive in Australia he has plenty of material to work with. He is not your average house-husband: he attends Quaker meetings, trains for an ocean swimming race and fits in a European holiday.
This is a very easy to read book with enough personal insights to give every man (and woman) food for thought.
Grug: now animated
My friends Bob and Leigh have completed a clay animation of the classic children's story Grug.
Now they're looking for a distributor and funding to do the whole series.
Anyone interested? They deserve some support.
Amazon.com's new book features
Wired has this story on Amazon's new features including Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", which are the most distinctive phrases in the text of a book.
There is also the 100 most common words in a book and, for fun, stats on how many words a book delivers per dollar or per ounce.
Insights from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Evelyn Rodriguez recently referred to Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when preparing for her "dwelve" (see here, here and here).
Since then she has published a note from a reader that has referred to it.
So I decided to pull my 1974 version off my shelves and see if there was something relevant to me now.
Here’s one of the sections I bookmarked:
On the topic of incompetent mechanics page 25: "Why did they butcher it so? These were not people running away from technology...these were the technologists themselves.They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it. There was no obvious reason for it. ...
The radio was a clue. You can't think really hard about what you're doing and listen to the radio at the same time. Maybe they didn't see their job as having anything to do with hard thought, just wrench twiddling...
Their speed was another clue. They were really slopping things around in a hurry and not looking where they slopped them. More money that way - if you don't stop to think that it usually takes longer or comes out worse.
But the biggest clue seemed to be their expression. ...They were like spectators...There was no identification with the job...They were involved in it but not in such a way as to care."
There were a couple of other interesting sections. However overall I found the book sad.
Passionate books
I've been catching up on reading lately and there's no doubt that the books which reveal the writer's passion for their story (whether fiction or non-fiction) or show an authentic "voice" were the ones that retained my interest.
The surprise packet has to be Bob Dylan Chronicles Volume One.
It is written in a straightforward, modest voice which is at its most passionate when discussing folk music and folk singers.
There are sections which foreshadow his break with the folk movement and give insight into his recording methods but the most revealing section is when he discusses his efforts at privacy for his family once he became famous.
He recounts his transition from tradtional folk songs to Woody Guthrie songs, his search to hear other singers and learn from them and his first tentative attempts to write his own songs.
He passionately disclaims any desire to be a protest singer. But it is clear he was passionate about music even in his "lost" years.
Five out of five guitars!
Favourite Books
The whole family recently gathered around the TV for ABC's My Favourite Books in which Jennifer byrne unveiled the Top 10 of a viewer poll on the Top 100 favourite books.
The program was entertaining even if most of the results were predictable.
Still, I was motivated to read Tim Winton's Dirt Music (number 11 in the list) over the holidays and loved it.
But my book of the holidays (so far) is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time...simply written but at times sad, funny and dramatic all at once.
Public Library
I have to compliment the Brisbane City Council e-library: not only can you search its catalogue, you can hold books and extend time online.
Spiritual lives
Mandy suggested I read The Diamond Cutter (The Buddha on strategies for managing your business and your life). Whilst I found it heavy going initially, there were parts that I empathised with.
One quote:
"Success, personal or business, is a result - and all results have causes. When you repeat the same causes, you get the same results. If you're doing business in a way that doesn't always produce the same results, then you haven't found the causes. If you don't know what causes a result and you keep trying something that you know doesn't always cause the result you want, then you're just being lazy, and don't be surprised when you don't succeed."
There seems to be a lot of these types of books around now from a variety of religious viewpoints (eg The Purpose-Driven Life (Christian) and The Committed Life (Jewish).
What they have in common is our need to transform the everyday material life into something spiritual. For example, this can be done through honesty and ethical conduct in everyday business life.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Fables
This article in Fast Company is a fable explaining the meaning and worth of current popular business management fables.
Will make you smile!
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