Category: books
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Gladwell, Journo-gurus, and Anecdotes as Science
You can guarantee that whenever Malcolm Gladwell brings out a book he’ll make headlines. And with his latest book having recently been released, here are a number of interesting and contrasting views. First (via Kottke, and in Gladwell’s own words), what to expect from Outliers: though the story of Sidney Weinberg, from high-school dropout to…
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Interviews on Sun Tzu’s Art of War
Sonshi bills itself as “the original online resource for Sun Tzu’s Art of War“. Of particular note is their collection of columns, essays and interviews featuring—among others—Guy Kawasaki, Josh Waitzkin, and this from Robert Greene, author of 48 Laws of Power and 33 Strategies of War: If I could simplify the whole game of power…
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Books of the Left and Right
The results from Valdis Krebs’ analysis of political books bought from Amazon is fascinating. Two groups typically emerge from the data: people who read liberally oriented books and people who read conservatively oriented books with a couple of books that both groups read. He ran his analysis again a few days ago and found not…
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Where a Book’s Cover Price Goes
Ever wondered what we pay for when we buy a book? Ever been interested in how the cover price gets divided between those involved; the author, retailer, publisher, etc.? Based on figures produced by The Observer, BookTwo has produced a wonderfully simple infographic depicting the percentages of the split (for a £20 hardback): Retailer: 55%…
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How to Win the Man Booker Prize
Earlier this week I started reading a Man Booker winner for the first time: Vernon God Little. I’ve heard on good authority that it’s a great book and so far it’s living up to its reputation. As chairman of the 2008 Man Booker panel, Michael Portillo has been interviewed by The Economist and reflects on…
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Eunoia: Beautiful Thinking
Christian Bok’s Eunoia sounds like an interesting read. The BBC has a review of the book, complete with some (interesting) excerpts: Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels – and it means “beautiful thinking”. It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok’s book of fiction in which each chapter…
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The Elements of Style: Programming Edition
Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is one of the most popular and influential writing guides available. By replacing a few key words, it can be used as a text on programming style and the craft of software. 2.12. Choose a suitable design and hold to it. A basic structural design underlies every kind of…
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Time’s 100 Best Novels: 1923–2005
2005 saw Time produce a list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. There are some greats there, but I’ve read embarassingly few of these: at least it’s giving me more material to add to my ever-expanding reading list.
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Words for Reviewing Books
Think you’ve read that book review before? It’s probably a bad case of reviewers lexicon. In Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing, Bob Harris adds ‘poignant’, ‘compelling’, ‘intriguing’, ‘eschew’, ‘craft’, ‘muse’ and ‘lyrical’ to the ageing—but still achingly poignant—list of words that reviewers and publishers love too much (where ‘achingly beautiful’, ‘darkly comic’, ‘deceptively simple’,…
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The Intersection of Work and Life: Shrink Talk Interviews PhilaLawyer
Dr. Rob of Shrink Talk talks with the PhilaLawyer on the intersection of work and life. The topic for this part of the discussion is boredom and job satisfaction. Here are a few choice cuts: PL: I don’t think anyone is wired to sit in front of a computer in the same office, every day,…