How to Cheat at Everything by Simon Lovell (Read via Kindle for iPad)
This was a great book for the coffee table. Its a classic book of cheats. Lovell spends his entire time going through a gamut of bar games, card games, chance games and all sorts of other things that people randomly place bets on. Then loose their money. I am not that kind of gambler type, that would usually take a person up for these kind of antics. Then again, perhaps for entertainment. I always appreciate a showman who can tell a story of tricks throughout the night, all amounting up to a greater con.
It’s perhaps is why one of my favorite movies is Revolver. The character Jake Green says it best: ‘One thing I’ve learned in the last seven years: in every game and con there’s always an opponent, and there’s always a victim. The trick is to know when you’re the latter, so you can become the former’
Ordered it for the coffee table,
7/10
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (Read Via Kindle For iPad)
Similar to the Salesforce slight propaganda type book, Hsieh takes us thought an abbreviation of his business live starting from childhood. He describes how Zappos first started and how he eventually bet the farm on the business.
What really got me was his view on customer service. That he realized that it is a core competency of his business and you have to value it dramatically. I did not realize that he actually wants to buy out his employees with a 2k bribe after training to make sure they want to work there. Which is a great idea. The only thing that might be a problem is when you don’t pay your employees enough, then it gets interesting. Thats another thing that I have been noodling with… The value of workers compared to their output and how do you approach that. hmmm… more thinking to come.
8/10
The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun (Read via Kindle for iPad)
This book really resets the common perspective of how innovation happens. Most people think its a magic idea, that’s then executed. In reality it is exhausting amounts of iteration that usually very much a group effort over a vast amount of time. The book itself is a very light read (It is long, but is not one of those books that dives deep into crazy abstract concepts), but worth the time. I really don’t have that much more to say about it.
7/10
Why New Systems Fail by Phil Simon (Read via Physical Book)
This is a great IT Book. It focuses on large enterprise projects and goes into why they epically fail. Simon give great case examples from his direct personal experience how the projects did not live up to their potential.
What I learned most about this book, is really knowing what you have, what you want, what you are buying, and who is deploying it. For example… If you are moving to a new billing system for example. You have to spend the time cleaning up the old one first and prepping it for transition before moving. The numbers in this book are sobering, more than half fail, most don’t live up to potential.
Even more, I would recommend AT&T pick up a copy of this book. It took me 12 hours to order a new iPhone today.
A must read for anyone in IT, especially above the line people (Wiki).
8/10
Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight Talk from an Energy Insider by John Hofmeister, Narrated by John Hofmeister (Read via Audible.com)
I got this book on an audible advanced book sale, not expecting too much. I was pleasantly surprised. Granted he does a lot of finger pointing in the book. But I do appreciate the candidness and his genuine perspective on energy policy.
I liked that he actually looked at the big picture of energy in the USA and in the world. He really explained the issue which I have not seen yet from any decent news source (That I follow anyway). The two main points he makes is that 1) current renewables are not efficient enough for a large scale once the energy cost of manufacturing is considered, and 2) there is a need for yet another oversight committee on energy.
For the first point, I would have to agree. When solar reaches a good enough efficiently and in a form factor that can made into a shingles for roofs, then everyone should replace their roofs with solar generation. If there was a law saying you have to do that, there would be dramatic impacts on the amount of energy being generated. But for that to work, you also have to modernize the energy grid, and plan on millions of homes generating for the grid, powering larger cities throughout the day. Also the United States has to dramatically invest in nuclear reactors. They have to pick an element or variant of one, standardize it and deploy it. Its not hard. If France can do it. So can the United States.
As for point number 2 in creating a new body in government… I am kind of torn. The concept is great. I do like the way he presents his idea, I would be all for the group. However, the current US government is just too broken right now and could not handle another group. Which would result in it end up doing nothing. That raises another issue entirely about the heath of current United States government. But that needs more thought on my part before a valid opinion can be made.
A solid 8/10
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich, Narrated by Mike Chamerlain (Read via Audible.com)
I only got this book because Leo Laporte was constantly raving about it for many months as a must read. I have to say, I was very delighted. Mezrich dives deep into the founding of Facebook, back to the Harvard days. He tells about the Harvard crew brothers and the Connect U site that was in some respects, sabotaged by Zuckerberg because he dragged his feat for months while he worked on his own competing concepts.
What was the most fascinating is how this book presents Zuckerberg. It really is a rather damming abstract picture. From the way he handled the Connect U stuff to pushing out Eduardo Saverin was very fascinating. While Mezich thinks he was a little bit more a self centered act. I would happened to disagree. From the book, my opinion would be that Zuckerberg acted a bit too privately, remember he was not the most social person in the world. Instead of learning to more follow the community pulse, he more architected his own Matrix of a social graph. This in lies the problem. It just like how Aristotle could not comprehend the crowd nature of setting monetary values on things. It is not not for one person to decide, but the community as a whole to figure it out. Which creates balance.
8/10 a must read for anyone interested the history of the big web 2.0 company.
Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education By Michael Pollan, Narrated by Michael Pollan (Read via Audible.com)
I expected that his book would contain some background on gardening… I did not expect 9 hours of complete obsession over the subject including diving deep intellectual thought over the very nature of nature of planting, zen design, seeds etc.. This book made me realize that there is definitely a book for everyone about every subject.
Don’t get me wrong I loved Omnivores Dilemma, and In Defense of Food. But this book is on a whole another level about gardening ethics and principals. It did contain a lot of good history of modern suburban agriculture and core principals that were established with the founding of the States. Its just that this book was very long. Too long. It felt like that someone could have chopped this down to 2/3’rd its size, without loosing and information. It was defiantly at 2x speed for most the book.
6/10
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain, Narrated by Anthony Bourdain. (Read via Audible.com)
In the same tone as Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica, this book is about working in the restaurant industry but on the kitchen side of the equation. I love that Bourdain was completely fired up as he wrote this book. You can just feel the grit in his voice of all the events he has lived through. The stories he has are just unbelievable.
What really made the book is his frankness of telling it how it is. He is right the restaurant business is a dirty business, and cooking is not a glamorous job. In fact it’s 6-7 days a week, 15 hour days. I also loved his complete bashing of the food network. Most of all I loved his stories about the NYC places he worked. I found the Rainbow Room stuff just classic. The Big Foot stories were even better. I get the impression the Big Foot is one of the most influential people in NYC on how restaurants are run because he’s so exacting. I give people like that credit especially that they are so on top of their business, to the point that they know what’s going on down to the cent.
More than anything else… This book is very humbling. Bourdain for all the partying that he did, is a straight shooter. He fully admits he did not make the best choices in the world in life, however he is glad that he has been very lucky. His google talk is a killer to watch as well.
9/10
Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster by Paul Ingrassia, Narrated by Patrick Lawlor (Read via Audible.com)
What a sobering view of the giant industry. This book give a good account of making automobiles throughout history in the USA. It mainly focuses on the big three. What I found that was total flabbergasted me, was the amount of time that all three management teams had to change their fate before their collapse in 07-08. They found cash cows with SUV’s, but did spend any decent abomut time to innovate the rest of their product line. I think of the EV program in the early 90’s that GM did. All the development that went nowhere.
On top of that was the whole UAW thing. Just how Enron took business too far, the UAW took unions way to far. To the point where they were paying people to do nothing everyday. Admittedly I have a severely limited perspective on the entire operations of that group, but from a casual outsider, both management and the union were at fault. They both worked themselves into such absurd long winded terms, I would not be surprised if there was a clause for smoking on the assembly line. Oh wait, there was. For a very long time.
A great piece about the auto industry.
8/10
Behind the Cloud… By Marc Benioff & Carlye Adler, Narraged by Ax Norman (Read via Audible.com)
This is the book about the people behind Salesforce, mainly Marc Benioff’s journey combined with his over a hundred specific points he makes. What I liked was you got to peak inside how this company came up from nothing. The balance of New Concept, Technology, and great marketing is what made the company.
The two tidbits I remember the most was the brilliant little move of spinning the protestors that were outside of a Salesforce conference. He managed to convince a bunch of attendees that those people were paid by him. Also I loved the part about when the site first started having massive uptime issues. Benioff talked about how saying nothing is actually many times worse then being out in the open about major things. (I guess BP still has to learn that lesson)
I am not saying you can’t have secrets. Only that once a major problem directly affects a large number of people dramatically, its better to be honest and open then try to pull a fast one.
The book reads well, however it did feel a tad like propaganda to believe everything too blindly. But since Benioff has such great character, I can’t fault the book too much.
For that
8/10