GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Books

  • A short list of Books

    I was rereading Damn Good Advice by George Lois and I realized it is most likely one of my favorite self help books along with Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

    Then there are the two Jocko Willink and Leif Babin leadership books, Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. The first is clear and concise, the second is a necessary counterbalance to the literally extreme title.

    And then Seth Godin’s most recent book This is Marketing, as well as his older classic The Dip. The first book is about selling, or as he defines it, making change in the world. The second is about quitting fast versus having grit and trying to navigate both great options.

    And I need to re-read the massive tome Design for Ecological Democracy by my first architecture professor, Randy Hester.

    Honorable mentions:
    The One Thing
    Essentialism
    Dale Carnegie
    Do it Tomorrow
    The Leadership Pipeline

    Throw in some “impractical” books like Invisible Cities and Labyrinths and that’s not a bad reading list at all.

  • Charlie Parker Played Bebop, Chris Raschka, 1992

    The girl is reading now, and we recently read Chris Raschka’s Charlie Parker Played Bebop together. The book is a brilliant play on word, image, sound, and absurdity.

    Never leave your cat alone.

    If you read it silently, it doesn’t seem like much, but read it with a preschooler and ham it up and the silly logic of the book opens up after several readings. I’m not a jazz expert, but it captures the feel and energy of bebop.

    On a semi related note, the girl just read to me Cindy Ward and Tomie dePaola’s Cookie’s Week. Don’t leave that cat alone either.

  • Sorting out our library

    After half a decade of buying cheap books at the friends of the library store, we now have enough volumes to fill up six slots of the Ikea Kallax shelves. So the girl and I sorted out our own private library this weekend.

    The first division we made was fiction and non-fiction, which were then sorted the rest out by author’s last name. Apart from confusing the illustrators and authors, and a child’s tendency to get distracted it went really smoothly. Some highlights from the exercise included:

    • She immediately decided talking animals were unreal and they all went into the fiction pile.
    • Human slice of life books generally ended up in the non-fiction pile.
    • ABC books ended up in the non-fiction pile, except for one which had talking animals. I guess she takes linguistics pretty seriously.
    • Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen also ended up in the non-fiction pile. Even though most of the contents are quite fantastical, my daughter pointed out the book is a dream sequence, thus for real. Somehow, Where the Wild Things Are did not get the same treatment and went into fiction.
    • A book on Noah’s Ark ended up in the non-fiction pile. I thought about discussing the myth of Gilgamesh but thought better of it.
    • An illustrated copy of the Night Before Christmas also ended up in non-fiction. I pointed out the drawing of flying reindeer, but she responded that they must have flown in the past. We have never pushed the Santa myth (all our Christmas presents come from humans) but I decided this was not the time to do a hard debunk of old Saint Nick.

    In all, it was a fun exercise. It was quite interesting to go through all the books we’ve collected over the past few years, and even better to plumb the depths of a five year old mind.

  • Checklists, Atul Gawande, 2009

    One of my favorite books is Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto.

    The other day I had to pull some photos off the phone so I decided to write one up so my wife could do so later.

    Yikes, what a convoluted process.

    I mean, I always knew it was a convoluted process, but this exercise really highlighted how convoluted it is.

    Looks like I have some streamlining to do.

    Or maybe not. Could be that this extra effort is worth not buying another computer or hard drive.

  • Dao De Jing, Laozi, (Ursula K. Le Guin) and Zhuangzi, (Thomas Merton)

    With my recent dive into the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi I’ve been been reminded that some authors are just better at writing in english than others.

    Admittedly the goals of these different translations were divergent – some of them are actual translations while others are only renditions.

    Not surprisingly however, the books that gave up fidelity to the original text gained the freedom to really write fluently in the new language.

    I’m certain the imprimatur of a famous author didn’t hurt my reception of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching or Thomas Merton’s Chuang Tzu. But then again higher expectations often lead to greater disappointment.

    In these two cases, they did not disappoint. Their years of writing for a popular audiences prepared them with the subtle tools to excel in their craft, and it shows.

  • Tao Te Ching, Laozi

    As you may have noticed, I’ve been dabbling with reading the Tao Te Ching, borrowing all the copies available at the library and reading the liner notes and introduction.

    After all, the Tao Te Ching is somewhat impenetrable.

    And then I had this sudden inspiration, let’s start buying copies of this book! I’ll start a collection!

    Old habits die hard.

  • Graham Oakley

    I’ve always been a big fan of Graham Oakley’s cheeky Church Mice Series. The illustrations are great, and the stories are really fun. My sister and I loved reading his books at the library.

    But they are out of print and you can’t find any copies at the library. Though oddly enough, they do have some taiwanese translations that reformatted his books to a portrait format.

    It’s a sad tale of what can be discarded with the ebbs and flow of fashion. Or reframed more optimistically, a tale of what the internet enables — a couple clicks of a button and I’ve got a copy headed home.

  • This Present Moment, Gary Snyder, 2015

    Recently, I connected with a former professor and he mentioned the poetry of Gary Snyder, so I trundled off to the library and picked up the one book of his work that they have in the Clark County system.

    I’ve never been much of a poetry guy, but I have subscribed to the excellent American Life in Poetry email newsletter for a few years now.

    I can see why he is such an acclaimed poet. The writing was so sharp, that it just sliced through the clutter of my mind. I could only read a couple poems at a time before doing something else.

    I suspect it’s poking and prodding into the dark recesses of my brain that doesn’t want to be illuminated. I suspect that’s a reason I really need to keep reading.

  • 5 is the Perfect Number, Igort, 2002

    It’s a pretty prime number, well balanced.

    And its half a decade.

    A college career plus one.

    You got five fingers on a hand.

    You got head, two arms, and two legs. What else do you need?

    And it’s the title of one of my favorite graphic novels by Igort.

    I wonder if will hold up to a reread, it’s been twenty years since I bought it in a comic shop in LA and so much has changed in the last five years.

  • A few books on Leadership

    The other day I came across a request for leadership books on a forum and here are four that came to mind

    “Leaders eat Last,” by Simon Sinek, was a really nice overview of leadership from a biological and evolutionary lens. The basic thesis is that humans are biologically motivated to form groups via several chemicals, some of which emphasize personal achievement and others which emphasize group cohesion. Our society has gone out of whack favoring individual glory and the book is a polemic for balance. I am not a big fan of his “Start with Why Book” (it felt like a pamphlet dragged out to book length) but I thought this one was excellent.

    “Leadership Pipeline,” by Ram Charan and Stephen Drotter, is a great overview of the different levels of leadership in management and the different challenges and mindsets required to succeed at each level. With seven levels, most of them won’t apply to one’s specific position, but it’s really useful to see the overall set to contextualize one’s own challenges.

    “Extreme Ownership” and “Dichotomy of Leadership”, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. These books could be read individually but I think of the pair as an single work. It’s an easy read with a mix of stories from their military service and in the business world, with practical lessons to consider throughout the book, both as leaders and for one’s own individual mindset and performance.

    “Tribes” and “This is Marketing”, by Seth Godin. I’m a huge fan of Seth’s Blog, but not as much of his books. But still he is a great provocateur and these two books deal directly with leadership. Well “This is Marketing” doesn’t exactly deal with leadership per se, but it sets a framework of how we are trying to improve the world in such a way that I consider it a leadership book. And “Tribes” is a good book on dynamics in the digital age and pushes one to take advantage of the opportunities we have in front of us.