Daily Thoughts 7/25/2009

Herbet Spenser

Today started quietly. I finished reading The Golden Rules for Managers. It was interestig. I went and got my hair cut this morning and took a long walk. I am looking at a dvd film called Waltz With Bashir by Ari Folman. It is an animated film about an Israeli soldier of the First Lebanon war who has forgotten much of what happened. It won the Golden Globe for best Foreign Language Film and National Society of Film Critics Film of the Year. I have not watched it. Last Night I watched Bolt. It is an entertaining animated kids film about a dog who does not realize he is not a superdog.

I am procrastinating a little bit on writing a review of Wildfire by Sarah Micklem. I am still thinking about it. I also have a copy of The City and The City by China Mieville sitting in front of me. They are all good books. I try not to spend too much time on books I do not like.

I have started reading The City and The City by China Mieville. The book is a murder mystery set in an imaginary city Beszel in what would be contemporary Eastern Europe. It reads like the present, but everything is just slightly off. The names sound real, but if you look closely, they are just slightly off from reality.

Daily Thoughts 7/24/2009 (Golden Rules For Managers )

Tatyana from Evgeni Onegin, by Elena Samokysh-Sudovskaya. 1900-1904

Daily Thoughts 7/24/2009

I had some time to do some weeding in the oversize books and the sports section. I still have quite a bit to do. They are still shifting the 700s as well.

I took some time to look for award books. I looked at the Edgar Award for mysteries, the RITA award for romance, and also looked at the Horror Writers of America association. I picked out the 2008 Pulitzer prize for poetry book, The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin.

One of my favorite young adult adventure series of novels is the Montmorency series by Eleanor Updale. It just reminds me so much of Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson. The writing is truly intriguing. It is a tale of a gentleman thief with a very dark side.

I have been reading Golden Rules for Managers 119 Incredible Lessons For Leadership Success by Frank McNair. It reads like a management book for people who like to read motivational business titles. The book reminds me a little bit of Who Moved My Cheese. We have a few people who come in regularly for authors like Norman Vincent Peale or Og Mandino.

The book has lots of acronyms, business fables, anecdotes, maxims, and sayings. It would be excellent for a salesperson or gregarious customer service person to pull pithy quotes from. Unlike many other motivational titles it also includes a number of recognizable business terms like SMART targets, participatory management, and performance appraisals which are listed in the index. Frank McNair rolled many loose business ideas into one coherent book. This book is a 2009 reprint of the 2000 edition. The book itself is very presentable. The typeface is very clean and the page layout is vey readable.

Frank McNair has an MBA from Wake Forest University and a certificate in Presbyterian theology. He also runs a well respected consultancy, http://www.mcnairandmcnair.com/ He does not make any direct religious statements though except for the Golden Rule . It is the kind of book a company might bulk order for their whole sales department as part of a motivational seminar.