Daily Thoughts

The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice helped ban the famous book Ulysses by James Joyce for a time.

I was not particularly impressed with The One Minute Entrepreneur. I read it while I was coming in on the train this morning to work. It is very much a feel good book about having a very positive outlook on life. The premise of the book, someone opening a successful speaking and motivation bureau is too close to the writers of the book.

It turns the book into a giant hundred page cliche. If you want to read something upbeat for a customer service or salesperson this book would be good. It is too focused on sales and touches too lightly on other aspects of entrepreneurship. I am not sure I would even call this book a book about entrepreneurship. It is really about running a motivational sales business. If you sold greeting cards with positive sayings this would ring true. However, if you were selling copy machines you would be at a loss for words after reading this book.

This book is like so many of the positive spin books out there, great for motivating your people, but impractical. There are places in the book which are so full of wishful thinking that they are astounding. For example, you should open your account books then people will be understanding when they get their salaries cut and there is a hiring freeze. However, if you want a positive story which will help you feel good about selling just about anything, this book is for you.

There are a lot of very simple tips at the end of each chapter. These are about basic success in life, not just as an entrepreneur. Things like read every day, keep a journal, be upbeat, make sure you bring in more money than you spend, customer service is important, take time for god, balance your life between work and family, be honest, and various maxims for success in life and business.

At the end of the book, they have a brief bibliography which lists various self help business books. These are pretty basic things like The One Minute Manager, Raving Fans, Life Is Tremendous, and Kingdomality. There is a mix of sales training with evangelical Christian ministry in this book which is a bit over the top. This is the kind of book which I would not buy, but might check out of the library.

Just as an afterthought, my favorite motivational book is by Dr. Seuss, it is meant for someone just graduating high school or college, and is quite entertaining. Oh The Places You'll Go.




I put another book on hold today, Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster. It is supposed to be a near future thriller set in modern India. Near future thrillers are kind of interesting, they extrapolate changes in technology in the near future. They usually have some kind of espionage or disaster happening. The last near future thriller I read was William Gibson's Spook Country

Right now, I am holding Full of Bull, Do What Wall Street Does, Not What It Says, To Make Money In The Market by Stephen T. McClellan. This is an analysis of what analysts mean when they are reporting by an analyst with 32 years of wall street experience. It talks about biases, blindspots, and manipulation in financial reporting. I think I put the book on hold about four weeks ago. There is often no telling when a book will come in that is on reserve.

I was looking around on the web again. This time, I found a nice little article on how to read business books by Seth Godin. I am posting a link to this article, because it seems relevant for the moment.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/how-to-read-a-b.html

I also looked through Kirkus Reviews this morning. They have a book which I hopefully will get to read. It isn't coming out until August 18, 2008. A Universal History of the Destruction of Books From Ancient Sumer to Modern Day Iraq by Fernando Baez.

One of the things this blog is about is the relation between social networking and books. There are three major social networks that combine social networking with books http://www.shelfari.com/ , http://www.librarything.com/ , and http://www.goodreads.com/ . Please let me know about any others you can think of. I intend to look at them a little more closely in the next week.

Thoughts For The Day

Reading room at the Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA).

I can imagine sitting here drinking a cup of tea, maybe with a candle on the table and reading a book. I've never been here but the picture is mildly inspirational. I am in a whimsical mood and am not quite sure what to say today.

I am sitting in my local library right now. I have a copy of One Foot In The Grave by Jeaniene Frost in front of me, which I had seen from the Avon Romance blog. It has an imprint on the side which reads Avon Paranormal Romance. I am going to take this home to read.

I also have a business inspiration book called The One Minute Entrepreneur by Ken Blanchard, Don Hutson, and Ethan Willis. It is in the same grain as the bestselling book, The One Minute Manager. I feel like I might have a Who Moved My Cheese moment and be inspired in a business sense. There is a whole class of business books that are inspirational and create a positive attitude but have very little practical business application. The classic book in positive thinking is The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. It has spawned an endless series of copies.

I'll probably look around some more today in the library after I run out of time to sit at the computer. I haven't looked closely at the graphic novels yet.

While I was browsing through the new books, I of course saw a movie book, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by James Rollins. It looks kind of ridiculous. This is one of those instances where I will wait for the movie to come out on dvd, rather than reading the book spinoff.

Today has been a rather slow day. Earlier, I went downtown and took the bus. Parking is hard to find there. On the way in, I read more of The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel by Salman Rushdie. I have not read anything quite like his style. It is quite unique and quite irreverent. The book is full of tricks, insults, and philosophical musings.

I picked up a few shirts and got some Chinese food to bring home, steamed chicken with rice. It comes with some cabbage and a kind of light soy sauce.

I also walked to the library. Now, I am here sitting in front of the computer writing something which you can read. I posted a message on twitter about sitting in the library. There is something novel about doing social networking in a public place. I don't have a laptop with wireless.

I wonder what it would be like to wander around with wifi and do social networking applications while sitting in small cafe drinking coffee. I know there must be a few people doing that right now who are reading this blog. Make a comment if you want.

I actually like writing these random thoughts. It is kind of relaxing. My time will be up soon. I was sitting next to some teenagers for a moment who were playing with myspace. One person had 11 pages of myspace contacts, over 200 contacts. It was kind of astounding.