Okay, so this is about a book I have been recommended to read by Karen Swim. No, I have not read it, yet. But I will.

The only reason I recommend it to you is because so far every book Karen recommended was a win. Not in the sense that I took everything in the books into my heart without any objections, but because they were thought provoking books. So this recommendation is a recommendation based on trust (RBOT for those who love acronyms).
So far what I know about the book is that it made the Top 20 in all books this week – or was that the last? – and is close to making the New York Times bestseller list for the week. What? Yes, I know that The DaVinci Code got similar rankings, which somewhat questions the value of these lists, but lets pretend that was a one time mistake.

This is book about stories, the power of the stories, and all the usual self search hassle you can think of woven into a story.

Standing on a mountaintop in Switzerland, Jeff thought he had figured out the secret to living a great life. Eight years later he was a rising star in his company and looking forward to the birth of his first child. Then it all unraveled. Follow his extraordinary journey as he discovers what he missed on the mountain and how to recapture his success at work and in life.

It is getting more and more difficult to tell anything new or original about these things – it’s not the fault of the authors, or the current age, the ancestors had a couple thousand years of a headstart you see -, and I am curious how this book tackles the challenge. I am sure it does well, I trust Karen’s judgement.

Also, Noah Blumenthal promised to donate 100% of his royalties from the bestselling week to the Miami Children’s Hospital, which I find a really good idea, and if for nothing else, you should buy the book for this reason – you can do worse than pay an author who actually gives back to the world.

And one more thing: watch the video of the book on YouTube – of course it has a video. Almost everything has a video.

These will be some basic assumption to keep in mind while I read the practical and real life project management advices.

1. You can’t select your team. You start with a predefined set of people, and that’s it. You can’t remove people, and you can’t bring in new ones.
2. The number of people in your team is about constant. Maybe, you can get someone else from inside the company to work on your project for a few days, but that’s all.
3. Everyone is working on at least 2 projects. You too.
4. You can’t relocate the team, you can’t choose their office
5. You don’t have a budget. You have a deadline, you got the people, do what you can.

Now, if the reallife and practical advices can cope with those, then they are usable.

The only thing I did not really understand and like when Coupland started to write himself into the book. Himself as Douglas Coupland the writer, that scenes I found a bit unneccessary. But all the same, go ahead and read it. It is funny.

The other book, the one I just put down is Seth Godin‘s Unleashing the Ideavirus. A really good book, although I wonder if he would write it differently, if there are parts which he no longer agrees – I think probably, after all it was written 6 or so years ago. Also, I have to check out the website, maybe he writes the changes there. And checking out the other one, the Big Red Fez site, just out of curiosity.

And now, I am moving on to Fred Newell‘s Why CRM doesn’t work, which seems promising – well, our product has a CRM functionality along with rating and billing, so I think it won’t hurt reading the book.

I would like to know what books did the people at the company read about their job. I think it would be a good idea to put up a list of recommended readings on different subjects that are related to our job and products.

I just bought this pretty book from Margaret Mason, and read it in one sit – ok, one lay, I could not sleep and had to read something. I bought it just to see what marvelous ideas can be inside the book, but I have to say I was disappointed. The book is expensive if you look at the content, which is 100 blog posts at most. I know, I know, people have to pay the bills, but come on now.

First of all, the start of the book, the Dedication part put me in a rather sarcastic mood

For my husband, Bryan Mason, who is far superior to all other husbands, and indeed better than most people of all sorts.

Best husband I could ever hope for, ok. The best man in my life, ok. Far superior to all other husbands and better than most people of all sorts? Jeez, the holy family has arrived. Get real people. Tone it down a notch, love and adoration is one thing, placing someone on the pedestal and putting down everyone else as inferior is an other.

But ok, it is a book about blogging, she had to start with something that catches attention, and this certainly does. Now, the book must be good. Unfortunately, the style stays the same. Mighty Girl is a far superior blogger to everyone, and she tells you what to put on the web.

Ok, I am biased. After the Dedication part, her style gave me that impression. That’s why I included the above part in the review, so you can see the full context. Do a favour to yourself and skip the dedication page. Dive in straight away. Maybe I will read it later and will see her not as a condescending sage, but right now, I had that impression. Probably only the freshly gathered prejudice.

She does not care about what you had for lunch – except in idea 31, titled Dig in where she in interested in your dream lunch or any lunch you had and was memorable – but she cares about the content of your bag. And your love life. And your most embarrasing memories that make you curl up and cry. And your photos. Your whole life.

If I had to sum up her 100 ideas it would be something like this

Tell us everything about you, your friends, your family, with photos, videos, podcasts, scanned in letters and old emails. Hide nothing.

Someone on amazon.com gave a review that was quite to the point

It’s all about things she’d like to see in the blogs she reads and while I don’t spend hours each day reading blogs, I know I’d quickly get bored of a blog that had such ideas as posting your high school yearbook pics or the contents of your purse.

The book is great if you want to show the world all the things you usually keep to your friends or family or only for yourself. If you are not one who wants to give out every possible information about you – with photo of course, so your co-workers can recognize you and have a good time -, or who likes to be the subject of juicy gossips then unfortunately you just lost you money, this book won’t help you.

If you can get the table of contents of the book, then you have the whole book. Some of the ideas are good, but then, if you get to the point where you actually consider of buying a book like this, you probably don’t need it.

Save your $19.99 , or give it to a charity.

What I really, really loved was the part under Examples: Stories framed around worldviews the worldview titled, and exactly I loved the title:

“I don’t believe marketers”*

Ok, I like the book, mainly because Seth Godin is marketer enough that I find some stuff he writes a bit disturbing – for the same reasons he describe under the bit called I’m angry -, but not marketer enough to make my skin crawl like it usually does. You know, from those snake-oil selling, “Our product is what your life misses” kind of marketers, who – you just know – tries to separate you from every last penny you have.

So, his words disturb me time to time for a little while, mainly because the same words are used sometimes by the other kind of marketer. Thankfully he goes on and deliberates on the meaning of his words. It occurred to me that maybe that’s when he takes me to the woods, but I hope not.

As a side note: the rain is pouring in Vienna, and I have an hour ’till my flight departs. Of course, there is not much to do, except buying stuff which I don’t need or buying food and coffee which I need for about 5 times the price you would pay elsewhere.

I think the main reason you can’t take your own mineral water to the plane is that you have to buy it for these ridiculous prices.

* And I read the fine print.

New books arrived yesterday and now I am just looking at them, trying to pick the first one to read.

Contestants:

	Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers
	The Wisdom of Crowds
	Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
	We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People
	All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
	The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
	JPod: A Novel

Looking for a daily plus of 6 hours.

I was looking for information about such things as appearance, style, where to put interesting and important stuff, how to arrange content, and such.

I am glad that it includes a chapter about blog engine writing, but I don’t think I’ll ever write my own blog engine – WordPress works perfect for me.

So, it was a bit of a disappointment, but still a good reference book. Would be even better if it was not about WordPress 1.5