Tag Archives: Reading2018

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Reading 2018

It’s been an interesting year. Half way through 2018 I started working from home basically full time. While that may not sound like it’s relevant, my time on the Tube was my “reading time.”

What I’m saying is: I didn’t reach my twelve book target this year.

I need to do better, allow myself to carve out some dedicated time as I did for exercise. Looking back over my list, I also want to read more fiction. I enjoy novels too much to only read one in a year!

You can read my full thoughts on my reading material by looking through the “Reading2018” tag, but if you want a theme drawing them together it might be “disappointment.” While pretty diverse — covering politics, persuasion and management — many of them didn’t quite live up to expectations.

On the other hand, What if… might be the best pop-science book I’ve read in a while and, in these turbulent times, Factfulness really is an important book. (I generally don’t like that term, so the fact I’m not using it ironically does mean something!)

Even without the library and new acquisitions, I already have a dozen unread books lined up for 2019. Let’s do this!

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Factfulness

I didn’t mean to immediately buy Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness“. I saw it in a “recommended reads” list (both Bill Gates and Barak Obama suggested it, if I remember correctly), thought it sounded interesting and went to Amazon to add it to my wish list. Fat fingers meant that I tapped the “buy” button instead.

Anyway. As an antidote to all the bad news around at the moment, I decided to read it right away. The narrative that the world is getting worse by many measures, this book argues, is false. I want to believe that we’re progressing but the pictures on TV of Trump and Brexit, famine and war make it hard to accept.

It starts with a questionnaire and, without wishing to steal the book’s thunder, most people will do incredibly badly at it. Worse, in fact, than merely picking answers at random, or “the chimps” as the book calls it.

I’d like to think that I’m better informed than many, if not than the general public than some chimps, but I still did badly!

The book continues with a list of errors that we all make, examples of them and how to spot and avoid them in the future. It sounds dry but it isn’t. Hans Rosling is humble, keen to draw attention both to where he made mistakes and where he made a difference. If anything, his modesty often sounds misplaced. I think it’s fair to say that he had more achievements than failures.

“I don’t tell you not to worry. I tell you to worry about the right things.”

The curse of this book, if there is one, is that we all think we’re well informed and that we don’t need to read it. The numbers show that we’re wrong. I hope that doesn’t make it the least read, most important book I’ve picked this year!

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How not to be a boy

I’m not generally big on memoirs or autobiographies, but I’ve liked a lot of things Robert Webb has done and the title “How not to be a boy” worked for me.

There’s a lot I can relate to in here. I may not have wanted to be an actor or comedian but there are definite parallels to people, like myself, who were not interested in “boys” things like football. While that’s not necessary in a memoir, it did make the more rant-y, less autobiographical parts make sense to me.

One of the things that most people wonder when they watch Peep Show is, how much of the characters are, well, characters and how much is the actor. This book doesn’t really help. There are paragraphs where you can totally imagine it coming from Jeremy. Is that Webb playing to his audience or is it really him? We still don’t know.

I guess it’s good to know that there are people out there like you, who don’t fit the social norms of what a real man is supposed to be. In that sense, maybe it’s a bit late for me (like the book for introverts, Quiet, I already know that!) but it might have been helpful to a teenage me. Then again, when I was that young I probably would never have watched Peep Show or That Mitchell and Webb Look, and therefore wouldn’t be interested in this book. A catch-22…

Overall, it’s mostly well written, there’s a narrative connecting it all together (unlike many memoirs), but I wouldn’t say that it’s “must read.”

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What if…?

“What if…?” is a totally ridiculous idea for a book and pretty much perfect because of it. The concept is asking all kinds of silly questions and seeing where they go. For example, what if a the earth suddenly stopped spinning? (Spoiler alert: it’s not good.)

There’s a beauty to both asking and taking the time to answer “absurd hypothetical questions.” It’s one of those things you’ll either “get” or you’ll think is utterly stupid. (Check out the reviews on Goodreads if you have any doubt.) To be fair, the people in the latter camp are probably not wrong but they’d be missing a lot of fun.

Will you learn anything from this book? A qualified yes. Yes in the sense that you’ll learn the odds of getting full marks on the SATs and the practicality of the human computer in “The Three-Body Problem“. But it’s not a pop-science book in the sense that there’s nothing useful in it.

And, frankly, that’s what I love about it.

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How to argue with a cat

Anyone else read Scott Adams’ blog? The guy who does Dilbert? He seems to have gone off the rails a bit recently with all his Trump stuff but the idea behind some of it — the art of persuasion — is potentially interesting. I wanted to learn more.

Jay Heinrichs’ “How to argue with a cat” seemed like a good introduction, in that it didn’t look too sleazy or too serious. As an added bonus, it’s also very short.

It’s well written, humorous (“But most of us humans look ridiculous when we swivel our ears,” “Cats rarely change their expression. That’s one reason they look so dignified. It also helps them hide their ploys.”), entertaining and clearly organised, so I wish I could recommend it more. However, I’m not really sure how much new I learned by reading it. If you’re truly a beginner — maybe I knew more than I thought — it’s possibly worth a read otherwise you might want to consider something a little more advanced.

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Creativity, inc

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I started “Creativity, inc.” In the end, it’s a bunch of anecdotes strung together to explain certain business practices that Ed Catmull believes has made Pixar successful. Half biography, half management guide if you like.

While the stories are engaging, and he has a surprising degree of humility, it’s difficult to see how many of the ideas can be successfully translated to other industries. Which is not to say that he’s wrong just that I wouldn’t expect to take his advice and immediately apply it to your workplace.

For example, he spends time talking about how the Braintrust has helped identify or solve many problems. But how would that work for a software product? (Is software engineered or crafted as other creative endeavours are? That’s a longer discussion for another time but, in short, I think it qualifies as creative.) I can see how it might help a review of the UX or visuals but the most helpful people for a code review would likely already be on the project. You need so much domain specific knowledge that I have a hard time seeing how an independent third party could provide anything other than high-level or generic development advice.

The other thing that stood out is that much of the advice would only work for companies awash with cash. I absolutely see the value in, say, teaching a designer how to code or engineers how to draw (two examples from Pixar U) but calculating that value and showing an ROI? Even the “rich” companies I’ve worked for have generally shown a preference for “shareholder value” and profits than hard to justify benefits for employees. Maybe that is why Pixar is successful where so many others are not, but you’d need a lot of spare money to support these endeavours, and not every enterprise is in an industry where they could afford do so even if they were willing.

Ultimately I’m a sucker for anything Pixar, so I found it to be an enjoyable read, and it certainly gives food for thought. Maybe that’s all it’s supposed to do. But will I be directly applying many of these lessons to my day job? Sadly not.