Category: Books

A few days ago, I saw this story about people being advised to return their library books on time in order to avoid their credit ratings being affected.

I think this is wrong. It’s like telling people not to do stupid things and stick them into Facebook in case their job prospects are affected. I understand that we all have to learn about the consequences of our actions, but I think we have to be careful here about the unintended consequences. If we carry on this way, all we are doing is enshrining the importance of the Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught. It’s worse than that: we are making sure that Fear and Greed remain the only two motivators.

I want to live in a world where people return library books on time because it’s the right thing to do. I want to live in a world where people do things because they’re the right things to do, and don’t do things because they’re the wrong things to do. Right and Wrong are far better motivators than Fear and Greed. So let us concentrate on teaching our children how to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong, rather than learning to differentiate only between orange conical edible objects and wooden weapons.

And in any case I’m not sure that fining is the right thing to do. There must be a better way.

[My thanks to Feibao Production for the illustration].

It must be all of thirty years since I first read one of Harold Leavitt’s books, Managerial Psychology; since then, I’ve dipped into the book a number of times. But not as often as I’ve dipped into a more recent book of his, Hot Groups. Or, to use its more formal title, Hot Groups: Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organisation.

Written by Leavitt and his wife, Jean Lipman-Blumen, the book encapsulated a number of studies they’d done in the 1980s and 1990s, looking at how social networks behaved in organisations, leading on from earlier research on group decision-making and small-group behaviour. [Incidentally, I’d read some of the works of Dr Blumen without ever realising that I’d also been reading her husband’s books. Her 1996 book, The Connective Edge, is brilliant.]

To them, “hot groups” were small, passionate, idealistic groups who, for a brief period, exerted disproportionate influence on the strategy and direction of a firm. They took care to look at how these groups formed, what made them tick (an overwhelming sense of shared passion, purpose, belief), why they operated at the speed they did, what made them die out.

I think their work on “hot groups” is greatly underestimated, something I am trying to put right in the book I am writing with Chris Locke. Over the years, I have watched these Mayfly Marauders arise and die many times in large organisations. Every now and then I’ve been part of such a group, and learnt the hard way how the immune system of the firm crushes such change agents.

More recently, however, I’ve realised something quite valuable. That “Enterprise 2.0” tools actually help hot groups survive and thrive, that we finally have immunity from the attacks of enterprise immune systems. But more on this later.

In the meantime, do go read the works of Harold Leavitt and his wife; they can teach us a lot about the human aspect of complex adaptive systems; the world is a poorer place for his passing, and my condolences go to his wife and family. I learnt valuable things from what Dr Leavitt wrote, and I’d like to acknowledge my debt.

(Continued from my post yesterday, where I was listing the books I have stashed away to read during the Christmas break, giving reasons where appropriate or relevant).

8. Halting State: Charles Stross. Recommended to me by Kevin Marks as we wandered around Borders on Union Square with Chris Messina, before having dinner at Asia de Cuba with Tara Hunt, Dave Morin, Brittany Bohnet et al a few weeks ago. I’d enjoyed Glasshouse, so I took up Kevin’s recommendation. Unusually, it was also recommended by BT colleague Bruce Schneier, something I don’t see that often. Reader Chris Swan has now recommended Accelerando on the back of my previous post, so I have a few more books to find and devour.

9. The Scientist As Rebel: Freeman Dyson. I’ve dabbled into Freeman Dyson’s writings for quite a while; if anything, I became even more of a fan when I met him at Esther’s inaugural Flight School some years ago, I think it was 2005. [An aside. I haven’t missed a Flight School yet, and don’t intend to miss one either. Fascinating conference.] More recently, having read A Many-Colored Glass, I decided to read the rest of his oeuvre. The Scientist As Rebel is the start of that process. It is a collection of essays, some that I’ve read, some that I haven’t even heard of. The eponymous Scientist As A Rebel is always worth another read. I’m also looking forward to reading Can Science Be Ethical? and the “Bernal” essay The World, The Flesh, And the Devil. When I riffled through the book before buying it (yes I do buy many books the old-fashioned way, loitering with intent in a bookshop), I found this quotation quite uplifting:

What does labour want?

We want more schoolhouses and less jails,

More books and less guns,

More learning and less vice,

More leisure and less greed,

More justice and less revenge,

We want more opportunities to cultivate our better nature.

Samuel Gompers, founder, AFL

10. Eating India: Chitrita Banerji: I’d first come across Chitrita in a Granta issue on Food over a decade ago. I liked what I saw, resolved to look out for her books, and then……nothing. I just plain forgot. One of those things. It should have been a no-brainer for me: she’s from Calcutta, writes about Bengali food, writes well. And then, when I was lazily walking around the MIT Coop a few months ago, I saw this book, bought it immediately, and then set it aside for Christmas. It’s unusual to be able to salivate while looking forward to reading a book.

11. The Center Cannot Hold: Elyn R. Saks When I was younger I would have refused to pick this book up, on the basis that “center” was misspelt and that Yeats would not have liked it. More fool me, the folly of youth. I’m a sucker for books that have to do with that strange space where intelligence and wisdom meet (and conquer) repeated adversity, where persistence and patience are called for in vast quantities in order to overcome great odds. Professor Saks’ book promises all this and more, so I’m really looking forward to it. Andrew Solomon, one of the reviewers quoted on the back cover, has this to say:

In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks describes with precision and passion the tribulations of living with schizophrenia, and conjures up in explicit detail a world that has gone unseen for far too long. In narrating her own capacity for success in the face of the illness, she holds out a beacon of hope for those who suffer with psychosis.

12. Scared to Death: Booker and North I can’t remember who recommended this book to me, it was very recent and I ordered it straightaway.

I quote from the Amazon synopsis: This book for the first time tells the inside story of each of the major scares of the past two decades, showing how they have followed a remarkably consistent pattern.It analyses the crucial role played in each case by scientists who have misread or manipulated the evidence; by the media and lobbyists who eagerly promote the scare without regard to the facts; and finally by the politicians and officials who come up with an absurdly disproportionate response, leaving us all to pay a colossal price, which may run into billions or even hundreds of billions of pounds.

Individually, it is possible for us to take extreme “sides” on many of these debates over the years; not surprisingly, we have done so; in most cases, it is no longer possible for us to debate the issues dispassionately. As a result, I guess I’ve withdrawn from taking part in such debates; instead, I concentrate on trying to figure out how the “system” works, how information can be corrupted, how that corrupt information is used to acquire funding, how the whole Emperor’s New Clothes thing is then played out, how the media is manipulated and manipulates, how it all ends with unheard whimpers.

You know what? The system described above is not just about world-changing causes, it exists in many large organisations. For issue or cause read project, for media read powerpoint, for scientist read consultant. So of course I am interested in understanding the system.

13. The Transparent Society: David Brin. I’ve read quite a lot of Brin over the years; for some reason I’d never read his nonfiction. The book may be a decade old, but the theme remains very current to me: as information technology evolves, will we be faced with an increasing need for trading away privacy for freedom? What does that trade-off really mean for people who have neither privacy nor freedom? That to me is the real question, and I am told Brin tries to answer it. So I look forward to finding out.

Well, there you have it. I’ve wanted to try something like this for a long time, write a book review with a difference. Review what I intend to read rather than what I have read. Share the rationale behind that intent. Look for opinion and comment as a result.

I’ve no idea how I’ve done with it, this is just a two-part experiment. Your comments will let me know if I should venture forth with shared intent again.

I love this time of year, as everything winds down and I get the chance to spend some real contiguous time with family and close friends. I’ve been very privileged: for many years, we’ve tended to share our vacations with a couple of other families, and the children have all grown up together as a result. As the children have grown older, there have been subtle changes to what we do during such times; in its simplest form,  what happens is that the older children tend to do their own thing a lot of the time, the younger ones are (in their own peculiar way) easy to manage en bloc, and the net result is that the adults get to spend a good deal of time just chilling out.

Companionable silences are common. A lot of reading goes on, with conversation meandering in and out of the soft quiet. Which is great, as long as you prepare for it. That’s what I’ve been doing, and that’s what I thought I’d share with you…… the books I have stored up for reading this Christmas, the reasons why.

Here goes:

1. David Leavitt: The Indian Clerk I’ve never read any of Leavitt’s books before; he courts controversy both in historical accuracy as well as in treatment of sexual attitudes; he’s even been sued by Stephen Spender for plagiarism, and lost the case. But I just could not resist an ambitious novel based loosely around the real-world interactions between G.H.Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan. Recently published, it had mixed reviews; I was swayed, however, by the Kirkus review, which said: “The certainty attributed to mathematics is richly contrasted to the uncertainty of human relationships in Leavitt’s unusual and absorbing eighth novel…impressively researched, insistently readable and keenly sensitive…easily Leavitt’s best—and a heartening indication that [Leavitt] has reached a new level of artistic maturity.”

2. Community and Society: Ferdinand Tonnies Been meaning to read Tonnies for a while; skimmed him earlier, when Stephen Smoliar recommended him. But I found him hard going then. Now I’ve found a Dover edition, translated by Charles Loomis, which seems a much easier read. If one must read paperbacks, then Dover’s a good publisher to go with. Good solid opaque paper, wonderful binding, the books last and last. They don’t fox or crack or anything, they just seem to age gracefully. There is something immensely satisfying about reading a Dover.

3. Convergence Culture: Henry Jenkins Been following Jenkins’ works for some time now; I’ve been particularly interested in understanding the power inherent in the 21st century media consumer, ever since some conversations with Dan Gillmor as he was preparing for a Release 1.0 article and then for the book We The Media. Jenkins appears to be doing some seminal work in this respect, and I’m looking forward to doing some delving.

4. William Wilberforce: William Hague I’ve been fascinated by the life of William Wilberforce for many years now, and I’ve read multiple books on his life. This version, issued recently, has had some worthwhile reviews. More importantly, it was given to me as a 50th birthday present by my close friend and pastor Wes Richards, so it’s a must-read.

5. Dirty Diplomacy: Craig Murray Now this is a strange one. I’d never heard of the book or the author. I was put off by the subtitle, which read The Rough And Tumble Adventures Of A Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck On The Frontline of the War Against Terror. But then I saw this mixed New York Times Review by Tara McKelvey, and then noticed the comments on the front cover. “A remarkable achievement” — Noam Chomsky. “A fearless book by a fearless man” — Harold Pinter. I have to read it.

6. The Future of Reputation: Daniel J. Solove I was deeply impressed by the stuff Solove has written on privacy, so any book by him on “gossip, rumor, and privacy on the internet” was a slam dunk. No way I can avoid reading it. I think there’s a real collision of cultures coming on the subject of privacy. Solove is one person that spends real time focusing on the real risks of bad information, rather than just scare-mongering.

7. Evocative Objects: Sherry Turkle. I really enjoyed The Second Self, I have re-read Life On The Screen a number of times, so I was bound to want to read Evocative Objects. I think Turkle captures something about human-computer interaction that very few other people do, something that is important and precious. Something about our humanity within that interaction.

More later, maybe tomorrow. And so to bed.

Those of you who know me well will also know that I love books. I read them. I devour them. I collect them. I love them.
At home, we had books everywhere, and I have many wonderful childhood memories built around reading. The way we lived, it was perfectly normal to hear harrumphs and guffaws as you wandered in and out of rooms, the sounds made by people enjoying what they read; there were times of day (and night) where all those who were awake were reading.

We read eclectically. And voraciously. We were the kind of people that would walk a mile for a Camel or a new Rex Stout; if we had to choose, then Rex Stout won. We quoted from poetry and from plays, from books as well as magazines. We were Walter Mittys and Holden Caulfields, we lived among Empresses as well as Queens, we moved from misty-eyed meanderings about “acres and acres of golden yellow pajamas glinting in the noonday sun” to equally misty-eyed meanderings about the liquefaction of Julia’s clothes.

We read Wodehouse all day as if our lives depended on it; at high noon it was Max Brand; in between games of Cluedo it was Perry Mason time; our Grishams weren’t Grisham, they were Desmond Bagley and Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes. [An aside. We played a short-lived charade game where you had to guess “composites”, weird creatures that were portmanteau phrases merging a popular film with a popular song. And the worst one I can remember was “The Guns of Navarone A Sunday“, which should need no explanation. That one hurt].

We read Shakespeare as well as Pynchon, Dante as well as Rabelais, the Thousand and One Nights as well as George Mikes, Salinger and Mailer, Dumas and Swift, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Hawthorne and Eliot, Whitman and Twain, Carroll as well as Castaneda, Sellar with Yeatman. We moved from Parker to Parker as if nothing was amiss. Leo Rosten kept warm alongside H Allen Smith. Somewhere in between we read a lot of comics as well, but that’s for another post.

We dwelt among many untrodden ways. We would talk to each other about the books we’d read, the books we were reading. [An aside, about “untrodden ways”. I remember a time when the men of the house were busy reading the oeuvre of Nevil Shute book by book, while the womenfolk were equally busy with …. Mills and Boon. It drove us crazy. So we the menfolk did the only thing possible, we started reading the Mills and Boons as well. Which drove the others crazy. Yup, I’m confessing to having read a horde of “Violent” Winspear (Violet’s heroes were always festooned with romantic scars) and Anne Mather and Janet Dailey and others of that ilk). We laughed and teased about Innocent Deceptions and long tall drinks with cubes of ice clinking at the bottom of the glass (sic).]

Yes, we read a lot. And we treasured books. So when I came to this country, I was unprepared for some of what I saw. People tearing chapters off books and throwing the “read” bits in the bin. People clearing houses and throwing hordes of musty mouldy books into skips. People actually destroying books.

I was aghast. And I’ve been collecting books ever since. Some strange collections, some very strange collections. For example, I have over 180 different first editions of just one book. Don Quixote. Just for the illustrations.

Bearing all this in mind, I had some mixed feelings when I first saw the works of Brian Dettmer, one of which I’ve used as an illustration above. I’ve decided I quite like his stuff. What do you think?

If you do like it, you can find out more at Aron Packer Gallery, which is where I found out about him. How did I get there? I Stumbled.