This post was sparked off by a recent comment made by Stephen Smoliar, which I reproduce here:

Massively parallel reading may work for entertainment, but I find I need to focus when I get to the heavy stuff. Otherwise, I just come away with a superficial feel; and, if THAT is what I want, then I can get a bit more depth from THE NEW YORK REVIEW. Actually, I think that good review writing is probably one of the most valuable talents in the age of information overload; but, since so few people agree with me, I doubt that I shall be able to start my own service business around it!

Fascinating comment; there are some bits that resonate very strongly with my thoughts, and other bits where I rise up in dissent.

When Stephen says “I think that good review writing is probably one of the most valuable talents in the age of information overload” I couldn’t agree more with him.

The only question or issue is an old one. one that has already been debated between me and Stephen. What makes an expert an expert? Who decides that a review is good?
When we have active feedback loops and ratings systems and rankings, what is the role of the reviewer? What makes a good reviewer?

For some time now, I’ve been reading Amazon reviews by Kevin Killian. I was put on to Kevin by Ron Silliman, via his blog. And how did I find Ron? He once linked to me, and I followed him back. Now he’s on my blogroll, and I read him regularly.

Instead of Kevin Killian, I could have said any of the following:

• PD Harris
• Daniel Jolley
• Kurt Messick
• Lawyeraau
• Mary Whipple

Actually there’s a very long list. The names above are the top 5 in a Top 500 list at Amazon, which you can find here.

But the guy I read? Kevin Killian? Well, he was last seen at number 122, or something like that.

And that’s where the sheer power of the web comes in. Sure I subscribe to, and read, the New York Review, The London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and, for that matter, even Kirkus. At some layer of abstraction, I could argue that there is very little to differentiate between Kirkus and Zagat, which I also subscribe to.

What differentiates all of these from people like Kevin Killian is something very small, yet very important.

There’s a Long Tail Effect in Reviews, in Reviewers, and in Review Readers. A Long Tail Effect that gets suppressed in a traditional hub-and-spoke model.

It is only the market that can determine who is good and who isn’t. And over time, as we remove the corruptions of traditional sales and marketing, there will be a high correlation between what the market thinks and what the market is perceived to be thinking.

So for the most part I agree with Stephen: good reviews, and good reviewers, are really important. What we have to be careful about is formulating “expert” rules about what makes a good review or reviewer.

There’s one other thing that niggled me slightly. Stephen seem to suggest that being entertained by books is not a good thing. Even when I read to learn, I am entertained. I like being entertained. Why ever not?
Maybe it’s the words used, and I shouldn’t get hung up over the semantics. But I’ve heard similar arguments about new ways of working, even about social software, so I am wary. “If people are having fun it can’t be work”. Why ever not?

Kerry Buckley came up with a wonderful piece of apocrypha when commenting on a recent post of mine. I reproduce the entire comment here:

• ….During the run-up to their launch, the schedule slipped significantly, and the CEO (overall a great guy) made the classic engineering management mistake of adding many more developers to the late project in hopes of speeding its completion.
• …
• After failing to win several arguments on this point, the engineers … each bought a copy of [The Mythical Man-Month], brought the CEO into a conference room, and stacked up the copies of the book, telling him, It is extremely urgent that you read this book. We’ve bought you many copies so that you might read it faster. They made their point.

Great stuff. It’s amazing how many people I meet today who have zero understanding of Brooks’ book. Maybe we’ve made it too easy for people to call themselves project managers; maybe we roll over too easily and go into the hairshirt-and-woe-is-me mindset as IT gets accused yet again of not delivering; maybe we’ve just grown to be too apathetic. I sense that for many IT people, life is now about Take A Number. Folks, we need to start caring again. It’s up to us.

On a lighter note. Another apocryphal story.

There was this guy, worked years at trying to get his book published. Failed gloriously. Finally went for a vanity publisher. Published the book. Failed gloriously.

Last throw of the dice. He rents a disused warehouse, scheduled for demolition in a few weeks. Converts it into a simple bookshop. Stocks it up with a zillion copies of his book. And nothing else. Calls the shop The One-Book Bookshop.

Fails gloriously.

There was a die still tumbling, though.

He puts up a notice in the window, saying:

Satisfaction Guaranteed. If you don’t like the book, come back anytime and exchange it for any other book in the shop. No quibbles.

ABC, NBC and the rest of television’s alphabet soup cover the shop.

His book becomes a best-seller.

By the way, if any of you knows how to get a copy of this book, please let me know. I’d love to acquire one. Again the blogosphere may succeed where Google failed.

Have you, by any chance, started reading more books in parallel than you used to? I have, and I’m trying to figure out whether it’s an age thing, or whether the Web has an unusual effect on reading habits. I’ve noticed that my tendency to read more than one book at the same time has, if anything, increased since the Web. Just curious.

While on the subject of books…..Some of you wanted me to bring back LibraryThing, which I will do. Soon. I’m working on a makeover for the site, and it should go live shortly. In the meantime, here’s what I’m reading while in my current incarcerated state:

I guess I realise just how odd I am when I see the books I’ve chosen as my companions for the next few days.

Some of them, I’m reading for the nth time, n being a number greater than 5. Here’s a quick summary:

The Social Life of Information by Seely Brown and Duguid : I probably read this at least once a year. I think it should be required reading for anyone working with information.

Son of Rhubarb by H Allen Smith: Maybe for the 6th time, I’m going through the whole H Allen Smith oeuvre this year. Anyone who thinks it is normal to bequeath a baseball team to an alley cat is normal enough for me.

How To Be Decadent by George Mikes: Maybe for the 10th time, I’ve been regaling myself on this wonderful humorist. Ever since How To Be An Alien I have loved reading and re-reading this guy.
White Flame by James Grady: Never read this, but ever since Six Days Of The Condor I’ve enjoyed Grady. Any book recommended by Gerald Petievich and Robert Crais must be worth a look.

Agile Project Management by Jim Highsmith: Probably reading this for the 4th time. If you’re interested in Agile you should read the whole series.

Housekeeping vs the Dirt by Nick Hornby: Never read it, I think I received it as part of my subscription to the Believer. I must have read quite a bit of it in his original columns, but what the hell. Always enjoyable.

Beyond A Boundary by CLR James: Dom, Sam and Gilbert sent this to me while I was in hospital. (Thanks!). Excellent cricket book. One that I haven’t actually read before. Already love it.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman: I think it was Bill Barnett, who used to work with me and now works at Wachovia, who recommended I read this. I took his advice. And love the book. Thanks, Bill.

Moral Minds by Marc Hauser: One of these books that appears to belong to the Edward Wilson Consilience class, probably similar to Wilson’s next book, The Creation. I am fascinated by the way the science-religion battle is taking shape. I’ve never had a problem with believing I was created. Hard reading, slow reading, but worth it.

In Darkest England and the Way Out by General Booth: Until you read books like this one, you don’t quite realise how you can learn from history. Written by the founder of the Salvation Army, it could have been written last year. Except for the stiltedness of the language, of course. The commentary on social conditions and the breakdown of the family unit is so similar it’s uncanny.

Free Markets and Social Justice by Cass Sunstein: I’m probably reading this only for the second time, and this time pretty slowly. I think Sunstein is an important read for bloggers. Don’t quite know why, can’t put my finger on it. But I read quite a bit of Sunstein, and it probably shows.

Comeback by Richard Stark: I devour anything by Donald E Westlake, in whatever guise. Two of his series stand out. The Dortmunder “caper” novels, which he writes as Westlake, and the Parker “hardboiled” thrillers, written under the name of Richard Stark. More about Dortmunder later. Soon.

Well, at the very least there may be one or two people out there who now have a holiday read recommendation they didn’t have ten minutes earlier. That’s all for now.

A few people have come up to me and wondered why I share “personal” things on my blog: things like changing my job, or, more recently, having a heart attack and then having a pacemaker fitted.

Fair questions.

And, given I have a lot of time on my hands while I rest and recuperate, I thought hard about them.
I realised for myself that I view the blogosphere as:

• a series of overlapping communities
• communities where people are free to walk around as they please, no walls or doors anywhere
• communities that are moderated rather than led
• communities where conversations take place
• conversations that are open and transparent
• conversations that are persistent and archived and searchable
• conversations that capture a richness of context that is hard to replicate elsewhere

And because I have that view, I don’t tend to recognise things like “content” or “flaming” or “soapbox” or “reportage” and stuff like that.

Once I see myself as part of a community, then it makes sense to behave like any member of any real community. You belong. You share things. You trust other members. You go through rites of passage together.

Together.

I’ve been astonished by the comments and reactions I’ve had while I posted about my recent medical challenges, pleasantly astonished. I’ve learnt even more about community as a result.

I’m really grateful to all of you for that learning. It is very precious. We all need to rediscover our sense of community, of shared belonging and identity, of being able to celebrate together and to mourn together, to learn together as well as to unlearn those things that hold us back.

We are only now beginning to discover the true potential of the blogosphere.

Thomas Madsen Mygdal and his team really had something when they themed reboot 8 this year as Renaissance. It was fantastic. I was privileged to be part of it, privileged to hear talented people share their thoughts and world views. [Thomas, if you read this, I hope you’re planning the next one already, and that you’re going to let us all know soon].

We need to continue to discover our true potential. And the blogosphere helps. As do events like reboot.

I’m not a particular fan of any form of “chain” anything, but it’s not something I’m legalistic about. Kris Tuttle “tagged” me via this post while I was in hospital, so it behooves me to follow suit. [All your fault, Kris :-) ] Here’s my five “little-knowns”:

• 1. I’ve never learnt to swim or to drive. Ever. This is something I plan to correct over the next 12 months.
• 2. I received my first formal proposal of marriage when I was 17. From a man! And only learnt about it when I heard my siblings, parents and grandmother hooting with laughter. [I used to have long hair in those days, and a very short sighted crony of my grandmother’s thought that I was perfect for her grandson. And my grandmother, God bless her soul, couldn’t resist going along for the ride.]
• 3. I spent thirty-odd hours in a coma in the early 1980s after being worked over by a large group of skinheads. Some people say that it explains a lot.
• 4. I still find Blackadder and Fawlty Towers, and for that matter PG Wodehouse or even Laurel and Hardy, really funny. And still watch cartoons when I have an excuse to….the joys of parenthood!
• 5. I once played scrabble for nearly 20 hours non-stop with one of my childhood friends, Viraf Mehta. I believe Viraf was the first non-UK holder of the UK Scrabble Championship. He’s an unbelievable player.

And here are my five tags: AKMA Nilanjana at Kitabkhana
Ron Silliman Kathleen Herding Ric Hayman Over to the tagged.