No books for ages and then two come along.
Eats, shoots and Leaves, as I am sure you all know, is a book about punctuation. It’s the ideal book for Ruth; but I’ve been shying away from it, Mainly because I’m pap at spelling never mind punctuation. I also read the first couple of pages a while back; and I didn’t get any of the jokes.
Now, as you can no doubt tell by my liberal use of semi-colons, I have read the book all the way to the end.
It’s a fantastically well written book. I don’t really want to criticise anyone who has managed to get published, but comparing just the writing of this book with Pies and Prejudice, really doesn’t do Stuart Marconi any favours. I think one of the reasons I took so long to read his book was the style and the pace. In contrast Lynne Truss knows how to write, she’s quite funny too.
It also does a really good job of explaining just where all the funny little marks are supposed to go. It’s of course still quite confusing; there are 17 rules for commas, not all of which make sense, or are easy to follow; There are other bits, where even experts can’t make up their minds; and there are several ways of doing the same thing, most of which are wrong at some point.
I’m going to make a concerted effort, at least for this week, to improve my punctuation. but I have to admit to being a little intimidated; because now everybody is looking, they will notice how bad I am at it.
she does at one point despair of illiterate book reviewers, so I’m stopping here.
It’s been a while since I actually finished a book. I think it depends a lot on my reading habbit; and just how much time I give myself to catch the train in the morning.
Stuart Marconi’s Pies and Prejudice is a book about the north, as in the north of the country - north of Crewe as it turns out. It’s meant to be a look the north has character too, and isn’t just flat caps and the Hovis music; I’m not convinced it achieves it aim.
Really this book is a Stuart Marconi nostalgia trip: He moved dow south for the glittering radio one thing. Now don’t get me wrong people are entitled to be proud of there roots, and he does a very good job of getting all the bits of the north and explaining the subtle differences that make us all unique - I’m from Liverpool which Marconi rightly puts as not really a northern town, more of an enclave of its own.
It’s just later in the book, he gets all sentimental and starts rambling about random music facts and bits of history that really don’t bring much to it. It has the sense of a book that the author could have finished after about 150 pages; but you can’t sell books that short so his editor made him add bits onto the end.
There is a whole bit at the bigging which tries (and I suspect fails) to persuade southerners that this book isn’t just a northern thing; again I think the publishers made him do it. The reality is why would you want to read this if you are from the south, it’s like me wanting to read about the history of Sussex - first I’d have to find it on a map.
Just finished Blink by Malcom Gladwell. This is his next book after The Tipping point which I read about three weeks ago. Unsurprisingly it’s very similar in style, and has the same type of quite interesting insights with Rambly bits in it. On the whole Malcom Gladwell books don’t give you amazing insight into how we think or what makes us tick, but they do lift the lid a little bit on the whole mysterious world of just how it all works.
The most interesting part of this book, was the references to the Harvard Implicit Association tests, that you can take on line. They show you just how scarily your brain is wired up in so for example how you associate careerer with male and how you probably have a preference for white faces over black no matter how much you think you don’t.
oh and apparently, when they changed the green on the 7-up can so it was a bit more yellow, people started to say it tasted nicer.
Next: I am re-reading Simplicity by Edward De Bono
I’m rocketing through the books at the minute, maybe it’s because the telly is so poor. We’ve not had it on in the evening all week. yesterday I finished The Tipping Point which is a book that looks at how cultural epidemics or trends spread though out life.? It’s very interesting, and quite insightful. there was a lot of stuff I already knew, but it’s hard to tell with a book that made such a big impact when it was first release whether the book is repeating or if things are done that way because of the book, I suspect a bit of both.
The book does actually ramble a bit in the middle and definitely at the end. but that’s?not to bad, because the bit in the middle is about sesame street and blues clues, and how they went about making the shows sticky (stickiness is making people stick with something and not fade of and loose interest, something which is quite hard with 4-5 year olds). I’ve said to Ruth that even if she doesn’t read the book (she won’t it’s not her type of book) that she should at least read that bit, it makes you see it all in a new light.
So now I’m starting the Complaint Free Book lets see how long?I last!
So right after finishing that book, what’s next?
Well I am actually reading two more books at the moment, my commuter book is Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. which is a book that looks at how small seemingly insignificant changes can cause huge change in all sorts of things, from disease to fashion trends. I’m about 60 pages in (10 minute train journeys make for slow reads), and so far it’s very interesting.
The book is talking about the types of people that are responsible for large scale changes, and it’s challenging the preconceived ideas of how word of mouth works, and just how marketing actually works. that’s probably why it’s a best seller. once I’m done i will probably move onto blink, which is the next Gladwell book that talks about how we make instant decisions.
The other book I got today, and am about to start is “A complaint Free World - The 21 day challenge that will change your life” It’s a book that encourages you to stop complaining, gossiping? or criticizing. the idea is you wear a purple bracelet (free with $.75 shipping from here) on your arm and every time you catch yourself complaining swap it to the other arm, the idea is to not change arms for 21 days straight. apparently this takes 4-5 months.
Quick scan of the contents and the book looks interesting. to start with I may aim for 21 minutes between complaints 
Just finished my first book of the year the QI Book of general Ignorance. It’s so my type of Christmas book that I got it twice. full of completely random things, that hopefully my photographic brain will be able to reproduce at the most random times of the day. “there is no word in welsh for brown apparently”.
There is a plethora of these types of books now, mainly i suspect do to the Schott’s Orginal Miscellany from a few years back, and i have to say that while with my random fact gathering mind i could probably polish of most of them, the quality can be quite poor. Fortuantly the QI book isn’t one of the poor ones it’s written in nice friendly tone and doesn’t get lost (to much) in it’s delivery, this is helped by the fact that never more than two pages is devoted to anyone thing.
The only real problem with this book is it’s popularity. I was talking to someone today and at least two other people in ear shot? piped up and said they had read the book, this makes my random factness less impact-full* what i need to do is go get another much less popular book and get some facts. like did you know lead has a nice taste? before they knew it was lethal they put it in food.
*management speak alert impact is not a verb 100 times Mr Jump
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