Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

One of the great things about the weekends is that I can cuddle in my favorite Corbusier long chair, with something mighty nice to drink,  John Coltrane’s melancholic saxophone through my Sony acoustic system…and something to read. While I spend my evenings and nights devouring novels and romans, my weekends are for catching up on newspapers and scientific magazines. Guess what, more and more I read those online… on the screen of my laptop. And… that is not very compatible with my relaxed dude-in-long chair attitude. No good way to hold the microcomputer.

41, and trying to find a way to justify an iPad. Midlife crisis, is that you?

There we were outside, overlooking a wonderful sunset over a well-known San Diego golf course. Three of us, simultaneously holding conversation, emptying starters and drinks, banging email over connected laptops while keeping an eye on the ever flashing blackberries.

How do you keep two screens, a beer and a discussion going? The gargoyle scene from Neil Stephenson’s amazing book Snow Crash comes into mind: people who make their living connected to the web are better off if they integrate their gear in their clothing… and body. Kurzweiler’s been announcing this for years.

Maybe on my next trip: overhead data projection on my designer shades, middle-ear-implanted voice link, trousers with a terabyte of data storage, keyboard-projecting shirt button.

And a water-cooled in-brain Twitter add-on decrypting fact from the vapor of nuance. Hell yeah!

I spend more time on the road than I care to compute. A formidastic part of my life seems to consist in trying to get from point A to point B while on point C yellow clad pointy haired entrepreneurs put obstacles on the road because they want to make it better. Or something.

Too often, before that snail of traffic moves, I surely have enough time to get acquainted with most of the people around me. That nose plucking sweaty teenager in the pimped up pink Clio behind, the yelling kids in the back of the Beamer in front, the aspiring Elite top model on my right. They are not moving either. They are intriguing.

But there is simply no way to shout out on a highway: “Hey! You look interesting! Want a tissue? Great car! Where do you work?” Nope. Everybody looks around, listening to some bonobo-on-steroids on the radio that is way too awake and loud for the beginning of a day. No way to connect. No way to reach out.

That’s why I decided to put my Twitter handle on my car. Hoping it will become a new trend. So people can Tweet me goodmorning on the highway. It’s safe, because we’re not moving anyway. It’s social behavior. It’s fun. I got a tweet from a Landrover Discovery today, and it made me smile. just for that I’ll keep TweetTweet, the tweet car on the road.

To paraphrase Snow Crash (great book):  The TweetTweet car has enough potential energy packed into its motor to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a Johnny box or a BoomBoom beater, the TweetTweet car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished exhausts. When you put the hammer down, shit happens. TweetTweet is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta… And it’s bloody stuck in traffic somewhere near you. Send me a tweet

Being a voracious reader, having a big brick of a book over the holidays was a good start.  And eat this, Harry Potter fans, Susannah Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell got me hooked for three days in a row. It deals with magic, dreamy written in a massive 19th-century -like tome. Clarke’s novel reads like Proust on mushrooms, and is an anachronistic oddity that switches off the real life out there for all seven hundred and eighty-two pages of Victorian writing. 

This book is not for the faint of hearted. Jonathan Strange, the magician mentioned in the title, does not even make an appearance until page two hundred and eight.

It took me the better half of two nights, three steaming baths and a great bottle of Bordeaux to finish it off. It’s a great book, I’ll put it between Ulysses of James Joyce an God created the Integers of Hawkin: to re-read when I am retired J.

Just looking at the news channels will tell you: the markets out there are in turmoil, to put it lightly. That means that consultancy firms and their clients go deep to stay afloat. Getting better, faster, more specialized, more strategic. Whatever works, name it, do it. “Go out, pitch to win, do not come back close second” must be a phrase that thousands of consultants have heard over the last few weeks. Pressure is high. Only the very best… etc J

I was given a book Market Forces, by Richard Morgan, painting a pitch dark view on the corporate world in the very uncomfortable close future. Consultancy firms respond to tenders (hey, that’s my world!) from global corporations. Over time these tenders are fought more and more grimly. From showing up with the best team, to showing up first… to –well-  showing up basically.

In  Market Forces, tenders and pitches are fought out on the road, on the way to the client. Pitch teams kill off weaker opponents on the deserted highway to the pitch. No rules. No witnesses. Quickest reflexes and biggest cojones wins. Competing consultants only stop to collect the bloody plastic corporate nametags from their dying opponents. Clients get the consultant that has proven to be the last man standing, natural selection. The consultant that went the extra mile, and lived. “Show up early, with blood on your wheels… or do not show up at all”. 

The day I find that on a real RFP (Request for Proposal) I quit. Although….. J

I just love it when people give me books. I just love books J. And I can judge people based on the books they choose: do they know me really well? I have a twisted mind and that reflects itself on my favorite reading list.

One of the best books ever offered to me (tx Kate!) is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The science fiction novel triggers my interest in computers, virtual worlds, the power of language, viral marketing and ancient civilizations.   William Gibson touched me deeply with pattern recognition. Stephenson intrigued me from beginning to end. You’ll just have to read the book, and follow Hiro Protagonist. And discover what I do for a living: condense fact from the vapor of nuance…. J

I have something with books. Since I was a little boy, I am fascinated by the stories and worlds that books are able to project. I read them, I collect them… I am pretty helpless and unhappy without them. People who like me, often offer me books… a sweet behavior that is encouragedJ.  

When I was offered Stardust by Neil Gaiman, I could not stop reading. I read it twice in three days. Here was somebody, offering me a book that I adored. That was written in a way that made me shiver, and glow, and smile. The little boy in me enjoyed the fairytale, the writer in me fell in love with the sparkling language, the rest of me simply dreamed away.

It takes big cojones to write a tale for adults that involves witches, falling stars and enchanted forests, and features talking goats, helpful unicorns and burning love. Gaiman’s prose creates me a parallel world that fits me. I parked the book on my trusted shelves, next to my all time favorite Dune by Frank Herbert. And I’ll be watching out for falling stars….

Let me tell you a secret. I DO have a dark site. From time to time (when nobody is watching) I dive in a book on management techniques. See, I need to do some management myself, and that proves not always easy. So occasionally, I invest the odd dollar in a book that promises to make my life utterly going smoother. 

Take email. Personally, I’m convinced it is a communication tool for old people. Long live IM! But David Allen’s book and podcast series “Getting things done” (yep I read it) has a solution for dealing with email in an earthshaking way, using his “GTD Method”: a ground-breaking work-life management system. How? Simple: you need to take action on every piece of email that arrives in your inbox. Now there is a thought. J 
It gets better. Divide incoming mail in two piles: things that require action, and things that do not. Easy, is it not? Let’s now focus on the things that require action. Three possibilities: If it takes less than two minutes: just do it. If it takes more than two minutes: delegate it. Or you can choose to just defer it. Seriously, that changes the whole concept of mail, not? J 
For the things that require not immediate action: File it, delete it (interesting concept), or flag it for some eventual action later on.

You see? Reading management books DOES change your life. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to hire a small army to delegate to.

On my way back from the Geneva Car Show, I finished another book of Jeremy Clarkson. Honestly, I loved every word.  Well, I know… he is getting a bit (ok, a lot) older, a bit tougher, and a bit grumpier. But, he is still a darn good driver, and the best Top Gear presenter the world will ever know. And yes, he is a bit homophobic, xenophobic, claustrophobic, hypochondriac, woman-helpless and generally political incorrect. And I love him for every bit of it, because he is so endearingly honest, straight and madly testosterone driven. He hates diesel, small cars, Europeans in general, Japanese wheels, Americans and rules by default. He will be the last one on the barricades, shouting “Rule the waves”. He hates cars that go slow, have less than enough horsepower and take an eternity to reach 100/hour. And above all, this grumpy slightly balding man drips his pen in pure vinegar, and writes with a vengeance. And he writes the way he drives: without compromises, fast, and relentless. On the edge. Ridiculously funny. And for crying out loud: you have to forgive him all the rest

Two weeks ago, I received a mysterious package in the office. Someone had sent me three books through Amazon, I was happy as a puppy. And by miracle, that someone must know me extremely well, seen I am liking the books very much. Books and me, I guess it’s all my grandmother fault. She, and my mom, have raised me with books… lots of books. I became hopelessly book-addicted. And proud of it. J There are books everywhere in my life, could not do without them. Through this blog, people who know me a bit better ask often what I read, and why. Our interactive guru Guy came with a workable solution: from now on, on the right sidebar of Heliade.net, you will find my books: to do, in progress, done. If you click on the “recent books”, I will give you -with a few lines- my modest -but very correct- opinion on the book. Enjoy. And thanks for the books…