Dominic Sayers

Environmental cooking

It's a well-known fact that you can cook salmon in your dishwasher. And cooking with your car's engine is so common there's even a book about it. Me, I'm heating a pie on the radiator in my office. Look it works, alright. I don't want haute cuisine for my lunch, just a hot pie. Well warm anyway. Warmish. Environmental cooking. It's the latest Thing. There must be alternative uses for the steam dispenser on that coffee machine you never use any more. What about that 3GHz processor in your PC? It generates enough heat to roast an aurochs. My wife has just published a cook book written by the artist-in-residence on a building site. It features a recipe from each of the 57 nations represented in the building site's workforce. It's a good book and as soon as it's available on Amazon I'll link to it. But I'm thinking - now there's a precedent. InSite Arts is a cook-book publisher. Send me your environmental cooking recipes and I'll get them published somehow.

How to read, part 2

Stephen Smoliar recommends keeping brief notes on things that he doesn't immediately understand. Guru suggests reading page 1 then page n of a book. If page n doesn't make sense then let n = (n+1)/2 and try again. Abi collates a couple of tips from Brad DeLong and Tyler Cowen on reading productively: you are allowed to skip pages! Who knew? Also, you are allowed to stop reading if you're not getting any value from the book.

How to read, part 1

JP reminded me how he gets through an enormous number of books. He wrote about it as an aside in a longer post. I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him at length:

I tend to read management and technology books on a three-pass basis. First pass is a quick skim, taking no notes, just absorbing the feel of the book. If I find one compelling idea in it, the book makes it to pass 2, where I read more slowly, skip entire chapters along the way, but make notes. If I find I make more than three notes, I read the entire book even more slowly, in pass 3. Maybe 1 in 200 such books make pass 3.

There are two problems with this approach for me (specifically). Firstly, I don't think I could absorb as much as JP from pass 1 - I suspect the clockspeed of my CPU doesn't quite match his. Secondly, the quality and importance of my reading list has already been established, in particular the Books I Should Have Read. They ought to pass the initial filter easily. Perhaps a hybrid approach might work - read the thing properly but skim certain chapters that don't seem to be as relevant to me personally.

Books I should read

Oh dear. If my list of Books I Should Have Read wasn't long enough, here is the list of books people have suggested I read as well:-

1. Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives: Books: Satyajit Das (Steve Patrick)

2. China Shakes The World: The Rise of a Hungry Nation: Books: James Kynge (Steve Patrick)

3. Who Runs This Place?: The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century: Books: Anthony Sampson (Steve Patrick)

4. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software: Books: Charles Petzold (Chris Hind)

5. Tricks of the Mind: Books: Derren Brown (Malcolm Dick)

6. The God Delusion: Books: Richard Dawkins (Steve Patrick)

7. Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe: Books: William Rosen (newspaper review)

Another plea then: how do people read so much? My journey to work is short so I can just about read The Economist in a week. At work I do work. At home I attend to my family. I don't watch television or have a hobby or do anything that could be displaced in favour of reading.

How do you manage it?

Footnote: these lists are now on del.icio.us - Books I should have read and books to read. In the spirit of JP's NewTailBlog meme, perhaps other people could use the same tag for their lists and see what happens when we aggregate the lists.

Books I should have read, update

Well it's been a poor six weeks of progress since my last update. I had a two-week holiday in Tobago to plough through some of these but very little got read. The moral of the story is: don't take a two-year-old on holiday if you want to do any serious reading. I started The Mythical Man Month, but found its content a bit old-hat - not surprising considering how long it has been since it was written. I can see how revelatory it might have been thirty years ago. Brooks is a bit fond of his biblical imagery and parables for my taste; it's sometimes difficult to resolve a rational approach with such a faith-based outlook on life, but wiser people than me have managed it I suppose. Unfortunately the list has got longer as well. I realised that two corporate sagas needed to be included: Barbarians At The Gate (about the takeover of RJR Nabisco) and The Smartest Guys In The Room (about Enron) are definite must-have-reads. Latest status: 1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell (job done) 2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell 3. The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki 4. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond 5. The Mythical Man Month, Frederick P. Brooks (Started) 6. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis (job done) 7. The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand, Chris Anderson (purchased but not started) 8. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Clayton Christensen 9. The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, Matthew May 10. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (purchase but not started) 11. Barbarians at the Gate, Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (purchased but not started)

Books I should have read, update

Latest status: 1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell (job done) 2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell 3. The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki 4. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond 5. The Mythical Man Month, Frederick P. Brooks (purchased but not opened yet) 6. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis (now finished. Yes, good stories but not sure what it signifies today. Enjoyable nonetheless) 7. The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand, Chris Anderson 8. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Clayton Christensen 9. The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, Matthew May Oh dear, the list is getting longer faster than I can read. To add to my woes Mike Masnik has now published the bibliography for his collection of essays on the economics of ideas and content. I suspect that I should have read more of his list than I actually have.

Books I should have read, update

OK, here's where I stand on my background task of catching up on the books everybody else claims to have read. 1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell  (just finished this on my way back from holiday in Spain. Still pondering what I think of it, but at least I can now say with hand on heart that I have actually read it. Good holiday read if nothing else, not too taxing) 2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell 3. The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki 4. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond 5. The Mythical Man Month, Frederick P. Brooks (purchased but not opened yet) 6. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis (under way, again easy reading) I have had some recommendations from friends and colleagues for which I am very grateful. Thanks Jonathan, Steve and Malcolm. I've added Jonathan's to the list because it met all my criteria. Steve and Malcolm's I will add to another list: Books I have been recommended to read 1. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (now in paperback I see) 2. Tricks of the Mind, Derren Brown I like the sound of both of them and will do my best to get to them in time. Come on, there must be more non-fiction classics I haven't thought of yet - what have I missed?

Book overlap

Paul Birch has a list of books that he calls "insightful". I assume he has read them. I was interested to see all six of my "Books I should Have Read" list on there. Perhaps I should aspire to read the others in his list too?

Books I should have read

6. Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis

Books I should have read: update

Forgot an obvious one: 1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell 2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell 3. The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki 4. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond And there's also a short list of books I thought I should read but got annoyed with and threw across the room, starting with: 1. No Logo, Naomi Klein Irritating beyond belief. Of course I haven't got anywhere near reading anything from the top list although I did buy The Tipping Point. Now gathering dust on the side table that is the physical embodiment of the Books I Should Have Read list.