Curation Nation How To Win In A World Where Consumers Are Creators by Steven Rosenbaum

Curation Nation Why The Future of Content Is Context How To Win In A World Where Consumers Are Creators by Steven Rosenbaum

Steven Rosenabum is describing a major shift in how media is being delivered.  Consumers of media are increasingly becoming prosumers and creators of their own content.  People create a variety of sites based on their interests from cooking to baseball.  Steven Rosenbaum runs Magnify.net which aggregates video content on the web so many of his ideas come from his direct business experience.

A prosumer is a consumer who proactively chooses what and how they will consume.  A good example of a prosumer might be someone who buys green products, or only buys from the Better Business Bureau.  Increasingly prosumers are becoming creators of their own content based on what they are interested in. 

The tools of content creation are becoming cheaper and easier to get access to.  Social tools like Twitter, Youtube, blogs, podcasts, and other social media tools are easy to get access to.  It is not just the software and web which is becoming cheaper, people now can easily afford smart phones, laptops, and inexpensive video recorders.  People can use these tools to spread their ideas and opinions.

The difference between this book and other books is that Steven Rosenbaum takes it one step further.  He describes how to curate content, picking out and organizing materials for blogs and websites.  He even describes content strategy citing Kristina Halvorson's book Content Strategy.

Then Steven Rosenabaum talks about how curation scales with aggregation mixed with selective content on websites like The Huffington Post, Blog Her, and Linked In. This creates a larger picture of curation both on the small individual level and on the larger scale of big commercial websites.

None of the material is particularly new.  However, how it is presented is new. This is a solid overview of how to organize social media tools.  It pulls many disparate threads together to create a picture of a strategy to manage and organize social content. The book can be a bit diffuse at times.  This book would be useful for people interested in new media.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This is a literary novel.  The writing is very well crafted.  The story focuses on Victoria Jones, a foster child who has just turned eighteen and been emancipated.  Part of the authors goal in writing this novel is to expose the abusive nature of the foster care systems in the United States.  At times, the novel can be quite difficult to read.  There is a lot of tension in the story.

A major theme in the novel is the Victorian language of flowers, which is a language of emotion expressed through flowers. The author includes an addendum at the end of the book called Victoria's Dictionary of Flowers.  Different flowers express different emotions in the book.  The flowers add color, tone, and feeling to the writing.  The writing uses all five senses.

The action and scenes also take place in very green spaces; a vineyard, a flower market, a flower shop, a floral greenhouse, and a park are some of the settings.  This makes the book very alive.  There is also some sex and quite a bit of writing about the meaning of love.

The characters have an edge to them.  They wound each other emotionally and have a creative edge.  Victoria Jones as she progresses through the novel creates a photographic dictionary of flowers, she selects flowers for weddings, dates, and lovers.  She relates to people in her life with plants.  It is a life at points which is on the edge of homelessness and madness.

The writing is both strong and beautiful.  It is the authors first novel. There is an interview in the back of the book.  The novel is coming out on August 23, 2011.  This was an advanced reading copy sent to me by Library Journal.

How The Hippies Saved Physics, Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser

How The Hippies Saved Physics, Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser

David Kaiser is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  This book is a history of science book.  It is also a popular science book. The book describes how quantum physics which many considered to be fringe science became accepted science.  It is a very strange, eccentric, and interesting story.


The book focuses on a group called the Fundamental Fysiks Group which held sessions at the University of California Berkeley.  Berkeley California is known for its eccentricity and counterculture.  The Fundamental Fysiks Group was instrumental in making quantum mechanics acceptable science.

The cast of characters in this book is very different; Jack Sarfatti, Paul Sirag, and Nick Herbert are the central people covered.  There is also quite a bit in the early chapters on Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein, and Erwin Schrodinger.  There are also numerous scientists spread throughout the book including Richard Feynman and Fritjof Capra who wrote The Dancing Wu Li Masters.

The story is very eccentric and outright strange to the point where it is funny.  There are very surprising sources of funding for the experiments which helped establish quantum physics.  There is the Esalen institute a New Age retreat in California, Werner Erhard and Est who were part of the human potential movement,  Henry Dakin the philanthropist and supporter of paranormal research, and the CIA with its remote viewing experiments.

The experiments themselves are very interesting to read about. They prove things like quantum encryption, nonlocality, and entanglement.  Some experiments do not succeed like faster than light communication.

This is a fascinating history about a very unusual topic which most people have a difficult time understanding.  It shows a process where fringe science is made into accepted science.

The book is very easy to read.  It mostly focuses on the people behind the story, not the physics.  The writing is very clear. There is an index, extensive notes, and bibliography.  There are numerous black and white photographs and easy to understand diagrams.  I found it to be a delightful book to read.

Idea Man A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft by Paul Allen

Idea Man A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft by Paul Allen

Paul Allen founded Microsoft with Bill Gates.  They went to the same high school together and were close friends.  They also were part of the early history of personal computers.  Microsoft was founded on the program BASIC.  One of the reasons it grew to prominence was also because it designed the disk operating system for IBM. 

Paul Allen does an excellent job describing the relentless drive behind people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  I liked his descriptions of how Bill Gates pulled all nighters programming fueled by caffeine and coffee.  It describes the extremely competitive, constantly demanding, will to succeed of many people in the computer industry.  However, this book is more than just a book about success in business.

Paul Allen originally wanted to be an astronaut but could not be because he wore glasses as a teenager.  He read lots of science fiction and constantly was thinking up new things.  In this book, Paul Allen innovates; he creates new computer products, starts new businesses, and does not stop trying new things.

The second part of the book is about what happens when he leaves Microsoft after getting cancer.  He starts living his ideals: founding a Jimi Hendrix museum, buying two sports teams, the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers, helps fund Spaceship One the X-Prize winner, starts a brain research institute, and becomes a serial entrepreneur.  I found this quite inspirational.

I especially liked his descriptions of being a serial entrepreneur.  He describes his failures as well as his successes in starting various businesses.  This is a story of failing a lot, but succeeding a lot as well.  I also liked his descriptions of traveling all over the world.  It would be some peoples dream to live this life.

This book is about business, ideas, innovating, and living your dreams.  It talks about how to take risks and succeed.  It is also about overcoming the adversity of cancer and trying new things.  The book says a lot about not giving up and paying attention to opportunities.

The Lost Fleet Beyond The Frontier Dreadnaught by Jack Campbell

The Lost Fleet Beyond The Frontier Dreadnaught by Jack Campbell


Jack Campbell continues his space opera series with the seventh book in the series.  John "Black Jack" Geary has successfully defeated the Syndic worlds as an Alliance commander.  Now, he is going to seek out the aliens who supported the Syndics.  This is classic space opera.  Black Jack is the hero out of time, a common theme in science fiction.  He was awoken out of frozen sleep after 100 years to lead the Alliance to victory.  This theme goes all the way back to Buck Rogers.

Jack Campbell writes about more than just battles.  The story is also about a man who refuses to become a supreme leader and is a living hero.  John Geary must also deal with the politics of command, prisoners of war, and resupplying his war weary fleet.  He is sent back to face a new enemy, the aliens because the people at home are afraid of him.

The aliens are wonderfully enigmatic.  They destroy their own ships and installations before they can be captured.  As the fleet enters deeper into alien space, the aliens become more and more dangerous.  It follows the classic formula of space opera; each battle must be more challenging, and each time the hero must be more morally upright and cunning.  It makes for an entertaining story.  Predictably at the end the fleet meets up with an even more powerful alien race.  It is a classic, reliable formula.

When I started reading this book, I could not put it down.  It was gripping.  The hero did not just fight the aliens, he outstrategized them.  The story is much more than blazing guns.  Jack Campbell, the author served in the U.S. Navy surface fleet and it shows in the writing.  The series is also on the bestseller list in Locus Magazine.  I also enjoyed reading several of the other books.

Bottled Lightning Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy by Seth Fletcher

Bottled Lightning Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy by Seth Fletcher

This is a history of batteries which make the electric car possible.  Seth Fletcher describes the invention of the battery from its beginnings to modern lithium-ion batteries.  It is about more than cars, because lithium batteries were first used in computers and cell phones before they were used in cars.

The book is very much a pro electric car book focused on the benefits of electric cars.  He enthusiastically describes the Chevrolet Volt, the Nissan Leaf, and the Tesla Roadster as the hope for our future.  His focus is not on hybrid electric cars, but on cars that are purely run by batteries.

I very much enjoyed reading about the lithium mines in Chile and Bolivia.  The largest lithium reserves are in Bolivia.  Seth Fletcher describes his visits to the mines.

There is an excellent reminder that ultimately lithium ion batteries are about more than cars.  Large power plants are starting to use giant lithium ion batteries as back up power storage.  This will grow with the increased use of wind and solar power.

This book is worth reading if you are interested in alternative energy or automobiles.  It is more of a story about batteries than just cars. 

Creators of the Superheroes by Thomas Andrae

Creators of the Superheroes Interviews and Commentary about Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Jack Kirby, and Will Eisner by Thomas Andrae

This book gives a very close look at the personal stories behind the creation of the first superheroes; Batman, Superman, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and others.  It is more than just about the art of the comics, it is about how the comic business was created.  The book fits in with other books printed by Hermes Press which has many reprints and biographical works on early comics.

The life stories in this book are often tragic.  Bill Finger one of the first writers of Batman got very little credit and died destitute.  The artists often got very little money from doing comics, most of it went to the publishers.   Most of the artists worked on a commission per page.  Unless you were Jack Kirby and had a solid business sense and a huge readership, or Will Eisner who ran his own company, there was very little money as a comic books artist.

There are many interesting details in the book.  I like the photographs and drawings of the women who inspired the creation of Lois Lane.  The book has over 400 illustrations in it.  It is also a coffee table size book.  Many of the images are photographs of the artists life, original comic book panels, and pictures from movies or films.  Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, and Joe Shuster were movie buffs.  Also Batman and Superman were made into films.

The majority of the text in this book is interviews. A lot of this is about the creative process in making comics.  It also has quite a bit about the artists personal lives.  Thrown in are interesting tidbits like the name Clark Kent is a combination of the movie actors, Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, and Batman's cape was designed after Leonardo's DaVinci's flying machine.

I especially liked the section on Will Eisner.  Will Eisner is considered the creator of the first graphic novel, A Contract With God.  He is also credited with making strong efforts to turn comics into an art form for adults.  He wrote comics as instruction manuals for the army.  This makes his approach different.

This is a fantastic book with beautiful illustrations, excellent interviews, and unique content.  If you are interested in the history of comics you should read this.

Powering The Dream The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal

Powering The Dream The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal


This is a history of alternative energy technology. It is a story of failure as much as it is a story of success. We learn that the ideas behind green technology are not new. There are many historical examples of early green technology in this book. For example, an attempt to build a 1 megawatt wind turbine was done in 1951. We also learn that many of the failures are not about the technology. It is as much about politics, philosophy, and business practices whether or not a new technology fails. The first battery operated cars hd horrible customer service and maintenance.


Alex Madrigal also compares other energy sources to renewables. Most notably he describes how the nuclear industry created a view that it was our future. We get a sense that history repeats itself with different energy sources being touted at different points in recent history. The historical examples are not what you might expect.


We learn that there were solar water heaters in 1930s, solar homes in the 1950s, wind energy was used in the American West to pump water, there was a wave energy demonstration plant in 1906 in San Francisco, compressed air was considered as an alternative to electricity as a way to store energy, and that historically green energy was part of a number of philosophical movements like transcendentalism. This is a very different picture than what is presented in the mainstream press.


In this book, green energy is as much a state of mind as a technology. For example, Google has a program called RE


We learn that only after many tries did wind become a viable renwable energy source, and that Luz solar concentrating power went through a variety of different companies selling the same technology with slight improvements over time.

The black and white photographs in the book are quite interesting. There are pictures of the first solar hot water heaters, first 1 megawatt wind generators, articles about wave generators from 1906, and pictures of other energy technnology.

This is an excellent book both from the viewpoint of a history of technology, and as a review of the philosophies underpinning renewable energy. I especially liked the first book on renewable energies title, The Paradise Within The Reach of All Men, Without Labour, by Powers of Nature, and Machinery An Address to All Men by John Etzler written in the 1830s, which described early forms of wind, wave, and solar power. It reminded me of Lewis Mumford's ideal of a "technic civilization" built on wind and wave power.

Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor for the Atlantic. There is a blog which is related to this book on the history of renewable energy. http://www.greentechhistory.com/

The World In 2050 Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith

The World In 2050 Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith





Laurence C. Smith is a geographer and a professor of earth and space science at UCLA. This book is about much more than climate change. It is about how the arctic is changing. This change is fueling a race for new resources in oil, natural gas, fisheries, mining, shipping, and open land.



In the beginning of the book, he focuses on four forces that bring change to the world; demographics, climate change, natural resource demand, and globalization. All of these are increasingly important. Global temperatures are rising, there are more people, more people are moving to cities, there is less water and other resources, and trade is more interdependent worldwide.



I think he may be wrong about some things. He does not factor in new technologies like urban farming, wave power, or digital fabrication. He is basing his predictions on there being no major breakthrough technologies.



The book is fascinating. It is easy to follow the changes he is describing. Brazil, Russia, India, and China are becoming manufacturing powers. India's cities are going to be the largest in the world.



We get to read about the consequences both negative and positive of the four forces. One thing I found especially interesting was his description of how wildlife and plant life are starting to move northward towards the heating arctic. I especially liked his description of a hybrid grizzly/polar bear.



In the second part of the book, he describes how the NORC countries; Canada, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and the United States are going to benefit in some ways from the opening of the arctic. Part of this description is how the United Nations arctic treaties are cementing the NORC countries peaceful control over the area.



Russia and Canada will be the futures largest suppliers of oil and natural gas. Also, there will be more water in the north as the arctic warms, and the southern countries water supplies dry up. The predictions show a pattern of rising importance for the northern countires.



We also learn how native populations in the Arctic will become more important, just like in Alaska where land and oil rights were given to many native Americans; in Canada, a whole new territory called New Nunavut has been carved out of the Arctic for the Canadian native peoples. It is being developed along a similar pattern to Alaska.



This is a fascinating story. I think the changes he is describing will be much faster than Laurence C. Smith anticipates. He is using very mainstream measurements.. There is a lot in this book worth thinking about.

Power Why Some People Have It And Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Power Why Some People Have It And Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer




Jeffrey Pfeffer is a professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University. He is writing about building power or authority inside organizations. His focus is more than politics. It is also about how to succeed at the top levels of companies or organizations.



There is focus on personal success in this book. He describes the process as much more than working hard. In fact, he shows how performance can hinder a persons career. I like his description of how personal networks are the second most important skill after technical ability. People move ahead becausue of who they know.



Parts of this book made me uncomfortable. There are descriptions of how to stand out without angering people.. This is a different approach than what I am used to.



The chapters on How To Make Something Out of Nothing and Overcome Oppositions and Setbacks made me think hard about my own career. He advises people to not look for where it is most prestigious, but look where they will succeed. The writing is quite thoughtful. It is aimed at making relationships with other people work.



I also like his description of the price of power; long hours, hard work, and loss of family and personal time. But, the author correctly points out in these days, you have to often fight just to stay in the middle.



This book describes pattersn and tools to mproave your chances of success in organizations. It is very much a career management book. Jeffrey Pfeffer uses examples from very successful people like Zia Yusuf  CEO of Streetline Inc, the California politician Willie Brown, and the venture capitalist and entrepreneur Heidi Roizen. This book is worth reading if you want to understand power inside organizations.

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly




Kevin Kelly views technology as a natural organic living process. He calls it the technium. He views it as being part of human evolution. I found the ideas to be fascinating but overly anthropomorphic. He gave living qualities to stone, steel, spoons, bricks, and computers. There is both a humanizing and a dehumanizing aspect to this writing.



The humanizing aspect is a view of increased possibilities, more opportunities to create greater freedoms and greater choice. The author shows how machines improve our lives and expand our possibilities. He also includes systems of thought like science, art, and law as part of technology. He describes how technology evolved as we evolved from the stone age to modern cities.



Where it fails and seems a bit dehumanizing is his taking a picture of nature that seems very utilitarian. He describes that eventually there will be no waste with biophilic technology. I think this lessens nature and makes it machine like. He even claims the Amish are part of the technium because of how they use technology. This was a bit far fetched to me. I don't like to think of myself as evolving in a similar way to a machine.



The unabomber, Ted Kaczynski's anti-technology views are gone into. This was quite daring to do. Kevin Kelly does not shy from tackling some opposing view points. He even talks about primitivism. This makes the book different.


There is a deeply philosophical bent to the writing. I can recognize some of the philosophy. Some of it is very much at the edge of high technology. He seems to be trodding a slightly different path than transhumanism where the idea is that we will become more than human when we integrate with machines. Kevin Kelly also does not argue for the singularity where machines become smarter than humans. Machines are a different kind of intelligence than human intelligence. His ultimate goal is to open infinite games for people, more choice, more freedom, more opportunities through technology.



Read this book it will open your mind to new ideas. It makes you think. Kevin Kelly helped launched Wired Magazine. His website is http://www.kk.org/



The book is fairly dense reading. It includes notes, an annotated reading list, black and white photographs, charts, and an index. It is very much a popular science title.

The Other Side of Innovation Solving The Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble.

The Other Side of Innovation Solving The Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble.

The Other Side of Innovation is about innovation inside enterprises. It does not cover innovation inside startups. This is a business management book. The authors argue that there are usually two ways to innovate; build special innovation teams or improve on existing products.

Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble argue that for major changes it is important to create special groups of people outside of every day operations. This is because innovating requires different skills and mindset than day to day operations. They make the case that innovation is about learning, experimenting, and taking risks. These are not day to day activities in most corporations.

I found their argument convincing. Where they said innovation occurs inside a corporation is in its "performance engine". It is there that small continuous changes in process and execution can be introduced over time. This has to have more than just ideas and excution, it also has to be accepted by managers or it will not work.

The examples the authors use are from large corportations; Nucor, Fisher-Price, John Deere, Thomson West and other large corporations. The writing is easy to follow; it is in plain english. The book is written for the practitioner. It even includes a set of assessment tools at the end of the book.

There is a Scholarly Foundation section at the end of the book. Like all the content in this book, they justify their choices. They not only give bibliographic citations, they also give reasons why the material was cited. This makes the writing more believable.

This book is a quality business title. It is published by Harvard Business Review Press. Both Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble are faculty at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. There is a companion website at http://www.theothersideofinnovation.com I plan to read their other book, Ten Rules For Strategic Innovators. It is supposed to be more focused on startups.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld

This book is an introductory text on information architecture for the internet.  The information in this book clarified and defined many ideas from this emerging profession.  It is quite relevant to librarians.  According to this book 40% of information architects come from a library science background.

Many of the concepts that were being described came right out of library school.  I remember reading about search engines, indexes, and classification in my cataloging class.  This book takes it one step further and describes how information on the web is turned into metadata, controlled vocabularies, and labeling systems. It also describes how indexes and search engines are designed.

It is more than just information systems, it is also the language of the nonvisible parts of websites.  It describes things which a chief information officer or a senior developer might talk about; web blueprints, taxonomy, wireframes, and content maps.  This is the planned architecture of enterprise websites.

The reader also learns the vocabulary and professional interests in education, strategy, and selling the profession.  Reading this was eye opening.  It gave me a description of how enterprise websites are created like evolt.org or the MSWeb intranet.

After reading this, I am beginning to get a context of how complex websites are put together.  There is the content strategist who puts in all the different kinds of content in the site, and the information architect who creates the framework on which an enterprise website is built..

This was an incredibly useful book.  It helped me understand the internet in ways which I had not done before.  I would highly recommend this to people who are interested in technology.

Letting Go of the Words Writing Web Content That Works by Janice Ginny Radish.

Letting Go of the Words Writing Web Content That Works by Janice Ginny Radish.

This book focuses on how to write content for the web.  It is more than just writing content. Janice Radish describes how to write links, describe pathways between different parts of websites, include images with text, and write specific types of informational pages.

Writing for the web is different than writing on paper.  Communication occurs in shorter paragraphs with more concise language.  Because it is more visually oriented, headings are more important, and paragraphs are often broken down into bulleted or numbered lists.

The examples in this book are mainly commercial pages.  There are many full color diagrams, photographs, and web page captures with explanations . This makes the book very easy to follow.  There is also a bibliography and index.

I found some of the things she describes quite useful.  For example, she tells us how to create an ideal user profile, and break apart large blocks of written text into shorter paragraphs with bolded headings and links. 

If you are writing a commercial or informational site this book should be quite helpful.  There are discussons on how to write a frequently asked questions page, add text to images, and create easy to follow directions between home, pathway, and information pages.

I found this book because I was reading about content strategy. Content strategy is about planning for all the different content that will go into a website including words, images, sound, and other media.  It is an emerging field of practice in web development.  It is often aligned with information architecture.

Net Profit How To Succeed In Digital Business by David Soskin

Net Profit How To Succeed In Digital Business by David Soskin

Net Profit is about building profitable internet enterprises.  It takes the view that web businesses are businesses like any other.  The writing feels very different than writing coming out of Silicon Valley in California, or Silicon Alley in New York.  It does not evangelize technology.  David Soskin takes a different approach to business on the web which comes from his working in Britain in a company that he bought, Cheapflights,  and then grew into an international business.

This is not about the wonders of open source, or how to reach lots of people through social media.  It is about how to protect your intellectual property and stay focused on becoming a profitable business.  He is not writing about how to make a lot of money very fast.

The books takes a nuts and bolts approach to business focusing on customers, choosing the right products, hiring for appropriate skills, raising cash, marketing, and bringing a company into the international market. He follows the conservative ideal of using your own cash and then plowing money back into a company you have started. It is only the last chapter which is speculative which is on the future of the internet.  The book starts with a chapter on the history of the internet and how it works.

This is a book that takes every day business practices and shows how they apply in a web environment.  It is for business people who are a little bit circumspect of the internet, but want to understand how it works and how to do business on the internet.

Echo An Alex Benedict Novel by Jack McDevitt

Echo An Alex Benedict Novel by Jack McDevitt




Echo is part of a series of novels featuring Alex Benedict, a recoverer of antiquities in the far future. In this novel, Alex Benedict is following the trail of an inscription written in stone which is part of no known human language. The inscription makes for an excellent gimmick.



The characterization is better than his earlier novels. I especially liked Sunset Tuttle, an explorer seeking alien civilizations for philosophical reasons. He creates an excellent back story for the book.



Alex Benedict's adversaries are more tragic than evil. The novel is more about how mistakes can lead to horrific consequences. The one exception is the sociopathic assassin bent on killing Chase Kolpath and Alex Benedict. However, the assassin is more subtle and devious than a brutish adversary.



This novel successfully combines mystery, exploration, archaeology, and suspense into a superb science fiction novel. It is the fifth in the Alex Benedict series. The third novel in the series, Seeker, won the Nebula Award.

Joann Sfar The Little Prince Adapted From The Book by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

Joann Sfar The Little Prince Adapted From The Book by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

This is a graphic novel adaptation of The Little Prince. Joann Sfar is french and has drawn over one hundred books. I especially loved his graphic novel, The Rabbi's Cat about a cat that eats a parrot and then can talk. The Little Prince  is translated from French into English by Sarah Ardizzone.

Joann Sfar's drawings are vibrant. They are very good at showing emotion. I like the flow of how he draws the characters in the story. The colorist Brigitte Findaklay uses lots of earth tones mixed with some very deep reds, sky blues, and bright greens. The characters have a lot more color than the backgrounds which makes them stand out.

The panel layout is two columns of three panels. This is very easy to follow. The lettering has a neat, small hand drawn quality to it. The characters have a slightly exaggerated faces with bigger eyes, ears and some fantastic qualities, especially for the flower people.

The Little Prince has a surprising amount of philosophical depth for a childrens story. Joann Sfar successfully translates the writing which is often very surreal into clear, beautiful pictures. 

I especially like the drawings of the Little Prince talking to flowers, the fox, and the snake.  Each character the prince talks to has a seemingly simple philosophical message.

This is worth reading, especially if you like fairytales or fables. The novel, The Little Prince is a childrens classic

Writing That Works How To Communicate Effectively in Business, 3rd Edition by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

Writing That Works How To Communicate Effectively in Business, 3rd Edition by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson





Writing That Works is an updated book on business writing that includes sections on email, presentation decks (bullet pointed lists often in powerpoint), and a reminder that computers are only as good as what you put into them.



The writers describe when it is appropriate to use paper memos and letters to add a personal touch or appear official. They also talk about how to give presentations to sell your product or idea in person.

The book covers written documents, presentations, and the internet. The chapters are short, clear, and present clear business objectives; getting a job with a resume, getting money for your ideas, saving time by managing email properly, and selling yourself in writing.



Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson open the book with a statement that the point of business writing is to get things done, not just to be clear.



There is a reminder to edit your work, be understandable, and write for a specific objective. Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson do this with ease. They make excellent use of bullet pointed lists, indented italicized text, and bold headings which catch your attention.



Kenneth Roman retired from being CEO of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide and Joel Raphaelson retired from being Creative Executive Director of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide. This makes them very qualified to write about business. This book is well worth reading.

Al Jaffee's Mad Life A Biography by Mary-Lou Weisman Illustrated by Al Jaffee

Al Jaffee's Mad Life A Biography by Mary-Lou Weisman Illustrated by Al Jaffee

Al Jaffee is a cartoonist for Mad magazine.  He also has over sixty cartoon books he has written.  He is best known for the fold-ins at the back of Mad Magazine.  He illustrated this biography with a mix of slice of life comics about his own life and light humor comics.  I like the slightly exaggerated style of the cartoons.  They remind me a bit of a kind of slightly guilty pleasure.  This book covers his whole life.

The story starts with his childhood which is quite poignant and hard.  It starts with him moving from Savannah Georgia to live with his mother in a Lithuanian shtetl (small jewish town).  Then it covers his return to live in New York city.  The story is one of hardship and suffering.  He ends up leaving his mother behind as the Jewish holocaust starts.

This biography has quite a bit of mature themes in it; his brother going mad, another brother having extreme disabilities, and being separated from his mother.  He often describes himself as a cut up and a bit out of control.  This is illustrated by a variety of escapades throughout his life which can be both ridiculous and shocking

The thing which ultimately saves him is humor.  He describes reading comics his father sends him as a child and deciding that there is a career for him in comics when he sees advertisements by Dr. Seuss.  There are quite a few cartoons from Al Jaffee's early career in this book including many from Mad magazine.  The juxtaposition between everyday life and silly humor fits well with the writing.

In what I consider the second half of the book, he gets his break when he is accepted for the New York High School for Music and Art as it is first opening.  There he meets Harvey Kurtzman and some of the early figures in comics.  This biography describes his work for many important people in the comics industry.

The second half of the book touches on the history of comic books.  It is quite entertaining.  I rather liked a few of the wordless comics on page 180.  I also like the inventiveness in this book. Al Jaffe attributes this to having very little when he was a child.  He had to make his own toys.  There are interesting cartoons of home made fishing poles, rafts, a toy truck and other toys.

This book is not in the least bit academic in style.  It is full of anecdotes, humor, and sad stories. There is no index and no lists of recommended titles.  There are some photographs from the authors life, many cartoons in full color from both the auhor's life and Mad magazine.  The book is printed on heavy stock paper.  It is published by Harper Collins under the itbooks imprint.  This is a story that makes you think.

The Story of Stuff How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-- And A Vision For Change

The Story of Stuff How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-- And A Vision For Change by Annie Leonard

This book is an anti-consumerist statement about consuming and wasting too much.  It describes how Americans waste huge amounts of materials.  Annie Leonard asks people to use less, use less toxic materials, buy things more carefully and choose more durable environmentally friendly products.

Annie Leonard is tracking how stuff is made.  It is a description of dangerous, inefficient, and wasteful consumption.  The book starts with extraction of resources, moves to production, then distribution, consumption, and finally disposal of goods.  She describes how the United States creates a society focused on getting more and more goods, planning to make them quickly obsolete, and then driving even more demand with advertising.

I like the idea of having fewer things that are more durable, better quality, and easier to reuse or recycle. I also can identify with the authors wish that people in the United States were more community focused.  I would like to see more recycled goods, green chemistry, and other products in supermarkets and stores.

However, I did find parts of this book to be a bit overbearing.  She is preaching at times against globalization, for fair trade, and often talks about human rights in fairly strong progressive language.  At points it seems unrealistic.  For example, she claims that we can survive on only solar and wind for energy.   Things like distributed hydroelectric, biofuels, and ocean power are not even touched on.

At the end of the book, we get a picture of a kind of agrarian paradise without cars, public gardens, and lots of public transportation.  It has a kind of far out feeling to it.  We are supposed to voluntarily reduce our carbon footprint to next to nothing.  It seemed a bit unrealistic.

The sentiment is easy to relate to.  I read the book as part of the Ecolibris campaign to read a book printed on recycled paper.   Recycling is something which I support.

I also found the book to be very much problem oriented.  Annie Leonard spends quite a bit of time writing against pvc plastics and incinerators which are quite toxic. I would have liked to see a litle bit more on solutions to environmental problems.  She makes some brief mentions of biomimicry technology and clean technology.  She derides clean technology as being impractical because there simply will be too many people.

I found this inteeresting. I am for more urban farming, urban greenhouses, farmers markets, and more local production of goods.  However, I don't have that every house should have a compost bin feeling.  I also like the idea of more car sharing and limiting use of cars to the minimum.  I like the concept of having public rental lots like zipcar.

This was an interesting book about wasteful, excess consumption.  However, it often had a politically correct feel to it.  It is worth reading if you are interested in the environment, a green lifestyle, or have an anti-consumerist world view.