zenpundit.com

A practice I’ve adopted since I’ve started blogging is to jot down ideas or questions that I get while surfing the blogosphere. Admittedly, the primary result from this habit is that my desk is usually littered with little pieces of crap on which I’ve scrawled some incoherent sentence fragments. OTOH, sometimes one of these tiny scraps of paper serves to jar my memory and I can return to a topic that interested me. Today is such a day.

A while back, I read an interesting post on “quantum libraries” – the books you read over and over again and learn something new each time. I’ve tried google and technorati to try and find the blogger who is the originator of this term but have failed ( if anyone knows, please shout out in the comments so I can properly link. It’s a great concept and one that applies to all serious readers.

Here is my “Quantum Library”

The Prince

The True Believer

The History of the Peloponnesian War

The Art of War

The Gulag Archipelago

1984

The Lord of The Rings

The Lord of the Flies

I suppose I could “tag”people but instead, I’ll just say that I’m curious about the quantum libraries of the following blogfriends: Dave Schuler, Dr. Chet Richards,  Soob, Lexington Green, Curzon, Smitten Eagle, Jeremy Young, Dr. Von,  Tim of Ubiwar, Cheryl Rofer, TDAXP, Shane and Sean Meade. Post if you have the time.

ADDENDUM:

Joining in on the Quantum Library fun…..

The Innovationist

The Committee of Public Safety

ubiwar

Just purchased:

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

Discourses of Epictetus

Of all the book reviews I have done at Zenpundit, this one will be the shortest.

Prodded to read War Nerd by co-blogger Lexington Green, I found Gary Brecher’s writing is a weird fusion of Robert Young Pelton crossbred with Dave Barry, yielding some sort of one-man, Mad Magazine of modern warfare but without the cartoons by Don Martin and Sergio Aragones. Beneath Brecher’s crafted shtick, however, lies a genuine grasp of military history and an analytical shrewdness with which I found myself nodding in agreement all too frequently.

Buy this book.

I find that I have fallen criminally behind on reviewing books in the past six or so months and I’m going to try to make an effort to post on at least some of what I have been reading. Time to begin:

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) by Garr Reynolds

 Garr Reynolds has done more than write a book about design; he has taken Zen principles and used them to design the book that he wrote. Zen Presentation is an aesthetic pleasure to read, a truly beautiful book where the author walked his talk.

Specifically, Reynolds will show you how you can make your slideware presentations better but Presentation Zen is really more than that; it’s about effective communication.  Understanding your own message and then crafting an authentic and persuasive vision. The principles Reynolds articulates while discussing sound design work equally well for the writer, the artist, the salesman or the organizational leader. Here are a few sections particularly worth your time to read:

What makes Messages Stick? 

The Art of Working With Restrictions ( all the Boydians out there will grasp this concept immediately) 

Two Questions: What’s your Point? Why Does it  Matter ?

Kanso, Shizen, Shibumi

Signal to Noise Ratio

The Need for Solitude

Many times, as the text itself is intentionally broken up visually by images and white space, I found myself reflecting at length on the implications of the passage before moving on to the next. Now that’s something that happens with reading certain classics – The Art of War,  Meditations (Penguin Classics), The Prince and so on – but far more rarely with modern authors, indicating that Reynolds effort  to discern and expound on the importance of the fundamentals was well executed.

If messages are meant to “stick” then Presentation Zen is a sticky book.

In mt previous  post, The Reading List of Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, I asked for reader suggestions on new additions to the list and you responded both here and at Chicago Boyz. Here is what you offered up:

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations  [ Jeremiah ]

War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage  [ Wiggins ]

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game  [ Wiggins ]

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference  [ Glenn ]

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking   [  Glenn ]

Explaining Chaos  [ Munzenberg ]

From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation  [ Munzenberg ]

The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence (Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science)                        [  Munzenberg  ]

Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization  [ Eddie – can’t find his second rec on Amazon]

Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web Application   [ Jeffrey ]

The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman                  [ Jeffrey ]

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable      [ Adrian – this was also a Hammes rec that I missed in my last post]

Gödel, Escher, Bach. Ein Endloses Geflochtenes Band.      [ Adrian ]

Daemon             [ Arherring ]

Halting State (Ace Science Fiction)    [ Arherring ]

The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War                   [ A.E. ]

City Fights: Selected Histories of Urban Combat from World War II to Vietnam   [ A.E. ]

Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers       [ A.E. ]

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets    [ David Foster ]

The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth                  [ David Foster ]

Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work (Financial Times Prentice Hall Books.)   [ David Foster ]

The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society      [ David Foster ]

The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations  [ David Foster ]

Order Out of Chaos   [ Shannon Love ]

And here are mine:

Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century  

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History Series) 

UPDATE:

Blogfriend and cybersecurity expert Gunnar Peterson steps up with his own list.