books Archives - Page 17 of 21

Post published:17/11/2016

Erich Maria Remarque – Im Westen nichts Neues

Incredible story about a German soldier on the Western front in France during the First World War.
Young men are mangled and deformed by the atrocities they experience in the trenches.
People die like flies. Soldiers must leave their wounded mates in the no man’s land between the fronts. From the trenches their hear them cry for help.
That same atmosphere as Celine’s Voyage au bout the la nuit.
Still, Remarque keeps some form of distance to the story, while describing the horrors of the war and the trenches. He analyses without becoming personal. Numb, dull, demoralised.

Post published:16/11/2016

Unavoidable? The First World War – John Keegan

I recently visited Belgium, the area of Ieper. The remains of the First World War there are impressive.
I got interested and purchased The First World War by John Keegan, which was according to the mass on google the essential guide to the First World War. My notes of this reading.
The incredible back story to this War. Starting with the long envisioned Schieffenplan, which had been cooking in Germany long before the war started. All the parties seems to be preparing their armies for a war. At a certain point the war became unavoidable.
How easily the war could have been prevented by some basic diplomatic actions.
Both sides hold on to very basic offensive tactic of frontal offence. Leading to many death. Both sides undertook these initiatives, which hundred thousand deaths or more in a week. This happened at all frontiers.
Besides the most well-known frontier in the West, mainly in Belgium and Norther France, the War was fought Africa in the German colonies, in the Middle East (Turkey being the ally of Germany in this war, in the Caucasus, Greece, Serbia, and at sea.
Germany was very successful with their submarines.
The war led or coincided with the downfall of the three large power centres in Europe: the tzar in Russia, the Austro-Hungarian emperor and the last emperor of Germany.
After the war Europe was fragmented in many new nation states due to the downfall of Germany and Austria-Hungary. This instabilities caused by this outcomes are still felt.
Keegan ends with the remark that is difficult to understand why a prosperous continent risked their achievements and values in ended up in such a bloody conflict.

A war that should never have happened. Not only was it meaningless. It was preventable.

Post published:11/08/2016

Read That Sh*t

Probably the greatest book title of 2016: Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield. It’s a very practical book.

Pressfield describes how over the years he learned how to write. He goes through his lengthy career and shares what he has learned in all these jobs leading to success as a writer. He explains how he has learned from his job as a copywriter to cut down his messages to the core.

Streamline your message. Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.

Make its expression fun. Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative. Make it so compelling that a person would have to be crazy NOT to read it.

Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.

He goes with his main theme for this book, which is you have to seduce your readers to read your stuff because they are not sitting around, waiting for your genius.

Have you reckoned the two principles in these first few pages? 1) Nobody wants to read your shit. 2) If you want to write and be recognized, you have to do it yourself. From these twain, all else proceeds.

Pressfield finds having a concept in your writings of key importance. He is coming from a copywriting perspective, a product perspective. See your book as a product.

A concept takes a conventional claim and puts a spin on it. A concept establishes a frame of reference that is greater than the product itself. A concept sets the product in a context that makes the viewer behold the product with fresh eyes—and perceive it in a positive, compelling light. A concept frames (or, more frequently, re-frames) the issue entirely.

During his years as a copywriter and writer for movies and series, he has learned that being authentic, being yourself, is very important. You can only speak to the heart by being authentic. If it is not meant, people simply will not believe you.

I said to myself, “It’s okay to be the kind of person I am.” It’s okay to be anxious. It’s okay to be unable to sleep. It’s okay to lack self-esteem. It’s okay to be an introvert, to seek out the quiet corners at a cocktail party, to care about quality, and to have your mood be affected by your surroundings.

Stealing is ok. Stealing is almost mandatory. You learn from others. But it should not be copying. Stealing should be done well. Austin Kleon has dedicated his book Steal Like An Artist to it.

“Kid, it ain’t stealing if you put a spin on it.”

Besides the concept, you need a theme. Nobody want to read your shit if the theme is not clear. it is what is in it for the reader.

Ask not, “What is the solution?” Ask, “What is the problem?” The problem in fiction, from the thrashing writer’s point of view, is almost always, “What is this damn thing about?” In other words, what’s the theme? What’s the theme of our book, our play, our movie script? What’s the theme of our new restaurant, our start-up, our video game? When we don’t

Pressfield shares how to structure stories. Discusses practical advice like having a clear Inciting Incident – in a movie – and that is something to repeat in your writing. He learned in during one of the formal classes Pressfield took.

About an hour into Friday evening’s class, he introduced the concept of the Inciting Incident. What was revolutionary for me was not so much that specific idea (though indeed it changed everything about the way I worked) as the mind-blowing thought that this stuff could actually be taught. … The Inciting Incident is the event that makes the story start. It may come anywhere between Minute One and Minute Twenty-Five. But it must happen somewhere within Act One. … How can you tell when you’ve got a good Inciting Incident? When the movie’s climax is embedded within it.

He shares a useful complete set of non-technical skill he acquired over the years.

I had learned these storytelling skills. But other capacities that I had also acquired over the preceding twenty-seven years were even more important. These were the skills necessary to conduct oneself as a professional—the inner capacities for managing your emotions, your expectations (of yourself and of the world), and your time. 1) How to start a project. 2) How to keep going through the horrible middle. 3) How to finish. 4) How to handle rejection. 5) How to handle success. 6) How to receive editorial notes. 7) How to fail and keep going. 8) How to fail again and keep going. 9) How to self-motivate, self-validate, self-reinforce. 10) How to believe in yourself when no one else on the planet shares that belief.

The aspiring writer is challenged by Pressfield not to be constrained about the things to write about. It does not matter if you do not know about a subject or situation. Just let it go and it will bring unexpected results.

The conventional truism is “Write what you know.” But something mysterious and wonderful happens when we write what we don’t know. The Muse enters the arena. Stuff comes out of us from a very deep source.

All nice about his storytelling and structuring skills developed writing stories for television and plays. But the world of a novel is different.

A novel is too long to be organized efficiently like a screenplay. There aren’t enough 3X5 cards in the world. Too much shit happens. New characters appear. New ideas show up. The whole story can get hijacked by the apparition of Mr. Micawber or Hamlet’s ghost or Winnie the Pooh.

So you are on your own there. And in the end, Pressfield comes back to the eternal enemy, which he wrote about extensively in his book Do The Work: Resistance.

Remember, the enemy in an endurance enterprise is not time. The enemy is Resistance. Resistance will use time against you. It will try to overawe you with the magnitude of the task and the mass of days, weeks, and months necessary to complete it.

Required reading:

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces, C.G. Jung’s Two Essays on Analytical Psychology and Symbols of Transformation, and, for the real Movieland nitty-gritty, Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey.

And Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder.

If you haven’t read Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, get them right away. One of Blake’s principles is Keep It Primal. A great movie, he believes, should be so basic, so soul-grounded, that it could be understood by a caveman. In other words, without language. Without dialogue.

Post published:04/08/2016

Zen in the Art of Writing

Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing is not about Zen at all. The Zen part is a marketing trick, he admits in the
book.

The book is about writing though. In a cast-iron writing style.

Find a character that wants something, or not.
Start without thinking, explode!
Ideas live everywhere.
Be extreme. Love and hate, Zest and Gusto.
Write fast, that guarantees honesty.
How to start something new? Be doing and stumbling into it.
Ideas come from our subconscious. Feed it with poetry, essays, novels and short stories, movies.
Write passionate, with a loud voice.
Plot is something for after the fact.
Your writing grows with experience and labor.
Take a series of words in your head and write a story.
Children have become our teachers. for the genre of Science Fiction in his time, but similarly for Young Adult books in these days.
Don’t get too serious. Just Run!
Don’t think. Self-conscious is the enemy of art.
Get a thing done. Then cut it appropriately.
The ideas follow you. When they are off-guard, grab them.
WORK. RELAX. DON’T THINK. RELAX MORE.
Quantity will make for quality.
Don’t expect money or fame.

At the level of Stephen King’s On Writing or Steven Pressfield‘s War of Art.

Post published:04/07/2016

Go Set A Watchman: donker en cynisch verhaal over de verschillen tussen de noordelijke en zuidelijke staten van de VS

Go Set A Watchman is als het vervolg op To Kill A Mockingbird. Maar het is donkerder dan The Mockingbird.

Atticus, de morele held in de Mockingbird, valt van zijn voetstuk in de Watchman. Vooral in de ogen van zijn bewonderende dochter, Scout.

Er is geen hoop voor Atticus, die vecht tegen onrecht in de Mockingbird. De kleurlingen hebben hun eigen advocaten gekregen en zijn niet langer afhankelijk van de weinige blanken die hen verdedigen. Deze ontwikkeling heeft echter niet tot meer eenheid geleid. Het heeft meer scheiding vergroot. Het heeft argwaan gewekt tussen zwart en wit. Het heeft de balans in het dorp verbroken.

Scout worstelt met dit karakter van het Zuiden.

Dr. Finch, Atticus broer, legt haar de geschiedenis van de oorlog in het zuiden uit. Het is een strijd om hun identiteit te behouden.

“Now then, Scout,” said her uncle, “Now, at this very minute, a political philosophy foreign to it is being pressed on the South, and the South’s not ready for it – we’re finding ourselves in the same deep waters. As sure as the time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons.”

The Watchman beschrijft dat scherpe verschil tussen republikeinen en democraten in de Verenigde Staten, dat we nog steeds kunnen vinden. Diezelfde identiteitsstrijd. De oorlog tussen Noord en Zuid is nog steeds aan de gang. Nergens is de strijd tussen links en rechts zo fundamenteel en ook belemmerend als hier in de VS. Ik was stomverbaasd om te lezen dat er zo weinig is veranderd.

Nog schokkender vond ik de karakterontwikkeling van Scout. The Mockingbird en The Catcher in The Rye waren deze fantastische romans waarin de jeugdige hoofdrolspelers achter hun naïeve maar authentieke zelf staan, hoe erg het ook afloopt. Maar in The Watchman wordt het idealistische, radicale karakter van Scout verpletterd en lijkt ze zich eindelijk te onderwerpen aan traagheid, ze vindt haar thuis en innerlijke stabiliteit na een grote ruzie met Atticus.

Wat een duisternis: gelijkheid faalt, ideologie faalt, cynisme en traagheid overleeft.

Post published:03/07/2016

The Mockingbird, a moral story

I got the Mockingbird for my birthday. Along with Go Set A Watchman. I had not read it before and thought it was time now to catch up.

There seems to have been quite a debate about Go Set A Watchman, the Mockingbird sequel. Originally, the early version of the Mockingbird was published only in 2015, about 55 years after the Mockingbird. According to some, the publication was against Harper Lee’s will. According to other sources, Lee was not mentally capable anymore at that late stage of her life to put off the publication.

Harper Lee recently passed away, in February this year.

I only knew her name as the writer of the classic Mockingbird. She grew up in the south of the US, and some of the stories in the book, let’s say, show parallels to biographical facts in her life. After writing The Mockingbird, she slowly disappeared from public life. Her biography is shockingly uninteresting.

The book breathes the southern small-town countryside feeling I associate with William Faulker’s books, such as As I Lay Dying.

And Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw The Angel. Rotten characters, Euchrid Eucrow-like. A lazy mood caused by early-day booze.

The introduction is the second-best book introduction.

“Please spare Mockingbird an introduction”

(The best is the Salmon of Doubt introduction by Terry Jones).

I also found a place where J.K. Rowling may have gotten her idea for Dementors in the Harry Potter series from Hot Steams.

‘A Hot Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an’ if you walk through him, when you die you’ll be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin’ people’s breath -‘

Hot Steam is a southern US superstition.

Boo Radley, a dark small town legend, a potential Euchrid Eucrow, prefers to live indoors. Because he wants to. Because he hates the small town outside. But unlike Euchrid Eucrow, Boo remains on the light side and becomes a hero, saving the kids Jem and Scout from the real dark Euchrid Eucrow character of the story, Bob Ewell.

The story’s hero is Atticus Finch, the father of Jem and Scout. The story is told through Scout, who observes the small-town manners, flaws, prejudices, and discrimination. Atticus Finch is the moral champion. Against the will of the white people in the village, he defends the black Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white girl, even though Atticus knows the case can not be won and the jury has already convicted the black man.

Good To Great Big BIG Things

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

I was astonished, reading Good To Great. It has so many findings about great companies, that are massively ignored.

Many business leaders have referred to this book as a guide in their leadership practice. While in their own organisations the findings they cast aside the findings in this book on a day by day basis.

Let’s go through a couple of these themes.

Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

So no need to attract expensive business leaders from the outside. What we hear about their compensations schemes we sometimes find unethical and excessive.

We found no systematic pattern linking specific forms of executive compensation to the process of going from good to great.

Not only does the compensation not necessarily need to be very high. Moreover, the leaders of these companies stand out in humility. Leaders of great companies are to themselves, focused on the company, not themselves, have a big sense of humility and do not have big egos, are persistent calm and determined.

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

As surprising, great companies are not great because they have such a fantastic strategy. Nor is it technology or acquisitions, a very promising industry or special program.

Discipline and perseverance are the most important traits of great companies.

Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

…

In confronting the brutal facts, the good-to-great companies left themselves stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more dispirited. There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.

…

No, those who turn good into great are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

It is doing the work, a feel for business, grit, a lack of arrogance, not taking anything for granted, that distinguishes the great companies
It is in such a sharp contrast with what you see in the large majority of the Fortune 500 companies, that I wonder how the leaders in these companies, and the big consulting companies advising these companies, and likely the investors in these companies can continue to ignore such fundamental findings.

When you put these two complementary forces together—a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship—you get a magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results.

Read on:

Tom Peters, for example The Little BIG THings.

Collins refers to Stockdale’s In Love and War, a book I would like to read next.

Post published:28/05/2016

On the business of Design: Design is a job

“The biggest myth ever perpetuated in the design field is that good design sells itself.”

I wanted to learn about design so searched the web for “best books on design”. Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro was consistently high on the lists. So I bought it.

Design Is A Job is not about design. It’s about the business of design. About running a Design practice. About getting work, selling proposals, agreeing contracts. And the knowledge in the books can very well be applied to other (creative) businesses.

Mike Monteiro is the owner of Mule Design, a Design firm. He is also the author a books on Design practices. He is famous for being clear on getting paid: F*ck You. Pay Me speech. In the book, it provides the same clarity.

Design is a business

Work for Money. You are in business.

…

Anything I have to tell you can be summed up thusly: charge as much as you can, deliver an honest value, and never work for free. Unfortunately, most designers feel such pangs of guilt about.

…

The secrets to getting the price you want for your work are having done the homework to know you’re asking for the right thing, the confidence to ask for it, and the willingness to walk away when you can’t get it.

Monteiro breaks down the magical mystery of design and creative work. It’s all well and good, but it’s also a business.

The myth of the magical creative is alive and well, and it’s powerful.

…

A designer requires honest feedback and real criticism, and that’s not going to happen in a realm where colleagues or clients are worried about crushing the spirit of a magical being.

A designer is solving a problem. Design has no purpose in itself in itself.

A DESIGNER SOLVES PROBLEMS WITHIN A SET OF CONSTRAINTS.

… any design task you undertake must serve a goal. It’s your job to find out what those goals are.

To achieve these goals, the designer must gather information about her clients and their goals. What do they want to achieve? What is their context? What are their financial constraints?

She does not operate in a vacuum.

Figure out what the client really wants early Most clients will approach you with a wish list of desires. If they don’t you should actually work with them on coming up with one. Assign a cost and a benefit to each one.

Finding a fit between client and designer is not just a concern that the client should be concerned about. You as the designer should also be critical to what customers you ‘hire’.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you are evaluating the potential client as much as they are evaluating you. Prospective clients sometimes find this surprising.

…

I totally encourage you to go after clients you want to work for. Let’s just be realistic about the return on this type of business development. It is very, very low.

…

The clients you choose to take on define you. Your portfolio needs to tell a story and each client you add to it is another chapter in that story. Make sure you’re consciously building the story you want to be telling.

Monteiro recommends a free customer screener tool he provides on his web site:

If you’re here it’s probably because you bought my book and read all the way to page 18, where I promised you a screener for ferreting out whether you’re talking to the right clients or not. Well, here it is.

[See http://muledesign.com/designbook/screener.html]

Interaction with the customer directly is essential. You should never just deliver the work and leave it with the client.

Selling your work directly to clients is extremely important. Not only should you be able to explain why you made the decisions you did, but you’ll get first-hand feedback on where the work needs to go next.

…

Look for clients who have clear goals, not detailed punch lists. This is especially true of RFPs that require you to reply directly to each line item at the risk of being disqualified from the process. You don’t want to sign up for a process that you know is broken from the start. Once you set sail on a boat you can’t convince a captain to take to the sky.

The job of a designer is not just doing the design work; it is also doing the research and selling and ensuring great interaction with the client. You will have to make an effort to help the client understand what you have created.

Not knowing the design language doesn’t make someone a bad client. I doubt very much that most of you could have a medical conversation with your doctor on par with a conversation your doctor could have with another doctor, and that doesn’t make you a bad patient.

…

It’s your job as a designer, and a communication professional, to find the right language to communicate with your client. When you say a client doesn’t “get it” you might as well be saying, “I couldn’t figure out how to get my point across. I am a lazy designer. Please take all my clients from me.”

…

The biggest myth ever perpetuated in the design field is that good design sells itself.

This not only allows the designer to differentiate from the competition, but it also helps build a good relationship with the client by giving him the opportunity for feedback.

Being able to present your own work is a core design skill. It helps build rapport with the client. It puts the person directly responsible for the work in front of them. It shows them that you’re presenting that work with confidence. And it gives them an opportunity to ask questions directly of the person who did the work.

With this feedback, discuss improvements with your client. But do not let them change the core of the product you have designed for them. Negotiate.

Your first job is to separate the actionable feedback from the non-actionable feedback. Sometimes clients just like to document their thought process. Your job is to sift through and find the actionable from the non-actionable.

And smartly negotiate the changes a customer wants.

“I once argued with a client for an hour over an issue I didn’t care about (eventually letting him win!), because I really cared about the next issue coming up. At that point, he was so tired out and savoring his victory

Monteiro is also idealistic about the jobs you choose and the way you design. Your work should improve the world, serve to create a better world, leave something lasting behind, ignite change. He refers to Victor Papanek’s seminal work.

Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World, which I will bluntly summarize like so: you are responsible for the work you put into the world.

I urge each and every one of you to seek out projects that leave the world a better place than you found it. We used to design ways to get to the moon; now we design ways to never have to get out of bed. You have the power to change that.

Then, it’s about organizing the work—making sure things get done, that everything is coordinated, and that all the people are working together.

Working with the project manager.

Just as you’re responsible for the quality of a project, your project manager is responsible for getting it done on time. And with the maximum amount of profit. This doesn’t mean you’re not both thinking about those things. It means you each own your part of the project. This often leads to tension, as your ultimate goal is to do good work, and the project manager’s ultimate goal is to do the work on time. And that’s pretty much how it should work.

The book is packed with great advice on business practices for creative businesses. It includes an extensive categorized book list for further reading. Because

Perpetual intellectual curiosity is the greatest resource a professional designer can have. Barring that, an island hideaway is nice.

What to read next.

Viktor Papanek’s Design for the real world.

Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell and others.

Post published:24/05/2016

Copywriting crash course: Henneke Duistermaat in How to Write Seductive Web Copy

“Each page needs to have one main call-to-action. In a color that stands out. And that tells people exactly what to do.”

I took the advice at heart to dig into copywriting. I didn’t know anything about copywriting. So this was going to be fun.

With another advisory voice in my head – learn something new every day, read broadly, have wide interests – I purchased Henneke Duistermaat’s How To Write Seductive Web Copy, after doing some research on the web looking for the best books on copywriting. (Why not some webinar or YouTube video? I feel so lazy when I do that. I don’t have that when I am reading. Video learning is challenging to me. Like exercising on a home trainer. Boring. Can’t concentrate.)

So I read the book. This book is outstanding in conciseness. Duistermaat gets to the point and is very practical.

Henneke Duistermaat is an internet marketing expert and founder of Enchanting Marketing and author of a number of very practical books on copywriting, blogging and marketing.

I learned a lot. Very simple messages.

Get a clear picture of who your audience is – write their biography.

Your value proposition is what you write on a billboard: a headline, a few bullet points, and an image.

What is important as well is to have a simple but clear view on the problem you are solving for your clients.

Let’s start with writing your headline. Four different options exist: You state simply what you offer. You mention the key benefit of working with or buying from you. You tell readers which problem or hassle you help avoid. You ask a question to target customers who are right for you.

Your product page shouldn’t be descriptive; it needs to sell your products or services. This is how: Write for your ideal reader. Focus on the benefits you offer and the problems you avoid.

The question your about page should answer is this: Which problems do you solve for your customers? Don’t talk all the time about your product, your service, or your business because nobody’s interested. Talk about your prospect’s problems. Explain how you solve these problems. Tell your readers how much happier they’ll be if they let you solve their problems.

Gain the trust of your customers. Show them you are not bullshitting or wasting their time. Get personal.

When you engage emotion and the senses, people get transported to a different world. Allow prospects to experience working with you, and their defenses against sales pitches are lowered.

You need to work hard to gain the trust of potential buyers. An easy way is to provide case studies and testimonials, or to include logos of business you’ve worked with, or publications you’ve been published in.

Often people want to get to know you more personally. Rather than focus on an immediate sale, get web visitors to sign up for your e-newsletter.

Also, on your website, Duistermaat provides very clear advice.

Each page needs to have one main call-to-action. In a color that stands out. And that tells people exactly what to do.

Remember that the way you design your web page has a big impact on your persuasiveness. A few tips: De-clutter each web page and simplify your navigation. Have a lot of white space to create an inviting environment. Use color and font size to show what’s your most important information. Promote readability with large, easy-to-read fonts. Guide your visitors with clear, stand-out calls-to-action.

And links to cheat sheets and other useful materials. Worth every cent.

Inside the mind of an Asperger: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

I got The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time as a present for my birthday. My kids were polite and only later told me it was a children’s book. My son said he had read it for his English class.

Mark Haddon has created an extraordinary story about a boy with Aspergers syndrome. I had read two books with a comparable first person perspective of a person with Asperger: The Rosie Project (Which I actually selected hurriedly in an airport kiosk for it’s interesting cover design) and the Dutch book Wat Is Er Toch Met Kobus (What’s wrong with Kobus). The first is written from the perspective of a full-grown scientist, with a light Asperger syndrome. Kobus is even more similar to The Curious Incident: in it’s first person narrative form, and the young main character is a highschool boy.