Scott Barstow

Books To Read - August 2011

As the hottest summer ever (OK maybe not, but it sure feels like it) rolls on, here are my must-reads for the month of August.  I tend to be reading two books at a time.  One is typically something to help me improve my craft or a topic I am wanting to learn about, and the other is purely for pleasure.  This month, I actually have had three going at one time as we are reading with our kids every night.  

I hope you enjoy the books below as much as I have.  

The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry

I love books that talk help me think about how I can do my work and life better.  This book was recommended to me a couple of months ago by an author I trust, and it did not disappoint.  If you are anything like me, you struggle with setting aside time to let your mind do what it does best.  I tend to rush from one thing to the next and see how much I can get done in a given day.  There are certainly times for that, but there are also times where you need to let your mind work on solving the problems you face.  The myth is that creative people have flashes of lightning and brilliance that come upon them without discipline.  Todd Henry argues pretty convincingly that it requires structure and a deliberate, methodical approach to allow your brain to do it’s best work.  I took two or three things from this book the first time through and implemented them immediately, and I can already tell a difference in my work.  Highly, highly recommend this book to everyone who has to be creative for a living.  That’s pretty much everyone now-a-days.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Last month I wrote about The Fellowship of the Ring, and you can pretty much bet that the Return of the King will be on September’s reading list.  As I talked about last month, I had never really given these books a serious read in the past, and I am really enjoying taking my time going through them now.  The section of this book where it’s Sam, Frodo and Gollum for about 100 pages gets a bit tedious.  I won’t lie.   However, by the end of this one I could not put it down and immediately picked up the 3rd book and started reading it.  We are about to start watching the movies with our kids, as they have been reading these as well.  I can’t wait to see the movies again.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My wife picked this book up about a month ago and was immediately hooked.  The story takes place in the future, after North America has more or less ceased to exist and has been replaced by a country called Panem.  It is a highly controlled police state. The Hunger Games are a series of sporting events where contestants are drawn from each of Panem’s twelve districts and are forced to kill each other to survive.  The last one standing wins.  The main character, Katniss, takes her younger sister Prim’s place in the games after Prim’s name was drawn in a lottery.  We are actually reading this book as a family each night, and it is gripping from the first chapter on.  It’s an easy read, and very entertaining.

Kindle and My Personal Library

I love my Kindle (even though I don’t technically own a kindle, I own an iPad and Android tablet that have the Kindle reader on them).  I have read far more books on my Kindle than I would have if I had been buying hardcover or paperbacks.  I am sure I am not alone.  

What really bothers me about the Kindle is that I can’t share the books I have purchased with others.  If I had bought those very same books in paper form, I could have lent them to my friends, and they could have lent their books to me.  It seems non-sensical that I can’t do the same thing with an electronic copy.  Amazon yesterday announced that you will be able to rent textbooks, and it got me thinking about my library.

If I had my wishes for Kindle, they would take a couple of forms.

1. Let me share my library, and let others “check out” books from me.  Just like I can share a playlist, publish it, and let my friends enjoy it, I would like to be able to share my personal library.  My friends could then come to my library and see what is available (stuff I am willing to share), what is checked in and what is checked out.  I could establish parameters around how long a particular book is able to be checked out, just like a regular public library.  While the book is checked out, I would not be able to read it on my Kindle.  On the day it is due back, it is simply removed from the borrower’s Kindle and returned to my stock.  Amazon could keep track of how many times the book has been lent, and maybe cap it to prevent excessive sharing.  If I could share any book up to three times, that would be ideal.  Amazon is or is going to allow you to check out books from your public library’s Kindle stash, so why not allow the same thing for my personal stash?  
2. I should be able to sell my books to someone else in an Amazon marketplace of some kind.  Again, I can do this with a paper book, so I should be able to do it with a digital book.  Copyright law allows for this through the first-sale doctrine, but I lose that right with the e-version of the same book.  

Both of these things seem so obvious.  If we have learned anything from watching the music industry crumble, it is that protecting for the sake of protecting is not a viable strategy.  

If you use another e-reader, do they have these features already?  If so, maybe I should just switch.  If not, what will it take for Amazon and others to begin to offer these services?

Books to Read - July 2011

With the 4th of July Weekend upon us here in the US, it’s a great time to step away and do some reading.  Here is my list of books for July.  I hope you enjoy them.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

First, I must say that I am a huge Michael Lewis fan.  I started with The New New Thing and have read everything since.  When The Big Short came out, it was somewhat poo-pooed by masses, though I don’t remember why at the time.  Anyway, for some reason I never read this book.  I finally got around to it a few weeks ago and it is fantastic.  Lewis does (as usual) a great job of storytelling, in this case about the economic meltdown of 2008-2009 and the people that saw it coming.  The Big Short is a profile of four funds who bet against the subprime mortgage market and made a killing when it all went to hell.  I could not put this book down.  The story will make you ill as you realize how those who caused the crisis escaped with millions and left the taxpayers holding the bag.  Great book.  It’s July’s must-read.

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

I just read this book yesterday after getting a note from The Domino Project people.  Derek Sivers is the founder of CD Baby, and this is a short recap of what he learned while building the company.  It takes less than an hour to read, but has some really cool insights into what made CD Baby successful.  The most famous takeaway from this book is the “Hell Yeah” method of decision-making.  When asking yourself if something is worth doing, unless you say “Hell Yeah”, don’t do it.  I thought it was a nice read, and worth the low sticker price.

To Hate Like This is To Be Happy Forever by Will Blythe

When you live in the cradle of college basketball, some things are required reading.  Will Blythe’s masterful storytelling of the history of the University of North Carolina / Duke University men’s basketball rivalry is the perfect book for a summer vacation.  Blythe is a rabid UNC fan who grew up in Chapel Hill and has hated Duke his entire life, but does a great job of telling both sides of this story.  His interviews with players and coaches, as well as other rabid fans of both schools is great entertainment.  If you enjoy this rivalry, which is one of the best in sports, this book will help you to understand the hatred even better.  

Enjoy this month’s list, and please let me know what you liked and didn’t like from the list!  Happy 4th of July!

Books to Read - June 2011

My monthly list of books to read and ( hopefully ) inspire you or provoke new thoughts or ideas.  

The Pixar Touch by David A. Price

Pixar is one of America’s iconic brands.  There are numerous books about the story of the rise of this company. I have read only this one, so I don’t know if it’s the best one.  However, if you enjoy reading about how great companies are built, this is a great book.  The book takes you from the very early days of Ed Catmull working at the University of Utah on the dream of using computers for animation all the way through to Steve Jobs’ involvement, Disney’s acquisition, and all the gory details in between.  What’s fascinating about the story of Pixar is how different the story ended up from where they started and the original vision.  I enjoyed learning about the details of each Pixar movie, as well as the back-room dealing that was happening around each one.   

Replay by Ken Grimwood

Jeff Winston is a down and out radio guy in the late 80s.  In the middle of a conversation with his wife, he drops dead of a heart attack.  He wakes up back in college in the ’60s with all of the knowledge of the next 20 years in his head.  He proceeds to bet on sporting  events where he knows the outcome, changes the course of history, and live a decadent, self-absorbed life.  Until he gets to the ’80s again, where he dies the same death and again wakes back up in college.  Jeff eventually meets Pamela, a fellow replayer, who is a famous film maker borrowing heavily from ideas from Star Wars and other movies that have not happened yet.  Jeff and Pamela fall in love and live several replays together, all with unique twists and turns.  This was a great read, full of interesting plot twists and the like.  Definitely worth a read.

The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

I am reading this book again for the first time.  It’s been at least 25 years since I last read it, and we are reading through the trilogy with my kids in advance of watching each of the movies.  There is nothing really that needs to be said about this book that has not been said already.  Read it again.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Dr. Meg Meeker

For those of us dads that have daughters, the days are filled with both delight and mystery.  I don’t typically read these kinds of books, but my wife bought it for me a couple of years ago to help me understand how my daughter thinks and how to relate to her.  It has been an extremely valuable resource, and I am actually reading it again this month.   Dr. Meeker is a somewhat famous pediatrician, and this book is a collection of her life’s work in this area.  The research is world-class, the advice is practical, and the stories will change your outlook on the young girls in your life.  This is a must-read if you are the dad of a daughter.

Hope you enjoy this month’s selections, and happy reading!

Books To Read - May 2011

It’s that time again.  Here are my May 2011 must-reads.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon

If you are a fan of The Wire, a series on HBO that aired a few years back, this is the book that inspired that series.  If you are not a fan of The Wire, you should become one. Rent the DVDs from Netflix and enjoy.  It is simply some of the best drama you will ever watch.  I wish I had known about the book first, because it does a tremendous job of introducing you to the gritty life on the streets of Baltimore.  The characters in the book make the show come to life.  It is very well-written, and if you want to understand and appreciate the life of a police officer in a rough and tumble US city, I highly recommend this book.

Living on the Black by John Feinstein

If you read this blog, you know that I am a huge fan of John Feinstein.  I have read nearly every book he has written, and this one is near the top of the list.  Feinstein spends a season with Tom Glavine, then of the NY Mets, and Mike Mussina of the NY Yankees.  I grew up watching the Yankees and Mets due to my proximity to New York.  I despised the Mets and loved the Yankees (still true today).  This book, however, has nothing to do really with the teams.  It is about two amazing pitchers near the end of their careers.  Tom Glavine is most well-known for his years with the Atlanta Braves, but finished his career with the Mets in pursuit of 300 wins.  Mike Mussina spent most of his career with the Baltimore Orioles, but finished with the Yankees.  I like understanding what it takes to be the best at something, and Feinstein helps paint the picture of life as a pitcher in Major League Baseball.

Why You Should NOT Read Business Books

I read a lot of books about business, but it just recently came to me that I was reading them for the wrong reasons.  I’ve always read books with the expectation that I would get the right information on how to build my own thing.  Take these characteristics from this guy and those characteristics from that guy, blend them, add salt and voila!  

However, it’s become clear to me now that all the great companies, the ones that everyone talks about in all these books, did something that no one had done before.  There was no blueprint, no how-to, no secret sauce.  They had an inspiration, set themselves to work on the vision they had in their heads, and made something from nothing.

Let’s go through the list of companies everyone talks about in every business book: Zappos, Craigs List, Tom’s Shoes, Wikipedia, Twitter, etc.  What makes these companies worth talking about is that they did something so different, so far afield from common thought and wisdom, that they set themselves apart from the noise.

I can’t create the same passion for customer service that Zappos has because that’s not my idea.  That’s Tony Hsieh’s idea and he got the payoff.  The same holds true for the characteristics we admire for any company.  I don’t want to create “Groupon for Black Labs” or some other “this for that.”  It has to be something I believe in or it will suck.  Furthermore, if in my mind I think it has to conform to some mold or it won’t be successful, I have already lost.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but for some reason it has crystalized for me over the last month or so.  I still think some business books have value because they inspire (or at least some do ), but I am not sure that someone else’s magic potion should be my magic potion.  

Books to Read - April 2011

It’s a day late, but here is my April list of must-reads.  There are only two this month, but both are excellent.

War by Sebastian Junger

I don’t know where to begin with this book.  It is one of the best books I have ever read.  This is the first book by Sebastian Junger I have read, and as a result I am reading the rest of them.  Junger deploys with an army unit at the point of the spear in Afghanistan, the Korengal Valley.  It is the one of the the harshest terrains in the entire country, on the border with Pakistan.  Junger spends a year with the unit, giving providing stories of camaraderie, tragedy, triumph and everything in between.  The stories of the operations are so vivid that I felt like I could hear the bullets ripping past my own head.  Junger does a great job of leaving any social commentary about the propriety of the war aside.  Instead he chooses to focus on the operation of a group of elite soldiers in extremely harsh conditions, fighting an enemy that seems to never run out of fighters willing to die.  One of the most interesting threads through the book is that the men he is deployed with don’t care about anything except each other.  They don’t worry about the politics of the war.  It is both the rush and loyalty that only combat can create that they live for.  They crave the battles and despise the downtime.  When asked if it bothers them to kill their enemies, the answer is a simple one:  If we don’t kill them, they will kill us.  It’s not personal.  It’s survival.  Read this book.  It’s not a glamorization of either point of view on the war.  I can promise you, however, that you will buy every soldier you meet out in public a drink from here on (if you don’t already).

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuck is the kind of guy you want to hang around.  I don’t know him personally, but if you watch his Daily Grape videos or his old Wine Library TV shows, you know what I mean.  This guy has so much energy and passion for what he does and what he believes that you want to be a part of the action.  I really liked this book and plan to write a full review of it in a different article.  I like it because Gary does a great job of laying out how customer relationships are going to change over the next five years.  And, unlike a lot of business book authors, you can see proof of his belief every day.  He is highly interactive in his approach to the use of social media and is the poster boy for how to build a brand.  The central theme of this book is that you must treat every customer interaction ( Twitter, Facebook, in person, over the phone ) with equal importance because you simply don’t know who is important anymore.  Hint: It’s not who you think it is.  It has some of the same, somewhat tired, reviews of companies like Zappos, but other than that I found a lot to take out of the book.  Like I said, I think this book deserves a bit more detailed treatment.

Happy reading!

Books To Read - March 2011

The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration By Isabel Wilkerson

I stumbled across this book thanks to Amazon’s recommendation engine.  This book re-tells the story of three Americans as they migrated themselves and their families from the segregated, oppressive South to the more free, less oppressive North.  Their stories are simply amazing.  It is hard to believe, as someone who grew up in the Northeast the conditions that existed into the 1970’s in the South.  The three stories in this book start in the 1930s and progress forward to modern day America.  It is one thing to read about the treatment of black people as a group.  I have found it quite another to read the personal stories of tragedy and triumph detailed in this fantastic book.  It is my March Must-Read.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

Beat the Reaper is the fictional story of a Jewish kid who grows up in the shadow of the Italian Mafia in New Jersey.  Peter Brown is raised by the Locanos, a mob family, after his grandparents are murdered.  Peter becomes a hit man for the mob, but eventually wants out.  He becomes a doctor courtesy of witness protection and is living a happy life until he treats a mobster, who rats him out to the family he was once a part of.  The story spirals out of control from there, and is a very enjoyable read when you need a break from real life.  

Evil Plans by Hugh MacLeod

I am an unabashed Hugh MacLeod fan.  I love his cartoons, and his first book Ignore Everybody was one of the books I read on the way to making the decision to starting my own company.  If you are stuck in a bit of a rut, I recommend both this and his first book, as well as subscribing to his daily cartoon feed at GapingVoid.com.  You will get the shot in the arm you need to just go do something.

Broken Music: A Memoir by Sting

I read this book a few years back.  I enjoy, as a general rule, reading about people who ended up doing what they love to do and the road that took them there.  Sting’s retelling of his childhood, the formation of the Police and the good and bad times that followed are an interesting read, particularly if you are a fan of the band and / or Sting.  It’s an easy read, and a good one to pick up when you don’t want to invest a lot of mental energy in a book.

There you have it.  My recommendations for the month of March.  I hope, as always, that you enjoy the books and hope you will share your thoughts on these as well if you get the chance to read them.

Happy reading!

Accidental Billionaires - A Review

I just finished reading Ben Mezrich’s latest book, The Accidental Billionaires.  I am a big fan of Ben’s and have read most all of his other books.  I picked this one up for a couple reasons.  One, I have read a good bit about the founding of Facebook and wanted to see if there was a different point of view brought forth in this book.  Two, I could not find another book in the airport Borders that looked interesting.

Read ‘Free’ for free

I just got done reading Free by Chris Anderson. I got my copy for free from Michael Hyatt at Thomas Nelson for posting on his blog about why I wanted to read the book.

I am going to do the same thing to continue on with the experiment.

Post a comment and tell me why freeconomics interests you, and what industries you see the march to free affecting next. If I like your entry, I will contact you and get you a copy of the book, both libre and gratis. I will give away five books ( if I get enough interest ).

Make sure you leave me enough info in your post to contact you.

I will be posting my review of the book in the next day or so.