John's books

Cider with Roadies (Maconie)

2010-10-30T02:08:00.002+01:00

Maconie charts his early life from claims of an early encounter with the Beatles to 70s pop, into prog and discovery of the Northern soul scene before punk blasted everything away ... briefly. He paints the colours of the passing decades in flower power purple, beige polyester, baggy trousers, ripped jeans before returning to beige polyester with the Happy Mondays in Madchester 1989.

Love or hate his choice in music, his passion for all music carries you along. The early highlights are avoiding the flying beerpots in a biker club with a band that only knows a handful of songs, massed battles on the dancefloor while discovering Northern Soul and being a punk in South Lancashire 1977. He goes on to drop out of university, take jobs he hates and eventually land the coveted title of music journalist with NME.

He intertwines his own history with tales of minor rock excess, following 80s bands around the world, a slightly more grown up version of 70s rock journalism. Some of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny - best not read on the early morning commuter train. With a cast of characters from his youth, wraggle-taggle teenage bands to the rock celebrities, this is a story charts the course of a generation of forty somethings

A Partisan's Daughter (de Bernieres)

2010-10-24T00:47:00.025+01:00

Novella from de Bernieres written in the form of a conversation. Chris is bored, middle aged, middle England, suffering loss of meaning in a tired marriage that has past its sell-buy date. Roza is from Yugoslavia and full of all the passion that Chris is missing from his life. They meet when Chris attempts to pick up a prostitute, and mistakenly chooses Roza. He is embarrased into offering her a lift home.
Thus begins their relatonship, with Chris finding excuses to visit, to listen to Roza's stories of her life in Yugoslavia with her Partisan father and her exploits since moving to London. The stories evolve in alternating monologue, with each telling their side of the story.

The story is a slow burner, with an evolving relationship between the characters and an underlying sexually charged connecton, that is clearly building to a crescendo. The manner of the apogee is unexpected from the earlier story, but suitably poignant. The only let-down is the concluson of the book following this point, which feels disappointingly rapid and concluded in haste.

Riding the Waves of Culture (Trompenaars)

2010-08-11T11:34:00.000+01:00

This is a classic in exploring organisational culture, using data gathered from global workshops and interviews. Although the focus is on understanding the differences between national cultures, this provides significant context in exploring cultures within an organisation where the differences may be across departments rather than nations.

Over many years, the authors have developed a database of cultural responses to their interview questions, and identified a number of axes of cultural difference describing relationships with people, time and the environment. These dimensions measure attitudes to rules vs relationships, group vs individual focus, expression of emotions, range of involvement, how status is noted, time-focus and the relationship with the environment. Each of these axes is explored in detail in the book, with data and anecdotes to illuminate the discussion.

This is a rare book from the scientific management genre, that successfully combines academic rigour with sufficient anecdotes to make the book educational and readable. The book does not contain a panacea for cultural challenges, but includes sufficient tools to enable an astute manager to identify and handle problems arising from cultural differences. In both a global and local context, this is a valuable tool for managing across intra- and extra-organisational cultures.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Paul Torday)

2010-07-27T15:30:00.000+01:00

Viewed from a distance, it’s difficult to see how this could be a success – a story of fishing in the desert, told through a series of emails, letters, memos, diary entries and interview transcripts. I had to ignore my initial concerns about the style to get through the start, but this was well worth the effort. The book is a sharp exploration of the cynicism of politics and the governing class, viewed through the eyes of a well-intentioned civil servant.

Time-serving official Alfred Jones is plucked from his obscurity to aid the Prime Minister’s aids in a heroically futile scheme – to devise a means of introducing salmon into the Yemen desert, and develop salmon fishing as a tourist attraction there. The powers-that-be are aiming for some grand gesture to Western-Arab relations, as witnessed by the world’s press through a camera-stopping moment. The scientific impossibilities of the scheme are mere project hurdles to be overcome in the search for headlines.

While written as a light farce, the book is cunningly incisive in its attack on the culture of media-hungry ministers and bullying senior officials. Alfred Jones is elevated to the highest ranks in the desire to create the mad project, and dropped just as rapidly as plans develop in an unexpected final twist. The perfect ending to a well constructed argument.

Leadership - Rudolph Giuliani

2009-10-22T01:31:00.000+01:00

This is one of the more interesting books on leadership, from a practitioner rather than an academic. Giuliani describes his style of leadership, and how he applied this to bring about change in New York. From communicating with all levels of his organisation and with external stakeholders, through establishing meaningful performance measurements to organising a new command centre during time of crisis, Giuliani explains how he did it, not just what he did.

Giuliani’s fame grew from his handling of the 9/11 crisis and aftermath in New York, and this lays a part in the book. But he had done the hard work long before this, establishing his effective leadership style across the New York city agencies, so that he could call on the resources available to handle the crisis. The book has 9/11 as an introduction and ending, but mostly draws examples from other parts of his leadership of New York.

Giuliani opens by admitting his love of writing, and he has a easily readable style. Each chapter is titled with one of his leadership principles, and he then explores, develops and demonstrates this principle in action. Particularly for anyone leading a public sector organisation, this is highly recommended.

God Bless you Dr Kevorkian (Kurt Vonnegut)

2009-09-22T00:54:00.001+01:00

This is a collection of short ramblings and comments about life and history, made through interviews with the famous dead. Kurt Vonnegut uses an assisted-suicide to reach heaven and meet the receent- and long-dead, to question motive and challenge assumptions. His suicide-assistant fortunately brings him back just in time to report his findings.

Originally broadcast as 90-second monologues on public service radio, these short stories loosely hang together as a collection. They serve as an effective vehicle for Vonnegut's comments on history - from the plight of Aborigines to Hiroshima and Kosovo. The dark humour is typical of Vonnegut's style.

The Adventure of English (Melvyn Bragg)

2009-09-22T00:20:00.001+01:00

Melvyn Bragg succeeds in creating a story that lives up to it title. This is a true swash-buckling adventure, full of invasions, rebellions, skulduggery and blossoming new relationships. English, as a living language, tells its own tale under Bragg's guiding hand, developing from the 4th century to modern adaptations.

The early chapters explore the French connections and Scandinavian roots of Anglo-Saxon in some detail, but the book comes to life with the religious battles to control access to the bible and translations. The second half of the book describes the spread of English across the globe, the variations that have sprung from this release and modern changes to a global language. Fascinating

The Time Travellers Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

2009-09-15T00:16:00.005+01:00

This is one of those rare genre-crossing pieces - science fiction combined with a love story. The book is quite slow to get going, but if you fight your way through the first 50 or so pages, as introduction, this develops into a fascinating story. The book describes the developing relationship between a young woman and a man who is an accidental time-traveller, dragged back and forth in time at the whim of a genetic problem.

In standard science fiction, time travel is generally viewed as a liberating experience, but this book describes a darker side of time travel, where there is no control. This is reminiscent of Ian Watson's short story "The Very Slow Time Machine", but with a much stronger link to reality, with the science fiction here linked to (a potential) reality. And, although the scenes shift backwards and forwards in time, the characters develop and grow as if the story was unfolding chronologically.

As the characters develop, we feel the pain and embarrassment from situations that arise from accidental time travel, which carries the book towards its conclusions. Unfortunately, the conclusions is foretold somewhat prematurely, which lessens the impact of the ending. Otherwise, an excellent example of an unusual combination of genres.

Have the Men Had Enough? (Margaret Foster)

2009-08-02T01:59:00.004+01:00

This is a beautifully constructed portrait of a family coming to terms with (or failing to) dementia within the family. After a lifetime caring for the family, when the mother/ grandmother needs caring for herself, what is the best approach the family can take? The characters demonstrate the range of emotions and responses that arise in this family challenge – is the quality of grandma’s life more important than her safety? Is the damage to other people outweighed by her happiness? Who benefits, who gains, who loses, who cares?

Rather than a purely clinical discussion of dementia, this book celebrates the joys of the patient’s former youth and glory, and combines this with a perspective on some of the more ridiculous aspects of the current situation. The tone conveys the seriousness of the problem, but allows a light-hearted style to convey the message with great effect.

This book draws attention to the questions and challenges that families face with caring for dementia. The characters’ different values and beliefs highlight the conflicts that will arise over caring, comforting and controlling both the sick and healthy within a family. If you are facing this challenge, or fear this for the future, read and share this book with your family – this may give you some reference-point to start the discussions.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (Jon Ronson)

2009-08-01T02:11:00.003+01:00

This is written as a documentary exploration of some truly bizarre forms of research into alternative forms of killing, torture and manipulation by various governments, mainly US and UK. While similar to a Michael Moore exposure, it's also so close to a novel that it's hard to tell whether this is truth or fiction (take Moore's Sicko and add in The Constant Gardener).

The book investigates forms of development of the human brain usually associated with the personal development movement, but applied to military and government control. From staring at goats (to kill them) to walking through walls, this covers a number of esoteric development skills. The reporting lists interviews with people purported to be involved in this research, and interweaves well-documented cases that add semblance of veracity to these reports. But the evidence is thin.

As a light-hearted holiday read, this deserves marks for an imaginative overview of potentially crazy investments of public funds. As an investigative journal, this is light on evidence and poorly organised to prove a point. Read it and laugh, and suspend belief.

Flags of Our Fathers (James Bradley)

2009-08-01T01:54:00.004+01:00

Describing the men involved in the famous photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Juma, this book explores their lives before the war and the reactions of the survivors after. Although described as "the best battle book I have ever read" by Stephen Ambrose (Band of Brothers) on the cover, this does not focus on the battle itself. It is the story of a generation signing up for the army after Pearl Harbour, and the lives of the survivors in searching for meaning after the atrocities in the Pacific theatre.

As a European, the Second World War has always meant the Allies and Germany - the battles of Europe, the ghettos and the concentration camps are enough history for one period. So I was not aware of the campaigns and battles in the Pacific - America's war. This book opened my eyes to the war in that part of the world.

There may be other books that describe the battles in greater detail, but this focussed on those few people involved in a simple ceremony during the battle - a flag-raising. Due to one of the flukes of history, this ceremony became iconographic of the battles and victories, and the participants became a nation's heroes. But the book describes their true feelings - simple soldiers doing their job, not heroes.

Written by one of the flag-raisers sons, he describes his search for the details of the events after his father's death. The soldiers had remained silent for decades following the battle, and the book highlights some of the possible reasons. The tale of the battle's death and destruction never descends into glorifying battle, but helps us to understand what these soldiers faced, fighting an enemy committed to death rather than surrender. Their struggle to learn a new life after the war is as poignant as the scenes they witnessed in battle. A book to make you cry at the destruction that can be wrought by misguided sets of beliefs and values.

Player Piano (Kurt Vonnegut)

2009-05-15T14:12:00.001+01:00

Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel is set in a dystopian America of the future, where technology has made manual work obsolete. This society divides into the few technocrats and managers who devise and control the machines, and the masses. A semi-utopian ideal removes the need for work and provides the masses with all they physically need, but provides no hope – what service can they provide? For those outside the elite, their only work is the army or the “Reeks and Wrecks” (Reconstruction & Reclamation Corps), and even the army is not trusted with guns in an age where wars are fought by machines in foreign lands. Even the legal system has been automated, with machines that analyse data and precedent to pronounce judgement.

The book is centred on one character’s struggle to find meaning within this society. Dr Paul Proteus is one of the elite, an engineer who manages one of the vast automated factories. But his state-controlled life provides material wealth and little satisfaction. The book follows his journey from elite to subversive in his search for meaning.

Written around the same time as 1984, the book offers a similar view of the future with total state control of society, work and media. While lighter in tone than 1984, the messages are strikingly similar and the outcome similar. This book ends pessimistically, challenging the goals of constant development but highlighting the needs that drive them.

The Black Swan (Naseem Taleb)

2009-04-22T20:21:00.005+01:00

This book is written by a proud sceptic, who challenges all our assumptions about systems and beliefs in modern science and particularly economics. The author worked in large financial firms, and (fore)-saw the downfall of current beliefs.

He argues strenuously for people to avoid believing in the charlatans, and demonstrates numerous failings of the systems. But he fails to offer a better way so, despite his displayed intellect and thinking prowess, he comes across as a whiner. This is unfortunate, as I warmed to his message, but I found myself constantly waiting for the great revelation of how things could be run better. It never really appeared.

There is also a follow-up essay from the author - The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics and finally a set of actions for the future. While Mark Vernon argues there is a flaw in the black swan argument.

The Periodic Table (Primo Levi)

2009-04-11T01:33:00.003+01:00

Loosely structured around a selection of the chemical elements, this book is a collection of short stories from the author’s memories of a life working in chemistry, together with a couple of pieces of fiction. The book starts with a long rambling chapter about relations in Piedmont before the war, a collection of memories of people from the author’s past. This is a huge barrier to the reader, but the book becomes much more readable after this opening.

Primo Levi is famous for his accounts of Auschwitz and afterwards (If This Is a Man (and) The Truce), and this book continues the theme but mostly focuses elsewhere in his life. The painful march towards Auschwitz is described over several years of people’s ignorance, lack of information and unwillingness to be informed. In working for the army in 1942, he recognises that he could have helped the German war effort and admits that he dismissed this notion, focussing on his desire to prove his worth to people who had labelled him inferior. Later chapters tackle the re-appearance of former captors in business many years later, and the dilemma Levi faced in dealing with them.

These are critical thoughts from a survivor of Europe’s darkest hour, and his commentary on his own actions calls for self-reflection. But the deep nature of this thinking does not make this a great book. There are supreme highs followed by long rambling sections that detract from the overall story. The fictional short stories fit with the book’s title, but fail to add to the overall message. Five stars for the message, three for the writing.

Longitude (Dava Sobel)

2009-04-08T00:53:00.001+01:00

This popular science account of huge changes in the 18th century has no pretensions to be a scholarly work. Short and simple, with reference material consigned to the appendix, the style is simple and the book refreshingly short. There is no attempt to draw the story out into the wider history of the age, just a clear focus on the challenge and the conflicts between the people involved.

The challenge of solving the longitude problem taxed the greatest brains of the later middle ages, as greater commerce created more shipping and more losses from miscalculations of position. The book describes the creation of almost-perfect time-keeping devices by John Harrison, and his attempts to prove these were the solution to the problem. Opposed to him were some of the great astronomers, who proposed the lunar distance solution, and stood in judgement of Harrison’s efforts. Although Harrison himself was perhaps his own worst critic, refusing to even submit his first two creations test until he had improved them … taking another 30 years.

The book captures the detail of clock-making without becoming boring, balancing the details with the desires of Harrison to deliver perfection and the tension between the competitors for the prize. Striking a fine balance between science and personality, this is certainly one of the better popular history of science books.

Lost for Words (John Humphreys)

2009-04-07T23:46:00.000+01:00

The first half of this book is a long rumbling grumble about the state of modern youth, modern teaching and all things modern that impact on the English language. Humphreys admits that language changes over the centuries (and decades) and decries the idea of an English Académie Française to protect the language from change, but he can't help complaining about the laissez faire approach this leads to. Or is that "to which this leads", avoiding sentence-ending prepositions.

The second half describes the failures of politicians, bureaucrats and advertising men in their attempts to promote messages that contort simple English into an unrecognisable list of over-syllabic verbised nouns, superfluous additional extra words and super-long sentences that serve to confuse more than inform.

And Humphreys is of course correct: we do not want a language dominated by the culture of cool nor by the excesses of bureaucrats. But in putting across this message, he argues himself in circles. He stands in the middle ground and argues for balance between changes and rules, which is precisely the position the English language adopts. As the author's question would be to any politician (around 8am) - "... and your point is?".

The Calendar (David Ewing Duncan)

2009-04-06T22:46:00.000+01:00

Describing a story that still has not run its full course, this book takes on the challenge of covering calendar designs from Mayan civilisations to the present day. The subject-matter is immense and covers Babylonian, Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Medieval attempts to measure, define and unite the lunar, sidereal and tropical years.

With a heavy emphasis on the difficulty of defining Easter, the book focuses on the disputes with the Catholic church in the Middle Ages, culminating in the Definition of the Gregorian calendar, describing the various people involved in previous attempts to reform the calendar an the people who succeeded. But this results in a long rambling synopsis of a millennium of European history, with various bits of Indian, Arabic and African stories thrown in.

The book covers a huge amount of detail about the various attempts to define the calendar, but falls between scholarly and coffee table science book. Touching on the science and people involved, the book fails to grip in telling an interesting story, but is adequate at informing.

I was interested in the description of riots over the imposition of the Gregorian calendar, with the loss of 10 days in most of Europe (11 in England) as I have previously found this is disputed by some.

Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)

2009-03-31T14:52:00.004+01:00

		This is a beautiful, magical story of children born at the moment of India's partition. Rushdie captures the sights, sounds and smell of nation as it grows, and faces new challenges with its neighbours. Told mostly through the thoughts of one of the children, we experience the growth, changes and challenges first-hand. The prose is lengthy, beautiful and demanding - this is not light reading! Rushdie's use of language demands concentration to follow the descriptions and plots. Find a quiet spot for undisturbed reading, and take in the sensual experience that Rushdie is able to convey in this classic. Five stars.

The Economic Naturalist (Robert H Frank)

2009-03-25T12:41:00.005Z

I was drawn to read this book following Risk, as there appeared several natural connections from skimming the book. But this initial connection soon disappeared.

Robert Frank writes for the New york Times and teaches economics. But he asks his students to look beyond the complex mathematics of modern economic theories for the underlying story. He asks (some) thought-provoking questions, and demands answers in simple narrative form that can be easily understood - comprehensible to the man on the Clapham omnibus.

This book is a collection of such essays, re-written to form a loosely connected story. As such, the book has a magazine style - a collection of short stories. Some of these appear trite, some create only a momentary "ah", but some lead to further reflection.

This forms a useful introduction to some economic thinking, and is timely in given the current economic situation. This raises questions and challenges to societies that allow pure economic forces to drive decision-making. Differential pricing strategies, the tragedy of the commons and aspects of behavioural economics are well described through illustrative stories.

Risk (Dan Gardner)

2009-03-18T17:28:00.004Z

I found this a fascinating exploration of our inability to handle information and risk adequately in an age overloaded with data. This book describes some of the psycho-social research that has built understanding of the rules of thumb we use - the Example Rule, the Good-Bad Rule and the Rule of Typical Things. Coupled with the Confirmation Bias, this starts to explain why mass panics break out in localised areas over spurious data - for example the MMR vaccine in the UK and silicone implants in the US.

From the examples given, I feel much more able to explore statistics and challenge the conclusions being drawn, but this is probably untrue - an over-confidence not based on reality. Sadly, the research suggests we are all prone to errors of judgement based on "gut reaction", even when we have an understanding that we may behave in this way, and especially when in the company of others who believe the same. But the book does conclude that, despite all the scare stories, there has never been a better time to be alive...

Well worth reading, just to open your mind to how others may be manipulating the information presented to you.

And a PostScript - it seems that our ability to handle risk and probabilities diminishes with age ...

Seventy Two Virgins (Boris Johnson)

2009-02-08T17:17:00.000Z

A tale of farce in modern politics. Classically constructed novel by the classically educated man, but don't let this put you off. This novel is a farce set in modern times, highlighting the ineptitude of government, authorities, systems and those se rely on for our safety. The characters are pastiches of the people we recognise in power, and surely a bicycling MP is a little too close to home for Mr Johnson.

There are parts of this that you will love - an ambulance being clamped by an over-zealous warden springs to mind. There are parts that plod a little, but the story turns a page and is off again. A great holiday read.

Nearly made it ... but not quite recommended (3 star)

2009-01-31T15:14:00.019Z

Non-fiction

The Greatest Salesman in the World - an average parable about sales and relationship skills that plods along in a rambling story.

Novels

Trinity - fails to build on a great start. Read Redemption instead.

The Girl at the Lion d'Or - meandering novel set in 1930's France, that fails to live up to Birdsong or Charlotte Gray.

Birds without Wings - never quite re-generates the emotional highs and lows of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and suffers from a surfeit of history lessons in the background.

Books rated 1 or 2 stars are only listed on the Amazon site.

World without End (Ken Follett)

2009-01-20T00:08:00.000Z

With the same setting as Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett invites comparison and criticism of this book with his previous work. An essentially similar struggle unfolds between church, state and town for control of people and wealth. But the novel stands up to the comparison. The characters are engaging, the story is credible and the pace keeps the story going … through the epic 1200 pages.

This is a page-turner – hard to put down once I had started. A small criticism that some of the scenes/interludes just seem to be too similar to the previous work, and slightly diminish the overall effect – a foreign journey of discovery in Pillars of the Earth is repeated as a quick “there and back again” in this story. But this is minor in another classic tale of good and evil that captivates from the start.

Man's Search for Meaning (Victor Frenkl)

2008-09-02T16:06:00.003+01:00

I was surprised by the small size when I received this book from Amazon. I had heard so much about the book, and expected a great deal from it. Compared to most books in the self-help section, this book is tiny, but Frenkl conveys his story clearly and succinctly in 150 pages.

Assuming that his readers will have read or heard the more gruesome details of the concentration camp, Frenkl describes the daily reality of a prisoner's experience. With poignant moments scattered throughout the first (autobiographic) part of the book, he describes how people survived, supported others and died in that world. As a psychologist, he also tells the reader how and why he and others made some of their choices during that time. On its own this is a gripping read.

In the second part of the book, he relates this experience to his own form of psychology - logotherapy. This form of psychology focuses on man's search for the purpose and meaning in life. This part of the book becomes quite academic at times, but is well worth persevering with, to put the earlier part into current context.

This is a classic - 5 stars.

Redemption (Leon Uris)

2008-09-01T15:29:00.002+01:00

This is the sequel to Trinity and builds on the families and characters introduced in that novel, but this story stands on its own and surpasses the former. Telling the story of Irish families split asunder by emigration, feuds and bitterness, Redemption spreads their story across the globe. Families from Ireland to New Zealand are separated and may be re-united, while the First World War intervenes.

Focussing on a few characters from these families, the book describes the futility of family feuding, strategic warfare in foreign climes and failure to communicate on a grand scale. No-one comes out as winners in this saga. But the heroes keep the plot boiling, and the pages keep turning. Hard to put down.