Letter Never Sent

Lately, I’ve been checking out a lot of audio books to read while I drive around town. It makes the driving so much more relaxing and enjoyable. You get the added benefit of learning something. Here are a few I’ve listened to recently.

On Negotiating by Mark H. McCormack

This is a great audiobook with loads of practical experience and advice on the strategies and techniques behind negotiating. McCormack presents numerous anecdotal examples to illustrate his points and brings his business leadership experience to the fore to provide very valuable insight and information. The material is highly valuable and you will find yourself thinking back to it when you encounter any type of situation that requires coming to an agreement. The biggest lesson to me was about thinking big during a negotiation. Don’t be afraid to make an insultingly high or low offer. If you start out splitting the difference during a negotiation you will have even less leeway and you will likely end up with a bad deal. The higher and lower you go (depending on if you are the buyer or seller) the more room you have to maneuver. This book is highly recommended for anyone. You will soon find new opportunities to put these techniques to work.

Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat: Business Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks (1995) by Lou Pritchett

This guy has a folksy charm with his Memphis twang and fantastic stories gleaned from his 36 years with Procter & Gamble. Starting off in sales right out of college he worked his way to head of P&G’s Phillipines division and onward. Most memorable yet simple idea: if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. Don’t quit, don’t stop. Keep working to improve yourself and your work. It’s a process that never ends.

From Frank Herbert, courtesy of Quipsmart, a blog for quotations, which I’m trying to update regularly:

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Frank Herbert’s Dune had an enormous impact on me. It has as much to do with our world and history as it has to do with Herbert’s artificial world and history. There is a strong human dimension to his first book: the power of destiny, the influence of history and tradition, and the relationships between family members. It’s also a book about growing up, and taking your place in the world around you.

I was talking with Jody about books we had read as kids, and I thought it might make a good post.

1. The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This was a good series, which I remember little about, except for its good description of pioneer living, like living in a sod house, for example.
2. The Great Brain series by John Fitzgerald. I read these in my fifth grade class. When you finished your work you could read from the bookshelf in the classroom. That’s where I discovered this series. The stories revolve around these brothers as they get into mischief and solve mysteries.
3. Flinx Series by Alan Dean Foster. This is a good sci-fi series about an orphan, Pip, and his pet flying snake, Flynx.
4. The Oz books by L. Frank Baum. These were essentially fantasy books, before fantasy was a genre. There’s a lot going on in the Oz books. Magic, witches, and other assorted craziness. I never really understood the whole Ozma / Pip situation.

• To the detriment of my own posting regularity I have ended up posting a lot more to my del.icio.us account than anywhere else. In the six months since September I have posted to it 432 times. Compare that with the 1561 entries I have posted to the blog over the past four years. That’s more than twice the frequency. Granted, the posts to del.icio.us are less substantial, but it is obvious that it is seeing a lot more activity from yours truly. With the del.icio.us Firefox extension you just have to right click a link or page to send it to del.icio.us. I dump much of the information I sift through directly into there. Since anything goes you can gather a good idea of the kind of stuff I’ve been reading about. Del.icio.us is a godsend for people who like to sift through massive amounts of varied information.

• I finally finished reading Pat Conroy’s novel “Beach Music“, which I’ve been nursing for a few months. Like most of his other books I’ve read (The Prince of Tides, The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini) I could really relate to the story and the characters. Conroy also has an effusive, bittersweet style that I enjoy.
  
  Now that I have read a few of his books I am starting to see a number of similarities among them all. Most of the characters possess a lot of the same personality traits, and the family circumstances are often strikingly similar. There is usually a harsh military father, a sibling with schizophrenia or mental illness, eccentric grandparents, and an overwhelmingly dominant yet fiercely loving mother figure. I’ve also noticed that several of Conroy’s female love interests are emotionally remote, and troubled. Usually his protagonists are in love with someone who is either unwilling or unable to love them back. His protagonists find some way to come to the rescue while also ultimately failing to achieve the love they want. Loss seems to be a common theme. It is interesting how Conroy resolves certain relationships. It’s hints at an actual lack of resolution the author might have felt when writing.
  
  At times, I feel amibivalent about his work. Much of what he writes is only thinly disguised as fiction and you feel like you become a part of his very real and palpable family suffering and drama. There is so much of his raw emotional reality dripping from the writing. It makes me wonder what drives him to tell his story as fiction. Is it a desire to express something that still causes pain thereby creating distance from it? Does he want to confess to his readers but hide from their scrutiny? I can’t help but feel that there is something sadly narcissistic about turning important life experiences into novels. The pain is very real, but he wants to draw attention to it as well.
  
  All that being said, I’ll probably check out the non-fiction work, “My Losing Season” next. Here are a couple related links:
  1. Pat Conroy interview on “Beach Music”
  2. Pat Conroy audio interview on Fresh Air

Damn. Damn. Damn. I’m devouring this book, A Storm of Swords, and I’m quickly starting to realize that there’s no way in hell the sequel is going to be out in time for me to read when I finish this installment.

This series is very good as I mentioned earlier. In thinking about it today, I realized a few things that make it exceptional:

1. It is character and plot driven. Fantasy novels often get caught up rhapsodizing over the setting, the history, the culture, and fantastic elements of the story and forget about the story itself. In this series the details support and help move the plot forward. Sure, there are swords, dragons, giants, and the other fantastic trappings you would expect, but it is in service to the narrative. The characters make the story come alive and the plot gets you involved as a reader.
2. On a related note, the details provide richness. This richness fleshes out the world, it doesn’t distract.
3. The world is fantastic but realistic. The characters are complex. Some “bad guys” do good things, some “good guys” do bad things. There are few overt judgments and no priggish morality. If I may be heretical, The Lord of the Rings was often tedious in its simplistic view of good and evil.
4. The entire series is wall to wall with action, intrigue, sex, violence, and good dialogue. It is unpredictable. Anything can happen to anyone and any character can die at any time even if he or she seems essential.
5. The story is told from several different points of view and these points of view are often conflicting. The reader is given an opportunity to think about what’s actually going on, which is rare.

Let’s just say I’m glad to find a good series to enjoy. It’s not heavy reading, but I think you might like it.