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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
kare has commented on (7) products
What to Do When There's Too Much to Do: Reduce Tasks, Increase Results, and Save 90 Minutes a Day
by
Laura Stack
kare
, June 20, 2012
It’s hard to change habits so read Laura Stack 's crystal clear plan in book, to free up time for using best talents more often & savor life. Just as Tony Schwartz, with The Energy Project, has shown us how to “more skillfully managing their four sources of energy -- physical, emotional, mental and spiritual ��" to develop actionable strategies that help them to become more energized, focused and productive”, popular and long-time productivity pro Laura Stack offers a powerfully simple plan to sweep away the underbrush of distractions, do first things first and wisely and graciously say no to requests and activities that can take you away from doing your best work more often. Along with your health and strong friendships, what could be more important for living a meaningful life? This book is an apt companion to The Power of Habit and The Power of Full Engagement.
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Do Nothing How to Stop Overmanaging & Become a Great Leader
by
J Keith Murninghan
kare
, June 17, 2012
1. Be clear about your top goal for your group, whether it is a team or a whole organization. 2. Step into the shoes of those you lead, assume the best and provide them with the resources they need to succeed 3. THEN get out of their way, except when your orchestration is needed. That seems simply yet, as I, and probably you, have experienced, first hand, it is remarkably rare. That’s why Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management professor, J Keith Murnigham in his book, Do Nothing! lays out a rationale and road map to move away from micro-managing to “leading, facilitating and orchestrating.” Not surprisingly Keith is a fan of Carol Dweck’s advocacy of a growth Mindset a book I heartily recommend. I agree with much of the common sense, general advice in his book, such as “doing too much is far worse than doing too little,” yet in business as in art, it is often a matter of exactly where you draw the line. He writes, “When things are really clicking, work will be like the performance of a great Beethoven symphony, with the notes in the right place, the crescendos coming on time, and at the end, a feeling of exhilaration at your collective accomplishments.” I also know that feeling, first hand, when at the Wall Street Journal, with a beloved bureau chief who seemed to know how to bring out the unique talents of each of us, and when to have a tight rein and when to let it loose. The art in leading or managing, it seems to me is in know when to do both, especially in times of internal conflict where I would have liked to have read more advice from Murnigham. I disagree, in one small way, with his advice to “Dan” a great IT guy who was promoted up the organization and away from a place where he could use his IT skills: “He really didn’t want to give up the skills he had worked so hard to perfect. His predicament is true of every leader: when you get promoted, you can’t rely on your technical skills any more.” Some people who have great mastery of a needed skill are more valuable to the organization and will experience more meaning and satisfaction if they can continue to use those skills and have a separate promotional track in their firm, as 3M provided at one time. Plus, in an increasingly self-organized and disruptive world, the skills of initiating and participating in collaboration may be at least as valuable as traditional leadership skills. Companies that support self-organizing to capture an opportunity or solve a problem may thrive more than those that cite “leadership” as a top skill. This book indirectly supports that notion set the vision, supply the resources and get out of the way of your people so they can perform at their best together and for each other. He cites some research and resultant insights not usually in a business book such as overcoming the empathy gap and the concrete benefits of starting from a place of trust in those you lead. One of my favorite examples about facilitative, collective team work is on page 111 where he describes how cardiac surgery teams, in learning a new and much less invasive surgical technique must move from a surgeon-as-God format to one in which everyone of the team is seeing different information on the technology they are responsible for and thus the team must be in constant verbal communication to perform at their best. Everyone must listen to and respond to everyone. This is an apt metaphor for many other kinds of work situations. In fact, it would probably serve us well if those in other sectors, such as politicians, were somehow forced/rewarded to act similarly yet I cannot think of a scenario in which that might happen…. unfortunately. I recommend this book as a strong primer for today’s leaders, with its focus on providing a clear vision, being transparent, facilitative and seeing yourself as an orchestrator rather than the boss who gives orders. If you follow this approach you will probably feel better when you answer Clay Christensen’s question, How Will You Measure Your Life? I recommend, as complementary companion books, Willpower, Great by Choice, Collaboration, Little Bets and The Business Model Innovation Factory.
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Cognitive Surplus Creativity & Generosity in a Connected Age
by
Clay Shirky
kare
, October 16, 2010
From slave trading to watching kittens on treadmills - there are many ways "we" use what Shirky dubs our "Cognitive Surplus" - otherwise known as our free time. The invisible gorilla, Get Satisfaction, wellness community, Bikewire, kiva and etsy are just some of the online places we’ve shared for fun, money-making, justice, special interests, tips or support. With more free time and the spread of “public media” ordinary citizens can “pool free time to pursue activities together” suggests Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus, his follow-up to Here Comes Everybody. Yet, where are we heading with this growing capacity to actively share and co-create? Towards extraordinarily satisfying and dangerous “opportunities” I’ve found. Shirky covers the upside. Here are some points from his book, followed by the dangerous downside of the trends he cites that are covered in other books. These effects will touch all our lives so it’s vital to be aware of them. The Benefits of More Free Time and Capacity to Share and to Organize • “The wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation and sharing that take advantage of that resource. Our cognitive surplus is only potential; it doesn’t mean anything or do anything by itself. To understand what we can make of these new resources, we have to understand, not just the kind of actions it makes possible but the hows and wheres of those actions.” • “Back when coordinating group action was hard, most amateur groups stayed small and informal. Now that we have the tools that let groups of people find each other and share their thoughts and actions, we are seeing a strange new hybrid: large, public amateur groups. Individuals can make their interests public, more easily, and groups can balance amateur motivation and larger coordinated action more easily as well.” • “The geographic range of collaborative efforts has spread dramatically. When Linus Torvalds first asked or help creating what would become the Linus operating system, he received only a few replies, but they came from potential participants all over the globe. Similarly, Julie Clarke, Valerie Sooky, and Meg Markus all lived in different places when they were forming Grobanites for Charity, but that didn’t stop them from creating a charity that’s raised a million dollars.” • “Today people have new freedom to act in concert and in public. In personal satisfaction, this goal is fairly uncomplicated – even the banal uses of our creative capacity (posting YouTube videos of kittens on treadmills or writing bloviating blog posts) are still more creative and generous than watching TV. • “Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.” The Dangerous Downside to Most Anyone’s Increased Ability to Share and to Organize Yes, people like sharing and collaborating, as Shirky suggests yet many are adept at both for illegal goals. There is a tragic and growing dark side in this increasingly connected world as Moses Naim points out in Illicit. From trading in women, guns and drugs, illegal activity has also grown more “creative” and “active” and connected groups of bandits, terrorists, pirates and self-described global businessmen in a more efficient, larger activity. As Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have found there are now more enslaved and traded girls and women in than there were blacks at the height of slavery. As well, we increasingly connect with people who share our beliefs, according to The Big Sort and Going to Extremes. A dangerous consequence of closer connections with like-minded people is not limited to terrorists. As a group continues to bond it tends to take more extreme stances on the beliefs that brought them together – and to become more intense in those beliefs. With our innate desire to belong, contribute and be known – and the greater capacity to connect, share and organize described by Clay Shirky, it behooves us to be aware of the downside tendencies of organizing groups as we enjoy the upsides.Also as low-paid writers for eHow and LIVESTRONG, wine and other “content farm” workers have discovered, we’ll see other downsides to increased connectivity.
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What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption
by
Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers
kare
, October 16, 2010
One Saturday a friend who lives on Nob Hill in S.F. drove a zipcar over to visit me in Sausalito. He was eager to tell me about his trip to Istanbul, paid for by renting out his spare bedroom. Earlier that morning, via a freecycle posting, a stranger picked up some clay pots I’d set out by my garage so he could make a deck garden. Our apparently different actions are, in fact, part of a trend that Roos Rogers and Rachel Botsman dub collaborative consumption in their book, What’s Mine is Yours. Feeling pinched for money? Hate waste? Want to get to know more of your neighbors? These are just some of the reasons that might motivate you to discover fresh methods to save and to share that can also enrich your life – with others. From bartering to exchanging, fixing, giving away, renting or more efficiently using what you have, this book is the most complete (and lively) resource I’ve found. You’ll not only read about the better-known businesses and organizations that are tapping into “collaborative consumption” like zipcar and Meetup but many lesser-known groups and methods that you might join or reinvent to adapt to your situation or interest. They write, “The collaboration at the heart of Collaborative Consumption may be local and face-to-face, or it may use the Internet to connect, combine, form groups, and find something or someone to create “many to many” peer-to-peer interactions. Simply put, people are sharing again with their community – be it an office, a neighborhood, an apartment building, a school, or a Facebook network. But the sharing and collaboration are happening in ways and at a scale never before possible, creating a culture and economy of What’s Mine is Yours.” Collaborative Consumption appears in three “systems” suggest the authors, product service systems, redistribution markets and collaborative lifestyles. The underlying principles that enable them are idling capacity, critical mass, belief in the commons and trust between strangers. In keeping with a book on collaboration the authors seemingly productively co-wrote this book. You can read about the factors in our relatively recent history that caused Americans to shop as a hobby, often beyond our mean or needs and throw away or store our extra stuff (Americans average more than four credit cards per person while Europeans get by with 0.23 per person)– or you can jump to the many interesting characters, services, methods and stories in the rise of our collaborative consumption. Some of my favorite stories are about business people who made dramatic changes on how they operated their business such as Ray Anderson who had a “conversion experience” after reading my friend Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce, and transformed his firm, “the world’s largest commercial carpet company” into “the first fully sustainable industrial enterprise.” There are many fascinating back stories on how company founders backed into starting their business after personally seeing a need to reduce waste or save money – or others desire to share. As someone who has had a long interest in collaboration I was delighted to learn how many more clever methods people are inventing to get along well on less, often through the use of collaborative technology. For example, I’ve been a longtime fan and user of freecyle, Zipcar, Netflix and Zilok (and was building up the nerve to try CouchSurfing or Airbnb) yet I’d not heard of many of the others including Snapgoods, SwapTree, SmartBike, TechShop, HearPlanet, iLetYou, SolarCity, UsedCardboardBoxes or OurGoods. Perhaps like me, you’ll finish this book convinced that sharing in all its forms is a major trend – and not just for the frugal or the greenies. Further you’ll have specific ideas about why and how to share, exchange, rent, swap or ensure that the things you no longer want get into the hands of those who do. After you’ve read this book visit Shareable and see more stories to inspire you about how we are becoming more inventive about sharing the more we connect with each other about it.
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Lily of the Field
by
John Lawton
kare
, October 16, 2010
It took about 26 pages and then I was hooked. As a first-time reader of Lawton’s mysteries I was not sure that there’d be characters I’d care about, enough plot twists and historical color yet he pulled me in. Just when I wanted to learn what would happen next to the young music pupil, Voytek, as the Nazis advance in Vienna, Lawton switches to a Hungarian physicist who is forced to live behind barbed wire for the first time (several surprising subsequent times appears in later chapters) on the Isle of Man. I did not know that the English also interned people. One gets glimpses of how the seven or so central characters affect each others lives yet it is a continuing adventure to see where and how they crossed paths, and why. In the run-up to World War II and afterwards, several countries come off with besmirched reputations including the U.S. Canada, Austria, Russia and England. This is a thrill ride of a history lesson where I cared about what happened – especially to the musician Viktor Rosen and his student and how police inspector Troy investigates the murders and handles the truths he discovers. The ending is apt and satisfying. Mimicing several real life stories including code reading, invention of the atomic bomb and the connection between police and spy-related agencies in several countries adds to the emotional ride of this book. I am now going to read some of Lawton’s earlier books that feature Inspector Troy. If you enjoy literary mysteries that envelop you in a story that parallels real life as you get with other authors like Elizabeth George, John le Carré and Martin Cruz Smith then you, too, may enjoy John Lawton’s writing.
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Abundant Community Awakening the Power of Families & Neighborhoods
by
John McKnight and Peter Block
kare
, July 08, 2010
In this weak economy where budgets of local governments and non-profit budgets will continue to get slashed, it is especially heartening to read the mutual-reliance message inherent in this book. Rather than rely solely on outsiders and related funding and services, the authors suggest we band together with locals to come up with our own solutions to problems – and ways to leverage the resources we each have in support of “our” community. While the authors advocate “no more relying on institutions or systems to provide us with the good life” the ideas that are good enough to be adopted do tend to get honed into systems and sometimes even institutions. That’s part of the ebb and flow of community design. I see variations on this message from sites like shareable and the creative people cited in Richard Florida’s books. Another reviewer notes that the authors advocate our striving toward greater compassion for each other rather than greater systems of efficiency yet I believe that, like natural systems and user-friendly design, finding ways to be more efficient can be a reflection of caring about one’s community. Not only do I feel compassion but genuine liking for those in my community who invent or suggest a way to make our community better run and/or close-knit. That’s compassion in action. As a long admirer of Block’s ideas who believes that the economy will be bumpy at best for the next five or so years I am heartened by the several specific ways that bottom-up community-building is happening - and that the models for such local efforts spreading so leaders in different communities can learn from each other’s local experience. The more specific they are the more “spreadable” they become – and often they reflect more efficient ways to be mutually supportive. Some examples are as seemingly mundane as Freecycle – which is elegantly moderated in my Marin County by “Nicole,” co-work space and the Village movement started in Beacon Hill. When people discover concrete ways they can be mutually-supportive they tend to adopt and modify them and to tell others. to spread. From my work in forging partnerships to generate more value and visibility I’ve found that identifying the sweet spot of mutual interest between individuals and/or organizations is a crucial first step to exploring how to accomplish greater things together than one can alone. When people collaborate around an explicit shared purpose they tend to bring out the better sides in each other so they inevitably get closer. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the co-authors use their influence to advocate the creation of an online community where we could exchange ideas about what’s working to create “abundant communities?”
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Pop Stand Out In Any Crowd
by
Sam Horn
kare
, August 11, 2006
Scientists, doctors, engineers and other technically-trained individuals who want to turn heads away from the more verbally-adept and towards them (and their ideas) will enjoy this concrete and conversational approach to becoming more frequently-quoted. Why not reach beyond your peers, natural allies and like-minded people to POP and turn the next chapter of your life story into the kind of adventure you want it to be? Fill the scenes of your life with the people you want in them, with the purposeful speaking that can pull them in and put you in the more fully-realized character role you were truly meant to play. Of course those of you who speak English like it tastes good (you ?people people?, sales gurus, cause advocates, lover of words and ideas, etc ) will just dive into this book too. With POP, Sam becomes the trusted sidekick who supports you on that path to, well, POP. She has for me.
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