Bookshelf

The trickster is the boundary crosser who disrupts a culture’s settled conventions. It’s a rich and well written argument for why mischief and useful accidents matter. I finished it admiring the idea but unsure how to put it to work.

An esoteric and hard to read book, but one that’s changed how I think. The core idea, that we play both finite and infinite games and that it’s useful to distinguish what game we’re playing at any given moment, has been a really useful framing.

Despite its small size, I found this book to be one of the most insightful business books I’ve read. It’s required reading for any agency owner, freelancer, or consultant that takes their craft seriously. It will, without a doubt, change the way you work.

Perhaps the most pressing issue I need to address with my own work is what Enns calls The Difficult Business Decision. That is, to choose a focus. As the author points out, most creative firms avoid making The Difficult Business Decision and this is the root cause of most business development issues.

Will be rereading many times, I’m sure.

Delivering Happiness follows Tony’s journey from quitting a respectable well-paid job, starting a company, selling it to Microsoft, investing in companies and eventually becoming the CEO of Zappos.

The overall theme of the book is about happiness: making customers, employees and yourself happier.

You get the sense that Tony is a really nice guy and is honest throughout. In the early days, after selling LinkExchange to Microsoft, I got the sense that Tony had lost his way a little and wasn’t sure what his purpose was or what he should focus on next. Once he found his purpose (essentially delivering happiness), he really excelled.

It’s a great story of how important purpose, vision, values and culture are. Certainly one of the more enjoyable ‘business’ books I’ve read.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s well researched and full of incites into the way Jeff Bezos and Amazon operate. The book seemed to fairly portray both sides of the story including the positives (Jeff is clearly a gifted business man) and also the negatives (poor working conditions, anti-competitive behaviour, etc.).

The sheer determination, commitment and inner belief that Jeff has is truly inspiring.

I’m new to whisky and have just begun exploring the wonderful and complex drink that it is.

This book is great for people like me who want to learn more about whisky. It covers how to enjoy whisky (including how water and ice change the flavours of the drink), the whisky making process and how that impacts on the taste, and an overview of different regions and distilleries.

There are plenty of tasting notes throughout the book. When I drink a new whisky, I compare my own notes with this book which is helping develop my palette. It’s also helping expand my own whisky collection.

The book is printed on good quality paper, has great photography, and the author is a good writer who really knows his stuff.