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What books are you reading?
Dormouse:
I hope you are also aware of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gatesw. I only read it once, long ago, but it seemed to me a fantasy masterpiece.-rjbull (June 03, 2018, 03:53 PM)
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I became aware of it when I checked out what else he'd written. Haven't read it yet, but intend to. Glad to see a recommendation.
My method for selecting books is partly random. I acquire books (paper and ebooks) when they seem very good value (usual), or I want to read them NOW (less usual), and I use access to other people's books whenever I can. If I'm staying at a B&B with books, I will try to read one of them (preferably finishing before I leave) and will browse books at coffee shops and pubs that have them.
At home, I choose what I want from the shelves or use a random number generator to select a book from our shared ebook library. If it lands on a series, I choose the earliest book I haven't read. If I don't feel like it, I'll look at the list again by author or recency, and then reroll. I prefer to switch genres and subjects to avoid staleness. I also like trying lots of stuff I would never have deliberately chosen. And varying quality levels, and styles.
Dormouse:
Yesterday I read Greylady (Clan Wars 1) by Peter Morwood; first published 1993. The start of a prequel series to the Horse Lords. The second (Widowmaker) was published but the mooted third in the series never appeared and neither did projected extensions to his Horse Lords series. Some joint writing with his wife, but his own writing seems to have come to a stop around 20 years ago. Apparently now 'consults on modern militaria and medieval European weapons'. He and his wife, Diane Duane, appeared at the Discworld Convention in Warwick on 22nd July last year and will be back again this year.
Came up on my random number generator, and I thought I'd check Goodreads before diving in. 3.89 - not good. None of his individual books were as high as 4 - not at all good. Worth bothering? I thought about it, but decided to check it out. And actually it was good. Rich sonorous prose. Somewhat derivative setting, but very little isn't. Too slow for modern pace junkies, but they would surely stop after a few pages, realising it wasn't for them. So looked to be worth a higher rating (OK, not by me - but I'd probably rate 1-2 points lower than the average rater). Not very, very good. Deus ex machina shows, hurrying some transitions. No tension build, and no sense of impending resolution either; can be OK, but not usually in this genre. All tweakable. And, I think, still is. Up to 90%.
What books are you reading?
But then a massive flaw. Six missing months. And it simply jumps into the new present. Fine in some books, but this style was about reflection and internal development as well as external. Those six months may have had no big external events, but personal events were moving apace.
And at the very end the protagonist does something he simply wouldn't have done.
Why? The short answer is rank bad editing. The book shouldn't have gone out like this. The author is probably culpable too.
Options:-
* Fixed word target, and the book was cut down to fit.
* The natural end was thought not to draw readers on to Book 2.
* Author boredom. He'd demonstrated an interest in his settings and that he saw action as scenes, visually, and maybe saw the missing six months as rehashing.Poor editing in any event. Either poor executive decisions about how the book should be, or a failure to direct or persuade the author to address the issues. No idea if he how much editing he did himself or how much input there was from his wife.
Not read any of his other books, so it is hard to know whether they have similar issues - I'm pretty sure the writing quality would be similar.
I'd still recommend it; always a good sign if a book is finished in a day.
IainB:
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organisation - 2nd Ed, (2006) Pub. Random House Business Books. This ed. revised and updated with 100 new pages since the earlier (1st.) Ed. (1992).
My rating: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:
What books are you reading?
Not sure whether it is the same publisher (it has a slightly different cover), but the Amazon page for this book is here. <https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385517254>
There is an E-book version and an Amazon audible version (featuring the author as narrator) - the latter is here. <https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/B0000640E9>
The covering blurb for the book says:
Completely Updated and Revised
This revised edition of Peter Senge’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book’s ideas into practice. As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices.
In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire.
The updated and revised Currency edition of this business classic contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future.
Mastering the disciplines Senge outlines in the book will:
• Reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them
• Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity
• Free you of confining assumptions and mindsets
• Teach you to see the forest and the trees
• End the struggle between work and personal time
Covering blurb copied from: <https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385517254>
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I first came across Senge's 5th Discipline when I was working on a contract with EDS, where his book (the 1st ed.) was required reading for management because EDS were at the time implementing the management philosophy of the 5th Discipline in the 3rd wave of an impressively ambitious 5-waves of planned change. Unfortunately, management either couldn't read, or didn't seem to understand it all, or maybe they just felt threatened by it, but they started to frustrate the implementation - seeming rather like the classic rejection of the "not invented here" syndrome. The rest, as they say, "is history" - after EDS stock was hived off from the parent corporation (General Motors) by it being floated in an IPO (Independent Public Offering) , EDS' performance/profitability and market share started a progressively accelerating downwards slide, ending in HP buying-up the failing EDS, keeping the strategically useful bits they wanted and closing down the rest, asset-stripping what they could on the way. Lots of redundancies - the HP euphemism for which was "WFR" ("Work Force Reduction/Resizing").
I am highly skeptical of the extent to which the "dozens of practitioners" in the organisations mentioned in the covering blurb have in fact actually properly implemented the 5th discipline in any sustainable form, since, from firsthand experience I know of two of them that have categorically failed to do so, but have instead turned those principles into a toxic form of management control ("toxic" here being a term that I gather was used by Senge) and which has been seriously detrimental for the organisations concerned.
This is not to say that the 5th Discipline is rubbish - far from it - but it does seem to indicate that we as a species may be unable to learn how to pragmatically implement its principles until we have unlearned most/all of the garbage that we have been brought up to believe or have been "educated" to believe.
This situation is kinda summed up in the Introduction to the Revised Edition, where Senge writes:
The Prevailing System of Management
...a short paragraph written by Dr [W. Edwards] Deming [as a comment for the book jacket of the 1st 1990 ed.]...
"Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people.
People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers - a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars - and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable."
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This could largely explain the EDS toxic management syndrome. Perhaps unsurprisingly, management seemed incapable of seeing/assessing the value of the pearls of wisdom (the 5th Discipline) strewn before them, and naturally fell back on learned (toxic) behaviours.
As far as I can see, this described destruction of humanity's potential continues unabated. For example, a sizeable majority of the people reading the above Deming quote could probably misunderstand it (or be unable to perceive and internalise the truth of it) as they will have already been damaged. There's some discussion about this on DCF:
The exemplary dogmatism and intellectual deafness of US business management schools and their inability to learn new things was - and still seems to be - egregious, with Harvard Business School arguably being there steadfastly leading the way back into darkness, most of the time.
-IainB (November 06, 2012, 09:27 PM)
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- and:
...mentioning W.E. Deming. I've pretty much read his entire corpus and found 99% of his thinking spot on. His "seven deadly diseases" of business still rings true despite them being so widely ignored.
The 7 Deadly DiseasesThe "Seven Deadly Diseases" include:
* Lack of constancy of purpose
* Emphasis on short-term profits
* Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
* Mobility of management
* Running a company on visible figures alone
* Excessive medical costs
* Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees
"A Lesser Category of Obstacles" includes
* Neglecting long-range planning
* Relying on technology to solve problems
* Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
* Excuses, such as "our problems are different"
* Obsolescence in school that management skill can be taught in classes[27]
* Reliance on quality control departments rather than management, supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers
* Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences
* Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality
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-40hz (November 07, 2012, 08:08 AM)
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Dormouse:
I have just finished Orconomics: A Satire by J. Zachary Pike.
What books are you reading?
It's an exploration of the economics required for D&D to exist in the form it does. Alludes to the financial crisis, and is probably slightly more enjoyable if you have some understanding of economics and finance but it is at a very simple level and not needed to enjoy the story at all.
Describes itself as a 'satire' but it isn't really; certainly not a viciously derisive satire in the Swiftian tradition and far more of a light persiflage full of warmth and fun.
Something that I think would be enjoyed by many RPG players.
mouser:
Sounds very cool.. I might check it out.
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