delivering happiness - tony hsieh
An odd book. On the one hand, I really Like Tony Hsieh, his chatty, enthusiastic style of writing and his business philosophy of trying to make his customers really happy. On the other, I'm not at all fond of those crazy macho dot-com bubble "look at us working 24/7" stories, particularly when he keeps patting himself and Zappos on the back about what a close-knit family of workers they are and how they are such a good place to work. It all sounds a bit cult-like to me.
Quite an achievement to build a business like Zappos, but I had expected a little more actual insights into how you make customers happy, and the nitty-gritty of improving customer service. We now get a lot of detail about financing and investors and incubators & such stuff, but that was not the part I came for.
Read it if you want an entertaining chat with Tony about his tiger mom-childhood and the good old days of the dot com boom, but if you're looking for ideas on how to help your own customers you'd probably be better off with some Seth Godins.
19-01-2012
verlorenzoon.com - rik zaal
I really enjoyed the first, oh, 80 percent of this book, about an older guy who is suddenly confronted with a grown-up son he didn't know was his. The son is a right bastard, of the type we're dealing with a lot in Holland at the moment: right-wing, rude, violent, petty, jealous. He and his cronies and the family dynamics he causes are hugely funny and entertaining.
But I'm not so sure about the last bits of the book, where an entirely new plot line from-the-past suddenly turns up. I can see why the author needed it, and I don't know how he should have solved the story in the absence of this bit, but still - it sort of fizzled. For me.
Still, I'd recommend this book to my lefty pinko Dutch friends who want a quick, entertaining read, I think.
15-12-2011
Is a NaNoWriMo winner, yay!
Well, this year's 50.000 words are done. At the moment it's a terrible, terrible, novel: horribly disjointed, part-English, part-Dutch, full of placeholders and lame dialogue, with plot holes you can drive a truck through, filled to the brim with unbearably cute kids - just terrible. This is going to need a LOT of work.
But for the very first time I actually have a plot, and, more importantly, I have written an ending, a genuine ending, so I feel good about this one. Even if it is still a ridiculous pile of zero-eth draft nonsense.
This was a very relaxed NaNo, with a steady, sustainable pace, no tantrums and not that many doubts. I had fun with it, fun with coming up with characters I wanted to put in danger and do terrible things to (even if I've sort of forgotten to actually name them - two of my main characters still go by the monikers The Writer and The Old Man, and my heroine goes by Cayce, short-hand for Make Her Awesome, While Figuring Out What To Call Her).
Who cares if the plot is very Michael Chrichton at the moment. I did it again! Yay.
30-11-2011
NaNo stats: 1801 words, 20.269 total
My characters over-use the words "Oh My God" a bit, I think. Other than that, pretty happy with how it is going. It's turning into a big old Armageddon book, which is OK, I guess. And a deer has just turned up!
12-11-2011
NaNo stats: 1689 today, 18.468 total
Ah, a night of ye olde rambly what-the-hell-is-my-plot typing. Which, come to think of it, yielded a lot of good plot material (even if not much of it actually makes sense yet (but still: no gnomes & no queens!)). So onwards.
11-11-2011
NaNo stats: 1256 words today, 16.779 total
Not an enormous lot of words, but I wrote a fine, Stephen King-y intro to the story that I am pretty proud of. Yay. Also wrote a bit of meandering mostly-useless prose while trying to figure out where we will go from here. What is next? What will these people do now? Not a clue. Oh well, at least I'm still on schedule.
10-11-2011
NaNoWriMo stats: 1.747 words - 15.523 total
More adultery. Which is good for word count. And I haven't brought a single gnome into the narrative! Plus I've also managed to not put the Queen in the book this year, which is quite a feat. Just, you know, a tsunami, and a devilish child, and supermodels. And adultery. This is going to be one highbrow book, I tell you.
09-11-2011
Hurray for NaNoWriMo!
So yeah, I sort of forgot to do updates for this round of NaNoWriMo, which is progressing nicely. Currently at 13.776 words, which is on schedule. Story not gelling yet, but by now I know that is part of the process for me. So all good. Today I worked according to the motto "When in doubt, throw in a dirty scene". Which is all I am going to say about that.
08-11-2011
superduif - esther gerritsen
Weird! But very good. Gerritsen is a great writer, who can turn the story of a confused little girl into a believable, touching book. Poor Bonnie. I loved Superduif.
06-05-2011
a dark matter - peter straub
Another right bastard who sucks you in to suffer through his awful stories (though I don't find him as gruesome as Lehane, while Straub writes horror and Lehane mystery). I can't believe I hadn't read any of Straub's work yet, since he's such a good buddy of Stephen King's, but there you go. A Dark Matter was certainly worth it: very accomplished, complicated but never dull. I think this is a book I'll have to re-read to properly appreciate, and I will probably do that.
05-05-2011
web form design - luke wroblewski
A re-read, in preparation for a client project that will start soon, and also while looking forward to doing Luke's workshop next week, hurray. Web Form Design is just excellent: very thorough, friendly, useful. It's not a beach read of course, but that isn't its purpose. Very good to read all this thoughfulness now, and I will certainly keep it around during the project. To blind people with its science!
04-05-2011
innocent - scott turow
I'm afraid I gave up halfway through this one. It's something to do with the pacing of this novel (quite slow) plus a musical aspect of its prose: each sentence seems to end on a down beat or something. It wore me down and made me so tired. A pity, since the mystery was interesting enough and I wanted to find out what happened and who did it. But it was all behind this thick plate-glass window for me. Alas. And sorry.
03-05-2011
daddy’s girl - lisa scottoline
A bit ridiculous if you think about it too much, but a great, fast-paced read about an unusual heroine (being 5'1" and nerdy and quiet). A great escapist light reading thing for a sunny day in the garden. And I loved the twist ending, which was actually a surprise!
02-05-2011
moonlight mile - dennis lehane
Dennis Lehane is an utter bastard. He grabs you and just doesn't let go until you've finished his books, even though they make you feel sad and awful and angry about the awful things people do to each other. And really frustrated by what a great writer he is. Bastard. Don't let him into your life.
01-05-2011
neuro web design - susan weinschenk
A quick, pleasant read with lots of solid and proven tips to help with building web pages that are great at improving conversion rates. Weinschenk sounds friendly and very knowledgeable, and I plan to keep this book close when thinking through new websites. But still. It does make me feel just the tiniest bit dirty to think about influencing people this mechanically. Bit conflicted.
12-06-2010
