award tour

Amazon.com has applied to open and run its own fulfilment center in Canada. Currently, Amazon outsources all inventory control and delivery to Canada Post because of existing rules on foreign ownership of “book publishing and other cultural industries”. For those who don’t know, Amazon.ca has a very limited item selection compared to Amazon.com and pricing is higher. There’s also no fancy features like Amazon Prime. According to a Globe & Mail article it looks like the Harper government might approve the application. Unforunately, both book publishers and book sellers aren’t crazy about the idea. If Amazon lost its application the only winner would be Chapters/Indigo (which probably owns 90% of the bookstores in Canada) and places like BestBuy.

Personally, I can’t wait. Online retail in Canada is a certified wasteland. The only exception to that is Well.ca.

I’ve pointed out the trailer for the upcoming movie The Watchmen but I just came across these videos on youtube that recreates era-specific content for the story in Watchmen. The videos are so spot-on. They’re also posted on youtube by The New Frontiersman which is itself a reference to the graphic novel.

“The Keene Act & YOU (1977)”

“NBS Nightly News with Ted Philips, March 11th 1970″

I just wanted to make a quick comment about CBC Radio. The comment is that it is awesome. I drove from Toronto to Ottawa today and decided to see what makes the Sunday morning program. First up was Sunday Edition which had this amazing piece about Canada’s new “Guest Worker” visa program which basically brings people into Canada to do unskilled labour that no one in Canada will do (like work at Wendy’s or work on farms). Next up was The Late Show which profiled a late author named Martha Blum who resided in Saskatoon and was a Holocaust survivor. The piece on her was phenomenal. Next, Vinyl Cafe did a show about covers which included crazy stuff like William Shatner’s Mister Tambourine Man, some standards like Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, but the one that really surprised me was a cover of the BeeGee’s Islands in the Stream by The Constantines & Feist. The Debaters was pretty good and then Wiretap was fantastic (I especially loved the bit about Josh trying to “rid himself of his material possessions and hit the road, wandering-hobo style”).

I really wanted to point this out because radio in Toronto is genuinely atrocious and it’s so nice to see that the CBC has such diverse, entertaining, and quality programming.

I wrote a post one year ago this week called books in 2006 which included brief reviews of all the books I read (or tried to read) in 2006. Here’s the same thing but for 2007 and, again, in the order that I actually read the books.

The Blind Side – Michael Lewis. This is the fourth book by Lewis that I’ve read. The book intertwines two stories. One, about the evolution of football over the last 30 years which led to the left tackle (the guy who protects the quarterback’s blind side) being the second highest paid position. And two, the remarkable story of Michael Oher, an orphaned teen who became a high school All-American left tackle. I absolutely devoured this book and I don’t even like football. Every person I recommended this book to also read it in record time. Lewis is a born storyteller.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior – Dan Millman. This is essentially a primer on Buddhism but told through a fictional tale. I found the book to be very similar to “Ishmael”. It features an old and wise teacher with special powers and a hapless student who asks far too many questions. Unfortunately, also like “Ishmael”, much of the writing is second rate and reads like incredibly forced dialogue. That said, I still enjoyed the book.

Mavericks At Work – William Taylor & Polly Labarre. Includes some really great case studies in how bucking trends and valuing people can lead to business success. The book still struck me as verbose at times and a little too “cheerleader” in others. No real concrete advise.

Thinking with Type – Ellen Lupton. A fantastic primer on typography. It was exactly the overview on fonts that I was looking for. Also a very quick read at 176 graphic filled pages.

Making and Breaking the Grid – Timothy Samara. Cool book on the history and theory of page setting and grid systems. Lots of interesting and inspiring examples. I was hoping for more web-related content but it was still a useful read.

The Seven Day Weekend – Ricardo Semler. Probably the most interesting business book I’ve ever read. Semler is the CEO of the Brazillian conglomerate Semco which has lines of business in industrial machinery, inventory control, HR management, internet ventures, etc, etc, etc. The company has no defined roles or work hours, no planning longer than a few months, no mandatory meetings, and a whole slew of other ideas which fly in the face of accepted thinking. If you’re interested in the topic, I highly recommend checking out this lecture Semler gave about some of his ideas or check out this summary of the video over on the 37 signals blog. Oddly enough, the book doesn’t seem to be in print and Amazon only offers the book through used-book sellers (or on the Kindle if you have on).

Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond. This book made my 2006 did-not-finish list and, holy crap, did it take a long time for me to finish in 2007. The book, which attempts to explain why western societies came to become so dominant. Essentially, “those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs.” The book is very long in some parts which, in retrospect, I wish I had just moved on to the chapter summary. I found the chapter on the development of writing systems to be especially interesting. I’d definitely recommend the book to anyone but would also advice you just skipping sections that you don’t find interesting.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – Jared Diamond. I starting reading this within days of finishing Guns, Germs, and Steel. The book profiles societies which have collapsed and provides a terrifying allegory for where our globalized society could be heading. The single biggest thing I took away from the book was a quote about the fallen society on Easter Island, which used to have lush forests but is now a barren dustbowl: “What were Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on their island?”

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment – David Swensen. Great book on long term portfolio management. Talks heavily about the virtues of working with core asset classes & rebalancing and talks very extensively about the failures of the mutual fund industry. I’d recommend just reading the summaries of the last two chapters about the extensive failures of the mutual fund industry. I also just started reading The Four Pillars of Investing which seems to be a better intro to portfolio theory and appears to include real world examples of a portfolio (which I found Swensen’s book lacked).

Books I didn’t finish

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning – Chris Hedges. One part uber-depressing and one part terrifying. Couldn’t get that into it.

Fooled by Randomness – Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Got through most of it but just couldn’t get it done. Some interesting arguments about our tendencies to under account for the impact of randomness. This is probably the first book I’ve read where the author’s arrogance shown through so clearly that it seemed he was annoyed that you were reading his book. I’m hoping to take a look at Taleb’s latest book, The Black Swan, sometime in 2008.

The Elements of Typographic Style – Robert Bringhurst. More than I cared to read about typography. Might be useful if you were actually going to be designing a typeface.

Maverick – Ricardo Semler. Semler’s first book about what was going on at Semco. Originally published in 1988, it’s more autobiographical and not nearly as interesting as his aforementioned book.

Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise – Ray Anderson. I first heard about this book and Anderson when I watched the The Corporation earlier this year. This is also how I found out about The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken. I didn’t have a chance to really get into either of the books but I’m hoping to in 2008 as I’ve been really interested in the topic since reading my favorite book of 2006, Cradle to Cradle. I’m sure that not a week goes by where I don’t wonder how I might be able to pursue a corporate endeavor which can create a positive environmental impact by design.

Have your own opinion on one of the books mentioned? Read any books in 2007 that you’d highly recommend? Then add your comment below.