Book Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

(Note: I would like to preface this review by saying that it’s not very complete. If I really wanted a good one, I should have written this right after reading the book. Still, I wanted to encourage people to read it, so I’ve very broadly recapped why I think people should read the book. Which I really think you should, mostly because it will be like nothing you’ve ever read. When I inevitably read this book again, I’ll be much better prepared to write an actual review. For now, this will have to do.)

Very few good things came out of the year 1984, but among them were Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” me, and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and, according to Wikipedia and Amy Winehouse, crack as well).

I guess you could call Unbearable Lightness a novel, inasmuch as that’s exactly what it says on the cover. What it’s actually more like is a collection of the thoughts of an author that might have, at some point, led to a novel. From the beginning, the story is told as though Kundera has pulled the curtain back, revealing the stagehands and pulley system that are allowing the actors to “fly.”

That’s not to say that this is a book about flying, or plays, or even Kundera (although he is omnipresent). I don’t know that the book on the whole is about any one thing in particular, or maybe I’m just not smart enough to figure it out. However, I can tell you this – the vast majority of the vast number of things that make up this book are sublimely tantalizing. That may appear to be a strange choice of wording, but it’s the closest term I could use to describe what

New Link

Every once in a while, you find a new site that makes you wonder how you never knew about it until now.

This. Is. One. Of. Those. Times.

There’s a hidden joke in the literary device I used in the links above. See if you can find it.

-Josh (via @dannynewman)

Book Review: The Football Factory

There are a lot of reasons not to read John King’s The Football Factory:

The content: I don’t consider myself someone easily embarrassed, but at times, this book’s cursing and the things being suggested by the main characters (especially when it comes to women) made me nearly blush reading it in public, even though I was totally cognisant of the fact that no one knew what I was reading.

The style: For two different chapters, King streams a character’s consciousness in sentences that appear to last a page or longer. Sentences that last a page. I’ve been known to push the conceivable boundaries of the run-on myself, but a page was never on my radar.

The dialect: At times, it’s nearly impossible to identify the English slang used, even for someone who’s lived in the UK for over a year and a half, and for a year of that in Scotland, where the word “murder” can often sound like the person speaking has forgotten there are vowels in it, and has lost control of his tongue rolls (think “mrrrrrrrrrrr-drrrrrrrrrrrrr” being said as though the extended rolled r’s are causing a whirlpool effect with all of the saliva in the person’s mouth).

The violence: Movie violence can make you cringe, but without sound, it actually tends to seem comical. Reading about a violent act, especially when described in deranged detail, makes you cringe, shiver, and squirm all at once. This book will do that to you on a regular basis.

My reading of The Football Factory, therefore, became a very on-again, off-again affair. Then I moved to Denver and began riding public transit into work every day, and I brought it along to pass the time. Reading through the book in ten-minute to half-hour pieces – sometimes getting through just a couple of pages – changed its complexion and removed some of the difficulty from the equation of reading it. And what I found was that the people who couldn’t initially stomach the book, for the reasons laid out above and probably more, missed out. What John King did with

The Struggle for Imaginationland

I recently read through this blog post on Lateral Action about brainstorming and the apparently ongoing debate about its usefulness, and I found myself reacting with some disdain. (I posted a pretty long comment.) I’m not sure exactly why I got worked up over a seemingly innocuous debate. Maybe the fact that I work primarily in Marketing, perceived by most to be a creative field, made me feel like my professional livelihood was being addressed along with it. I also disagreed strongly with anyone’s opinion that “brainstorming” is not useful, because I believe that the vast majority of great ideas have come from brainstorming in some form. (I of course have nothing to base that on, but I don’t care.)

Now, I realize at the beginning of the post Mark states that the detractors are referring specifically to the concept of “Brainstorming” as originally suggested by some advertising guy in 1963. I don’t know if this is specifically the case or not, but to me, that’s not even worth confronting as an argument. As the admen griping about brainstorming

Miss Teen Louisiana Dodges Bullet, Left Crack in Other Purse

Deposed beauty queen relieved she chose the Louis Vuitton over the Coach

Miss Teen Louisiana was arrested over the weekend and charged with drug possession in a foiled “dine-and-dash” operation that cost the current beauty pageant queen(pin) her crown and sash.

Wait staff solved the mystery with the help of local law enforcement when they scoured the booth crime scene and discovered that one of the would-be dashers left a purse behind. Police considered dusting the bag for fingerprints, but after a heated discussion decided to simply check the contents for identification.

New Link Euphoria

I just added a link to the website of Paul Graham, a computer engineer and artist who runs a high-profile venture capitalism outfit and writes essays on a host interesting subjects. He writes very conversationally, and this simplistic approach provides an appropriate format for the insightful observations that he supplies. For instance, I completely identify with statements like this:

“A friend who moved to Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping. At the time I thought she was being deliberately eccentric. Sure, it can be interesting to eavesdrop on people, but is good quality eavesdropping so important that it would affect where you chose to live? Now I understand what she meant. The conversations you overhear tell you what sort of people you’re among.”

That from an essay about (of all things) how the city you live in affects your personality.

When I am killing time in public without my iPod, you’d better believe I’m eavesdropping on your conversation. You can tell, because the second I hear something out of context that sounds inane, you might see me crack a slight smirk out of the corner of your eye. If it’s particularly embarrassing, I might even give a muffled laugh

Technological Warfare

Each candidate’s plan to cure the American epidemic of stupidity

Obviously, the first step is to approach the UN about a global ban on airing “The Hills,” but after that, here is a great NYT piece that examines both McCain’s and Obama’s take on what to do about our country’s lack of cool new stuff. It comes from this series of informative articles that demonstrates the views of each candidate on a range of crucial issues (bipartisanship sold separately).

I really enjoy John McCain’s argument of deregulation and tax cuts to encourage corporate innovation – which has actually already been the central plan for years and has resulted in the National Review providing this scrumptious tidbit:

What a Night…

1) Job offers galore – but the startup wins. I am (meagerly) employed.

2) I’ve always said I never want to see my President smile, ever, because his job too important. Fortunately, we learn that this won’t be a problem with Barack Obama, who can’t tell a joke to save his life.

3) The Boston Red Sox go down (a combined) 29-5 over two games and 6 and 1/2 innings, and then: Oh. My. God. To think a team could (*knocking furiously on wood*) come back from either a 3-0 or 3-1 deficit in a postseason series three freaking times in five years…I’m just going to stop there. I’ll just say that I’m not going to turn off the next game in the 5th inning.

The Super Sultry, Smoldering Hot Fall of Fannie Mae

The hottest business journalist EVER predicts the oncoming economic crisis

Introducing your (soon-to-be) new US Treasury Chief

JP Morgan Chase CEO Speaks from the protection of Harvard Business School’s Ivory Tower