Category: books

book review – Born to Run

On By Rick McIn books, health & fitness, product endorsements, sport - amateur, sport - pro4 Comments

On the insistence of my Adventure Racing buddy, Dave Adlard, I bought a book.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

A fantastic read, even for non-runners. The author, Christopher McDougall, (video) is a master story teller. I was gripped by this true life story.

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong. …

It’s available on Audible.com, as well as in a Kindle edition.

Get it!

I listened to this book immediately after Dan Brown’s entertaining The Lost Symbol (my review).

It was crystal clear that Dan Brown is a hack compared with by Christopher Mcdougall.

Why is that?

I believe Brown is an old school author. Mcdougall an author of the future,

Mcdougall is a journalist, writing primarily magazine articles. This is his first book.

A magazine article must be instantly engaging. Otherwise the reader will flip ahead to the next story.

Christopher Mcdougall reminds me of Jon Krakauer, another magazine scribe turned author.

Bottom line: get Born to Run.

The Lost Symbol – book review

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsements1 Comment

Dan Brown, author of super popular blockbuster hit novels, has done it again.

The Lost Symbol, his most recent, is the best of his very, very similar books. They follow a formula.

Amazon review:

… The Lost Symbol begins with an ancient ritual, a shadowy enclave, and of course, a secret.

Readers know they are in Dan Brown territory when, by the end of the first chapter, a secret within a secret is revealed. …

Again, brilliant Harvard professor Robert Langdon finds himself in a predicament that requires his vast knowledge of symbology and superior problem-solving skills to save the day. The setting, unlike other Robert Langdon novels, is stateside, and in Brown’s hands Washington D.C. is as fascinating as Paris or Vatican City …

Brown is only an average wordsmith. But his plots are complex, interesting and entertaining.

The plot of The Lost Symbol is terrific. It had me guessing. The setting, Washington, D.C., is superb. I want to visit as a tourist now.

This book is highly recommended. Author Dave Adlard calls it one of his favourite books of all time.

Amazon

There’s one glaring problem. This book is perhaps 30% too long. Dan Brown, get an editor!

Adventure Story of the Decade – Greg Mortenson

On By Rick McIn books, education, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Outside Adventure Blog named Greg Mortenson the Adventure Story of the Decade.

Kudos to Outside. That’s a gutsy and correct call. What Greg has done was the most inspirational story I’ve heard in recent years.

… Who is Greg Mortenson?

Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute www.ikat.org , founder of Pennies For Peace www.penniesforpeace.org , and co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea www.threecupsoftea.com , and author of the bestsellerStones into Schools www.stonesintoschools.com.

In 2009, Mortenson received Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his dedicated and humanitarian effort to promote education and literacy in rural areas for fifteen years. …

About Greg Mortenson

This guy has done more by himself to help Pakistan than all the hundreds of millions spent by the U.S. government. I love the title of this article: He Fights Terror With Books

I highly recommend his first book. Greg Mortenson is my hero.

click for details on the book

Never has the failure to climb a mountain led to such success. After Greg Mortenson failed to climb K2 in 1993 to honor his dead sister, he picked a new mountain. He raised enough money so a small village in Pakistan could build their own school.

In 2006 he published Three Cups of Tea, a book chronicling his journey. By 2009 he had supported more than 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. At a time when U.S. foreign policy is governed by military might that includes Shock and Awe and a flock of high-altitude drones, Greg Mortenson took a simpler, gentler approach. He traveled on rugged roads to small villages—in the same remote regions where the United States dropped bombs from unseen and unheard planes high in the sky—to deliver cash so locals could build schools from stones and have basic learning supplies for their children. He took the war against violence out of the sky and put it in the hands of young girls on the ground.

The Top 10 Adventure Stories of the Decade

the future of magazines

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

National Geographic Adventure magazine announced recently that it was ceasing regular publication.

The brand survives in two annual newsstand-only publications, in books and on the Web.

I can’t complain. I like that magazine … but never actually paid for one.

One company seriously looking to the future is Time, Inc. Here’s a possible electronic distribution of Sports Illustrated that could be on a tablet by 2010.

This collaboration between The Wonderfactory and Time, Inc. is an excellent example of how tablets will enable the creation of innovative, addictive experiences by publishers, media companies, and advertisers.

Click PLAY or watch Sports Illustrated – Tablet Demo 1.5 on YouTube.

This is exactly the kind of thing you’d find, hypothetically, on the much rumoured Apple tablet.

(That hand is freaking me out. You’d think guys that could design that cool demo could come up with a less ghoulish graphic.)

Improv Everywhere – We Cause Scenes

On By Rick McIn books, humour, musicLeave a comment

Improv Everywhere (often IE) is a comedic performance art group based in New York City, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd. Its slogan is “We Cause Scenes.”

The group carries out pranks, which they call “missions” in public places. The stated goal of these missions is to cause scenes of “chaos and joy.” Some of the group’s missions use hundreds of performers and are similar to flash mobs, while other missions utilize only a handful of performers. Improv Everywhere has stated that they do not identify their work with the term flash mob, in part because their site was created two years prior to the flash mob trend. …

Wikipedia

Click PLAY or watch a sample “mission”, Frozen Grand Central, on YouTube.

Another sample …

Click PLAY or watch I Love Lunch! The Musical on YouTube.

Improv Everywhere’s videos have been viewed over 78 million times on YouTube and their channel is the 64th most subscribed on the site.

I’ve subscribed to their blog. This is the kind of troupe I would join!

They’ve even got a book out now: Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere

I first heard of them on This American Life.

Robert Heinlein – Red Planet

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsements1 Comment

Robert A. Heinlein is perhaps the greatest writer in SciFi history.

… popular, influential, and controversial …

Rockin’ recommended I revisit one of his “juvenile” classics, Red Planet (1949).

Jim Marlowe is a youngster living on Mars, and he has a “pet”-friend named Willis. Willis is a “bouncer,” a furry little guy of some intelligence whose most amazing quality is an innate capability to reproduce exactly anything he hears. Jim takes Willis with him when he and his friend Frank go off to school. The new headmaster makes life miserable for all the boys with his military discipline, and he has the audacity to take Willis away from Jim and lock him away in his office.

A bold rescue attempt by the brave lads manages to recover Willis before the headmaster sells him off to the London Zoo, but the friends’ joy soon turns to surprise when Willis plays back a conversation he overheard about the Company putting an end to the seasonal migrations on Mars. This means that Jim’s family in the South will be forced to remain where they are all winter, where the temperature easily falls below one hundred degrees freezing. Now it is up to the boys to escape from the school and somehow find their way back home (hundreds of miles away) and inform their families of the Company’s intentions. Only their bravery and a little help from Mars’ unique native inhabitants give them a chance to save the day.

The Martians are fascinating in and of themselves; needless to say, they are something entirely different from little green men. …

Good stuff. Entertaining and thought provoking.

Related …

I took a couple of dozen Isaac Asimov novels (audio) on my last long road trip. I must admit Heinlein is a far more nuanced and sophisticated writer than Asimov.

In fact, I was mostly disappointed with Asimov’s Robot series of books including I, Robot.

Two characters will stay with me, though, R. Daneel Olivaw and his human detective partner Elijah Baley. Brilliant fictional creations. Jehoshaphat!

last meal in Kathmandu

On By Rick McIn books, food, hikingLeave a comment

Egg masala dosa, garlic naan and coffee.

The vegetarian restaurant at Pilgrim’s Book House. If you’re into trekking, climbing or spirituality, this is one of the best bookstores in the world.

4576311-Pilgrims_Books-Kathmandu

I picked up a classic, Nepal Himalaya by H.W. Tilman (1952). Some reading to supplement my audio books. I’ll need it during my acclimatization days at altitude.

The future of news is entrepreneurial

On By Rick McIn blogs, books, Google, internet, product endorsements5 Comments

Jeff-JarvisThere’s a brilliant guy named Jeff Jarvis with a blog called Buzz Machine.

Rockin’ reads it religiously.

I find it bloody dense. Wordy. Few graphics or photos. A video once-in-a-while if you’re lucky.

But one dense Buzz Machine post is dead on, something explained better than I’ve heard before:

The future of news is entrepreneurial:

The future of news is not institutional… The news of tomorrow has yet to be built…. The structure – the ecosystem – of news will not be dominated by a few corporations but likely will be made up of networks of many startups performing specialized functions …

That statement also holds many implications for sectors of the economy and society: investment (put money into the new, not the old)… public policy (don’t protect and preserve the incumbents but nurture the startups by creating a fertile and level playing field)… education (how do we train journalists when everyone can do journalism? – how do we train everyone?)… marketing (advertising won’t be one-stop shopping anymore and that means it may support news less)… PR (influence will be no longer be concentrated)…

Ryerson-blog

He writes this, I think, as a response to the idiotic proposals that governments should support your local paper with tax dollars.

Are you telling me the Calgary Herald is too big to fail? … It’s not.

There’s a cheesy sounding news service called Demand Media, founded 2006. It’s already the single largest contributor to YouTube.

Also founded 2006, but better, is a company called Examiner.com. My friend Blythe Lawrence went to work for them. She’s a trained journalist. Check out Blythe’s “blog” – Gymnastics Examiner. It’s as good as any of the old media in my business.

Jeff Jarvis is associated with another new (2007) media company called Daylife.

daylife

Looks like all 3 of these companies are going to survive. Dozens more will be founded. Some will flounder.

All 3 are radically different business models. In all 3 most of the people producing the content are paid very little.

Those are all “news” sites. More likely to survive longterm are speciality sites. I frequently read Matador Travel, for example. It’s an online travel magazine and social network. I’m more likely to check Matador for travel, or the Gadling travel blog, than look at travel pieces in a news site like DayLife. Matador and Gadling specialize in travel.

A friend of mine Kraig Becker went to work for Gadling recently. He’s getting paid something, and really enjoying posting for them. I’m totally happy with the quality of Kraig’s writing. And scan each and every one because I like his perspective on adventure travel.

We don’t know yet how we will get our news 2 years from now. It’s being fought out in the market place of ideas right now.

Perhaps they’ll even find a way to monetize news. To pay the people that produce it in micropayments. … My guess is that very few journalists will be well paid in future, however.

Certainly I won’t be subscribing to the Calgary Herald dead tree edition, ever again.

==== UPDATE:

I heard Jeff Jarvis on Leo Laporte’s new audiocast, This Week in Google.

Jarvis is a genius. Much better in audio than in text, IMHO.

His book, however, What Would Google Do? is high on my “to listen to soon” list.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsements3 Comments

In 2075, underground colonies are scattered across the Moon. Most “Loonies”, as the residents are called, are either criminal or political exiles or their descendants …

Moon-cover

Amazon – The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The ringleader of the Moon’s revolt from Earthworm tyranny, Professor Bernardo de La Paz, describes himself as a “Rational Anarchist”. We would call it Libertarianism.

Very thought provoking. This book is important social commentary, even today.

I’d never read the 1966 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, but it ranks up there with these other master works:

  • Starship Troopers (1959)
  • Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
  • Time Enough for Love (1973)

    • Heinlein was a genius, way ahead of his time.

    Unfortunately his frequent theme of sexual liberation reached the point of prurience in his later novels. I wondered at the time if Heinlein’s mental faculties were diminished. His last books, I thought, unreadable.

    Heinlein is oft listed with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke as one of the “three masters of science fiction to arise in the so-called Golden Age of science fiction”.

    I would rank him with Asimov in the top two.