*turns on the lights*
Feb. 28th, 2015 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionWell! It's been a long time. I've got a real backlog of books to put down here (almost a year, in fact) -- so I'm going to try to do these in dribs & drabs, & my thoughts may be even briefer than usual.
To start:
Drowned Ammet - Diana Wynne Jones. Not much to say that I haven't said before, really. I love the sea setting, I love how there are two stories about kids (in v. different positions of privilege) having their eyes opened politically, I love love love Mitt.
The Crown of Dalemark - Diana Wynne Jones. Same here, zillionth-time reread. Mitt & Maewen 4EVA.
A Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay. I used to love this book, & wasn't sure it would hold up to another reread. Sure, it's not perfect by any means, & sometimes is even a little cringeworthy, but this is still pretty compelling & heartrending (for that, read: I still cried).
Fluent in 3 Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language - Benny Lewis. It's really trendy to hate on Benny Lewis if you're a polyglot (or an aspiring polyglot). & I do have issues w/some of the stuff he's blogged about (I think he, like many white Western native English-speaking people, can be pretty gross & colonialist at times). But in general, this book is so encouraging, so positive, & so useful for people trying to learn a language more seriously than the halfassed setting of a classroom usually lets you. For readers who aren't up to all the independent language learning techniques discussed in the polyglot blogosphere, this book lays it out. (& no, Lewis doesn't promise that anyone can learn a language to fluency in 3 months -- the title comes from his own language-learning missions, but his point is that you need a goal & a timeframe.)
Eat That Frog! - Brian Tracy. Another book about productivity focused on super-driven workers who, for the most part, seem to have a lot more autonomy over their work & their workday than, say, admin staff.
There's one anecdote about an executive convinced by the author to give up handling his email to his secretary, thus freeing him to do more work. To his surprise, she was able to get a handle on what to do with various incoming emails within a couple of hours & then he was able to be much more productive doing other things. I wanted to know, naturally, how the secretary herself could use tips from this book (similar to tips from so many other books) about choosing what to work on, ignoring emails for set periods of time, simply ignoring requests that come in that you don't deem as important, making yourself unavailable, etc. Oh wait, I suspect if the secretary did that she'd be fired. Well, okay then!
Apparently us cogs in the machine don't get to aim for the dizzy utopic heights of productivity & self-fulfillment that these dudes (b/c it's almost always dudes) seem to prescribe. The tips & arguments presented herein also take no account of disability, mental health, family/community commitments (except as something that, once freed from busywork to focus on the most important work things, the upwardly-mobile executive will be able to choose to focus more time on), etc.
Well, small mercies, this book was also incredibly quick to read, so less time wasted on my part.
To start:
Drowned Ammet - Diana Wynne Jones. Not much to say that I haven't said before, really. I love the sea setting, I love how there are two stories about kids (in v. different positions of privilege) having their eyes opened politically, I love love love Mitt.
The Crown of Dalemark - Diana Wynne Jones. Same here, zillionth-time reread. Mitt & Maewen 4EVA.
A Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay. I used to love this book, & wasn't sure it would hold up to another reread. Sure, it's not perfect by any means, & sometimes is even a little cringeworthy, but this is still pretty compelling & heartrending (for that, read: I still cried).
Fluent in 3 Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language - Benny Lewis. It's really trendy to hate on Benny Lewis if you're a polyglot (or an aspiring polyglot). & I do have issues w/some of the stuff he's blogged about (I think he, like many white Western native English-speaking people, can be pretty gross & colonialist at times). But in general, this book is so encouraging, so positive, & so useful for people trying to learn a language more seriously than the halfassed setting of a classroom usually lets you. For readers who aren't up to all the independent language learning techniques discussed in the polyglot blogosphere, this book lays it out. (& no, Lewis doesn't promise that anyone can learn a language to fluency in 3 months -- the title comes from his own language-learning missions, but his point is that you need a goal & a timeframe.)
Eat That Frog! - Brian Tracy. Another book about productivity focused on super-driven workers who, for the most part, seem to have a lot more autonomy over their work & their workday than, say, admin staff.
There's one anecdote about an executive convinced by the author to give up handling his email to his secretary, thus freeing him to do more work. To his surprise, she was able to get a handle on what to do with various incoming emails within a couple of hours & then he was able to be much more productive doing other things. I wanted to know, naturally, how the secretary herself could use tips from this book (similar to tips from so many other books) about choosing what to work on, ignoring emails for set periods of time, simply ignoring requests that come in that you don't deem as important, making yourself unavailable, etc. Oh wait, I suspect if the secretary did that she'd be fired. Well, okay then!
Apparently us cogs in the machine don't get to aim for the dizzy utopic heights of productivity & self-fulfillment that these dudes (b/c it's almost always dudes) seem to prescribe. The tips & arguments presented herein also take no account of disability, mental health, family/community commitments (except as something that, once freed from busywork to focus on the most important work things, the upwardly-mobile executive will be able to choose to focus more time on), etc.
Well, small mercies, this book was also incredibly quick to read, so less time wasted on my part.