cafes, communication, and more
Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking Most books about cooking will walk you through recipes. If you’re lucky, by following the recipes, you will eventually work out something about the practice of actually cooking, and become a better cook. This book – though it features recipes – is all about how …
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Book: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy In this book, jet-setting international marketing consultant Martin Lindstrom talks about what he’s learned by using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and SST (Steady State Topography) brain scans to look at what regions of the brain “light up” when people interact with different marketing messages. By …
Book: The Scarlet Letter – I read this using an iPhone app called Stanza, so I’m linking to the wikipedia page of the novel. I started reading this because of an offhand comment made by Wil Anderson to one of his co-hosts on the Glasshouse years ago – “we should paint a scarlet letter on …
Book: Designing for the Social Web This book only has a few things to say, but it says them very clearly, with great case studies, and presents a framework that can actually be followed in practice. The whole book can be summed up as an explanation of the “usage lifecycle” that details the journey from …
Book: Freakonomics (Rev Ed) I’d been waiting a long time to read this, and my very generous ex-workmates chipped in and gave it to me as a farewell present (among other gifts!). Rogue economist Steven Levitt teams up with journalist Stephen J. Dubner to put together this eclectic collection of anecdotes loosely tied around a …
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Book: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing I asked twitter what marketing books I should read, and this was the first recommendation (still happy to receive other recommendations, by the way). This is the kind of typical business book that can be read in a couple of hours, though it seems to have at least …
Book: unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters This is an unusual book: a Christian left his job to start up a research agency that would look at what people in America really think about Christianity. This book covers the results of a large-scale survey of the opinions that …
Book: The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism Tim Keller wrote this book as a response to the things that he learned in 20 years as a pastor in NYC, engaging with the doubts people had expressed to him. Out of all the books I’ve read explaining the reasons for believing in …
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book: Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community I’m still trying to work out what to make of this book. To some extent, it’s another “everyone else is doing church wrong, this is how you should do it” volume, but it makes some constructive points. There were moments where I felt like giving …
Book: War and Peace (Wordsworth Classics) It’s been almost a year since I started reading this, one chapter per day. Matt put out the challenge, and has been faithfully blogging about each chapter as we go through. I’ve found this tremendously helpful in understanding some of the more obscure topics and characters, especially given my …