Seth Godin's THE DIP

"Quit the wrong stuff. 

Stick with the right stuff.

Have the guts to do one or the other."

One of the best characteristics of a strategy book is being brief. Another one is being easy to understand. Written by the creator of Squidoo, the book may not be necessarily agreeable as per reader, but a little push is something we might just need in improving ourselves within the dynamics of the current professional ecosystem. But the basic ideas you can learn here is applicable anywhere and in any forms of relationship be it organizational or one-on-one. Illustrations by Hugh Macleod provide an additional comic relief.

Genre: Strategy

Rating: 4 pawns

2012 in a nutshell

The Mayan prediction may or may not be wrong, but one thing remains:

I'm still reading books at the end of the World!
img source

It's that time of the year again when I need to do another roundup of my book reads this year:

January 2012 
The Sketching Backpacker (non fiction)
KOKOLOGY: The Game of Self Discovery (non fiction)

February 2012 
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

April 2012
Legend
Super Panalo Sounds!

May 2012
Skyworld Vol. 1
Skyworld Vol. 2
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Magic Circle

June 2012
Looking Back 1 (non fiction)
When the Elephants Dance

July 2012
Bringing Down the House

August 2012
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Slaughterhouse Five

September 2012
Pugad Baboy 24

October 2012
Trainspotting
November 2012
Preacher issue # 1

December 2012
The Hobbit

BEST FICTION: 
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

BEST NON FICTION: 
Looking Back 1 - Ambeth Ocampo

BEST PINOY READ: 
Super Panalo Sounds! - Lourd De Veyra

BEST SHORT FICTION: 
The Magic Circle - Gilda Cordero-Fernando

MOST UNDERRATED: 
Skyworld Vol. 1-2 - Mervin Ignacio & Ian Sta Maria

BEST GRAPHIC FICTION: 
Skyworld Vol. 1-2 - Mervin Ignacio & Ian Sta Maria

BEST ACQUISITIONS(TBR): 
Cloud Atlas, Gates of Fire, Kokology, The Tales of Genji, The Hundred Year Old Man...

BOOK HERO of THE YEAR: 
Druss the Legend (Legend - David Gemmell)

BOOK HEROINE of THE YEAR: 
Margie (The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys - Chris Fuhrman)

AUTHOR of the YEAR: 
Kurt Vonnegut Jr

QUICKIE/FLASH READ: 
none

WORST READ: 
none

BEST BOOK COVER: 
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

QUOTE of the YEAR: 
"The ancient tribal musicians knew how percussions and chants evoked the sense of ritual. This is the spirit of the jam: from simple E chord, you slink into fifths and minor sevenths then float into strange combinations that you once thought never made any sense... When this goes on for a significant length of time, telepathy begins---the shared sensitivity to every little shift in temper and groove, without eye contact or hand gestures. To jam is to search, a groping for a shape. 
And before you know it, a song is born. A sound heard like nothing else in the world."

----Super Panalo Sounds! page 31-32  

Goodbye Earth!

img source

The Sketching Backpacker

If you've never been to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Macau, Hong Kong, and provincial areas of the Philippines, this is a pretty book worthy as your de facto travel guide. According to the author Robert Alejandro, 90% of the sketches were done on site and the rest were post-processed texts and photograph prints. Inheriting the ownership of Papemelroti from his parents, Robert Alejandro's designs can easily be seen inside a Papemelroti shop from t-shirts to notebooks to calendars and coffee mugs.

I agree with him in saying that traveling is an education which you will never be able to get from school or books. I think traveling is an education of using all your senses, more than just starting from point A and ending to point B. It's about making a plan, meeting people, learning about the world and maybe next time, a chance of breaking and remaking that plan. It's about what you encounter between the point of origin and point of destination and loving that unique experience.

"I am not a tourist. I am a traveler."

Tuktuk - Thailand's version of our very own trike

Lau Prabang French Colonial Architecture

Gao Dai Temple - Vietnam

"bookleg" - paperbacks bootleg in Vietnam

Back Cover

 

Genre: Art Journal, Travelogue
Rating: 4 sketch pads

2011 in a nutshell

A tradition I started last year, this is my roundup of book reads for the year 2011. Compared to last year, it's unfortunate that I got a worst read this time. It's part of an anthology I'm looking forward to finish before 2012 crashes in. My reading this year is also less in quantity compared to 2010 due to my current work in GPS navigation for the first half of the year. We surveyed Visayas-Mindanao area via road trip and RORO island hopping from Batangas-Mindoro-Panay-Negros-Cebu-Bohol-Mindanao-Leyte-Samar-Bicol-Manila (homebase). Still, I like the balanced outcome of my reading adventures this year.


January
Pacman / Manny Pacquiao & Timothy James

February
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo / Stieg Larsson

April
The Element / Dr Ken Robinson

July
This is a Crazy Planets / Lourd De Veyra

August
The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth / Carl Joe Javier
Nightwatch / Sergei Lukyanenko
Pugad Baboy 23 / Pol Medina Jr

September
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold / John Le Carre
Darna Lives / Gery Alanguilan & Arnold Arre

October
From The Profound to The Profane / Jaime Licauco
Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo / Will Self
Trese 4 / Budjette Tan & KaJo Baldisimo
Dumot / Alan Navarra
Productive Pinoy / Yeng Remulla
Armageddon in Restrospect / Kurt Vonnegut

November
Tabi Po / Mervin Alonzo
Lone Wolf & Cub Volume 1 / Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said The Ticktockman / Harlan Ellison

December
I Lie For A Living / National Geographic Society
Songs of Love and Death / GRR Martin & Gardner Dozois

BRAIN TOAST

Digital Art by mu6 @ deviantart.com

BEST FICTION:
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carre

BEST NON FICTION:
The Element by Dr Ken Robinson

BEST PINOY READ:
Tabi Po by Mervin Malonzo (also BEST E-BOOK/WEB COMICS)

BEST SHORT FICTION:
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said The Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison

BEST UNDERRATED:
I Lie For A Living by Antony Shugaar and NGS

BEST GRAPHIC FICTION:
Lone Wolf and Cub Vol. 1 by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima

BEST ACQUISITIONS(TBR):
Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (E-Book)
Into The Wild by John Krakauer
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

BOOK HERO of THE YEAR:
Anton Gorodetsky from NIGHT WATCH by Sergei Lukyanenko

BOOK HEROINE of THE YEAR:
Svetlana from NIGHT WATCH by Sergei Lukyanenko

AUTHORS of the YEAR:
Dr. Ken Robinson for The Element
Kurt Vonnegut for Armageddon in Retrospect

QUICKIE/FLASH READ:
Productive Pinoy by Yeng Remulla

WORST READ:
The Marrying Maid by Jo Beverly (Short Story from Songs of Love and Death Anthology--watch out for my upcoming review for the whole anthology)

BEST BOOK COVERS:
The Best of This Is A Crazy Planets by Lourd De Veyra
From the Profound to the Profane by Jaime Licauco

QUOTE of the YEAR:
"Masyadong busy ang tunay na lalake sa pakikipagdigma sa larangan ng buhay para mag-abdominal exercises. Ang tunay na lalake kadalasa'y walang panahon sa gym dahil okupado ang katawan at isip nila sa paglikha ng mga siyentipikong teorya, mga obrang makasining, mga prinsipyong pang-rebolusyon para mabago ang lipunan. Wala silang oras para sa pang-araw-araw na 100 sets ng crunches, 45 minutes cardio, at dalawang oras ng pagtitig sa kanilang katawan sa salamin."

---Lourd De Veyra in "Ang Tunay na Lalake, Walang Abs" from The Best of This is A Crazy Planets collection.

I Lie for A Living - Greatest Spies of All Time

I saw a review for this book over Amazon complaining that it lacks index or bibliography. It's true, there's no bibliography part but if you look closer and try reading within the pages, you can see there's a lot of reference and source materials given by the author. Only if you read the book with enthusiasm and a keen eye.

What the reviewer failed to understand is that the current recorded information on the historical spies were directly sourced from declassified data of the CIA. Meaning, what we are seeing are just the "tip of the iceberg"--cases that were deemed closed or finished--from the CIA's perspective. We must realize that espionage work will never end as long as the threat of conflict and war is always persistent, and revealing additional sources which are connected with ACTIVE cases will surely compromise not just the US, but also any other country currently performing espionage activities. So instead of seeking for the exact source, we better read and enjoy the history of both popular and less known spies of the world as recorded from the CIA archives. The main source of the story here is the CIA and if you don't trust the accuracy of their archive, then this book is not for you.

Written by Antony Shugaar and illustrated by Stephen Guarnaccia, the reader must take note that the book was published by National Geographic Society in 2006 as a tie-up project with International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. The project aims to promote the Museum to fans and scholars of Espionage, both fiction and historical. It's purely for entertainment and informational purposes. And in this criteria the book is most effective. The NGS and the authors presented this one to be objective as possible.

When I was young I love reading through monthly copies of National Geographic Magazine and knowing the magazine and the organization (the National Geographic Society), I have no doubt with the legitimacy and reputation of their scholarly work in world history. The book's intro is written by Peter Earnest--the current director of the International Spy Museum and a retired member of the CIA. Intelligence work may be romanticized in popular media but we all know how the actual players themselves suffered but still loved their work. Others who are not lucky just simply paid their lives for it. Clearly, employing espionage work is like using a weapon similar to a double edged sword. You can never win without losing something.

The book is divided in 10 chapters (or spy categories) namely Spymasters, Selfish Spies, Spies With a Cause, Femme Fatales, Spycatchers, Masters of Tradecraft, Masks of Celebrity, Mirror Writers, Agents of Influence, and Covert Actors & Wetworkers. Now I understand the term "wetwork" as an espionage term for assassination. George Washington as a spy master and Benjamin Franklin as a propagandist are basic historical ideas but it's good to know that Erskine Childers who wrote The Riddle of the Sands is declared  father of the spy novel here, and the contrast between Ian Fleming and John Le Carre (and Graham Greene) styles of spy novels were also noteworthy. Women spies who were equally deadly and controversial as their male counterpart and the involvement of Alan Turing in cryptography and the Nazi's Enigma machines are all quality informations for fans of the professional espionage. If you're a James Bond fan, you will love to know who were the historical archetypes of 007, M, and Q. The details of killing Stalin's rival Trotsky in the hands of an assassin is thrilling while Edward Lansdale's propaganda against the Hukbalahap and the eventual support for Ramon Magsaysay's presidency are ingenious.

As an introductory book for spy fans, there's more here for your delight and subtle shock. I tag this book as one of the underrated reads this year.


image source:
book cover

Genre: Biography, Espionage, History
Rating: 3.5 Enigma Machines out of 5

What Type of Reader Are You?

"Readers may be divided into four classes:
1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)


image sources:
sponge, sand-glass, strain-bag, diamond

Book Review Rule # 1

Stop whining, bourgeois reader!

Finish the book first, and stop whining.

A book review is not a book review if you can't read through the whole book. If you want to write a review, make sure you read the book from cover to cover and go through the whole reading experience. If you don't like the experience and cant finish it, better not make a review and give the book to somebody else. The point in writing a review is you must finish the book first to prevent prejudgements and observe protocol to give the author the benefit of the doubt. Who knows if it turns out good in the end, or the hardship is intentional until you reach a certain revelation point---an "Aha!" moment? It's as important as studying first before taking an exam; if you failed the test 'coz you cant read through the book, it's your fault. You can't blame Shakespeare, or Newton.

I have often seen a lot of book reviewers endlessly complaining and whining like "This book sucks 'coz I can only read the first five pages!" or "I cant finish this book for the author's weird, political, and misogynistic foreword. Ergo, I rate this book one star! Blah blah blah" Partial reading leads to an incomplete and incompetent judgement. What they are doing is not a book review but only a book warning. As self-confessed bookworms and avid readers, they just displayed their laziness and stupidity in choosing the wrong book.

What's the point of "reviewing" if you never made the "viewing" first? As the saying goes, "Learn to ride the bicycle BEFORE you drive the motorcycle." Don't try to put the cart before the horse.

Supernatural

First, let me share you a piece of personal history.

During my younger years my family looked to the radio as one of the primary source of home entertainment next to the black-n-white TV. I grew up in the late 80's (up to mid-90's) watching Knight Rider, Macgyver and Air Wolf, reading my older sister's monthly issues of National Geographic Magazine (she earned her subscription via my father's work) and the locally-published comics like Funny Komiks and Ninja Comix, and last but not the least---listen to the radio. We've had a daily dose of music via FM but my family bonded well by listening to late Kuya Ernie Baron's Knowledge Power via the AM station DZMM. Aside from that, my father and I loved to listen to radio coverage of PBA games (local basketball games can only be viewed via cable tv in the Visayas area, and we could not afford it being below the middle class) and DZRH's Gabi ng Lagim horror fest series, aired weeknights at 8:00 pm. In the province, our childhood fantasies and nightmares were heavily influenced by fantastic tales of the supernatural as told by our grand folks and the popular media (I came from the oldest province in the country, a ride away from Capiz and stories of aswangs, duwendes, and manananggals are staple stories in the dining table). And when it came to the unexplained stories (real or imagined) nothing beats the feeling of supernatural experience by listening to Jaime Licauco's Inner Mind on Radio segment via DZMM.

This early fascination with Jaime Licauco and his field of the supernatural proved useful when I encountered his book "From Profound to the Profane" originally published in 2009. Even if I don't believe in everything he writes and preaches (like the idea of Reincarnation and past lives), he remains the most sensible and entertaining expert when it comes to the realm of the unseen and the unexplained.

And this caution is probably the best that I can give to the uninitiated reader attempting to read his books. No doubt his articles are very entertaining streamlined with the popular media as his topics ranges from the controversial Gnostic Gospels of Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot; the past lives of Jesus Christ; Spirit Guides and physical encounters with other spirits like succubus and incubus; Residual energy of a dead person and the spiritual signature left in an ukay-ukay shirt (a cautionary topic for lovers of ukay-ukay goods); the stuff common Sci Fi readers love like telekinesis, bilocation, teleportation and its irrevocable connection with Quantum Mechanics; Aliens among us; Karma and old/rehashed ideas of the popular book The Secret; Carl Jung's Synchronicity Theory (this topic is my favorite!); every woman's source of romantic fantasy---Soulmates; and every man's source of sexual fantasy---the exact location of the Graffenberg Spot (G-Spot). If you don't find any of these topics entertaining then you belonged in a different planet.

But then again, I saw these topics mainly as source of entertainment and looking to open my mind and challenge my beliefs are just secondary. The former reason is how i would like to recommend this book. It entertains.



Genre: Supernatural, Parapsychology, Alternative Science 
Rating: 3.5 Spirit Guides out of 5

Live The Story

6 Km Per Second Faster Than Light

INSIDE A NEUTRINO DETECTOR

In the world of Science, this is a new discovery and a great challenge and threat for Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Just as we thought that nothing in the universe is faster than the speed of Light, we are now wrong. Unless theoretical physicists of the world prove that experiments conducted by CERN (Conseil Europeen pour le Recherche Nucleaire - European Council for Nuclear Research) are fraudulent, this is so far a good kick-starter for a geek talk and debate.

In school, we used to study Neutrinos and their special role as dark matters in the physical realm. We even used to think about them as "neutrals" of the sub-atomic universe being electrically charged neutral with zero mass. But with this breakthrough, Neutrinos are the new "rock stars" of the science world. 

Read the groundbreaking news.

NEUTRINOS EMITTED FROM A COMET

BACK TO SQUARE ONE, FELLAS!!!

Reading List of 30

01 - Your Favorite Book

FOUCAULTS PENDULUM by Umberto Eco

02 - Least Favorite Book

CONAN THE BARBARIAN by L Sprague de Camp and L Carter

03 - A Book that completely surprised you (bad/good)

THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Graham Greene

04 - A Book that reminds you of home

BARRIOTIC PUNK by Mes De Guzman

05 - A Non-fiction book that you actually enjoyed

TIME FLIES by Bill Cosby

06 - A Book that makes you cry

NIGHT by Elie Wiesel (this is a holocaust memoir)

07 - A Book that’s hard to read

---(it aint a book if its hard to read...)

08 - An unpopular book you believe should be a Best-Seller

THE SUMMER OF KATYA by Trevanian

09 - A Book you’ve read more than once

THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN by Mitch Albom

10 - The first novel you remember reading

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding

11 - The Book that made you fall in love with reading

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy

12 - A book so emotionally draining you couldn’t complete it or had to set aside for a bit

THE RAPE OF NANKING by Iris Chang

13 - Favorite childhood book

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES by Hans Christian Andersen

14 - Book that should be on hs/college required reading list

THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS by Musashi Miyamoto

15 - Favorite book dealing with foreign culture

SHIBUMI by Trevanian

16 - Favorite book turned movie

THE LORD OF THE RINGS by JRR TOLKIEN

17 - Book turned movie and completely desecrated

DUNE by Frank Herbert

18 - A Book you can’t find on shelves anymore that you love

BARRIOTIC PUNK by Mes De Guzman

19 - A Book that changed your mind about a particular subject (non-fiction)

TO SUFFER THY COMRADES by Robert Francis Garcia

20 - A Book you would recommend to an ignorant/racist/closed minded person

MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor Frankl

21 - A guilty pleasure book

THE GAME by Neil Strauss

22 - Favorite Series (Edit)

The LOTR Trilogy by JRR Tolkien

23 - Favorite Romance Novel

--- (this is weird, i hate romance books. better ask me of a porn novel instead!)

24 - A Book you later found out the Author lied about

AN IDEOLOGY FOR THE FILIPINOS by Ferdinand Marcos

25 - Favorite Autobiographical/Biographical book

MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor Frankl

26 - A Book you wish would be written

I'm thinking of a novel about a group of assassins formed after a series of brutal rape and slaying of a Filipina working abroad

27- A Book you would write if you had all the resources

This may be foolish but I used to imagine about the spirits of Rock n Roll masters who died early in their career making a comeback and creating a terrible mess, a terrible void against the world of the living, the world that adores Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga...

28 - A Book you wish you never read

---(that book does not exist!)

29 - An Author that you completely avoid/hate wont read

STEPHENIE MEYER

30 - An Author that you will read whatever they put out

NEIL GAIMAN

note: my shelfari group inspired me to make and update this list and damn, i missed writing a list like this!

Food Wisdom

If Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto can be considered as the "bible" for advocates of the Traditional Diet, his latest book (published in 2009) Food Rules: An Eater's Manual can be considered as the "Ten Commandments" of healthy eating. Sixty Four Commandments, actually.

Nothing is really new in this book as the author himself lifted some of the 64 adages of eating from ancestral and cross cultural beliefs (from France, Italy, Japan, China, and Greece) of an ideal diet for omnivores and vegetarians.  Some of these adages were later found out to be true and effective by scientists and nutritionists. This is something Pollan clearly realized at the time performing his research work for this book: "I learned that in fact science knows a lot less about nutrition than you would expect---that in fact nutrition science is, to put it charitably, a very young science." Pollan wanted to emphasize that the current global knowledge in nutrition is best represented not by scientists and nutritionists but by our elders-- the group of people who knows the secret of the organic food. Ask your grandmother or great grandmother about the ideal food and they can definitely share an essential fact or two.

The journalist reiterates from his earlier book the three basic answers to the three ultimate food questions: What should I eat? Eat Food. What kind of food should I eat? Mostly plants. How should I eat? Not too much. It wont hurt to follow the sixty four rules even if you have your own set of Food Rules. And if you're still thriving on a Western Diet--a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, it's time for you to try traditional diet, reconsider the sixty four rules, cook your own food, and throw the "fast food" away. If somebody tells you to eat whatever you want and die like a man, let him be. He's probably just trying to be funny, or just a plain coward. Because it takes a lot of courage and discipline to be healthy and to live longer and the choice is yours to make.

The following are my favorites of the sixty four:

RULE 13: Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
In short, eat organic not synthetic foods. I remember eating an instant pancit canton years ago and then tried to feed some to the household ants and to my surprise, the ants wont eat it. They just left it untouched the whole day. Black ants eat everything as long as it's edible, and they pester your kitchen for a small drop of soy sauce, sugar, or used cooking oil. If ants wont eat your food, why eat it?

RULE 47: Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
This is self-explanatory. Food is not the right cure for boredom but a good laugh with a friend, an exercise, or a meditative walk in the park.

RULE 54: Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.
I also learned this from my parents, and I still love to follow this rule.




Rating: 3.5 servings of steaming brown rice, fried anchovies, and sliced tomatoes.
Genre: Nutrition, Healthy & Sustainable Diet, Food

My Current Book Sources

Book Hunters travel inside and out of the city just to fuel their fantasy and addiction in collecting books. Everytime I score a book on my Hunted List (especially those rare editions), I get an indescribable high than watching a basketball championship game seven, or catching a smile from the HR kitty cat in my office (hehehe).
Soon, I might be able to share my Book Hunting Trips here. But for now, let me share my two cents' worth of  Book Sources.

WTF 1981 by 3one

TOP BOOK SOURCES

__________
used books:

SM Southmall - Book Sale
                       - Pick a Book      

Festival Mall - Book Sale (there are 2 shops)
                    - Diplomat
Market Market - Chapters & Pages
                        - Pick a Book
Alabang Town Center - Chapters & Pages
SM Manila - Book Sale
SM Bicutan - Book Sale
SM North - Book Sale
Philcoa - I forgot the shop's name but it's @ the back of McDo
22 Maginhawa - Bookay Ukay
UP Shopping Center - one inside, the other near the Post Office junction, and another, Sarabia Optical (but this was ages ago...)
Book Shop sa Longos
Casimiro - Pick a Book warehouse



_______________
new books on sale:

Alabang Town Center - NBS
SM Southmall - NBS
SM Manila - NBS
SM Megamall - NBS
                      - Powerbooks
Gateway - Fully Booked
Recto - NBS
          - black market stalls =P
UP Diliman - UP Press


_________
new books:

Festival Mall - NBS, Powerbooks
Alabang Town Center - NBS
Global City - Fully Booked Warehouse (across the Serendra Towers, my projects!)
Market Market - NBS
UP Diliman - UP Press
Trinoma - NBS