From the category archives:

Books

The Great American Novel

by Ron Bieber on Saturday, April 19, 2008

Photo by rbieber

Just received my Amazon shipment of The Great American Novel by Keith Malley (host of Keith and the Girl). I’ve been looking forward to reading this for a while.

Update:
It looks like the book was released prematurely by Malleys publisher and is no longer available. Apparently the version on sale was not completely edited and the cover was not approved. Full explanation of what happened is available on KATG Episode #711 at around 37:40.

Old Hardy Boys Books

March 30, 2008

Photo by rbieber
I think I had this whole set as a kid.

Jonna and I hit a local antique store yesterday to kill some time and sitting on a shelf I saw these. I am pretty sure I had every one of this set when I was a kid and would spend hours reading [...]

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Current Reading – Maverick by Ricardo Semler

October 18, 2007

While I still have a few books in the queue mainly focused around TPS, I started reading Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace, the prequel to The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works.
Not too far into it yet, but riveted again. Pretty amazing story. [...]

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The Seven Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler

October 7, 2007

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book on business that has kept me captivated through the whole thing, but Ricardo Semler’s The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works certainly did.
Semler is the CEO of SemCo SA, a company in Brazil with a pretty crazy management model by conventional standards. A [...]

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The Myths of Innovation and the Full Machiavelli Quote on Change

June 1, 2007

Last month I posted a quote from Nicolo Machiavelli on change that I had heard in a lecture by Carly Fiorina. I’ve recently picked up the book The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun where he includes the whole quote – which is much more interesting than the subset.

There is nothing more difficult [...]

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Building Scalable Web Sites by Cal Henderson

March 8, 2007

I have about three books that I am reading on and off but have been unable to focus on any of them for any length of time. Tom The Architect mentioned a book to me a few months ago called Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web [...]

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Starbucks Green Apron Book

January 14, 2007

Photo by rbieber
Did you know that you could just walk into your local Starbucks and request a "Green Apron Book", that outlines the principles of Starbucks? I heard about this little booklet from a recent book I had read about the company and went in to my local Starbucks and asked for [...]

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Books: The Starbucks Experience : 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary

January 6, 2007

For some reason, if there’s a business book related to Starbucks, I just have to pick it up and usually wind up going through it as quickly as one of my favorite mocha’s.
This week I ran across The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary by Joseph Michelli. This book [...]

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The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick

December 26, 2006

Over the last few months I’ve started a lot of books. There is so much interesting reading out there that between the usual blogs that I read, the effort I’m spending learning Ruby on Rails, and the interesting books I run across in my usual ritual of trolling book stores, I’m finding it [...]

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Practical Subversion – Second Edition

December 17, 2006

I received a free copy of Practical Subversion, Second Edition by Daniel Berlin and Garrett Rooney on Friday from their publishers, Apress.
I had reviewed the first edition before it was released and had found it to be an excellent companion to “Version Control with Subversion” (C. Michael Pilato, Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian [...]

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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

November 30, 2006

I just finished reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
I remember the first time I had watched the movie. I never actually wanted to see it. Jonna had run across it by chance and told me that I HAD to watch it – that it was a movie right up my [...]

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Off The Rails – The Review

November 19, 2006

I just finished reading Off The Rails by Rudy Sarzo this last week. Overall, I would say I liked it.
I’ve been a fan of Randy Rhoads since first hearing the Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of Madman albums in 1983 or so. He was a unique player for his time and these [...]

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Off The Rails

November 10, 2006

Photo by rbieber
After a long wait , I finally received my copy of Off The Rails by Rudy Sarzo, his diary of his time on the road with Ozzy Osbourne and more importantly, Randy Rhoads. This is the only book with detailed information on Randy out on the market, and has been waited [...]

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Off the Rails by Rudy Sarzo Now Available At Amazon.com

November 5, 2006

I received an email yesterday from someone letting me know that Rudy Sarzo’s long awaited book, Off The Rails is now available at Amazon.com. The book chronicles his time with Ozzy Osbournes Blizzard of Ozz band, featuring the late great Randy Rhoads.
From what I’ve heard, this book is a one of a [...]

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Lean Principles from the Source

October 8, 2006

I’ve started reading The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker. I’ve figured that as my curiosity peaks on Lean Development and Lean Principles in general, I might as well go to the source.
Chapter One opens with a quote from Fujio Cho, the president of Toyota Motor [...]

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Current Reading Queue

September 24, 2006

Thought I’d throw out a list of the current reading queue. I have two books in process, another in waiting:

Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash – Currently Reading

Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated – On Hold Until #1 completed.
The Toyota Way: 14 Management [...]

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New Book Ordered

September 13, 2006

I just put in my order for Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising, after hearing an interview with Mary Lynn on this episode of the Agile Toolkit podcast. The book sounds quite interesting and sounds like just what I need these days.

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Books: Primal Branding

August 18, 2006

Walking through Borders last week I came across the book Primal Branding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future by Patrick Hanlon. Since I had recently read The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do, the initial browse [...]

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Random Thoughts on Lean Principles

July 26, 2006

Last night I finally received my copy of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. I’ve actually had quite a few books on order and as they’ve been coming I’ve hoped that they were this one. Finally it got here.
I started getting really [...]

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Books: The Culture Code

July 11, 2006

Over the weekend I found an excellent book by an author named Clotaire Rapaille called The Culture Code : An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do.
Rapaille, a cultural anthropologist, has consulted with large companies for years. His talent is finding the cultural [...]

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