Although I am familiar with a lot of Stephen King’s stories through film adaptations – The Shawshank Redemption, The Shining – to this point I had never read any of his original work. Like many of the books that I have been reading recently, the main topic is nicely summarised in the title.
The details of how I came to read this book are long gone, but whatever the reason, I completed it in several days – in audiobook form. The beginning and end of the book – which are most mostly autobiography – sandwich the meaty middle section – a frank and clear explanation of King’s views “On Writing“.
If you’re at all interested in writing, you’ll want to read the book yourself. He gives away no secrets of the trade, indeed he insists that there are none, but his advice and opinions are very interesting and useful. I also found it very inspirational, and though I don’t envisage becoming a writer like King, I have come away from the book a lot keener to express myself through writing.
Onto my next book.
“All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”
“This Wisdom of Crowds” by James Suriowiecki
How much does a crowd know? How do crowds compare with individuals? How are teams best organized?
OK, the title slightly gives away the punchline so there’ll be no big shocks here, but the characteristics and behaviours of crowds described in the book were often counter-intuitive, and always intriguing. Collectively, a crowd can produce some amazing results – the books starts with the story of a group of people at a cattle auction. Each of the ~150 people is asked to guess the weight of one particular cow after it has been slaughtered and butchered. The crowd was predominately composed of lay-people, and although answers varied wildly, the mean average guess was under 1 pound off.
There was also some discussion of teams, and I could really appreciate what was said. The Senior Leadership Team at school, of which I am a part, demonstrates one of the author’s ideas perfectly – we are a very diverse team, with people of all intelligences, interests, backgrounds and spheres of influence, and I think our success owes itself to this diversity. A team filled with like-minded yes-men is not a good one: there is little dissention and alternative thought, and action produced by the team will be very insular.
Spoilers over. Overall, this is clearly a book aimed at a general audience; and although it’s heavy on ideas but thin on evidence and maths, I still recommended it.
Some of my writing is awful, perhaps even most of it. That’s got to change.
At last year’s prizegiving, I won a bunch of gift cards for Waterstones – £70 in fact. It’s not the best prize that I can imagine – a free week off school or some privileges at school would be better, or even just cash. The problem with Waterstones is that nearly everything that they sell is overpriced to the point that I only ever shop there out of necessity. This morning I found myself in that situation again when I found the cards in an old coat pocket. Over breakfast I decided to – what else? – read the small print.
It the small print that always puts me off companies. I won’t go into great detail, but it just becomes clear that gift cards are just one big money-spinner. Cards not used for two years will be deactivated. Waterstones retains the right to cancel gift cards at any time. Only one card per online transaction.
It’s this last one the annoyed me. Having decided that, I should probably make use of these gift cards, I turned to the internet. Going instore would mean a long, cold, windy and wet walk, and no Amazon to check prices. There is also a terrible range instore, whilst searching through the vast Waterstones internet stock takes seconds, so the internet was the obvious choice. The problem is that my £70 wasn’t on one single card, it was split into 5 £10 gift cards and a £20 card. Only using one card per transaction meant that I would either leave money on the card, or have to supplement my purchases with real money. Why they limit you to one card, I don’t know. Perhaps I should email them.
In any case, I chose a selection of books that I liked and that weren’t ridiculously priced compared to Amazon, and then I bought them. In four separate transactions. (I also bought a book from Amazon too, making it five).
These are the books which are on their way to me:
Total: £51.87
Click on the image of a book to read what I have written about each book.
