Books

Some innovation reading

Not so much dead tree reading, for me anyway, as I tend to read books on my Kindle these days (they’re awfully good), but here’s a few books that I’ve found really useful on the topic of innovation. All those who have had their interest piqued by the talk of skunkworks on this blog recently should find them worthwhile:

Not to forget the classic:

And yet another pimp of the excellent and delightfully short

Another other great innovation book recommendations?

Disclaimer – the links to Amazon are affiliate ones – if you buy something after clicking them I make a few pence.

DavePress bookshop

I’ve always wanted to own a bookshop. Somewhere nice and quiet, with tables to sit down and read, some sort of tea and coffee arrangement and plenty of books to browse and buy.

I’m obviously not ever going to have one – after all, if Borders can’t cope, then how could I? But I can have a virtual arrangement, thanks to Amazon’s astore service.

You can find it here. I’m still stocking the shelves, but you should find some good stuff in there. In fact, they are all books I have read and liked, so you can blame me if they’re crap.

Disclosure – I get a few pence every time you use the bookshop. I’m not going to get rich out of it, though!

A Million Penguins

Penguin, the publishers, have unleashed a cool idea: a novel written on a wiki. There’s a blog just for the project, too. Great that they are using open source tools: WordPress and MediaWiki.

The main Penguin blog (Typepad, boo) notes that:

Over the next six weeks we want to see whether a community can really get together, put creative differences aside (or sort them out through discussion) and produce a novel. We honestly don’t know how this is going to turn out – it’s an experiment. Some disciplines rely completely on collaboration, while others – the writing of a novel, for example – have traditionally been the work of an individual working in isolation. But with collaboration, crowdsourcing and the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ being buzz words du jour, we thought we might as well see if these new trends can be applied to a less obvious sphere than, say, software development.

Fair play to them.

[tags]penguin, a million penguins, wiki[/tags]

End of 2006: Books

Here’s the pathetic list of books I managed to read this year. Excuses: new job, wedding, house move.

11. The Prone Gunman – Jean-Patrick Manchette
10. He Died With His Eyes Open – Derek Raymond
9. The Damned United – David Peace
8. Four Stories – Alan Bennett
7. The Complete Talking Heads – Alan Bennett
6. Writing Home – Alan Bennett
5. Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
4. Port Mungo – Patrick O’Brian
3. Newton (Brief Lives) – Peter Ackroyd
-. Virtual Light – William Gibson (abandoned)
2. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro (carried forward from 2005)
1. The Consolations of Philosophy – Alain de Botton (carried forward from 2005)

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