I've been reading Thomas Ligotti quite a bit. Didn't really get his fiction works, though some were quite... atmospheric (which I loved). They tended to be really difficult reading though (the words he uses tend to lie outside my standard vocabulary). More recently I picked up his non-fiction work, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,... Continue Reading →
I'm currently reading the book Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression and it's... depressing. I'd thought of reading the book because I wanted to understand depression a little more, as I felt I was a little more susceptible to its callings (for reasons I won't go into here); and with greater understanding, the... Continue Reading →
I've been writing a lot less here. I suppose life gets in the way, you know. Change in job; kids getting a little more demanding; prioritising running a little more than writing. But, you know... excuses (though the last point above regarding priorities probably is accurate -- life's gotten a little topsy-turvy of late and... Continue Reading →
I'm currently reading The Sports Gene by Jeffrey Epstein (really enjoying it so far) and he provides a great analogy for nature vs. nurture, liking nature to be "hardware" and nurture to be "software". So here are a few things that really stood out for me: You are born with certain traits, i.e. your genetic... Continue Reading →
As I was going through my Goodreads account, looking through the ratings and reviews of books I'd read, I realised that almost all of them were highly rated! I couldn't help but think what a poor reviewer I was, contributing to a ratings inflation. Did I have an inherent bias of giving high scores to... Continue Reading →
are those that I've read with a question in mind to be answered (especially work-related non-fiction). The worst are those where I've gone through chapter after chapter, with the words "so what?" at the end.
There's this post on Seth Godin's blog called "Avoiding the GIGO trap" that other than being brilliant as Godin's posts so often are, also reminded me of what I've always felt differentiated the people I've worked on the spectrum of face-slappingly awful to walk-on-water great. On the awful side of the spectrum, you have people who... Continue Reading →
I'm an avid reader, but have grown up reading almost exclusively non-fiction. Not because I don't enjoy them, or think any less of fiction than I do non-fiction; it's mostly because I can never remember the names of all the characters! (Especially in novels...) In non-fiction, the cast of characters tend to be ideas. And... Continue Reading →
This was supposed to be a post on radical transparency. But an article bashing radical transparency just left me feeling so outraged with its lies and misleading statements that I just spent the last four hours of my life writing this warning to all of us media-consumers out there: Don't trust all you see, even if it... Continue Reading →
I finished reading the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera a couple of day's back Loved it (mostly). It reminded me of what it was like to live a life that was lighter, not weighed down by expectations; que sera sera. Just thought I'd like to share a couple of passages from the book. Emphasis... Continue Reading →
Donn, fragments 