Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The Truth is the 25th novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. It follows the adventures of William de Worde as he accidentally starts the first newspaper, The Ankh-Morpork Times.

Without a doubt, it has been my favourite novel so far. The pioneering spirit of free enterprise, the passion for reporting the news to the public and the almost-tangible smell of Ankh-Morpock that emanates from the pages makes for a powerful, if odorous, combination.

I do wonder as to what the sitcom element comes into play in making the stories enjoyable. In a sitcom, you get to know the characters and that is what makes the situations so funny (not because the situation itself is inherently hilarious on its own). Similarly, it could be that the earlier novels are just as good as the later ones, and if you read them the other way round, you would enjoy the earlier ones more. Or maybe not. Or maybe it is a combination of both.

Everything is obvious – once you know the answer. That is the suggestion put forward by Duncan J Watts in his book. Is is not available as an ebook, which is very annoying, so I had to read this one using paper. Like I am living in the nineties…

It was a phenomenal read. Watts first puts forward the case against common sense. Within the first twenty pages I felt like I could never trust myself to make a decision again. Luckily common sense is not the kind of thing that lets logic get in the way, as Watts explains.

He points out that common sense is not that common. If it was, we could all just think about a problem, and come to the same conclusion. But we do not. Common sense is built up from our experiences to explain how to deal with every day situations. That means that each of us has different common sense. Not to mention that many of our common sense rules are contradictory to each other.

This is a problem because when we try and solve a problem, we often use common sense. These are built on our experiences, which are different from other people’s experiences, hence are not directly translatable. One of the most extreme cases of this is that what is the obvious solution to a politician from a rich Western country is not the actual solution that impoverished third world countries actually need.

He then goes on to point out that when you realise you cannot trust your own common sense and go looking at lessons from history, these are useless too. History only plays out once, which as any statistician will tell you, is a pretty poor sample size. The iPod may have been a huge success while MiniDisc floundered, but was it due to Apple having a better strategy than Sony, or where they simply the victims of circumstances? The honest answer is, we will probably never know.

Finally he presents some solutions to the problems put forward. We need to be aware of our biases. We need to do things that we can test and measure scientifically. Sometimes however, this simply is not possible. In those situations, we are basically screwed…

Still, at least we know that now.

Everyone knows that the world sits on the back of four elephants. That are themselves standing on the back of a giant turtle. The elephants themselves are also pretty big. That is just how it is. Obviously it would be nonsense to suggest there was once a fifth elephant. Yet some people actually believe that!

In the 24th novel of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Sam Vimes travels to Ãœberwald to take care of some sensitive negotiations. In the usual way that Sam Vimes deals with things. Obviously a recipe for success.

It was a really good novel. While I generally prefer the goings-on of Ankh-Morpork, it was nice to get out and about a little to explore some more of the Discworld. You can’t beat a good underground dwarf fortress. Well, maybe goblins can. But they are still really cool.

Carpe Jugulum is the twenty-third novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. It features The Witches (you know, the maiden, the mother, and the other one) battling vampires trying to take over Lancre.

Despite my state school education I even managed to work out that “Carpe Jugulum” meant “seize the throat”.

Good novel, even if nobody used the phrase “that’s what being a witch is all about”. I also found out that Lancre even has a royal historian. It’s Shawn Ogg.

The twenty second novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is “The Last Continent”. It features Rinsewind and The Wizards, and is set in a continent that is not Australia, but is very much like it. It was brilliant. Discworld novels are usually funny, but a lot of this was laugh out loud funny. One of my favourite so far.

Today I’m pleased to announce the launch the 2nd edition of the Leeds Restaurant Guide. The new edition contains 14 brand new restaurant reviews and updates to another 18 entries. This takes the total reviews to 200! It is available from tomorrow from the Kindle Store.

Added

• Aria
• Belgrave Music Hall
• Cosmo
• Crowd of Favours
• Harry’s Bar & Brasserie
• Prezzo
• Rare
• Roast + Conch
• Shears Yard
• The Atlas Pub
• The Pit
• The Pour House
• The Tetley
• Trinity Kitchen

Updated

• Ambiente
• Angelica
• Baby Jupiter
• Bar Fibre
• Bewley’s
• Brasserie Blanc
• Brasserie Forty-Four
• Dish
• Ho’s
• La Tranquillite
• Las Iguanas
• Little Tokyo
• Malmaison
• Nation of Shopkeepers
• Primo Restaurante
• Red’s True Barbecue
• Sam’s Chop House
• Sukhothai

The 21st novel in the Discworld series is Jingo. It sees Ankh-Morpork face off against Klatch in a territorial dispute over a new island. It was not one of my favourites.

The plot is a bit predictable. The two armies line up to fight each other, but never actually do, which reminded me strongly of “Interesting Times“. Of course Lord Vetinari has a plan all along, as always. I am also left wondering just how many extra titles and promotions can possibly forced upon Samuel Vimes.

Ray Kroc is founder of McDonald’s Corporation. I found out he had written an autobiography, entitled Grinding it out: the making of McDonald’s, when I was listening to one of Mark Knopfler’s songs. “Boom, Like That” was obviously about McDonald’s, so I did a little reading up on it and sure enough, it was inspired by Kroc’s story, this book being cited.

The book itself is short and simple. At under 200 pages it only took me a week to get through it without much perseverance. In some ways this was a little disappointing as the book never really goes into much detail. You do not feel like you are gleaming so many secrets to success as you might feel you were if you were reading Duncan Bannatyne’s or James Khan’s autobiographies. But there is valuable content in there and given the length, comes at an easy price. Kroc did always place an emphasis on value as well as quality after all.

It has somewhat dated. It was written in 1977, Kroc having died in 1984, and the ages shows. He finishes up by talking about how he now has 4,000 restaurants and is dreaming of 5,000, maybe even 10,000. McDonald’s now has over 34,000 restaurants worldwide. Similarly, at the time it only had 21 restaurants outside of the United States, now I would be very surprised if the majority are not elsewhere in the world. Not that this detracts from the reading much.

The real take-away message from the book though is that Kroc only founded McDonald’s when he was 55! Too often we hear about the success of irritating people like Sebastian Vettel who is now a four-times Formula One world champion, despite being younger than me. I haven’t even won one yet. Kroc however, spent his whole life grinding out a living, and it was only after many would consider you are past your prime (especially in 1954) that he built a multi-billion dollar business empire in less than two decades. It is comforting to know that there is a possibility, however slim, that I could spend the next 30 years of my life messing around and still have the chance to make it big.

Given the popularity of the 20th Discworld novel, Hogfather, I started to think that given the anticipation I had built up on finally reaching it, it could only really be a disappointment.

I was a little. It had all the right ingredients, and by that I mean it had Death in it. Also The Wizards. But it just did not do it for me. I am not a big fan of Susan Sto Helit, she is just a bit too normal.

Terry Pratchett’s nineteenth Discworld novel, Feet of Clay, looks at golems and the City Watch. What more could you want? I probably say that in all my blog posts about Discworld books. I really did enjoy this one though, it might be my favourite Discworld novel so far.