Mind Roll for the Blog Roll

A few books I've been reading since I last had a blast of blog enthusiasm...

No Logo by Naomi Klein
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Muhammad by Karen Armstrong
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

All held my attention as I love a book to do but all for different reasons. The first weaves a wide web that explains part of the pathology of the current "0ccupy" movement. It was timely and helped me better understand that the response we are seeing now reflects 20 years of change in the economy rather then just 2008 recession angst. The second book was a novel beautifully and creatively written for teenagers. Everyone of any age I know who has read it has enjoyed it. Third a non-fiction topic I think is good to understand better and finally philosophy in the mist of narrative. I just discovered it was made into a movie so I might check that out too!

Confusius Says: Writing with a light tone will hold the readers atttention

Very fun and interesting read. While the book is sweetened  by the history of a cookie and other "Chinese" treats we know only too well in North America (-because they don't actually exist outside of the America-Chinese cuisine), the real substance of the book examines the immigrant history and experience through the context of explaining menu items. 

 While this book is written from an American perspective, there is an interesting call out to Vancouver and I easily transposed many of the historical observations and implications to the Chinese immigrant experience to Canada. Recommend for a light but insightfully fun read.

Caring

No organization cares about you. Organizations aren't capable of this.
Your bank, certainly, doesn't care. Neither does your HMO or even your car dealer. It's amazing to me that people are surprised to discover this fact.
People, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of caring. It's part of being a human. It's only when organizational demands and regulations get in the way that the caring fades.
If you want to build a caring organization, you need to fill it with caring people and then get out of their way. When your organization punishes people for caring, don't be surprised when people stop caring.
When you free your employees to act like people (as opposed to cogs in a profit-maximizing efficient machine) then the caring can't help but happen.


From Seth's Blog

Maybe we need to re-organize?

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | Video on TED.com