What are you reading?

Sketchgrad, I’m into book 4 now on the Expanse series. Chewing through it. I don’t plan to watch the show. I saw a clip and the characters just did’t hold up to what I imagined them to be :slight_smile:

Reading

Business Model Generation
Good Profit
1974 Kawasaki owners manual :wink:

Ah I wasn’t aware there were more than three books in the series! I’ll have to see how I feel after finishing the first, I’m only a quarter in at the moment and have so many other books on my list before I fully commit to reading all the expanse books.

As mentioned The Third Body problem seems to be highly recommended and perhaps you’d like it too.

I’ll definitely check it out! Thanks for the recco.


There are currently 5 books in the Expanse series and I hear a book 6 is due out soon!

Currently reading “How to win friends and influence people”, which is mostly common sense for friendly human interaction, but great for outlining the basics of avoiding an argument and steer an otherwise disagreeable person to your favour.

Also reading “The Fools Errand” from the Tawny Man Trilogy by Robin Hob, which is the follow on series from the Farseer Trilogy. I’d recommend giving these a shot if you enjoy fantasy reading, they become very addictive!

I didn’t like reading either. Much preferred watching some groundbreaking TV or a great movie and considered myself more of a “visual” person. The thought of picking up a book in my evenings or weekends never even crossed my mind.

BUT I found myself moving and having a half hour train ride in the morning and a half hour in the evening. Theres only so many times you can shuffle your iPod and gaze out of the window so I ordered a few books that were recommended and now I enjoy my train rides because I can read…and I also sometimes continue with the book before bed or at the weekend :wink:

I just finished “Re-inventing Collapse” by Dmitry Orlov. It was OK. A little too conspiratorial, pessimistic and “Walking Dead” for me.

Someone on the boards had mentioned “Managing the Design Factory” by Donald Reinertsen. I’m about 80 pages in now and my mind is blown. I had no idea there were strong logical arguments to be made in managing product development. I wish I had this toolbox 10 years ago to help make my arguments. It’s fun to when one’s life experiences lead to the same conclusions as advanced theoretical models.

BTW: Not an easy read for a designer. The author is from engineering and so he tosses a lot of maths with little explanation of what it means. Be prepared.

Loved “Managing the Design Factory”. I wish I had read this 10 years ago. Lots of stuff I knew from experience, but great to get theory behind it.

Just finished Douglas Rushkoff’s “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus”. As someone who has read all his books, it’s a continuation of the themes he explored in Life, Inc. and Present Shock. I always enjoy his writing so much that I don’t mind if the content isn’t too novel to me.

I’m 3 chapters into “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. So many people have suggested this book to me that when a colleague told me he could loan me a copy, I jumped at it. Similar to “design factory”, I wish I had read this years ago. I feel like Robert Pirsig is how designers feel and John, his traveling companion, is how business people feel. I can’t wait to enjoy the rest of the book and see where it all goes.

Just starting 747, by Joe Sutter. Didn’t realize the book existed until Sutter passed several weeks ago. The guy basically watched Boeing being born in front of his eyes as a child, then went on to run the team that developed the unthinkable (at the time) 747. Pretty interesting read so far. Heavy on the engineering side. A bit, but still cool if you’re into aircraft at all.

Its kind of 1970’s touchy-feely and engenders a righteous response from the reader, a la Atlas Shrugged does with college freshmen (disclaimer, that was me at one time) - but the arguments and advocacy for a thing called Quality should resonate with any good designer. Loved the bit about the aluminum beer can shim.

I’m reading ‘Understanding Industrial Design’ by King and Chang (ex-IDEO ID guys). The book is targeted toward UX designers (or other collaborators) to learn about ID. I’m finding it useful and enlightening, like how reading a history of your own country written by a foreigner can be enlightening (for example - De La Démocratie en Amérique by Tocqueville, or The Right Nation by Micklethwait.)

hmm, I’m going to have to give that King/Chang book a read and pass it on to my peers.

I’m trying to burn through it and pass it on to my group at work. Definitely recommended - the authors write quite well (for designers!) and the examples and stories they use to communicate design topics like using all senses, and understanding the spectrum between hard controls and on-screen interfaces are all contemporary and relevant.

I’m 30 pages into The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. I feel like 2016 is my year to find books that I wish I had read 10 years ago.

The thing the book reminds me most of is repeated comments by Yo about how designers qualify ideas versus marketing/sales/etc. I don’t know if this summary will make sense, but I’m going to try: the premise is that best management practices work great at increasing performance within a product architecture. However, those best practices actively discourage innovating on the product architecture.

In any case, I think designers do a better job at seeing those architecture shifts. A good example that I see all the time in Canada is manufacturers thinking the advantage of Asian manufacturing is cost. I’ve seen these manufacturers invest millions in new machinery, hundreds of thousands in consultants and training and then they drop their margins. At the same time, some new entrant manufacturers a high end product in Asia and takes a huge profit. In other words, the domestic manufacturer focuses on performance (in this case, cost per unit) but misses out on the bigger change (because of the diversity of suppliers in Asia, you don’t need to sink millions into machinery and tooling to make a new product).

Back to the book though, I’m anxious to see what the author suggests for management changes to see if corresponds to my thinking on the subject.

I just finished Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. It was a pretty interesting story about a dystopian future where pretty much all jobs have been automated and the New World is being run by engineers. The fact that it was written in 1952 blows my mind.

Highly recommend it to all you ID-ers/manufacturers out there

great book, I’ve read that one as well. I love a good Vonnegut read. ironically a lot of futurists are again predicting this issue.

I think the engineers can be automated too, imho.

Well. I don’t like reading books. I just like to read a small article or a short story. I don’t have much patience to read long stories. I had undergone a physiotherapy procedure in Toronto due to severe leg pain. So I am currently researching about the secret of a healthy leg. And I found a few interesting articles. One among them is:

I finished the Innovator’s Dilemma. Highly recommend it. Gives a lot of business ammunition to design arguments.

Now, I’m half way through “The Shock of the Old”. I would avoid the book and just read a review of it. It’s central argument is interesting: instead of looking at innovation as a chronological series of events, look at the use in time and space. However, the book feels repetitive and lacks the kind of insights about old technology being used today that I was hoping it was going to contain.

Just curious here. How many books per year are you reading?

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