Tag: BookReview

I have been reading several books for writing. This book is not focus on technique of writing, but the mentality of writers. The author describes, ‘Good writing is good medicine’. I think I can understand what he says. We can use writing as a kind of tool to release stress.

Why do we need to write? For me, firstly, the writing is putting my thought in order. And then, if possible, I do care about the audience which may be able to get something from my writing, For them, I hope I would be a good reader in the future.

The author suggests a good training method for writing. Let me introduce.

The writing marathon.

The author says ‘Writing marathon is a delving stile of free writing, where I write persistently for an especially long period, taking responsibility for shifts of nuance and focus – managing free play and direction, growing more conscious of the writing process, of myself, and of generating enlivened, unburdened creative material ‘

These are rule from the book.

Rule 1. (Duration) Write for the duration, by long hand or on whatever devices you’d like.

Rule 2. (Rate) Write at the rate of one letter per second or faster. This rate is the required minimum.

Rule 3. (Breaks) Take 15 mins break every 3 hours.

Rule 4. (continuity) Don’t look back and reread what was written. Don’t concerned with quality. Do, however, focus on having fun.

Also the author says.

Rule 5. Send a message to your friends to let them know when you are planning a writing marathon. Tell them how long it will be.

Rule 6. Post another message to notify them when you have finished your marathon.

I would like to try this writing marathon in near future.  Are you going to try?

Haruki Murakami is one of the most famous fiction writer in Japan. Also his work has been translated into more than forty languages. I am huge fun of the way of his thinking and the character he writes.

Murakami sometimes describes the man who (looks) does not care the things around him.  He can enjoy being alone and himself.  I can see myself on him. Murakami is also known as a good runner. He talks running. Here is what I learned from the book.

1. Team sports or not.

“The desire in me to be alone has not changed. Which is why the hour or so I spend running, maintaining my own silent, private time, is important to help me keep my mental well-being. When I’m running I don’t have to talk anybody and don’t have to listen to anybody.”

I have not though deeply. But I have similar thought with him. During running, especially for long and hard running, I talk to myself. That is important time. On that time, I usually talk to myself “can you do it?. Do you wanna stop?” I have to say “No. I won’t stop”  Training discipline.

2. When is your peak?

Our time, our life is limited. And our body is getting older. The older we get, the more we are going to weak? Maybe. Even though, we may have physical peak, we train hard to fully fill the room of improvement.

3. First priority is work.

“This can’t be good for me, I decided. If I wanted to have long life as a novelist. I needed to find a way to keep fit and maintain a healthy weight.”

 I have a similar idea with him. If I would like to enjoy living life, working, we need the energy and health. Without health, we can do anything. I wanted to stay health for work and family.

4. Know yourself.

“To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself “

If we train harder, we can know our limit. We can not run forever, we sometimes get injury, we need rest to run faster and safer. This is same in real life. knowing ourselves is important skill. Working too hard is not good, working too little is lazy. To perform best, we need appropriate amount of task. We need to be good manager of myself.

5. Totally unfair.

I could see his thinking on this book. He might believe that the world is made in totally unfair. I think I can agree.

This book is the one of best seller romance book in the U.S. Many people (especially for women) read this. This books is a kind of erotic romance fiction. It is hard to say you can talk anytime with anyone. But, if the situation is appropriate, you could ask what your friend think about the story. You can have a insightful discussion. Maybe.

Why did this book become the best seller in the U.S.? My friend told that it is because American people would like to read what they can not do. O.K. Japanese, do not take it seriously, if you read this book. This book may not be what american student and entrepreneur are like. Haha.

I have to say this book is erotic. I can not recommend this to young people. My running buddy who is old man said  “Why did you read that book? that is women’s pornography.” I have enjoyed the conversation with him though.

The story is something like this, literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young incredibly rich entrepreneur Christian Grey. The unworldly, innocent Ana (who was a virgin) is startled to realized she wants this man, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Grey also wants her. She is quiet beauty, has wit and independent spirit.

But Grey was totally different from other ordinary guys. He has the strong need to control, like he is tormented by demons. He has special rules for relationship. The rule has already been written with lawyer, which try to regulate the women’s (called the submissive) act, sleep, cloth, food, exercise, and so on. And the rule also describes about the sex, very carefully and explicitly. It is very hard. Hard SM one.

Other than this, their lifes are totally different, student and super rich entrepreneur. Could they keep the relationship? Read the book, see what happened.

People think and act irrationally, even they believe they are rational. Cognitive science has been proving this lately. So only we can do is knowing how we are irrational, that help us to think and act less irrationally.

The author of this book is not scientist but journalist. He gives us practical 99 examples with short stories.

1. Overestimate your chance to succeeding.

In daily life, because triumph is made more visible than failure, you systematically overestimate your chance of succeeding. (P.1)

2. The circumstance of yours.

Harvard has the reputation of being a top university. Many highly successful people have studied there. Does this mean that Harvard is a good school? We do not know. (P.5)

3.  We are not rational.

If fifty million people say something foolish, it is still foolish. (P.12)

4. That had already done.

The film was dire. After an hour, I whispered to my wife; “Come on, let’s go home.” She replied; “No way, we are not throwing away thirty dollars.”

We have spent the thirty dollars regardless of whether we stay or leave, so this factor should not play a role in our decision. (P.13)

5. absolute value.

The contrast effect. Experiment shows that people are willing to walk an extra ten minutes to save $10 on food. But those same people would not dream of walking ten minutes to save $10 on a $1000 suit. An irrational move because ten minutes is ten minutes, and $10 is $10. Logically, you should walk back in both cases or not at all. (P.29)

6, Attractive people.

Why attractive people climb the career ladder more quickly. – Halo effect. (P.113)

7. Delay rewards.

The older we get and the more self-control we build up, the more easily we can delay rewards. (P.154)

8. Procrastination.

So get over yourself. Procrastination is irrational but human. To fight is, use a combined approach. (P.256)

9. Envy.

Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it. (P.258)

10. Jealousy.

The subject of envy is a thing (status, money, health and so on.) The subject of jealousy is the behavior of third person. Envy needs two people. Jealousy, on the other hand, required three. (P.258)

11. Talent and hard work.

Little is achieved without talent, and nothing is achieved without hard work. When a person is successful for a long run compared to less qualified people – then and only then is talent the essential element. (P.282)

These are sentences I though helpful for me. If you are interested in some, I would suggest you try this book.

“Practice”, When we learn something, we need practices. Practice is everywhere, anytime. But, we are sometimes chased by practicing. The purpose of practice is to get the things done well. Practice itself is not purpose. So, do we practice efficiently for our goal? Sometimes, we forget to ask this question.

This book is about practice. Recently I was interested in what talent is. Some books say that people who has talent practice deeply, compared to the novice. That is the key. So that, what is practice? That was my question. I started reading this book.

What I learned from this book are following.

1. Focusing.

When we do practice, what kind of practice do you plan? This book says that we need to recognize what we are doing to practice deeply. Namely, we need to know the purpose of practice. Even though, we practice the same thing we did yesterday, what is this practice for this time? Focus on what you are practicing.

When I was young, I used to try to do complex practice. I did not focus on basic skill, but practical skill. Because I thought that was efficient. That was wrong. We need to simplify the practice, and focus on what the component of performance we are practicing.

2. Teacher or Coach.

Because I like teach myself, I usually do not ask teacher to help me. I realized I was terribly wrong. But, as you know, good teacher gives us good critique, feedback and comment. Basically, the role of teacher is something like this,

(1) What to do.

Good teacher knows what the problem student is facing. Good teacher could give you appropriate level and amount of tasks.

(2) When to do.

Good teacher knows what the practice student needs for now. Good teacher could give you appropriate skill of tasks.

So, why don’t we practice with teacher?

3. The audience.

Does the audience disturb you? Yes, sometimes. But, the practice in front of the audience is beneficial to you. (Of course, the audience may be your teacher. ) The quality of practice dramatically could increase by them. Some musician says that he always practice in front of the audience, because that purpose of practice is “The performance for the audiences”

This is not summary of this book. The book tells you 42 rule of practice. That is surely helpful. So, let’s read it and apply it for your daily practice. I hope these rules would help you reach your best performances. Good luck.

This is the story about the meaning of time. Honestly, I do not think that this is worth reading and paying. The story is cheap but the book is expensive. But this book is good chance to think about the meaning of our time. Do you need more minutes, hours, days, time? I do. Why is our life time limited? I have not thought deeply this topic. I am physicist though!! If you could live unlimited, what would happen?

Dor is the man who has unlimited time because of the punishment by God.

There is the girl who is about to give up on life. There is the rich business man who wants to live forever.

Dor has to save them, to save himself. Dor has to teach the meaning of time.

As for me, I can summarize this books those two paragraph.

“Remember this always: there is a reason God limits man’s days.” “What is the reason?” “Finish your journey, and you will know.” (P 80)

”There is a reason God limits our days,” ”Why?” ”To make each one precious”. (P206)

I got some good quotes from this books. Those are,

“Man rarely knows his own power”

“Length of your days does not belong to you. You will learn that as well”

“Time. It seemed to be running too fast for everyone but him”

“Can you imagine having endless time to learn?”

“Never too late, too soon.”

This book describes writing. Unlike an usual writing book, this book describe how to write a lot. The point is not writing well, but a lot. All students and professor need to write, and many struggle to write journal article, book, and grant proposal. If you can write always more than you are needed, it is O.K. If you find the difficulty to write sometimes, you can pick up the idea from this book. This is not exactly review of this book, I will summarize writing techniques which are what I learned from this book and my experience.

1. Write regularly.

This is important. Writing is hard, so every time, we have excuse to run away. But to write productively, we need to write regularly. The “regular” depends on the study or subject. As for physics, we need to get the result to write a paper, sometimes we can not write the paper. But I strongly agree that we need to write regularly. Only I can do is do experiment and analysis a lot, and try to the results regularly. Let’s do it!!

2. Watch your enthusiasm.

Like reading books, you are most excited to write the next, when we finish the manuscript. So, why don’t we start the next, right after when we finish the manuscript.

3. Count number of words you write.

Steven King said “Start from 1000 words a day.” This is for fiction writers, but we can use the same idea. The physics paper, especially for letters, is not so long, compared to psychology, economics. However, if we know, how many words we can write daily. That makes you easy to plan.

4. Posses the topics what you really want to write.

As for physics, when we could get clear and strong evidences, we can write easily. Because we know clearly what we are going to write. If we posses what really want to write, we can write.

5. Learn how to manege.

If we write a lot or longer. We need to manage schedule. When is due, how long we need to write or want. Practice to finish the manuscript by deadline. We have different strategy, for 100 words, 500 words, 2000 words, 10000 words, and so on. You need to have strategy for each.

6. Writing is hard.

Among the language skill, like listening, speaking, writing, and reading, I believe that writing is the hardest. That is why I practice writing. When I drunk, I can listen, speak and reading, but I can not write. Just I want to remind “writing is hard”. That’s why we need to keep writing.

This books is for every writers. The one of most productive writer in the world “Steven King” talks about writing. I am not writer for living but I have to write the papers, the proposal for experiment, the proposal for grant. So I am strongly interested in how to write a lot and better. I could find useful suggestions from this book. Let me summarize these here.

1. Simplicity.

This is similar with presentation skill. But for writing, we should be careful every sentences. Is there any way to write more simply? Do we need this adverb?  Sometimes, we attempt to write more because we have deadline or quota. However, the simplicity comes first. Clear sentences and clear structure gives us grant or approval for publication? Haha. Do not write redundant sentences.

2. Vocabulary.

I am not a native English speaker, so that I do not have strong vocabulary. However, the truth is “The bread of writing, is vocabulary”. We need to build the vocabulary which can use for better description. However, we should keep in mind.  “It ain’t how much you got, honey, it’s how you use it”.

3. Read a lot, write a lot.

There is no way to be a good writer, “Read a lot, write a lot”. There is no shortcut.  Everyone think we can read. However, that is not true. Great writers are always great readers. So how we read the book is also important for writers.

4. Do not use adverb.

This is useful suggestion. We can usually omit adverb. Sometime, the sentence becomes much stronger when we omit the adverb. So that, we should be careful. Why do we need to use the adverb? Is this really necessary?

5. Take it seriously.

He says, “If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe” He is strict but tells the truth. If we are going to be a writer, we have to take our writing seriously. Do not compromise your writing.

6. Rewrite.

“When you write a story, you are telling yourself the story, when you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.” We rewrite our writing so many times, to get better description. I believe the process of rewrite is important for better writing. Based on the advice from co-author, referee, editor, rethink your writing again and again. Write a lot, rewrite a lot.

Making presentation is one of the most important skill. But, like a writing skill, there may be basic rule though, there is no specific goal to achieve. That makes us difficult to build the better presentation skill. This book is the one of suggestion. I could learn a lot. I will summarize what I learned from this book.

1. Simplicity 

Chose only 1 topic, what do you want the audience to understand the most? Chose only 1 topic. What is the message you are going to present? Keep in your mind. Practically, this book suggests you that you had better chose 1 message for each slides.

2. Clarity

If you do not have clear understanding of your topic. Who can understand clearly? Clear understanding of your topic also makes your presentation clear. You should be most familiar with your topic in the room.

3. Draw pictures by your hand.

You are told to make presentation in 1 week. How do you start preparation? Do you open the laptop and Power point, start making slides? This book suggests you to draw the pictures by your hand on notebook first. What kind of figures are you going to use? what is the message of your presentation? What is the story of your presentation? You should try this technique. I actually am not good at drawing, but it is fun and beneficial, I have really enjoyed doing this. Also, this technique can be used for writing.

4. Save the time for the everybody.

I have not noticed before reading this book. On the presentation,  you are using everyone’s time. Take advantage of it. For example, you have 10 mins for your presentation, and 100 audiences. You might think you are using your 10 mins. However, that is of course not true. You are using also audience’s time which is 100*10 mins = 1000 mins. Why don’t you imagine the benefit of this situation? If you use this time effectively, you will get a lot. If you use this time poorly, you will get almost nothing, sometimes even minus. Let’s practice for better presentation for you and your audience.

5. Practice makes perfect only when you practice effectively.

There is no goal to perfect presentation, we have always improvements. Like music, writing, sports. But there are ideas you can try to improve. Why don’t you try 1 idea for each presentation, see what happened? If possible, you can increase the chance to make presentation. Let’s practice effectively, present effectively every time.

It is an old joke. A man hurrying along a New York street asks a passing musician, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The man said “Practice man, practice.” 

Let’s do it effectively, I like this old joke though. 

Bliss Edward was about to graduate from college. She was a only virgin among her friends, she decided best way to deal with the problem was to lose it as quickly and simply as possible – a one-night stand. So she hit the bar and found the gorgeous guy Garrick who has sexy British accent. He likes reading Shakespeare and Bliss also does. Finally, Bliss and  Garrick agreed to go to Garrick’s house.

At his house, they were going to have a sex. Everything was going smoothly, however, just before having, Bliss said that she needed to take care of her cat. This was a lie. She had never had cat. She was upset with having sex for the first time. She at lat ran away from his house in the middle of night with almost naked. If this was only a night stand, that was good.

However, next morning,  when she arrived for her first class of her last college semester, she recognized her new theater professor was the man who she met last night in the bar. Wow, what would happen this semester??

She has also best male friends. Cade. But he liked her. But She liked him, but only as a friend. Here, I saw kind of selfishness of her and about her relationship. She likes him as a friends, not boyfriends. She also does not want to lose him. The relationship sometimes is difficult. There were several incidents between Bliss, Garrick and Cade. What would happen among those people?? If you are interested, you should read this book!!

I enjoyed this story. I understand the first sex have special meanings. Someone may feel the fear. Someone does weird things. This book just reminded me my stories and when I was high school and college. I understand what she wanted to do and what she felt.

The author is Cora Cormack, this book says that she is a twenty something writer who likes to write about twenty something characters. If you are interesting, you will find something from here!!

http://coracarmack.blogspot.com/p/about-sisterhood.html