800-CEO-READ Blog

What I Did On My Vacation

I have been on vacation this week. Now I take two kinds of vacations. Vacations where I go away and turn everything off and veg. Then I have vacations where I read in bed for an hour in the mornings, cook soup, putter in the garden and hit the links; these are the vacations where the Blackberry is turned on and I stay in touch with the office. This has been that kind of vacation.

I want to tell you about two books that I have read this week and loved. They aren't my typical suggestions for you as they aren't books about business. I actually read other kinds of books, too. Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer is the best lawyer/courtroom book I have read in ages. This guy has been writing really good noir books for years. This is a brighter book with a great plot.

The other book is a coffee table book called The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher. This book is hard to explain. As she states in the dust jacket,

All cities, big and small, rely on a vast array of interconnecting systems to take care of their citizens’ most basic needs; keeping water bubbling through the pipes, traffic moving on the streets, power flowing to businesses and homes. Largely invisible, and almost always taken for granted, these are the basic building blocks of urban life. But how exactly do these systems work? Using New York City—among the largest and most complex of world cities—as its point of reference, The Works answers that question.

Now if that was all that the book offered, it would be interesting. The book is really richly detailed with great graphics. I learned the reason behind those stacks that have steam coming out of them on the streets of New York. Check it out.

Now, I have to depart because I have tee time shortly.

Posted by jack at November 10, 2005 12:32 PM