Apparently 2009 is officially The Year of Serious Reading.

In addition to working through the Personal MBA Reading List, I’ve just joined the Gene Wolfe Solar Cycle Book Club. (I even introduced myself, which is a step I very rarely take.)

Gizmodo: Palm Stock Jumps 34.85% On Palm Pre News.

I am pleasantly surprised that the new Palm Pre is getting such positive initial buzz. I’d long accepted that Palm was on death watch, and for good reason: “stagnation” doesn’t even begin to describe how badly they’ve botched product development this millennium. It will be interesting to see how the Pre does.

I’m not a huge fan of the cloud computing concept as such, but otherwise the Pre looks very intriguing. I refuse to use a Windows Mobile device, dislike Blackberry, am indifferent to Android, and won’t even consider the iPhone (no keyboard = useless for me). The only other device that intrigues me even a little is the Nokia E71. (And no, I never seriously considered the Openmoko platform; I may prefer to use a Free Software distribution, but I’m not a complete masochist.)

Of course, I’m not going to be adopting the Pre any time soon: at a minimum, I want a phone based on GSM, and preferably unlocked, not a CDMA phone exclusively tied to Sprint. Fortunately, according to PC World the new Palm Pre will go on sale in European countries during the first half of this year as well.

Assuming Palm doesn’t screw it up—never a safe assumption—my next phone may very well be a Pre.

Elizabeth Bear may well be right when she says that this is the best Amazon review ever. Hysterical satire.

(Update: Not surprisingly, the spoilsports at Amazon have apparently pulled the review. Rather surprisingly, the spoilsports at Amazon have apparently put the review back up! Good for them. Here’s another copy, just in case.)

I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions as such, but a quick review of what I read in 2008 prompted me to commit to reading the Personal MBA Recommended Reading List in 2009.

grep "^2008" ~/reference/books/read | less

One unexpected side-effect of implementing GTD and swapping my pre-millennial cell phone for a Palm Treo was that I read about 50 additional books last year. Nearly all of these titles were genre fiction: mystery, suspense, crime, sci-fi, horror, etc. I’ve never been good at keeping track of multi-volume series or prolific authors, and I hate reading out of chronological order. Once I had an effective way to manage lists and convert them into actions, I really made up for lost time.

I feel a need. A need…to read!

Now that I have a proven workflow for dealing with reading lists, it makes sense to try applying it to the sort of self-improvement that the Personal MBA reading list represents, as opposed to simply reading lots of popular fiction. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that—I hope.) It took a bit of time and some regular expressions, but I soon discovered that most of the books on the Personal MBA list are available at the NYPL. Indeed, nine listed titles were sitting on shelves I pass by nearly every day.

GTD + NYPL = PMBA?

I deliberately left home early this morning so I could spend a leisurely bus ride entering tasks in my Palm. I timed it well, arriving at the library just as patrons were admitted; I didn’t even have to break stride, much less wait in the cold. I worked my way down from the top floor, Palm in hand, and then used the self-service machine on the ground floor to check everything out. The guard at the exit was still getting settled at his station when I left, and actually did a double-take when he saw my stack of books. Thirty minutes later—I took the subway this time—I was home with my first batch of materials:

1. On Writing Well by William Zinsser
2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
3. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
4. Indispensable by Joe Calloway
5. Growing Great Employees by Erika Andersen
6. Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis

The first three titles—Norman’s in particular—are books that I’d been meaning to read for years. (Only one was even on my “Someday/Maybe” list, though, so there’s still plenty of room for improvement in my system.)

What’s the Next Action?

Of course, except for peeking at the Norman book, I haven’t actually read anything yet. But that’s because I was doing the tasks I’d brainstormed on the first leg of my trip; my productivity halo remains untarnished for today.

This project should be an interesting test of my commitment to keep up with a reading list that actually requires serious, you know, reading. I’d say I’d post updates and book reviews to this blog as I go, but that would almost certainly be a lie. One New Year’s Resolutionesque project is probably too much as it is.

Another song meme, and another realization that I have a fairly depressing music collection.

If someone says is this okay you say?

Rest In Peace – James Marsters

What would best describe your personality?

The Silence of Daylight – Konami

What do you like in a guy/girl?

Duality – Electrostatic

What is your life’s purpose?

Buzz – B. Fleischmann

What is your motto?

Fresh Dog – MC Frontalot

What do your friends think of you?

Merry Happy – Kate Nash

What do you think about very often?

Doctor? – Orbital

What do you think of your best friend?

Paging System Operator – Barcelona

What do you think of the person you like?

Halcyon+on+on – Orbital

What is your life story?

Ballad For Dead Friends – Dashboard Prophets

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Alone Again (Naturally) – Gilbert O’Sullivan

What do you think when you see the person you like?

Pump Up the Volume – M/A/R/R/S

What do your parents think of you?

Seeker of Your Love – Melt Wizard

What will you dance to at your wedding?

Under Pressure – Queen and David Bowie

What will they play at your funeral?

Eternity – Ennio Morricone

What is your hobby/interest?

Mega Man 2 – The Minibosses

What is your biggest secret?

Following Her Around – Sprites

What do you think of your friends?

Empty Houses – Garry Schyman

What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Have You Forgotten the Bomb – Barcelona

How will you die?

A Very Unlikely Occurrence – MC Frontalot

What is the one thing you regret?

The Queen And I – JAMs

What makes you laugh?

Chewing Gum – Twilight Electric

What makes you cry?

Christmas Time is Here – Vince Guaraldi

Will you ever get married?

Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus

What scares you the most?

God Is God – Juno Reactor

Does anyone like you?

Sister Ray – The Velvet Underground

If you could go back in time, what would you change?

The Long Wait – Morton Stevens

What hurts right now?

Pretending To Be Alive – Red Delicious

Variety describes the novel The Straw Men as a crime thriller about a detective brought out of retirement to solve a series of bizarre murders connected by dark conspiracy . Which makes me wonder if the intent is to make the least interesting of the novel’s three main characters the protagonist of the film version. That would solve one structural problem: the late Big Reveal of the novel is not possible to delay in a film without jumping through hoops. But it would also be boring. It’s the pulpier aspects that make the novel interesting IMHO.

I followed the instructions for a meme on Elizabeth Bear’s LJ:

Put your music player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first song is the title.

I let the music play in the background, letting the work on the meme act as a break timer while plowing through several thousand unread items in Google Reader. (Letting one obsessive Internet activity balance another appealed to me.) Once I discarded instrumentals, song mashups, and foreign-language stuff—which, taken together, were actually the majority of the songs selected—the “poem” came out like this:

Taking Samples from Other People’s Records is One of the Most Widespread and Controversial Aspects of Computer Music

An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma
This is the greatest and best song in the world

Where were you on November 22, 1963
Look at what’s happened to me
Hey I’m not a young man any more
Well hello there little boy don’t be shy

You look like a perfect fit
A long long time ago
Tonight it’s very clear
I know all there is to know

I’ve been having a bad, bad day
What goes up may not come down
You are likely to be eaten by a grue
Here we go

Down in the boondocks
We’re the casualties
My sweet lord
He’s so fine

Further evidence that random can be good, and surprisingly cohesive, but also a little bit scary. (It comes across as much darker lyrically than the playlist is musically.)

The songs:

1. Dean Reed – Ghost Riders in the Sky
2. Blue Öyster Cult – Godzilla
3. Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
4. Tenacious D – Tribute
5. Steinski & Mass Media – The Motorcade Sped On
6. Joey Scarbury – Believe It Or Not
7. The Velvet Underground – I’m Not A Young Man Anymore
8. Voltaire – BRAINS!
9. Aimee Mann – Save Me
10. Don McLean – American Pie
11. Peter Cetera – Glory of Love
12. Barcelona – I Know What You Think of Me
13. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cast [Marti Noxon] – The Parking Ticket
14. The Minibosses – song c(asptan)
15. MC Frontalot – It Is Pitch Dark
16. Southside Reverb – Here We Go
17. Billy Joe Royal – Down In The Boondocks
18. Red Delicious – Casualties
19. George Harrison – My Sweet Lord
20. The Chiffons – He’s So Fine

The title is from the meta-mashup track f.d. by Dummy Run.