Category: Books

Heidi Benson reports for the San Francisco Chronicle on the closing of Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park on August 31 – and on efforts underway to revive it.

Last week, a “Save Kepler’s” vigil drew more than 500 of the impassioned to the shuttered store.

Days before, Rick Opaterny started a blog on the Web at www.savekeplers.com. A writer and Google employee, Opaterny has been a Kepler’s regular since his student days at St. Francis High School in Mountain View.

“I learned how to become a serious reader because of that bookstore,” he said last week. Now, he’s returned the favor. His blog has become a virtual community, a placeholder for the one so many hope has only temporarily disappeared.

I’ve been reading a new book – Blue Ocean Strategy by two Insead professors, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne – that outlines how to compete in the area outside the core competence of the firm.

Like the red/blue states, the authors describe a world of red and blue oceans of opportunities. The red ocean is the traditional battleground where firms spend most of their time. The blue oceans are the new opportunities that are out of the box yet provide the greatest opportunities for a breakaway strategy.

The book is an enjoyable read and builds upon earlier articles by these authors in the Harvard Business Review, etc.

I took Malcolm Gladwell‘s new book Blink on a trip with me yesterday. It’s a quick read – but not in the sense that it’s at all lightweight!

As others have already said, it’s a great book — right up there with his earlier Tipping Point. Gladwell provides some fascinating insights into how we make decisions (or don’t) during the first two seconds we have time to think (or not to think!).

James B. Stewart reviews the new book 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.

Even as the tragedy was unfolding, what was happening was far clearer from the outside than from the inside. For most of the people trapped inside, it was chaotic and confusing. They had no way of knowing what had befallen them, let alone why, and no way to know if they would live or die.

There’s an amazing interactive feature on the book on the New York Times site in the right sidebar of the book review pages.

Mark de la Viña writes in yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News about the Los Altos History Museum’s tribute to Wallace Stegner. The celebration begins this Sunday.

With all of the tragedies taking place around the world, a bit of comfort reading comes in handy. Two years ago I posted about reading Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety.

I was reminded of this great book again this morning by Cynthia Crossen’s column in the Wall St. Journal Online edition.

Friends, it is said, are the family we choose for ourselves. These days, with many families flung to the far corners of the earth, friends often become the family with whom we celebrate holidays.

UCLA physicist Didier Sornette looks at why best selling books are best sellers.