Ryan Holiday asks, What is the ‘classic’ book of the 80s and 90s? Ryan starts by listing the classics from previous eras and decades…
The Scarlet Letter (colonial America)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (slavery)
The Red Badge of Courage (sometimes for civil war)
The Jungle (turn of the century)
All Quiet on the Western Front (WWI)
The Great Gatsby (20s)
Of Mice and Men (30s)
Catcher in the Rye (50s and 60s)
Fahrenheit 451 (Cold War)
…and goes on to suggest that the classic 80s book is American Psycho and Fight Club for the 90s.
I cannot disagree with American Psycho; the book satires perfectly the 80s yuppie culture which embodies everything the 80s was about. The 90s, however, is a different story: Fight Club is a good and very valid choice, but I would argue that Trainspotting is on par with it for representing 90s UK culture.
Like My Life in Books, I can only suggest The Corrections for the current decade.
Other contenders were:
The Personal MBA is a site dedicated to helping people gain an MBA education without the expense of business school. It’s a self-study guide to advanced business topics and concepts. As Kevin Kelly—the founding executive director of Wired—says:
No matter what they tell you, an MBA is not essential for landing or handling a good business job… Pursue your own Personal MBA in tandem with actual experience doing some kind of business. If you combine study with actually trying stuff, you’ll be far ahead in the business game.
An impressive introduction comes in the form of the Change This Manifesto, and one of my favourite pages on the site is the book list: The 77 Best Business Books.
On a large number of ‘best of’ or ‘books that changed my life’ lists I always spot Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB), the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter.
When my copy arrived at my door recently I was taken aback by this tome and realised that it was going to be a dense read that will need—and hopefully reward—all of my attention. As with similar books, I will undertake background research and reading first so that I can fully appreciate all the concepts contained within.
This is when I found MIT’s ’special programme’ specifically based on the book. While it doesn’t provide a wealth of useful, supplementary material (much like the Wikipedia entry), it does mention some good Bach pieces to accompany your reading.
The rise of university textbook piracy: the scourge of the textbook publisher, a blessing for students.
All forms of print publishing must contend with the digital transition, but college textbook publishing has a particularly nasty problem on its hands. College students may be the angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere.
Compared with music publishers, textbook publishers have been relatively protected from piracy by the considerable trouble entailed in digitizing a printed textbook. Converting the roughly 1,300 pages of Organic Chemistry into a digital file requires much more time than ripping a CD.
Time flies, however, if you’re having a good time plotting righteous revenge, and students seem angrier than ever before about the price of textbooks.
As the author of a number of influential marketing books, Seth Godin knows what he’s talking about when it comes to writing and marketing a book. Advice for authors is a list of his top 19 tips.
- Lower your expectations. The happiest authors are the ones that don’t expect much.
- The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.
- Your cover matters. Way more than you think. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t need a book… you could just email people the text.
- Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority. You should write one.