Never Check E-Mail in the Morning

I get approximately 300 emails a day, and I am always looking for ways to deal with them efficiently, so the title of this book caught my eye. I was disappointed to find that this is just a trendy new retitling of an old book with a clunky title: "Making Work Work".

Basically, this is a version of Getting Things Done that seems to be written for the ladies. It is not as pointed or draconian as GTD, but it does have a lot of generally useful tips for people who haven't spent any time engineering their work processes. The "Email" title is really just a single tip in the book, suggesting that before you get caught up in a torrent of emails, that you should take a little time to plan your day, so that it is as effective as possible. This is something that I'm learning to do myself. I'm trying a new thing where I try to kill off all my inboxes before I go to bed. Which is why I'm writing this at 12:40 AM. I didn't learn that from this book, I'm just mentioning it. We'll see how long I can keep it up. It continues to amaze me that there isn't more discussion in the world about how to deal with email efficiently and effectively... even in a book with a title like this.

One surprising chapter in this book is about working well with others. It has a very concrete idea in it, that whenever there is workplace frustration with a co-worker, it is about one of six things: Inaccessibility, Unreliability, Rigidity, Disrespectfulness, Vagueness, or Unfairness. This was a new list for me, and so far, I think it is spot on. So, conversely, avoid these six deadly sins, and people will like working with you. I think I'll use this in BVW next year...

Wormy Apples

Played this with Emma today for the first time in ages. It's a simple randomized game, not unlike Cootie, or Hi Ho Cherry-O, or dozens of others. In this one you are trying to get all the worms out of your apple with a simple spinner. I was surprised that Emma, who is now nine, would still want to play it, but she did, and it is still kind of fun. And it comes in a cool mini-lunchbox, which makes everything better.

Space Invaders Revolution

At last! I finished this little devil! You might wonder why I don't list more games in this blog. The simple reason is that though I start many games, I finish very few. Well, I finished this one! It was a really fun extension of the classic Space Invaders. It has lots of variations on the action and the enemies, but does a great job of staying to true to the feeling of the original. So, if you like old-fashioned Space Invaders, I definitely recommend this.

And yeah! I finished it!

Cave Canem

So, I took three years of Latin in high school, with grades that descended each year, because I didn't work very hard, and so things never really stuck. I've always been sad about that, because I had grand visions of sitting down to read, say, the Aeneid. It was with delight, then, that I discovered the Dowling Method of learning Latin, which is based on slow, steady, and thorough drill, with the goal of being able to read Latin smoothly and naturally. At this moment, I am 170 pages into my drill book of 200 pages of nouns, and when I finish that, I'll begin adjectives, and then verbs.

Now -- none of that has anything to do with Cave Canem, except that I bought this book as a way of breaking the intense monotony that is the Dowling Method. The book is alright, it has little windows into Roman history via common Latin phrases, but I wish that it paid a little more attention to grammar -- it frequently presents accusative or ablative forms of nouns, with no explanation that that is the case (no pun intended, and I'm sure, none taken). Some of the translation and explanations I found a little suspect, too. But, I found it a great way to pick up a little more knowledge and vocabulary. I am very likely going to put "Non scholae sed vitae discimus" over my door.

The Pajama Game

I saw part of this on TV when I was very young, and it has always haunted me, so I finally got around to watching the whole movie. Workplace comedy always fascinates me. I know the poster wants us to think it is some kind of sex comedy, but really it is a story about labor relations in a pajama factory. I was amazed at how many well-known songs it contains, from "I figured it out" to "This is my once-a-year day" to "Hernando's Hideaway". It was tremendous fun.

Playboy's Silverstein Around the World

No study of the complete works of Shel Silverstein would be complete with out this: A collection of the sketches, photos, and cartoons he did for Playboy magazine in the sixties, each feature sending him to a different city of the world. They are just so silly, so self-deprecating, and so fun -- so much of Shel comes out in these, and he was certainly the perfect man for the job!

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Part II

Why Part II? Well, the library didn't have part I on audiobook, so I just jumped in on Part II. I can see why so many people talk about this book -- it is full of fascinatingly lurid details of the murderers, scoundrels, and prostitutes that brought the Roman Empire to ruin. I don't think any other book can boast having the words "pusillanimous" and "rapine" appear so many times in a single text.

The other thing that is notable about this book is the love and care with which Gibbon treats his subject. He is not objective at all, but he is very personal and present throughout the book, happy to step in and offer his opinions about what is true and what is not, and about how those who erred in ruling Rome could have made wiser decisions. It is clear that Gibbon spent the better part of his life on this text, and his personal tone makes it feel alive, though it was written over two hundred years ago. I love how he ends it, so humbly. I used the same trick in my book:

The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally delivere to the curiosity and candor of the public.