Week Thirty Seven: What's Mine is Yours

What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers. This is another book on the effect and structure of networks, where the nodes are people. The specific thing about this being that the new pattern being predicted is sharing over ownership.

This is not a manifesto for communal ownership or commune style living. Nor is it Communism. This is a thoughtful look at consumption, driven by green ideals and finding a way through lifestyle without waste. Trying to redress the balance in favour of consumption versus cost.

Loads of ideas, most of which are predictive and reflective - but it's a guess at what happens next. Driving the idea of un-consumption by foucssing on the need rather than the solution or the need to own the solution. Ideas in play for centuries coming back into vogue like shared land and shared knowledge and experience.

Fascinating that on average Power tools are used in their lifespan by American consumers by only something like 8 to 15 minutes, but in reality what you need is a hole, not a drill. Very Zen.

Next week - don't know - but I'll share this book anyway - it seems fitting.

Week Thirty Six: Bolivian Diary by Ernesto Che Guevara

Bolivian Diary is the last in the set of personal diaries by revolutionary and t-shirt/poster model Che Guevara. The first and most famous of these being the Motorcycle Diaries - which made a fantastic film, and the last being the one he kept until he was captured and executed without trial in Bolivia.

In parts it's boring and banal, in parts it shows you how determined and driven he was, for his causes. He was impatient and ruthless, but also in his own reflections unsure and caring - but unable or unwilling to express anything that did not further the cause.

Because the outcome is well known the diary takes on a fatalistic charm, yet his own racism and lack of compromise - the same thing he railed against in others does come to the fore. It feels like he is of two minds - one the enemy that America and the dictators of South America feared (and rightly so most of the time), but also one a normal man with failings and a judgement that never seems final, he never really gives up on his men despite his often harsh assessments and ultimatums.

A diary is always a biased account, but knowing nothing of how the future would regard him - except hope - there is less glossing and more recording. It's a like a bush walk gone horribly wrong some days.

Next Week: Either the Nigger Factory by Gil Scott Heron (to further the revolutionary theme) or Collaborative Consumerism - to pick up the network theme of a few weeks ago.

Week Thirty Five: Earth by John Stewart and the Daily Show

Earth: The Book.

Or more rightly, the audiobook. As I had quite a few things on this week I settled on catching up on an audiobook, in this case Earth: A Visitors Guide to the Human Race. A few hours listening is a nice way to read a book, specifically good if you have loads of other things to do. In this case at least a third of the book was while I was assembling an "easy to assemble" entertainment unit. So every now and then I would have to skip back for the bit I missed while swearing loudly at inanimate objects.

Typical humour of Stewart and the Daily show - if you like them then you'll like this - lots of witty observations about humanity delivered in varying amounts of self-deprecating, caustic and occasionally deadpan style. Features other performers from the show such as Wyatt Cenac, Samantha Bee, Jason Jones and a guest narrator Sigourney Weaver.

Recommended as a book (which I flipped through) or as an audiobook - as all the subtlety (or not) of delivery are there as intended by the writers.

Next week - your guess is as good as mine (though now that a large amount of unpacking has occurred the number of unread books at my beck and call has increased once again)

Week Thirty Four: Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson is a book in a set called Eminent Lives - where the idea is to profile the life and times of a Eminent Life, without being the be-all and end-all of biographies.

A slim volume tackled over two days as there was no way I was going to be able to finish the Phillip Zimbardo book I was barely halfway through and struggling with.

Nice, lightweight and easy enough to read but filled with fact about how very little we know. For someone so written about, so understood by his own writing he is yet vague as the mist. Elizabethan records not being the best and all.

Another book from the Newby collection, if he ever comes back there will be a box of them waiting...

Next week - we'll see if I can get through the Abu Ghraib half of the Zimbardo book.