The Three Best Gifts Ever
Birthday edition of What I’ve Read this week. The caption above says it all. I’m a happy husband and father. Not much else to really want outside of that. Now, on to the material!
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World – If you know me, follow me on Twitter and/or read this blog you know that I’m a Lewis fanboy. I picked this one up after a good friend of mine had forwarded Lewis’ Vanity Fair article that turned out to be a version of the Germany chapter in this book. The timeliness of this work is spot on, with Berlusconi in the rearview mirror and the upheaval in Greece a daily occurance, impending financial doom and gloom hovers like a starved scepter of economic chaos. As Lewis relates, this work is a companion piece to his Big Short (another great read) that went into detail on the issues involved in the subprime debt fiasco of ’08-’09. He picks up where the cascading effects of that crisis have infected the global financial system, this time effecting the governments who held much of the debt that served as the “other side” of the subprime bet. As usual Lewis does a great job telling a narrative in the soverign debt crisis enveloping the globe. The prelude of this one is enough to make you shudder and start hoarding gold. And no, you don’t have to read the Big Short to get immediately into Boomerang. For a great, timely and quick read, pick this one up.
Steve Jobs – Anything I could find on the Penn State tragedy and this book both literally consumed me last week, and in the process, accounted for a significant amount of emotional overhead. Walter Isaacson does a neat job tying in the diametrical forces that shaped the Apple founder’s complex, full but short life. Jobs talks about his passion for his work lying at the intersection of the humanities and technology, something that resonates all too clearly for me. At this intersection is where I found my passion as a consultant back in my prior career and where I do today as a coach. That’s not trying to compare me to Steve Jobs at an “outcome” (accomplishment) level but more of an acknowledgment of what is the “sun in my belly” in my own career. For me, Jobs is the Einstein of my own short life, a monolithic figure whose influence permeates all of modern culture in art and technology.
Find My iPhone – In the general oblivion that often is my general state of consciousness, I left my iPhone at CostCo last week. I knew I had lost it, but I had no idea where. I actually even had turned around and gone back to the store to see if somebody had turned it in. At that time, nobody had, so I left utterly confused (per usual) and hoping to activate the location services function on one of my iOS/Mac devices at home. Once home, I did a quick Google search on losing your iPhone and found this app. I downloaded it to my iPad, launched it with my Apple ID and voila! There, pinging in the middle of the CostCo warehouse on a Google Map was my iPhone. Not only is this app great for these moments, but as I had related the story to my wife later that day, the functionality is ideal for tracking me for my mid-day riding, heaven forbid something unpleasant ever happened.
