Lunch with Buddha – An entertaining, engrossing, thought-provoking American road-trip novel – #bookreview

Lunch with Buddha
Roland Merullo
(PFP/Ajar, Kindle, paperback)

To be honest, I was not really aware of Roland Merullo until his publisher contacted me offering a review copy of an enticingly titled new novel, Lunch with Buddha.

I could blame my “Who?” reaction on my intense focus toward reviewing technology books over the past two years. And I could blame it on empirical evidence that it’s really tough to sell works of fiction these days.

Indeed, several writers of novels and short story collections have told me they don’t get much publicity help from their publishers. Some also have declared they were taking up self-publishing so they could (a) get their books into print (or its digital equivalent), (b) keep more of their paltry earnings, and (c) try their hand at book promotion. Furthermore, I have data — very hard data — showing that virtually no one on Planet Earth has yet read my novel, Erwin’s Law, nor my experimental novella, Jump.

Thus, bottom line, I have not been paying very close attention to the world of fiction lately.

Immediately, I was impressed  (and jarred) to learn that (1) Roland Merullo’s seventh novel, Breakfast with Buddha, is now in its 14th printing; (2) Lunch with Buddha, published late last year, is his eleventh novel and already in its second printing; AND (3) Lunch with Buddha’s completion and publication was funded, at least in part, with significant Kickstarter contributions from Merullo fans.

Intriguingly, Roland Merullo turned down a six-figure advance from a major publishing house and chose a small, independent publisher to bring out his new book.

So he must be good, right?

He’s better than good, actually. Roland Merullo is one of the best, most entertaining writers I’ve encountered in a long time. Seldom am I hooked by a book’s first few paragraphs. But, in Lunch with Buddha, Merullo blends verbal calmness, clarity, wit and depth to create an engaging, absorbing story that flows smoothly from darkly humorous opening to meaningful end.

His new tale is a road-trip novel that covers an odd, yet very American, route: from Seattle to North Dakota, in a borrowed, battered pickup truck nicknamed “Uma.”

Otto Ringling, a New York editor of culinary books and recent widower, is taking the journey with reluctance, while searching for peace of mind and new meanings for his suddenly altered life.

His traveling companion on the drive is his sister’s former guru, “His Holiness” Volya Rinpoche, a Siberian “semi-Buddhist” who now is the sister’s husband and father of their young daughter, Shelsa. Volya still has many questions and misconceptions about life in these not-so-United States. But he also has an infectious spirit, an unshakable spirituality, and plenty of confidence that all will be well and work out in the end.

Otto, meanwhile, is just trying to get a renewed grip on existence. “One of the side effects of losing a spouse–at least for me–had been a peculiar inability to perform the most mundane tasks,” he says in the book, adding:

“Making plane and hotel reservations, shopping for food, setting out the trash on time–these duties, which ordinarily I would have completed with a practiced ease, now seemed as daunting as the learning of a Chinese dialect. I let things slide. For the first time in family history, bills were paid late. The dry cleaners had to call three times to remind me to pick up my shirts. My children could be harsh with me about these failings, but I took their casual criticisms like a battered old fighter takes punches. I would stand. I was determined to stand. I was determined to stay sane, and love them, and help them envision a new life after our old one had been ripped to pieces.”

While Otto and Volya drive across Washington state, Idaho, Montana, and into North Dakota, Otto’s sister, Cecelia, her young daughter Shelsa, and Otto’s children Anthony (20) and Natasha (22), are all riding Amtrak, taking a separate route. They’ve been to Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington state, to witness Otto scattering his wife’s ashes. Now they are heading for Dickinson, North Dakota, where Celia and Volya live — in Otto’s view – “on the far side of some line that marked the boundary of ordinary American reality.”

Along the way, Otto and Volya have several humorous–and sometimes troubling–encounters with contemporary American culture and values. Otto, for example, tries to explain to Volya the meanings of some strange signs they see along the highway, such as “REPTILE ZOO AND EXPRESSO” and “EAT BIG FOOD.”

Otto and Volya also have debates over religion and spirituality as the widower seeks understandable meanings he can attach to life, death, and whatever lies beyond our mystery-shrouded finality. For example:

 “What is the goal?” I asked, trying to slip away from it. “What’s the whole point? Enlightenment? Eternal life? What?”

He patted me on the shoulder for the millionth time, and said, “You purify. You go and go. Life cuts you and you try and try and try and pretty soon–”

“You become beautiful.”

“Yes. Good.”

“But toward what are we going and going? What does the beauty look like?”

He shrugged almost helplessly, and for a moment I was gripped hard by the hand of doubt. He seemed only an ordinary man then, and I wanted more than that from him, more than cryptic answers and shrugs. A small inner voice suggested he’d been fooling us all these years, playing a role, maybe even working a scam.

“I can show you,” he said. “I can’t tell you.”

“All right. Please show me, then. I’m having a crisis of faith. I’m a little bit lost.”

He nodded sympathetically. “We find you,” he said. “Don’t worry too much….”

Lunch with Buddha has the same key characters as Roland Merullo’s best-selling Breakfast with Buddha. And a third book, aptly titled Dinner with Buddha, is said to be in the works.

Fortunately, Lunch is written so it can be picked up and immediately enjoyed by those who have not previously read Breakfast. Indeed, Lunch with Buddha will make many readers go back and devour Breakfast, then eagerly anticipate Dinner–and check out some of Roland Merullo’s other works of fiction and nonfiction while waiting for the next serving.

Geoffrey Chaucer and Jack Kerouac are the two names that  pop most quickly to mind when the debate topic is “classic road-trip novels.”  I move that we now add Roland Merullo to that short, but esteemed, list.

– Si Dunn

Designing Games – A well-written, comprehensive guide to video game engineering – #bookreview

Designing Games
A Guide to Engineering Experiences
Tynan Sylvester
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

If you design video games, if you hope to become a game creator, or if you work for a company whose lifeblood is creating and maintaining successful video games, you need to read this excellent book.

 Tynan Sylvester provides a comprehensive overview of the design processes that are the heart of successful games. And he describes the day-to-day actions necessary to keep game projects on track to completion.

“A game can’t just generate any old string of events, because most events aren’t worth caring about,” Sylvester contends. He is a veteran designer who has worked on everything from independently produced games to big-studio blockbuster games. “For a game to hold attention, those events must provoke blood-pumping human emotion. When the generated events provoke pride, hilarity, awe, or terror, the game works.”

Unlike screenwriters, novelists, or choreographers, game designers do not focus on creating events, Sylvester explains. “Instead of authoring events,  we design mechanics [the rules for how a game works]. Those mechanics then generate events during play.”

In his view, “The hard part of game design is not physically implementing the game. It is inventing and refining knowledge about the design.” And successful game creation involves “inventing mechanics, fiction, art, and technology that interconnect into a powerful engine of experience.”

His 405-page book also shows why you should not try to spell out everything up front before beginning work on a new game. It is too easy to overplan, he emphasizes. But it is also easy to underplan. So you should aim for a process in the middle: iteration, “the practice of making short-range plans, implementing them, testing them, and repeating.” And that loop-like process is applied not just to the overall game. “We can iterate on a level, a tool, or an interface. On larger teams, there should be many different iteration loops running at the same time.”

According to news accounts emerging from the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, much of the video game creation business is now gravitating toward independent developers and game companies with 10 or fewer employees. And the main focus within that movement is on creating games for tablet computers and smartphones–platforms with lower barriers to entry. But powerful new video game consoles are expected to appear soon, and they likely will drive the creation of new games, as well as upgrades for some successful existing games.

Whether you work alone, in a small shop, or on intercontinental game-development teams within big companies, you can learn important insights, processes, and skills from Tynan Sylvester’s Designing Games.  And if you are now in the process of trying to find a design job somewhere in the video game industry, you definitely need to read it.

– Si Dunn

LEGO Bonanza — Stack ‘em up: 3 hot new books for LEGO builders – #bookreview

No Starch Press recently has released three new books aimed at the world’s millions of LEGO™ builders:

• The Unofficial LEGO™ Builder’s Guide, 2^nd Edition
• The LEGO™ Adventure Book, Vol. 1
• The Unofficial LEGO™ Technic Builder’s Guide.

Here are short reviews of each.

The Unofficial LEGO™ Builder’s Guide, 2^nd Edition
Allan Bedford
(No Starch, paperback – Kindle)

Allan Bedford’s popular how-to guide has been updated, and all photographs and illustrations are now in color.

The well-written 221-page book starts at the absolute beginner’s level, showing and explaining the various LEGO pieces, which range from “bricks” to “plates” to “slopes” to “tiles” and numerous others. From there, it shows the best ways to connect pieces for successful construction.  Then it delves into three different, progressively larger, sizes of LEGO constructions –minifig, miniland, and jumbo – before briefly going smaller, to microscale.

Bedford explains how to design and build structures and characters from LEGO elements and also shows how to put together several projects, including a train station, a space shuttle, a mosaic, a game board, and a sculpture of the Sphinx.

His book’s Appendix A offers a helpful “Brickopedia” that contains “a selection of more than 275 elements, from basic bricks, slopes, and plates, to specialized elements, arches, and even decorative elements.

The pieces included represent the most common and most reusable elements in the LEGO system,” Bedford notes. The parts’ specifications are given, and helpful notes are included, as well.

Appendix B, meanwhile, shows how to download and use design grids to plan complex LEGO projects before you build them.

The LEGO™ Adventure Book, Vol. 1
Megan Rothrock
(No Starch, hardback - Kindle)

Megan Rothrock’s book is the debut volume in the new “The LEGO™ Adventure Book series” from No Starch Press.

Subtitled “Cars, Castles, Dinosaurs & More!”, Volume 1 presents excellent color photographs of nearly 200 intriguing models crafted by LEGO builders around the world. Ms. Rothrock’s 200-page book also features “brick-by-brick breakdowns” of 25 models that range from a medieval village to T. Rex and a British Railways steam engine.

The constructions are shown step by step in close-up, so even inexperienced builders can duplicate them. Some are simple, such as a small bridge “that can be added to any scene” in eight steps. And others are more involved, such as a mecha named “Counterblast” that is well-armed with big guns that requires more than 50 steps to complete.

Megan Rothrock is well-known in LEGO builder circles. She is a former set designer for the LEGO Group, and her models have been widely displayed, including at ComicCon and LEGO events in Europe. She is now a freelance toy designer in Denmark.

LEGO builders frequently claim that they can build models of “almost anything” with LEGO parts. With books such as The LEGO™ Adventure Book, Vol. 1 helping guide and train you, you definitely can learn to build lots of different types of models.

The Unofficial LEGO™ Technic Builder’s Guide
Paweł “Sariel” Kmieć
(No Starch, paperback – Kindle)

The LEGO™ Technic system lets you build LEGO models that move. The system includes motors, gears, pneumatics, pulleys, linkages, and other devices designed for LEGO constructions. But working with Technic can be complex at times.

Fortunately, Paweł “Sariel” Kmieć has excellent credentials for showing and explaining how to construct Technic models and make them operate. He is described as “YouTube’s most popular LEGO Technic builder, a guest blogger for the official LEGO Technic blog, and a 2012 LEGO Ambassador.”

His 333-page book is packed with illustrations, photographs, explanations, and tips on everything from simple “pins” (which “keep bricks and beams together”) to wheeled suspension systems and using a subtractor to get better steering of a tracked LEGO vehicle that has two motors and is radio-controlled.

While most of the focus is on details of how to use specifics Technic parts, he also shows some amazing and inspiring powered models that he has built from LEGO pieces and LEGO Technic devices.

Whether you are new to Technic or an old hand, you likely will want to build many things that move, once you have this book. 

– Si Dunn

Enterprise Games – How to build a better 21st-century business with game mechanics – #business #bookreview

Enterprise Games: Using Game Mechanics to Build a Better Business
Michael Hugos
(O’Reilly, paperback – Kindle)

Can 21^st-century games and gamers attack and destroy the top-down, assembly-line thinking that still keeps many businesses firmly rooted in the previous century?

 Michael Hugos’ compelling new book makes a solid case that they can. Game mechanics, he argues, can reshape how workers work, how organizations are managed, and how business goals get accomplished in today’s volatile global economy.

“Games and the associated technology we currently refer to as video games offer us more than just a diversion and escape from difficult times,” contends Hugos. “They offer us field-tested models to use for organizing companies and performing complex and creative tasks. They offer clear and compelling examples for how people can work together, build their careers, and earn a living in rapidly changing and unpredictable environments.”

Hugos, principal at the Center for Systems Innovation, offers his well-written views in a 199-page book “loosely divided into three parts.”

Part One focuses on “ideas and case studies to illustrate how games can provide operating models to follow for redesigning work.”

Part Two presents “a discussion of games and game mechanics that are relevant to the way work is done.” He includes “specific examples, pictures, and case studies to show how game techniques and technologies can be applied to the design of new business systems and workflows.”

Part Three “describes business and social impacts of combining technology from video games with in-house corporate systems, consumer technology, and cloud computing. The book concludes with a discussion about where this is all going and what it might mean for the future of work.”

During the coming months, Enterprise Games may spur many discussions and arguments at all levels of enterprise. And these may lead to some business-model reorganizations not only in Corporate America but elsewhere in the interconnected global economy.

For these changes to happen, however, many company leaders will have to stop thinking “top down” and learn to adapt ”the four traits of a game…goal, rules, feedback system, and voluntary participation” to how they to structure and operate a business.

“We all have a sense of what a game is,” Hugos notes. But most of us also have been taught that “play” is not “work.” Enterprise Games shows how the two concepts can be brought together in ways that can make companies more competitive and more profitable in these uncertain times.

– Si Dunn

Daily Decadence: The Art of Sensual Living – Make your day go better with a little wine, art, food & love – #bookreview

Daily Decadence: The Art of Sensual Living
Sherri Dobay
(Flying Archer Press, paperback, Kindle)

You might quibble with a few of the food and wine pairings in this entertaining book on sensual living. But there is no denying Sherri Dobay’s bright, cajoling spirit. She wants us to try harder to make unfettered time for ourselves each day and use it to enjoy a bit of decadence. And she makes it difficult to say No, too busy.

“All around,” she writes, “there are fabulous things ready to indulge in if you simply stop, open your eyes and yourself to touch, taste, feel—celebrate—something each day.”

She notes: “The world is on the fast track to efficiency (and ulcers) thanks to technology and the ability to work 24/7. It’s no surprise that it drains us and leaves us empty, unfulfilled and lost as we lose the ability to pause and enjoy life on a daily basis.”

Daily Decadence is full of ideas, tips, recipes, wine suggestions, and sensual essays intended to inspire and encourage you to take some time each day to indulge yourself—whether alone or in the company of someone you love.

You can make pleasant differences in your life, she says, even when you can invite just “five minutes of celebration into your packed day.”

So can a conscious effort to bring more simplicity into each day. “Simplicity is truly decadent,” she emphasizes. “What clutter can you clear from your life to make way for more living?”

– Si Dunn

Dance All Night: Those Other Southwestern Swing Bands, Past and Present – #bookreview #in #music

Dance All Night: Those Other Southwestern Swing Bands, Past and Present
Jean A. Boyd
(Texas Tech University Press, hardback, list price $65.00; paperback, list price $39.95)

Fans of 1930s and 1940s western swing will find plenty to enjoy in this entertaining book by Jean A. Boyd, a  Baylor University music history professor and native of Fort Worth, Texas.

She celebrates the distinctive music and its Texas roots and highlights several groups that, unlike Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, did not or have not made it into the national spotlight.

Yet these bands have picked, fiddled, strummed and sung their way to regional stardom in Texas and Oklahoma.

Her book likely will also appeal to musicologists and performers. She includes musical analysis and transcriptions of recorded performances, as well as histories and recollections.

– Si Dunn 

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Fitness for Geeks – A book that will knock you OFF your butt – #bookreview

Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health
Bruce W. Perry
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $34.95; Kindle edition, list price $27.99)

You know it’s true: You spend way too much time at home and at the office just sitting on your back pockets, staring at computer screens.

You do have some mobile devices. But, to use them, you mostly just carry them into your favorite free WiFi coffee shop and then sit, eat bagels and drink coffee while you poke, occasionally twitch a finger and squint.

 Not much of a healthy workout, is it?

 Many of us now spend most of our days and nights engaged in what Bruce W. Perry calls “a marathon bout of sitting.” Indeed, toss in the time spent sitting in your car as you commute to and from work, and you are a perfect example of a modern lifestyle that some scientists now term “chair living.”

It’s time, says Perry, to move, to skip the elevator and take the stairs (two at a time, if possible) on your way to and from those chairs.

 It’s time to find the company fitness center and start using it. It’s time to pay closer attention to what and how much you are eating, especially while sitting, computing and commuting. And it’s time to realize that you are spending too much time in front of your computer or TV when you should be sleeping.

Perry, a software engineer, journalist and self-described “fitness geek” has written an entertaining, inspiring and downright helpful book that draws from “the many parallels between software design and fitness geekdom, such as the whole concept of antipatterns, or learning how to do something by studying how not to do it first.”

There are, he notes, many apps, websites and devices now that can help you track, calculate and chart effort, calories, distances, sleep and other fitness factors.  He even tosses in a few bits of code that can help you, for example, display the route and distance that you just covered on a bike ride

Now is the time for all good geeks to come to the aid of their chair-shaped, digitally softened bodies.

Fitness for Geeks is organized into 11 standalone chapters that you can read in any order, Perry says. The chapters are:

1.  Fitness and the Human Codebase: Reboot Your Operating System
2. Fitness Tools and Apps
3. Food Chemistry Basics: Proteins, Fats, and Carbs
4. Micronutrients: Vitamins, Minerals, and Phytochemicals
5. Food Hacks: Finding and Choosing Food
6. Food Timing: When to Eat, When to Fast
7. The Other World: A.K.A Outside
8. Hello, Gym! Finding Your Way Around the Fitness Facility
9. Randomizing Fitness and the Importance of R & R
10. Code Maintenance: Human Fueling and Supplements
11. Lifestyle Hacks for Fitness

 There is no complete escape from chair living, of course. We still have to sit at our home computers, sit in front of our TVs, sit in our cars, sit at coffee shops, and sit, sit, sit at the office.

But chair living does not have to consume us and kill us. We can find the time to make better choices: Skip the escalator and the éclair; eat a carrot and take the stairs. And we can find tools that can help us enhance those choices – digital and physical. They are already out there. 

Mainly, we just have to make ourselves get off our butts for a little while each day and do something healthful with the time out of chair.

Bruce W. Perry’s new book can help you discover – yes, even program – a workable path to better living.

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– Si Dunn is a novelist, screenwriter, freelance book reviewer, and former software technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist. He also is a former newspaper and magazine photojournalist. His latest book is Dark Signals, a Vietnam War memoir. He is the author of an e-book detective novel, Erwin’s Law, now also available in paperback, plus a novella, Jump, and several other books and short stories.

Consuming too much information can make you fat, clueless & dead – The Information Diet – #bookreview

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption
By Clay A. Johnson
(O’Reilly, hardback, list price $22.99; Kindle edition, list price $19.99)

In this controversial new book from O’Reilly Media, veteran software developer, open source guru and political advocate Clay A. Johnson makes the forceful argument that our current mania for consuming information is killing us, mentally and physically.

First, we are sitting too much and too long while consuming data from the Web, from TV, from smart phones, from books, and while driving around in our cars listening to blather on the radio.

And, much of what we are consuming is crap – the digital equivalent of high-fat junk food and raw sugar. Some of us now are driving ourselves to destructive distraction through gluttonous obsessions with tweets, status updates, downloads, videos,  instant messages, text messages, emails and restless Web surfing.

For instance, suppose a tweet just went by mentioning some kind of rumored problem with pig populations in Zambia, and you idly read it, processed it in your head, wasted a few more seconds of your life, and took another sip of your latte and took another bite of bagel while continuing to sit on your butt much longer than you intended.

Then you checked your Facebook account on your iPhone or iPad, took another sip of your latte, took another bite of bagel, and went back to Twitter and followed a link to what seemed to be a review of a movie you’ve already seen to see but turned out to be just a lame blog post about how Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich resemble certain characters in Avatar. Then you took another bite of bagel, another sip of latte and checked your email and followed a link to something about Lady Gaga.

More wasted time. More attention to generally useless information. More sedentary life gone by.

We now spend nearly 11 hours a day consuming – frequently gorging on – information, Johnson’s book points out. And it’s driving us to distraction – and killing us.

First, the physical dangers. Johnson notes: “In 2004, one physician coined the term Sedentary Death Syndrome to classify all the diseases that come from the sedentary state. The effects: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and yes, obesity. Some researchers are calling it the second largest threat to public health in America. What are we doing when we’re sedentary? Few of us are meditating. We’re consuming information.”

He continues: “New research points to sitting, especially amongst men, as a leading cause of death. Even if you exercise regularly, it turns out that sitting for long periods of time can be deadly.”

It’s also easy to lose track of time and lose control of time management while distracted by the free flow of information. Something unexpected or surprising or outrageous on the Web grabs your attention, and your carefully crafted to-do list for the day is shot to hell. And, relationships can be affected: “Just a quick check of email when we get home can often end up in evenings entirely lost to LCD screens…” instead of talking and paying attention to each other.

Then there’s the problem of “attention fatigue.” Writes Johnson: “About two years ago, I started to wonder: what the heck happened to my short-term memory? And where did my attention span go? I’ve written a little pithy 140-character tweet, sent it into the universe, and in no more than five minutes, I’ve received a reply. The only problem is, I’ve already forgotten what I wrote in the first place. I’ve had to go back, and look at what I said just five minutes ago to understand what the person replying to me is referencing.”

This book offers more dire warnings about consuming too much information. But the author also offers ideas and recommendations for achieving “Attention Fitness.” You can still have your information and consume it, too, in deliberate, conscious doses that are healthier for your mind, body and your participation in American democracy.

If you pay attention to this book long enough to actually think about what it points out and proposes, you may figure out how to get healthier again, how to regain your focus – and how to better understand the ways you are being duped by some of the misinformation constantly sucked into your head by your addiction.

You can become a more conscious and proactive consumer of information and not just another wasted – and life-wasting — data junkie.

– Si Dunn‘s latest book is a detective novel, Erwin’s Law. His other published works include Jump, a novella, and a book of poetry, plus several short stories, including The 7th Mars Cavalry, all available on Kindle. He is a screenwriter, a freelance book reviewer, and a former technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR – More how-to from David Meerman Scott – #bookreview

The New Rules of Marketing & PR (3^rd Edition)
How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases & Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
By David Meerman Scott
(John Wiley & Sons, Inc., paperback, list price $19.95; Kindle edition, list price $19.95)

More than a quarter million copies of this book have been purchased since it first appeared in 2007, and it has been translated into more than 25 languages. David Meerman Scott clearly has some fans and has jarred some thinking in the marketing and public relations world.

So the updated advice, examples and how-to tips in his book’s third edition may be just what you need if you are in the process of starting up a business or trying to revamp and modernize your existing marketing approaches.

The updates include new examples and ideas drawn from the author’s many sessions with audiences around the world, as well as responses to posts in his well-known marketing and leadership blog, WebInkNow.

Two timely and important new chapters also have been added.

• “Mobile Marketing: Reaching Buyers Wherever They Are” focuses on using “location-based mobile marketing” to reach buyers via “GPS-enabled mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and other devices….”
• And, “Marketing and PR in Real Time” makes the key point that “[i]f you pay attention to what’s happening in your marketplace and react instantly, you can insert yourself into stories as they unfold, generating market attention not possible if you want even a day to react.” Scott shows you how to do this.

The third edition is stronger than the previous two editions on answering “How do I get started?” For example, the book includes a new “Marketing & PR Strategy Planning Template” that is designed “to help people implement strategies for reaching buyers directly.”

Writes Scott: “I believe it’s essential to shift out of the marketer’s comfort zone of preaching about products and services….The marketing and PR strategy template is built on the same principle I use throughout this book: that understanding buyers and publishing information on the web especially for them drives action.”

The goal, he says, is to publish “valuable information” so “your content surfaces when buyers are looking for help solving their problems!”

This book likely will not be the only one you will need to help launch or modernize your marketing and public relations strategy. But David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing & PR definitely should be at the top of your list and the one you read first.

– Si Dunn‘s latest book is a detective novel, Erwin’s Law. His other published works include Jump, a novella, and a book of poetry, plus several short stories, including The 7th Mars Cavalry, all available on Kindle. He is a screenwriter, a freelance book reviewer and a former technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist.

The Twitter Book (2nd Edition) – What newcomers & veteran tweeters need to know #sm #bookreview #TwitterBook

 

The Twitter Book (2^nd Edition)
By Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $19.99; Kindle edition, list price $15.99)

It’s easy to spot a business that’s starting to use Twitter for the first time. They think ”tweets” are a great and inexpensive way to push out information and reach potential customers worldwide. So, over and over, they tweet how great their new product or service is, and they include a link where you can get more information, place an order and add cash to their bank account.

But a funny thing happens on their way to easy fortune and fame: Most Twitter users shun them; many actually block them; and some get snarky and snarl about their lame tweets.

Twitter, the authors point out in their newly updated book, is mostly about sharing information, being helpful to others, and generally being interesting and entertaining.

Yes, there are ways to sell stuff using Twitter. But one of the quickest ways to failure on this widely popular social media outlet is to just barge in and try to be an electronic door-to-door sales person.

The recently published second edition of The Twitter Book is fun reading and nicely illustrated. And it is a good guide for learning how to use Twitter without the “common gaffs and pitfalls” that many newcomers commit.

Many experienced Twitter users likely will find helpful tips and techniques in this book, as well.

If you are thinking about trying to put Twitter to work in your business, the two authors offer some sage advice: Listen first. For a long time.

“People already on Twitter will expect your corporate account[s] to engage with them,” they write, “so before you start tweeting away, spend a few weeks or so understanding the ways people talk about you. Get a sense for the rhythms of conversation on Twitter, and think about how you’ll hold conversations.”

That listen-first and “rhythms of conversation” advice applies to all other new users of Twitter, as well.

And it wouldn’t hurt if some long-time Twitter-istas paid more attention to what others are saying and less attention to tweeting their every thought (or half-thought).

One more benefit of The Twitter Book:  It can introduce you to some of the third-party services and tools now available, such as TweetGrid, Monitter, Seesmic, and TweetDeck., which provide more “features and flexibility” than the standard Twitter web interface offers.

– Si Dunn