Been meaning to set a blog like this up for a while now. It’s basically a blog where I can share quotes and stuff from business books I’m currently reading.

Check it out and see what I’m reading right now.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of the Sony Reader Touch and see that D.I.D. Electrical are offering it for €249.95 in store this weekend. Oddly, if you buy it direct on the website it will set you back €278.95.

The Power City price has been pegged at  €249.95 for a couple of months now. Today I noticed that it’s now selling for €232.45, presumably in reaction to the D.I.D. offer.

If you’ve been thinking about investing in an electronic reader I don’t think you can go wrong with the Sony offering. At this price, I think I may upgrade my old PRS-505.

If you’re looking to buy any books this week, Kennys.ie have a special promotion running at the moment.

On orders over €25, you can select from a list of free books. One that caught my eye was this one – ‘In Praise of Male Chauvinism’. It is described by Kennys as follows :

“Paperback ~ 64pp. 8vo. An amusing volume, not to be taken too seriously”

I really don’t understand why praise for this subject is not to be taken seriously though.

Some other titles available in the promotion are :

‘The Bus and Coach Industry: Its Economics and Organization’. This 1975 publication is the one still in use at Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann, so get it while it’s hot. Don’t worry girls, there is a book on sewing for you as well entitled ‘Sew News Timesaving Tips’.

Kennys have free shipping on books too, so there’s never been a better time to give an Irish bookseller some of your business.

“So Oz finally became home, the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhoold places and started out to make up our lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that ‘there’s no place like home’, but rather that there is no longer any such place as home: except, of course, for the home we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz: which is anywhere, and everywhere, except the place from where we began.”

Now, I’m off to see the Wizard.

Hugh Leonard. From the wonderful book ‘The curious mind’. It is a treasure trove of thoughts from 25 years of the RTE radio programme.

Basically, my thought process is that by being informed I could go to see the film and sort out the fact from the fiction. Hollywood is very clever you see. I believed that I could fly if I squeezed my eyes tight and tried really hard enough. I believed that nice guys eventually got the girl. I belived in Unicorns (actually I still do, and no one will convince me otherwise). I believed in happy ever afters. Getting the picture now of someone easy to fool? That’s me. I’m not about to let Hollywood pull a fast one on such a serious topic as the end of the world. Armed with scientific fact, I could happily go to see 2012 and not come away with the weight of impending doom on my shoulders. In a fit of ebook buying one evening I was attracted to the following title:

This blurb appealed to my inner Bear Gryllis:

The purpose of this book is to help those who now agree that time is of the essence. It does this by offering a practical 2012 tool kit of how-to survival knowledge, for those who’ll be left to fend for themselves. Regardless of whether you can afford to build a bunker or can barely afford a shovel, the information in this book is designed to be equally useful. This is because the key to surviving 2012 is more about what’s in your head than what’s in your wallet.

So I plunked down my dollars on the interweb and downloaded the book.

I’m about half way through at this point. In a nutshell, there’s this undiscovered planet/brown half dwarf with pointy ears lump of rock out there. Scientists have been looking for it since the 1800′s. The writers of this book firmly believe it is out there, and will pop out from behind some black hole and head towards our solar system. Once here, it will interfere with the sun and induce a solar storm of epic proportions.

This would naturally have a big effect on our little planet’s well being. Satellite systems and communications knocked out. No more internet – OH NO!!! We’ll have floods with hundreds of millions of deaths. Disease will be rampant. Civilisation as we know will come to an end. Survivors will have to rebuild from scratch. Think Kevin Costner’s Waterworld and you’re there (what, you didn’t watch that film??). So far, so apocalypic.

Anyway, I’m reading the book and realise I’m wasting my time (can I hear a DUH). Other than satisfying a curiosity, it’s not really going to help me survive which is one of the aims of the book. When it comes down to it, I don’t think I’m the surviving kind. I reckon faced with impending doom, I’d just shrug my shoulders and sit down to a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. If I was on that plane that went down in the Andes and people survived through cannibalism, I’d have been the first to say “here, shoot me and be done with it but don’t eat my eyes or heart”.

Survival at all costs is a basic animal instinct. Sometimes you just have to accept when the game is up. Intelligence and reasoning is what marks us out from the animals.

So I’m not going to continue reading the book. I won’t be doing a “Back of fag box review to it”. Life, literally, is too short and if the shit hits the fan at some point in the future, you’ll find me with cup of tea in hand ready to face whatever the cosmos throws at me.

Family members tell me from time to time that they read here the odd time so…

See that book above? It’s from the genius behind Information is Beautiful.

You know the way no one ever really knows what to buy me for Christmas?…

It’s a US edition so you won’t find it in any bookshop locally but Bookdepository have it for a steal at €15.37 including p&p.

Luvvly jubbly.

Thought this video was a spoof until I spied a packet of crisps with the book cover on the front. Now I just have to have Mr. Tayto’s book – The Man Inside the Jacket.

Actually, this is genius marketing from Tayto – I passed by the local bookshop last night and they had two big posters in the window advertising it. This will sell in huge numbers for Christmas as it is priced at €5.99 and perfect for a stocking filler. Available from all good bookshops countrywide.

Had a glance to see did Amazon.co.uk have it – and they do too. Thought it was funny to see the list of related items people bought. Not much of a stretch of the imagination to see Bertie as Mr. Tayto!