poprock wrote:

Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint by Russell Davies.

Russell is an extremely modest genius. He does the same job as me, but for much cooler companies and with much more important clients (like the UK Government, Nike, Apple and Honda). He’s probably better at what we call ‘presentations’ than anyone else on the planet. This is a book he wrote recently about PowerPoint (and presentation software in general, but mostly PowerPoint because that’s what most people use).

First, Russell explains who he is, what he does, and what the hell gives him the right to pretend to be an expert. Then he writes about the history of PowerPoint, about what presentations really are and what they do, and why they’re important and worth thinking about. Finally, for the second half of the book, he gives advice on how to be good at PowerPoint and presentations in general.

It’s all in Russell’s usual relaxed and chatty style. The book is only short (under 300 pages and half of those are big slide-like typographic illustrations) and it feels like you’re reading a really fascinating blog post. That’s what Russell does - he finds something interesting, learns about it, and explains it in ways that make you find it as fascinating as he does. Then he points towards a few vague thoughts on what it could all mean and what you could do if X or Y were true … he sparks inspiration by first being interested and then being curious. And this book, well it’s about the thing he’s always been most interested in. So it’s quite a thing.

To quote from one of the early pages: “Cashpoints give you cash. PowerPoint gives you power.” That’s the sort of simple idea that makes you want to learn more. Or at least, it does for me.

Brilliant book. Maybe not for everyone, but brilliant.

He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut and pick murdered men from between her teeth and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty backstreets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages. It was no palace of delights. It bred death, not pleasure.

Kow wrote:

His succinct summaries of Haughey and what he did are particularly eye-opening.

Edit:  Not George RR Martin.

Raiziel wrote:

hylian_elf wrote:

1. A Clash of Kings - 22/1 George RR Martin Yay! I finished a book! Only took… 6 months? Enjoyable enough but I don’t see why people rate these so highly.

Are you still buying these from Folio?

hylian_elf wrote:

Raiziel wrote:

hylian_elf wrote:

1. A Clash of Kings - 22/1 George RR Martin Yay! I finished a book! Only took… 6 months? Enjoyable enough but I don’t see why people rate these so highly.

Are you still buying these from Folio?

Yep. They’re probably the nicest of all the standard edition Folios. At least the ones I have anyway.

I’m liking them. When I say I don’t know why people rate them so highly, it’s that it often gets put in/near top of greatest fantasy books. It’s good, but not greatest good!