I read a paper some time ago–but for the life of me cannot remember where–presenting study findings on student recall and comprehension. The irony of not recalling the details of a paper on the subject of recall spurred me to examine my own recall in other areas. I may have forgotten the source but the gist of the paper… that I remember: The best way to improve comprehension and recall is to write an essay. I’ve long believed that writing develops a concept more fully (Galbraith, Torrance & Hallam, 2006) but the lost paper suggests that essay writing on a new subject internalizes the content.

Blogging is (or can be) a form of essay writing. I read a lot for both work and school. Would writing about what I read improve my recall? The lost paper seems to suggest so. With that in mind, I have decided 2011 is my year to write book reports. Since I’m writing for myself, these reports may be peculiar and I make no apology for it. I make no claim of their utility in anyone’s purchasing consideration. In fact, I may not even write about the content but rather the mechanics of the content.

My recent review of Beginning Rails 3 (Carniero & Al Barazi, 2010) dated February 23, 2011 can be found on safari.oreilly.com [repeated below]. I don’t know if it’s a proper or even a traditional review. It contains my pressing thoughts upon finishing the book. Reading back over it, I can think of several essay topics that have little to do with Rails but rather with the construction of a book on Rails. That, however, is a different posting.

I found Beginning Rails 3 to be a gentle introduction to rails. I came from a C/java background and comfortable with ruby, sql and bash.

Intro: Ch 1,2,3 contain the obligatory ‘getting started’ material. Fortunately the material is easily digestible and relatively brief. I wanted to build the sample application as I read the material and went through processes of updating rails (on OS X) and getting the first app running. Everything here worked on my laptop as described in the book.

Models: Ch 4,5 walk through just enough ORM to carry the reader through the rest of the book. The authors didn’t get wrapped up in sidebar discussions of ActiveRecord outside the scope of the sample project. I liked using the rails console to learn the minimum basics of creating and using models.

Controllers/Views: Ch. 6,7 walk through building the ‘web side’ of the app based on the models from the previous two chapters. A good understanding of the models before building the controllers and views made the exercise much easier to follow and anticipate.

Samplers: Ch 8, 10, 11 are sampler chapters each of which could warrant an entire volume. A consistent theme throughout the book is ‘just enough’ and these sampler chapters give the flavor if not the feast. The chapter on ajax replaces prototype with jquery (thank you) and ajaxifies a single form. It’s enough to get started. The chapter on internationalization gives just one approach to creating a multilingual site. It’s an ugly problem and this book should only be viewed as an introduction–a good introduction but an introduction nonetheless. The same can be said for the chapter on testing. For someone just getting into rails, the material on writing tests is enough without being overwhelming.

Skipped: I read but skipped working the tutorial for Ch 9, 12, 13. The material seemed simple enough and I felt the other chapters gave me an adequate base of understanding to start working on a simple app of my own.

These guys really worked to keep their code clean and in sync with the book. I kept getting a warning (Object#id will be deprecated; use Object#object_id) on a partial when working through the chapter on testing. It turned out that the error was upstream (a case of id vs. :id). I downloaded the chapter source and diff’d against my work. Aside from some whitespace differences (and typo’s on my part), the files matched.

This is where I’d normally offer my suggested revisions. I really don’t have any. This is, after all, *Beginning* Rails 3. No book can cover everything. Nor should it try. So, what’s next? Speaking for myself, the next book to read is on test development.

When I travel, I take a stack of unread books. The stack I bring is always one or two books more than I believe I’ll finish. For example, my last trip to Delhi lasted two weeks. The reading list for that trip…

| Marketing and Promoting Your Own Seminars and Workshops
| by Fred Gleeck
| Self-published, 2001
| 188 pages

| How to Run Seminars & Workshops
| by Robert L. Jolles
| Wiley; 3 edition, 2005
| 320 pages

| Why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby
| by Why the Lucky Stiff
| Self-published
| 126 pages

| Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
| by Malcolm Gladwell
| Little, Brown and Company, 2005
| 288 pages

| Head First Servlets and JSP
| by Bryan Basham, Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates
| O’Reilly Media, 2004
| 886 pages

On these trips, I save the most anticipated book for last. That book, in this case, was Blink. I didn’t get that far this trip. I enjoyed Gladwell’s previous work, “The Tipping Point”, and want to take some time with Blink.

I read the two geek books. “Head First” is as good a book as you’ll find on Java Servlets and JSP. “Why’s Poignant guide” is difficult to classify, tedious to read and thoroughly enjoyable.

The remaining two books—both related to running seminars and workshops—are the subject of this post.

I’ve not finished Jolles book “How to run Seminars & Workshops” and will review more completely when I have. I will, however, make a few statements here.

Robert L. Jolles and Fred Gleeck are cut from different cloth. Their books could hardly have been more distinct from one another.

The manner in which Jolles and Gleeck each present their material reflects the core tenants of their respective approach to running a seminar business. This is how each of the two authors occur to me.

Jolles’ position is that your seminar participants paid to be informed, to be trained, to walk out of your seminar with an increased level of mastery of the material that you—as seminar leader—were entrusted to deliver.

Gleeck’s position is that your seminar participants walk out having bought products you presented during the seminar and, perhaps, register for another of your seminars.

This isn’t to say that Gleeck’s book is bad. It’s not. He is very consistent and upfront in what he says. And, he practices what he preaches. If the point of a seminar is to have people buy your products and register for another of your seminars, then it should come as no surprise that the point of Gleeck’s book is to have you buy his products and register for one of his seminars.

That’s the beauty of “Marketing and Promoting…” Reading this book is to be in his seminar.

I found myself at once marvelling at and revolted by this book. It starts off light enough with an overview and some of the nuts and bolts of running a seminar business. Much of the material is univerally relevant, if colored by Gleeck’s view of the intent of a seminar.

There are better books for learning event production and management. Far better books.

But there is value to be had in “Marketing and Promoting…” as a companion to “Influence: Science and Practice” by Robert B. Cialdini. Whereas Cialdini’s book offers a systematic view of the psychology of influence, Gleeck’s book immerses you in his efforts to influence … you.

By the time I finished Gleeck’s book, I was exhausted. “Marketing and Promoting…” is a self referential study in offering just enough information to keep an audience interested, but not enough to satiate curiosity; employing various techniques of influence to position products as ‘the missing piece’; and closing the sale.

The first half of the book is weighted towards building curiosity. The second half is weighted towards closing sales with you.

Throughout the book, Gleeck talks of his desire to sell “a ton of product.” It should come as no surprise then that he wants to sell a ton of product to you.

He offers you a free gift. The offer is printed in the footer on every page.

He talks about upselling. That is, have various price points available and when someone keys in on a product, work to sell them the next higher priced item.

He sprinkles invitations to call him throughout the book. They occurred to me as invitations to hear another sales pitch. Gleeck is upfront about this. “Don’t be surprised if I suggest you buy something from me when you call,” he writes.

I’m sure.

I picked Talent up in the Hong Kong airport last month. I thought I would read it on the flight to Delhi but found the format too annoying. The colored text on colored pages was simply too trying.

Yet, I did read the book the following week. I stayed in a guesthouse in Noida not far from the office. August is nasty hot and humid in Delhi and the early morning is really the best time to be outside. I’d sit under the front patio ceiling fan sipping Nescafe instant coffee and read a chapter of Talent before breakfast.

[Note to self] Next trip to India, I’m bringing my own coffee and cone filters.

Talent is one of four booklets in Peters’ “The Essentials” series. It’s a smallish book with five chapters.

Chapter 1 – Your career is dead. Develop yourself as talent and think like a freelancer.

Chapter 2 – Make everything you do matter. And brag about it.

Chapter 3 – Volunteer for crappy jobs and make them WOW! project. And brag about it.

Chapter 4 – Success = Sales Success. Sales is politics. If you suck at sales and politics, you are a loser. Period.

Chapter 5 – Surround yourself with the weird. If it ain’t weird, it’s mainstream. If it’s mainstream it’s mediocre.

Okay. This is a bit terse but it capture the essence of my experience with Talent. And I used Peters words in the context I believe he used them.

I’m not going to write a long review; It’s not a long book. I discovered that five short chapters is a nice format. You can read a chapter a day before breakfast and view the rest of the day in context of that chapter.

I have but one criticism of Peters’ message in Talent: For all his talk about re-invention, there is a stronger undercurrent of revolution. Much of Peters’s rhetoric is about bringing down the establishment. “Viva la Revolución!” blah, blah, blah. It’s a little naïve.

Peters achieved his stated goal: “I don’t expect you to agree with everything I say in this book. But I hope that when you disagree … you will disagree angrily. That you’ll be so pissed off that you’ll … Do Something.”

Talent reads like a dogmatic prescription to fix what’s broken but if you recast that dogma in terms of “what if?”, you’ll see the world in a different way. In this sense, Talent is a good supplemental text in the challenge of conventional thought.

I find myself threading his comments and ideas in my comments and debates. I say that that alters the conversation which, in turn, alters the course of events.

It was a decade ago that I realized the obvious. Just because you start reading a book doesn’t mean you have to finish it. I can still remember the book that broke the spell: The Vermont Papers

If I’m reading a book for my own enjoyment and edification, if I can’t relate the book to my life, if I’m getting nothing out of the book, it’s history. Ciao, baby. The Vermont Papers was my last "I’ll finish the book simply because I started it" experience. When I finished that book, I said, "What a waste of my time."

Currently, I’m reading Battle for the Mind. This book I will finish and read again.

The text is easy to read but it’s been slow going for me. As I read, I can immediately relate the concepts and observations Sargant makes with an endless stream recollections. It is as if someone has come with a hand full of puzzle pieces that have fallen from the table.

This reading, I’m looking mostly externally. To movies. To history. To trends. To current day personalities. I’ll read some and then think some. Read some – think some. Again and again.

Next reading, I’ll look internally. Should be interesting.

I just finished chapter five. Here’s my description thus far.

William Sargant was an English psychiatrist who, while working with battle fatigue victims in WWII, made the connection between symptoms and treatment of battle fatigue (now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder — PTSD) and the work of I.P. Pavlov (of "Pavlov’s Dogs" fame).

I gained an appreciation for who Pavlov was and the context of his work. I had heretofore believed Pavlov simply discovered the conditioned response commonly referred to: The dog learns that when the light comes on he gets fed; soon, the dog will slobber whenever the light comes on, food or no.

Not exactly. Pavlov traumatized these dogs, and in different ways, to see how much they could take before they broke down. He noted that there were different types of dog. Each type broke down with different levels of trauma and with different results. Pavlov also found that with a nervous breakdown, he could reprogram the dogs.

Sargant doesn’t go into all the various ways Pavlov broke his dogs down but did comment that the methods would be unacceptable in Britain (circa 1950). I gather that some dogs were brutally tortured.

It was the various phases/stages of neuroses that Sargant connected with PTSD victims, especially after the Normandy invasion. Well presented arguments and observations.

Chapter two centers mainly on dispelling that Pavlov’s works are not useful in human psychiatry as dogs are dogs and men are men. Interesting read but I was already convinced before reading the chapter.

Chapter three and four talk about psychoanalysis, psychiatric drug treatments, shock treatments and leucotomy (lobotomy?). This was one of those ‘a-ha!’ moments when all those old 70′s movies about mind control suddenly made sense. The big take away here is that sometimes psychoanalysis is not effective and other, more drastic measures, can help the patient. Sargant lays out, in lay terms, how these different measure work.

Chapter five is where Sargant moves out of PTSD treatment techniques and their background and into techniques for religious conversion. Had I read this chapter 25 to 30 years ago, it would have changed my whole perspective on how the world works (or doesn’t). I’ve lived much of my life skeptical of emotional assaults on the intellect. No longer. Sargant presents a compelling intellectual argument with numerous historical illustrations including mass conversions, serpent handling, speaking in tongues, miracle healings, voodoo, and other primitive tribal rituals.

I have a better appreciation for the historical and social importance of oracles, witch-doctors, voodoo and other priests.

This mid-book review is unusual for me. I almost didn’t write it. In light of my slow progress through the pages (reading as an academic work rather than pleasure read), I wanted to say something now. I’ll finish the review when I’ve finished the book.

But right now, the clock struck 11:30 and I’m suddenly hungry.