Starting year 2009 - Book and music recommendations

Thank you for reading this blog and commenting it in 2008. 

I will start year 2009 with  ... music and book to recommendations :-)

MUSIC

Seal has a new CD, Soul. It is all about soul music. Soul is very much about interpretation and 'feeling'.

As an (amateur) singer, I find German Lied songs challenging and enjoyable. Propably the best master is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Still,  Ian Bostridge is really good as well. I recommend his Schumann Liederkreis & Dichterliebe -album.

I am also famous for my 'bad' taste. I am so glad that lovely Britney Spears is performing again :-) I have not yet listened her newest album, Circus, but I still dare to recommend it. The Wizard of Sweden, Max Martin, writes usually her best songs. If you don't like Britney, at least her performance does not leave anyone ... indifferent ;-) Lately, she has been kind in promoting Finnish Sauna for free :-) (What is the real Finnish sauna? An orthodox explanation.).

BOOKS

Bodil Jönsson: Ten Thoughts about Time. Some years ago, this small and simple book changed radically ways how I consider time and spent time . Nowadays:
-  I don't wear a watch ("Western people are slaves of digital time")
-  I am not reachable and available all the time ("We should have time to "stop and stare")

... and my wife is desperate ;-)

I remember when I was in 2003 walking with professor Mike Sharples and his father Alan on a hill, north of Birmingham, UK. In the highest spot, Mike took ...  a kite from his bag. I was surprised and Alan commented "Every true scientist has a kite". In winter time, you can not always fly a kite.  Therefore, I recommend this Kid's Paper Airplane Book. You can always fly a paper airplane indoors ;-) I am so clumsy with miniature models, so this is good building exercise as well. And it always nice to build together with my children :-)

This current recession can be (perhaps) explained with terms of Peter Drucker?! His book 'Innovation and Entrepreneurship' could explain the Dot.com -bubble 15 years ahead in 1985.

- "Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic and social innovation. "

His '7 sources of innovative opportunity' are always worth reading and thinking ;-)

FUTURE

As you might have noticed, I am (we are) working with disruptive innovation and paradigm shift ala Kuhn. Year 2009 will be interesting, even revolutionary. Stay tuned!

But now: Happy New Year!

    Mikko

Comments

[McCabe]

Thanks for posting about Ten Thoughts about Time. I haven't come across the book before but now I'm quite keen to read it. I read the synposis on a book site I've been browsing around for a couple of days, and I wondered if the book was a bit like Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow?