The Seven Basic Plots

I recently finished listening to The Seven Basic Plots (Christopher Booker, read by Liam Gerrard, 2019, 38 hours and 58 minutes). This is a monumental piece of work, with lots of highlights.

In short, this is a book with a thesis that all stories ever written fall more or less in one of the following archetypes: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Rebirth, Comedy, Tragedy.

Apart from arguing based on the fundamentals of why this is case, with multiple examples, the book also goes on examining the main character types that show up on the different stories. And it also covers plots that would not entirely fall in any category above, but with an explanation as for how they are many times a distorted misrepresentation of one of the basic plot types.

The author spent 34 years writing this book, and one can easily understand why. It covers basically “all” classics and provides summary of stories from the old times to recent popular movies. In that sense, it is a great way to actually grasp an overview over some of the most famous literary works of all times.

It’s also fascinating that one of the main ideas behind the whole book is on how stories actually expose the human ego, and how most of tragedy and perhaps all villains actually are representations of the selfishness in us. The egocentric behavior opposes the flow of life, and that’s how villains lose in most of stories we tell or are told.

Stories also play a role in introducing the world to children, with a representation over the paths one may follow through adulthood. And that’s related to one of the other interesting thesis in the book, which claims that we, as humans, are basically “programmed” to imagine and tell stories that fall back into one of the seven basic plots.

All of that put together makes this book a great one. Almost epic. Even if some of the arguments may get repetitive at times, I think it pays back in knowledge and breadth all effort one takes to go through it all.

$100 Offers

I concluded recently the $100 Offers – How to Make Offers So Good that People feel Stupid Saying No (Alex Hormozi, 2021, 164 pages), and I think it is an okay book.

It’s interesting to notice that, at the time of this writing, this book has 4.9 starts on Amazon, with close to 30 000 ratings (!). It could be the highest indicator of its quality. But I think the explanation for those high ratings are probably in the fact that the author tries to sell the book the same way he sells other things, and it may even work better for the book than for the other things, I suspect.

To explain myself, first I must say that the text in this book keeps reinforcing itself (like those tedious marketing campaigns or emails that push the same buttons again and again). And it probably works for many of those reading or listening. Secondly, a book like this will be read by people who (like me!) are more or less very interested (or desperate!) trying to find a way to sell things. The very fact that the author reinforces himself dozens of times as an authority in selling, and to the extent that some of his arguments are even mathematical and sound bullet-proof, the readers may feel they hit jackpot. Thus, the reviews. Which, again, are asked by the author right there, in the text itself, at the time of the reading (like no other book I read before) – I guess this may be the closest to the “please like, share, and hit the notification bell” in writing that one could imagine.

However, I wonder if the same positive response would be reflected one year after the reading, for example. Because, as the time passes, I’m not sure too much of its message is as good as the author thinks it is. Or as even I thought it was at the time of the reading.

Again, to explain myself, first I must say this is not a scientific or academic book. Which may not mean much, but it does in the sense that the best scientific minds are very aware of the possible shortcomings of almost any reasoning. Secondly, the author seems to believe you can “position” any product or service as a premium one, as long as you have something special and write a powerful offer, covering all possible showstoppers in the mind of the buyer.

What’s the problem with that, you may ask. Well, the first one it that creating something really unique and special is damn hard. Very few will make it. There are multiple sodas in the market, for example, but just one Coke. You may blend something together and claim it is better. But I guess people will see you through as soon as they try it. So, no, creating premium products it not simply an act of will. Secondly, the book is in a way a product of its time, in which we are bombarded with “irrefusable” offers by email or calls, for example, almost every day. Not only as before in the late-TV infomercials, but every day. And, guess what, many of us have learned to say no or simply ignore, because there is a sense of being BS’d. It will sure still work with many, but I question the effect for the majority in a given market.

In any case, this is not a bad book. You may enjoy it, and perhaps there aren’t many better alternatives for this kind of marketing elsewhere (or I didn’t do my homework yet). But the lack of criticism and the “cult”-like feeling of this one is just too much for someone like me.

The YouTube Formula

 I finished recently The YouTube Formula – How Anyone Can Unlock the Algorithm to Drive Views, Build an Audience, and Grow Revenue (Derral Eves, 2021, 352 pages). I think it is an interesting overview over YouTube, but from a soft perspective in the sense “you can do it yourself”.

The author believes that anyone can have a successful YouTube channel. And he has one himself, in addition to many years of experience as an advisor for others in the platform.

But the main points of the “formula” described in the book are actually very close to how any other new business idea are approached. By first researching the existing market, then choosing and pursuing a given niche, and incorporating feedback by offering more of what already works. In short, Marketing 101. YouTube applied.

Of course, the book also brings some anecdotal success stories, and some do-nots. And it also talks a lot about analyzing audience data provided by YouTube. But it stays mostly on the “soft” parts of it. So, don’t expect filming and editing information, for example. Or any other practical advises on how to do go about making a good video, whichever the niche one would choose.

If that type of content, even motivational to some extent, is what you need now, in order to get a push to start your own YouTube channel, then this book is for you. If, like me, this is not what you have in mind, then it’s not the best option.

War

 I just concluded War (Bob Woodward, 2024, 448 pages), and it is an absolutely great book.

This is my first time reading Bob Woodward, whom I have known a little bit because of the Watergate case, in which his work was fundamental. I think it is also impressive that he is now 81 years old and keep writing such great pieces as this book War.

Something else that is also a “first timer” for me in relation to this book is the fact that it talks about some fresh history. I hadn’t before read books that summarizes and expands on stories that are almost still evolving, when the book is printed. For someone that has been fascinated by politics, and have been an avid reader of news like me, it is very interesting to contemplate facts that I have recently closely followed, but now by the perspective of many of the main characters themselves.

For this book is based in over four hundred interviews with staff and advisors for Biden, Trump, Kamala Harris, Zelensky, Netanyahu, etc. All the main figures behind-the-scenes of the most critical events of our recent world history. And it brings some new pieces of information that would be almost impossible to get otherwise.

For example, how the Biden’s administration failure in Afghanistan exit informed the strategy for leading and containing Russian invasion strategy. Or how the US intelligence managed to get all details for the Russian plans six months before February 22^nd 2022. Or how Zelensky and other European leaders first failed to acknowledge those intel details. Or how Trump kept his discourse of stolen election after the January 6^th, to later be nudged to refocus his rhetoric towards the 2024 presidential campaign. Or how Trump had several private calls with Putin after leaving the presidency. Or how Biden and Jake Sullivan acted when the intel revealed a 50% chance of nuclear bombing by the Russians in the Autumn of 2022. And more. Much more.

If international relations and politics are something for you, there will be zero regrets in taking your hands on this book as soon as possible. It won’t help us poor mortals influencing things in any way, but it you give a glimpse over intentions and who to trust and not trust with regards to our common global destiny. Highly recommendable title.

Fooled by Randomness

I concluded recently Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2005, 368 pages). And I think it is really interesting and thought-provoking.

This book, which I had never heard of before, showed up on my radar during a couple other readings related to financial investments. But actually, the topics in it transcend finance and markets, although Nassim is himself a renowned investor. The discussions in the book are probably relevant to all of us, in any sort of career.

For, although Nassim may sound pretentious and even arrogant at times, what he covers is some basic flaws in the human perception of probabilistic, statistics, and randomness. And I think he does a great job in that.

The relevance of the topic, and here already inspired by the book, is because we humans basically have a brain that was adapted to a different world than that of randomness. And, yet, randomness plays a huge role in what happens in our current world.

For example, the fluctuations in price for any given stock, in any given day, bring most likely no significance. It is typically noise. Larger variations of the price, however, may indicate some significant change in one or more of the intrinsic aspects of the company or market in case.

Likewise, fluctuations in the general market over time typically fool lots of players, who rapidly create and tell each other stories about how price levels are as they are when, in fact, there is no logical explanation behind. Once in a while, a new crash/correction happens, and it makes clear that many of narratives floating around were baseless.

But this is just one aspect of this title. There are many other interesting reflections on math, statistics, biases, psychology and evolution. All around this topic of how easily we get fooled into taking noise for signal. I think all of us can learn something, or a lot, from this book. Highly recommendable.

Joshua Slocum – Førstemann Rundt Jorden Alene

Jeg har nylig blitt ferdig med Joshua Slocum – Førstemann Rundt Jorden Alene (første publisert i 1900, 293 sider). Og den likte jeg veldig godt.

Det var faktisk en god stund siden sist for en ikke-faglig bok for meg. Og grunnen til å velge akkurat denne er min interesse for seiling tematikken, selv om jeg ikke er en seiler selv. Ikke ennå, i hvert fall.

Men Joshua Slocums historie er ganske fascinerende uansett, fordi han var faktisk den første man som gjennomførte en jorderundt reise, i løpet av ca. 3 år, med start i 1895. Og det etter ca. 3 års arbeid med renøverings på skute Spray, som han bygget nesten på nytt før den var klar til reisen.

Født i 1844, så var Slocum allerede en erfarn sjømann da han starte med sitt omseilings prosjekt. Men det gjør ikke mindre inntrykk ut fra de fortellingene han har om ferden sin, med mange interessant og noen farlige situasjoner. Fra sjøroverne til hardt vær i noen av de vanskeligeste delen av kloden.

Særlig interessant er beskrivelsene av passagen rundt Magellanstredet, der han fikk både hjelp av lokaler, motstant fra nativer, og virkelig hardt prøver i forholt til været.

Ikke minst interessant er å høre hans beskrivelsene fra å komme seg ut av de meste utviklede delen av verden og mot spennende lokale miljøer rundt kloden. Det gir et innblykk på verden i den tiden, som er ganske så forskjellige tydeligvis fra det vi kunne sett i dag.

Så, alt i alt, så synes jeg at den er en meget spennende bok, særlig kanskje for de som liker seil og eventyrer.

Bulletproof Problem Solving

I recently finished Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything (Charles Conn, Robert McLean, 2019, 320 pages). This is not a groundbreaking book, but I consider it a good discussion about modern problem-solving techniques.

If you are familiar with different modern approaches to solving different kinds of problems, this book may not have too much new to add. Except from some interesting examples, and anecdotal stories that follow.

However, if you are new to things like design thinking, strategy consultancy methods, statistical data analysis, etc. this book may be a good general introduction, and a step-by-step guide. With the advantage that it is up-to-date with the most modern methods in use today, including Machine Learning modelling.

In my case, I have already read about and professionally practiced different techniques presented on the book. Still, I considered it interesting as a refreshener and as a good discussion on how to methodically approach different kinds of problem, with the steps that can be taken to create hypothesis, collect data, prove or disprove ideas, and communicate possible solutions.

If this sounds interesting, in addition to some good examples of problem-solving in practice, the book may be a good fit for you.

The Most Important Thing

I just finished reading The Most Important Thing (Howard Marks, 180 pages, 2018). This was a gift from a investor friend, and I’m happy she gave it to me! Otherwise, I would probably not have read this book, at least not at this moment, and I would simply miss out on a great title.

To start with, this is a book about investing. And not a technical one, but more like a description of the main things one should think about when embarking on an investment journey.

I love the fact that the author, being quite seasoned as he is, kept answering many times, along the years, on what “the most important” thing about investment is. And it turns out that there are many “most important things”, and they are all outlined in the different chapters of the book.

Investing is about value, risk, economical cycles, as much as it is all about second-level thinking, psychology, and knowledge. The fact that many things are important just makes the work of an investor more interesting and challenging.

That’s why the reflections of the author are so useful. This book contains years of distilled wisdom that are passed away in an accessible format. I like specially the author’s deep sense of respect for different economical cycles, and the description of how different investing styles (defensive vs. aggressive) goes about in actions during bullish and bearish market times.

Although Howard Marks is clearly a defensive investor, he is very clear about the fact that any style could do, as long as the investor acts to compensate the weakness of his approach. A defensive investor is happy with average gains when market is up, being sure that he is more rusted to avoid losses when things turn down. While an aggressive investor will try to beat the market in bullish times, and hopefully avoid big losses on bearish ones.

What is clear, however, is that any measurements of performance cannot be done in a year or two. A skilled investor, if he or she exists, can only be judged over the span of multiple years.

And that’s what is the strong point on the author’s approach. Since nobody can predict the future, the only way to assess different strategies is by looking over results produced over many years. Or decades.

Blue Ocean Strategy

Although I have first heard of this book over a decade ago, I just now concluded Blue Ocean Strategy (W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, 320 pages). And I think this book is a hype, and not worth the time.

To be fair, there are some good key ideas here. The idea of value innovation (focusing on user value, divided into different components) and the idea of focusing on creating new markets, or new demand, instead of focusing on the competition. Nothing of this is new, however, as the book sometimes present it.

If books and authors could be confronted with their ideas while readers read the text, I feel I would have stopped the authors at many, many points along this book. Mainly because too many building blocks here were, in my opinion, biased, or ill-formulated, while the logical construction just built upon layers and layers of less-than-solid foundations.

One of the main problems is that the authors “personalize” companies in a way that is not only simplistic, but also wrong. Thinking that the Cirque du Soleil, for example, created a new market that didn’t exist, and attributing intention to unknown or complex dynamics is almost silly.

It is okay to come up with a post-factum explanation to the success of the Cirque du Soleil, or of Ford Company, or any other of the many “cases” described in the book. But the reality is that most likely none of these cases were purposely conducted from beginning to end.

In other words, entrepreneurs basically combine their known-how, previous experiences and current resources, along with their access to new and evolving technologies, and throw at the mix different hypothesis that are tried out in practice. Many are brave enough to try out ideas, and some of them succeed. Our first bias here is towards finding a hindsight explanation, when many times even the same idea does not succeed first to blossom just some years or decades later.

The book, however, ignores all of these dynamics and basically wants to make us think of it all in terms of ignoring competition and focus on creating new industries or new demands. That’s not how things work out in practice.

One indication as of why this simplistic method is flawed is that the authors themselves don’t seem to have created multi-billion companies or industries, as their method seem to indicate to be quite possible by following their simple rules.

Another irritation point is the claim, at different points, that technology innovations were not enough to explain the success stories presented. Even when they clearly were pivotal. Ford did not start producing cheap cars because he envisioned the brave new blue ocean of an entire new industry for cheap cars. He did it, to a great extent, because the assembly lines were brought to a new industry. And this very technical and process innovation explains much of his success.

In any case, I could go into many counter-arguments to multiple cases presented in the book. But it is not worth it. The time I spent on it was not worth it. Even being a super best-seller, I think the couple good ideas in this title can be absorbed without the need to go through it entirely. I rest my case.

The Design of Everyday Things

I finished recently The Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman, 2013, 368 pages). This is a justifiable classic book that is insightful to virtually anyone.

What is most relevant here is the human perspective. The way we learn things, and even the very limitations of the human brain are central to designing stuff that fits into our daily lives.

As the author points out in different occasions, there are multiple products developed along the years that were sometimes marvelous in themselves, but which were not successful. The reason being that they did not help humans solve real (or perceived) problems in way that could be easily understood and used.

I appreciate a lot the fact that Don Norman has also worked on the industry for many years, including many years at Apple, and therefore he also has first-hand experience of the limitations professionals and companies face when coming up with new products. Budget and time are never enough. And the shortcomings are almost always noticeable.

However, there is a way to make great products, and that is by not ignoring human psychology and by really spending time with potential users to understand what they do, rather than what they (us) may say they (we) do.

This ties back many good recent books and practices on human-centric design, and design thinking. For example, we humans have severe limitations on our short-term memory. We need “signifiers” to point out on real-world objects what they can do, especially when it is not dead obvious. We count on our previous learning and intuition. Which, once in opposition to what a new product expects from us, no matter how nice and cool it may look, will result in usability problems. Sometimes in serious accidents.

One recurrent topic on the book, by the way, is that most accidents are not “human-errors”, even if sometimes the “experts” conclude so. When we dive deeper, there is typically one or more design flaws in products, processes, machines, plants, that are at the root cause of the failures. Sometimes catastrophic ones.

If all this sounds interesting, this book won’t disappoint you. And it should definitely be on the list for those of us designing any kind of product or services to be used by fellow humans.