i think i will finish the book today or be finished with it or whatever. i read a well-written book today--natalie robin's Savage Grace--that was so unrelentingly sordid that i just have to think of something besides the ugly dissolute stupid foul ways of careless rich people and the nasty appetites of readers like me, ugh.

anyhow, i am glad i have continued because of the neat take-down of New Urbanism between pages 202 and 206.

"What a dense, stylish urban environment and its predominantly residential outer rings do not provide...are what most of the 36 percent of Americans who are currently raising children...want"

'They're building ephermeral cities for the nomadic rich'

.....

why this book has inspired current reading notes and others have not, i do not know.

.....

page 159 reminds me that sarbanes-oxley required precise tracking of financial documents and that when i lived in nyc i was, for the most part, a sarbanes-oxley temp. pretty much every job i had was for a company that had been in the news for being bad.

......

---oh my gosh, not a review, just stuff i want to think about. is very messy...is not meant to be clever, like here is a book about mess and here is my messy mess. i hope no one could even consider that i would do such a george herbert-ass thing! here is a poem about an altar; i have made the words look like an altar! or whatever.----


i started reading this book when it came out, but it is so very, very *2oo6* that i couldn't take it. it's 2021 now, so back at it.

i need some help figuring out this 2006-iness quality. is this a publishing trend? the dubner&levitt gotcha! school of writing: "we know you think you know that [whatever] is true, but allow us to present very specific small sets of numbers that will reveal your idiot ways." the gladwell-inspired self help from sociologists for professional professionals. like, they arent jared diamond but aspire to the diamondesque and in the more peripheral texts (this one!) are sure to quote him.

was all this the efflourescence of the Fast Company era? a repudiation of it? both?

i really don't and really didn't dislike Freakonomics as much as it may seem. d&l relied overmuch on a narrative formula, but that was ok...it is just that the book was so popular that it seemed like everyone started relying on that same formula (the jonah whoever boston globe guy who was always writing those "you no doubt think people in cities are smart but ACTUALLY cities make you dumb because you never have to look down and wade through a creek to get somewhere"

2006 was about the time i decided to focus on just a few authors instead of the whole hot wide world of new nonfiction. just for a little while, i thought, i will only pay attention to new releases from thomas frank, paul krugman, sarah vowell, chuck klosterman, jon krakauer. david brooks was on the list, but his interests diverged from mine (no hard feelings, go with god etc). at any rate, it was a good decision because i'm not not enjoying this book. ( )

A good book which develops the good idea of finding value into mess, in different areas of our life. Unfortunately, the book suffers from the typical "American business-oriented essay" approach: so it talks about disorder but it ends up being too much ordered and predictable in its own structure. ( )

I like this book because it speaks to me! I am - can be - messy at times, and it seems like my desk is in a state of clutter. But there is a method to this madness. I always move from item to item and seem to find what I want. It's when everything is in perfect order that I get lost.

This book is very good in helping us understand the importance of a slight amount of mess in our lives - as long as it is not completely chaotic. A bit of mess helps us all become explorers.

Towards the end, the book becomes a bit repetitive. But, the last two chapters are important - they warn us of excessive disorder.

The chapters and sections on the kinds of people is delightful. ( )

This book probably wouldn't rate "amazing" for most. However, at the time that I read it, I was in the greatest state of obsessive compulsiveness with regard to cleanliness, organization and planning in my life. Reading this book showed me that it might be time to lighten up and that sometimes, a little last minute change or a book left on the table rather than the shelf wouldn't kill anyone.

I'm still not ready to leave my house w/o making my bed though. That still bothers me all day long. ( )

This book starts with the premise that messiness or disorder is good and then proceeds to demonstrate with many examples spread across several chapters. He comes down hard on professional organizers.

The first premise is that the cost of ordering stuff may exceed the benefit. Another premise is that order stifles innovation, and that disorder may be conducive to greater creativity.

A few interesting things:

Cell phone providers managed to annoy users by eliminating noise. (We need the noise to know that someone is still on the other end.) The book seemed to say to reduce bandwidth consumption, they take out the real noise and put in fake noise at the other end.

The 1948 book [b:Cheaper by the Dozen|764903|Cheaper by the Dozen|Frank B. Gilbreth|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348220916s/764903.jpg|1925199] is based on an actual family where the father indeed strove to impose a high level of order or discipline on his family.

There were examples of many unknown and small companies reputed to have success through disorder and lack of planning. Risk takers and non-conformists seems like a pretty good description of most of them. One recognizable name was mentioned, Novel Corporation. Not exactly a sterling model of a successful strategy, however, they still exist as a company.

It mentioned some examples where noise is useful in decoding information, both in biological and man-made systems, but didn't mention one that I am familiar with, which is delta-sigma analog to digital converters.

An interesting read that will probably make little difference in my life. On second though, perhaps I will do a little less planning. The book said that planning doesn't improve outcome.
( )