Browsing: books

News
NZ Book Council shows how the greats inspire the greats via Colenso
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Last month we wrote about a clever ad we saw on the back of AUT’s Debate magazine, which looked like an old library list showing the generations of great minds and talents who had been inspired by George Orwell’s 1984. We’ve now learned more about the campaign, which includes other influential texts such as the Holy Bible and Romeo and Juliet with the goal of exploring how digital natives view great pieces of literature in an online world.

Opinion
Media Munchies: Theresa Gattung
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Theresa Gattung was made chief executive of Telecom at the very young age of 37 and, after eight years in that stressful role, she took a well-earned break in 2007. Now she’s putting her efforts—and her capital—into a much smaller business, food delivery service My Food Bag. And with a 40 percent stake in a company that’s expecting revenues of $50 million this year, she obviously knows how to pick ‘em. Here’s how the self-proclaimed uncool entrepreneur spends her media time.

News
Parental profanity
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Plenty of people with kids—and many without—greatly enjoyed the brutal honesty of Adam Mansbach’s best-selling children’s book Go The Fuck to Sleep (and Samuel L Jackson’s audio book rendition). Now he’s written a follow up based another major parental frustration called You have to Fucking Eat.

Opinion
Book reviews: Unfair Fight vs Scaling Up Excellence
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Let me start by stating that Scaling Up Excellence by Robert I. Sutton & Huggy Rao and Unfair Fight by Sam Hazledine are both as comprehensive as they are excellent. One is all about taking your business to the next level, while the other is a précis of considerations and actions required for SMEs and startups. As such both books are probably not for you. One of them will be extremely relevant, while the other will be as useful as a Facebook poke. But since both are so damn virtuous and wholesome, I’ve devised a bit of a system based on key criteria to help you discover which book is best suited to you and your business needs.

News
A shot of creativity: Ben Crawford shines a light on New Zealand’s best cafe design in Built for Caffeine
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Conveniently enough, there are more than a few creative types who tend to believe the best ideas happen outside of work. Ben Crawford, past The Block NZ winner, co-owner of ad agency Libby & Ben, Herald design columnist and committed coffee drinker is one of them, so he decided to write a book—Built for Caffeine—that tells the design stories behind 20 of New Zealand’s coolest cafes.

News
Richard McManus reads, writes, webs
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Kiwi internet entrepreneur Richard MacManus has always had the dream of writing a book. Ever since selling his technology blog ReadWriteWeb (RWW), which he started back in 2003, to US-based media company Say Media in 2011, that is exactly what he has been working on.

News
Libraries: accessory to grand theft
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On bludger patrol

Doyen of the leftie literrati, Brian Edwards, has launched a surprising attack on that near-sacred liberal institution, the public library. In his blog yesterday, he writes:What pisses me off as an author is that for every person who buys your book, dozens of other bludgers get …