Book 'em Dano

Got myself a pile of books for the weekend.

My Life with Dylan Thomas - Double drink story by Caitlin Thomas. A memoir of their life together by poet Dylan Thomas' wife. The Mail on Sunday describe it as 'Compelling, if painful reading'.

From the moment they met at a pub in London, drink was the most conspicuous part of the lives of Caitlin and her 'genius poet', Dylan Thomas. It fuelled their sexual adventures, lessened their shyness and enriched their social life. This searing book is Caitlin's story of the passions, the rage and the tragic humour of those years of drink and the toll it took on the lives of two talented people, leaving one of them dead at the age of thirty-nine, and the other alone, penniless and an alcoholic. It is also the memoir of a woman not always likable, but consistently energetic and honest and possessing an indomitable spirit.

Typo - The Last American Typesetter or How I Made/Lost 4 Million Dollars (An Entrepreneur's Education) by David Silverman.

Two months before David Silverman’s 32nd birthday, he visited the Charles Schwab branch in the basement of the World Trade Center to wire his father’s life savings towards the purchase of the Clarinda Typesetting company in Clarinda, Iowa. Typo tells the true story of the Clarinda company’s last rise and fall — and with it one entrepreneur’s story of what it means to take on, run, and ultimately lose an entire life’s work. This book is an American dream run aground, told with humor despite moments of tragedy. The story reveals the impact of losing part of an entire industry and answers questions about how that impacts American business. The reader sees in Clarinda’s fate the potential peril faced by every company, and the lessons learned are applicable to anyone who wants to run his or her own business, succeed in a large corporation, and not be stranded by the reality of shifting markets, outsourcing, and, ultimately, capitalism itself.

Bringing Nothing to the Party - true confessions of a media whore - Paul Carr
Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore

As a journalist covering the first dot.com boom, Paul Carr spent his life meeting the world's most successful young Internet entrepreneurs. In doing so he came to count many of them amongst his closest friends. These friendships meant he was not only able to attend their press conferences and speak at their events, but also get invited to their ultra-exclusive networking events in London and New York, get drunk at their New Year parties in their luxury Soho apartments and tag along when they threw impromptu parties at strip clubs after raising tens of millions of pounds in funding. And being a lowly hack, rather than a super-hyped new media mogul, Paul was able to enjoy this bizarre world of excess without actually having to be part of it. To help the moguls celebrate raising their millions without having to face the wrath of the venture capitalists himself. There was just one problem. He wanted to be rich and famous too. So, at the age of 25, Paul decided he didn't want to be a spectator any more. He had been harbouring a great dot.com project of his own and, with a second Internet boom on the horizon, he decided it was time to do something about it.In 'Bringing Nothing to the Party', Paul uses his unparalleled (and totally uncensored) access to tell the real story of a unique group of hard-partying, high-achieving young entrepreneurs - and his attempts to join them, whatever the cost.

I got them from Unity Books in High Street, Auckland. As I was looking in the window at the oversize art books I noticed a well dressed woman had stooped and was looking too, standing closer than I would have thought usual. But she was kind of attractive so I milked it for as long as I could without being obvious. There's a limit, so I went I went inside. I was hanging by the table with the books the make science interesting books (I well remember the day I bought one about the colour Mauve, which is more interesting than the purple prose title suggests). When I looked up, there she was again. She looked up, smiled and began waving. It had a momentarily surreal effect; right up to the point I realised she wasn't looking deeply into my eyes - or even straight through me in the usual way attractive women do - she was looking over my shoulder at another attractive woman who joined her by the books about evolution, embraced and pranced off together, arm in arm.

The cashier combined my various loyalty cards into one, ensuring to tear up the various dog-eared, incomplete, don't know why I bother, cards.