Delightful, practical, smart, well-writtem.
582730
Loved this from start to finish. Immediately transformed the way I fold my clothes - clearing up lots of space both physically and mentally. A terrific book for anyone wanting to clear out extra "stuff" and simplify.
4943904
This is one of those books that you could borrow from your library, or from a friend, but you will likely need to buy your own copy since there are so many passages that are either so wise, so funny, or so meaningfully touching that you will need to use your pencil in order to happily jot checkmarks, brackets, and asterisks throughout the book. I know that I did.
David Hays has a surfeit of academic, personal, and professional accomplishments. In his sixties, he was semi-retired, kids grown, had good health and a happy family life. His mind is unquestioningly fertile (yet organized) and he seems to embrace new experiences. As a child he gazed into a mud bubble, and glimpsed eternity. As an adult he throws himself  into the grass in his back yard, in order to look more closely at the earth.  His life was full, and meaningful, but  he does not brag, and he is likable from the outset.
Rather than rest on his not inconsiderable laurels, he decides to become a Bar Mitzvah, joining a class of local eleven and twelve-year olds - in order to devote himself to study with his congregation's rabbi, Doug, for more than a year. It is this journey - and there is a steady unfolding, with no outburst of religiosity -  that forms the starting point for this wonderful narrative.
Hays has an ability to tell you a lot about himself by telling you about other people. He respects himself, and he respects others. He is never boring. His parents, in-laws, grown children, grandchildren,  his wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and his classmates are interesting to him, and worthy of reportage. He lets you in on these people and their lives and their histories with unstinting (and never maudlin) respect, even awe. In doing this you find out a lot about Hays and his subjects. Their privacy is never violated, and their dignity is sustained.
There is uncloying, laugh-out-loud humor throughout. Family lore emerges, and it is often funny. Hays delights in his wife Leonora's knack of elegantly summing up a situation with a trenchant malapropism. Of his new-found fervor for religious study, she says, "He hooked, line and sinker!" Of the Bahamas: "It's a third-war country."  He also shares his family history, including a terrific (true) story, "How my family saved Israel." His feelings and observations as a sensitive member of his class (of the kids at  recess he marvels, "They always know where to go.")  - and his relationship with his wonderful rabbi - are a pleasure to watch unfold.
Hays includes a piece on Anne Frank that is dramatic, thoughtful, and not at all funny. It is appropriately included, given that the concerns of an adult approaching his bar mitzvah are different from those of a child. And at one point, he attends a Harvard reunion - which maybe could have been left out of this book, with no loss of substance to this great story.
In all, a wonderful book.
1828167
A brilliant, thoughtful read. Well written, practical and insightful.
2191725
The bookshelves groan with the weight of self-help books, some invaluable, and some ordinary common sense made marketable by astute `guides'.  Though this remarkably readable new book by Pamela Skillings is subtitled `A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of your Dreams', suggesting yet another of the self help series genre, what this carefully detailed, wise, and immensely user friendly book offers is a call to the reader savvy enough to buy this guide to address not only employment and how to make meaningful, plausible changes in job situations, but also how to essentially take charge of your life in every facet of living.

Skillings uses a conversational style of writing, full of wit, insight into the unspeakable issues that crowd many of our professional lives, and practical approaches to what other authors have created as `formulas', and in doing so she manages to supportively take the reader by the hand and lead the way down the dark hall of indecision or stifling boredom to the possibility of light at the end of the tunnel of change.  `You don't have to settle' is a term she frequently inserts into this fact-filled examination of the good and the bad side of Corporate existence. The signs and symptoms of corporate burnout are detailed in lists of levels of `disease' states that provide a lot of truth as well as significant humor (monotony, control issues, workplace drama, cubiclitis, etc.).  But Skillings has the wisdom to refuse to push her readers into leaving the womb of corporate security. Instead, she offers skilled advice on how to evaluate job and life goals, and follows this with detailed methods of how to approach dreams of finding the perfect job - along with a healthy list of the possible temporary setbacks and side effects of making change.

One of the many fine points of Skillings' mentoring is her realistic approach to the challenges that accompany change. After long chapters on how to decide what kind of job would provide personal satisfaction as well as a means of viable financial support, she outlines sensible and attainable pathways to make the `change' work. After deciding just what would make the reader's life happy in the work environment (and it follows, in the home environment), Skillings suggests seeking advice from people in the field of work being considered, doing temp work in that field, volunteering in areas associated with the goal (adding to the resume as well as to the conviction that the change will be what the seeker wishes) - all before `quitting the day job'. In other words, Skillings advice is crowned by recommending sound research and implementation of dreams BEFORE taking the leap.

Within the context of the conversational advice are numerous examples of people who indeed escaped from corporate America, lists to complete to aid the reader in defining exactly what are the goals and the steps toward achieving them, and a constant supply of warmly friendly, gently humorous, reality based supportive asides that reassure the reader that `you can do this'! In her final chapter HAVE A NICE ESCAPE, before she shares myriad contacts and resources to aid the reader, Skillings warmly states `Only you can decide if you're really ready to escape from Corporate America.  The most important thing to remember is that you always have options. You deserve an inspiring, fulfilling career, and there's no reason you can't have one.'  Dreams and Visions fill the pages of this fine book and it would be difficult to find a more informed and supportive guide to attaining those than Pamela Skillings.  Highly Recommended!  Grady Harp, May 08
3044978
Masterful. Engrossing. Instructive. Satisfying. A must.
2881566
Sharon Astyk has done it again. Engaging, intelligent and practical!
120322
This is such a smart novel, and the epilogue afterwards clarifies what was the author's intent.  She accomplishes her goals brilliantly, describing the themes like a college English professor.  It is an engaging novel that is an easy read, yet it reveals a depth in the verbal pictures of characters, art, and cultures.
2184349
This is not only a very practical book but also one that is digestible.  Liz Curtis Higgs has a conversational way of writing that makes you forget that you are reading and you feel instead as if you are talking with a good friend who understand your blunders and sees your desire to get it right.  I really like the way it is written in little bites for the concepts are huge.  Also the practical application and prayer at the end of each section is welcome and fitting.
4599464
Wise little lessons, smooth easy-reading two-page stories, clear fonts, bright colors, and every border a different sure delight; what more could you ask from a smart hard-backed story-book to be shared with small children? Combining the savor of Aesop with the whimsy of Peter Rabbit, Demis The Pandas and their Chopsticks, and other animal stories, is a genuine delight. Each fable takes two short clean pages. Each telling is bright and light. And each is illustrated with vivid colors, genuine artistry, and pictures full of visual intelligence and appeal. Colored borders with animal figures make favorite stories easy to find. And every tale ends with a simple wise moral, perfect for bedtime telling and those quiet lessons remembered before sleep.

Some of these stories might illustrate familiar conceptsthe pandas' generosity that helps everyone for example; others offer wisdom you might not have seen so brightly told before, as with the faults that follow unless we do something to leave them behind. But all are bright and new, refreshingly told, a pleasure to read and a treasure to own.

Which story do I love best? I really cant say. The humble ocean perhaps... the wily fox... Youll have to read them and choose your own favorites, as Im sure you will.

Disclosure: I was offered a free copy by the publishers and I offer my honest review.
987755
A wonderful, wonderful book.  My only disappointment was that he hasn't written another one.  He's clearly very smart, very capable and handy, a fellow of wide acquaintance and knowledge, and a terrific writer.  The tone of the book reminded me a bit of DEAR COMMITTEE MEMBERS, an academic novel (i.e., in the form of letters by a professor to various students and colleagues) by Julie Schumacher.  Shaun Bythell demonstrates both well-earned impatience with (often willful) human ignorance or pride, and an equal capacity for warmth and compassion.  I'm already looking forward to re-reading it, any number of times in the coming years.
3887248
This is a thoughtful, humorous, intelligent and wonderfully written book. You will both enjoy and learn from reading it.  It abounds with wisdom!
455314
What I love about this intelligent book:
1) the hacks, of course  - smart, succinctly summarized, imminently do-able, illustrated via stories - mesh so well with today's shortened attention spans as well as our always-too-much-to-do  21st century lifestyles.
2) Nathalie includes the stories of and champions so many other women.  She says her superpower is storytelling and that is certainly true. And another superpower is elevating others - in an era when so many look at the world and see only "us vs. them", a mindset fueled by the perception of scarcity, Nathalie shows how these hacks expand the proverbial pie, so that there is more for everyone.
Thank you, Nathalie and Sara, for sharing your knowledge, insights and connections.  If all the entrepreneurs I know haven't already purchased this by the holidays, this book is what I'll be gifting!
2342934
This book is a delight. It's also incredibly practical. Whether you're an experienced designer, a student of design, or simply curious about why it's so hard to find the right train in Manhattan, you'll soon be engrossed.

Katz distills a distinguished career of design practice and university teaching into a compendium that combines pithy (and witty) discussions of principles with case studies drawn from his own work, his teaching, his observations, and his (sometimes surprising) critiques of famous historical models. Most of the cases come from his three cities--Philadelphia, Rome, and Paris--and part of the fun is the sense of place that permeates the pages. As you would expect the book is designed for use, and the form following that functional emphasis is graceful and elegant.

In its structure the book embodies a movement network, one of the real-world design applications in which Katz's practice has specialized. Its basic units are single-topic two-page spreads; these are grouped into thematic sections on the nature of information, qualitative issues in perception and representation, quantitative issues, structure and organization, and the effect of movement, time, and orientation on wayfinding and experience. Patterns develop naturally within these sections, but they are also like neighborhoods of ideas; the spreads form relatively self-contained nodes, like subway stops, that may be linked in a variety of sequences to create equally compelling journeys through the material. It would be possible to create at least half a dozen meaty course syllabi based on different paths through the book.

This flexibility is facilitated by well-signposted, consistently placed sidebars on each spread noting cross-references within the book and links to outside resources; a granular index; and an extensive bibliography that is alphabetized within sections representing a slightly different handful of topic divisions than those in the main text.

Illustrations are well-curated and profuse, and often funny. One of my favorite features of the book is a recurring "Every silver lining has a cloud" module, in which we see bureaucratic procedures, circumstances, and necessary compromises undermining effective designs, often after they have left the control of the designer. Learning to expect and deal with such infelicities should be part of every young designer's training; one hopes the examples would also inform every potential purchaser or specifier of design services.

Katz is generous in crediting other practitioners and modest in his presentation of his own exemplary work, but the book carries the unmistakable stamp of his personality. That in itself is worth the price of admission. What other design writer would include a red sidebar that reads in its entirety, "Students: Your other instructors will never tell you that the size at which type looks its most elegant is just a little too small to read comfortably"?

Inevitably there are one or two wispy clouds in this silver lining of a book. In my copy the registration on one spread was slightly off; a couple of copy-editing hitches slipped by. For some, the elegantly set body type may be just a little too light to read comfortably. And the web addresses to fascinating related material are sometimes unrealistically long and convoluted to type into a browser (in this regard an ebook version would be a real asset). But these are quibbles, which only show that the book was produced by humans and that I am not a paid shill.

As others have said, Designing Information is destined, deservedly, to become a classic in the field. More important, its common sense and humanity are destined to influence young designers for years to come. Surely that will make it a little easier for all of us to find our way through the world.
4494812
I sat down and read Simple Prosperity for an hour and a half when I first got it and was thoroughly charmed and delighted.  I love the way David Wann uses stories about his own and other peoples' experiences to illustrate the delights of Simple Prosperity. It is such a positive philosophy and so very earthwise.  I didn't want to quit reading and go back to work. I think this book is the perfect antidote to the sense of malaise about the future that most of my friends and family have been expressing of late. The sensible, practical ideas for living a simplier, more responsible yet personally rewarding life are really appealing.
4406311
Clever, well-written, informative, fun, and a mystery.
1743332
Intelligent, delightful, and charming!

This is a story about friendship, heartbreak, acceptance, forgiveness, love, and food.

The characters are fun-loving, dependable, flawed, and real. The plot is interesting and engaging. The writing is exquisite. And the prose is descriptive and witty.

To me, it was like sitting down to watch a reunion episode of Friends, but instead of the usual gang sitting around the Central Perk, this one had a new light-hearted bunch gathering in the lush countryside of Italy instead.

I loved this book. It is a perfect summer read.
4336715
Very smart and well organized thoughts and suggestions. Fun and easy to read.