Book review: A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa

A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some hardship the author has endured. It puts everything into perspective. From a 'must read' perspective this deserves 4 stars. Some episodes are a bit too superhero'ish, but otherwise it's a 5 star book. But the writing style puts it on 3 stars instead. It annoyed me at times, but then I put it back to 4 stars because this story is worth spreading.
I would actually like to see this book as a mandatory read on every school in the western world... 1st year in high-school.

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Book review: Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT by Martha Heller

Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT by Martha Heller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First off, I bought this book as I loved the CIO Paradox and was looking forward to new insights on the topic. Currently involved in Agile Transformations and coaching SMB's in using IT more effectively instead of efficiently I was interested in reading on how IT can position itself as 'The Business'.

Unfortunately this is merely a book full of quotes with embellishments recorded by the author. Unlike the CIO Paradox, this book doesn't provide any insights as to what to do to actually become the business being IT. It does tell the stories of some CIO's that apparently succeeded. I say apparently, because the author leaves us readers dangling. In addition, she also fails in describing the commonalities between the interviewed CIO's and their approach towards the topic.

That said, there are some extremely interesting insights from some CIO's that struck a cord with me, and I immediately understood the value of these in my day to day activities. That's why this is a 3 star book and not a 2 star.

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Book review: The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin P. Williams

The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin P. Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A short little book that is helpful even after the first couple of pages. It explains thoroughly in a practical and useful way how to write texts, in any fashion. It's not so much about the text itself, but all about how to design your texts. What works and what not, where the author clearly defines 'works' as 'somebody is ready what you have written'.
Too often I struggle with writing reports, documents, blogs, CV's, cover letters etc. Fiddling around with fonts, colors, styles, etc. I now feel way more confident in that I can style my documents more effectively. And while typing this, I realize that pretty much everything I learned by reading this book has nog been consciously applied in this book review. Shame on me. I guess.

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