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Books

Ghosts of the Desert, by Ryan Ireland

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As someone who lived in Utah for many years, I was interested to read Ryan Ireland’s post-apocalyptic sounding Ghosts of the Desert. It’s set (mostly) in the western Utah desert and ghost towns. It was an interesting follow up to another Utah-based novel I recently read, The Never Open Desert Diner, by James Anderson, which is set more to the east in Utah, but also very remote.

Ghosts of the Desert

“Ryan Ireland’s GHOSTS OF THE DESERT is an intensely compelling read full of muscular prose and characters who are, at once, cinematically vivid and entirely, scarily authentic. This book richly deserves and surely will find a wide, enthusiastic audience.”- Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author To escape his troubled past, Norman heads to the Utah desert to lose himself in work.

First things first: this book won’t be for everyone. It is a violent, strange, perverse literary near-horror novel, with a fair bit of philosophizing mixed in. Comparisons to Cormac McCarthy aren’t entirely wrong; if you mix in a little Stephen King you won’t be far off.

But as I read the opening chapter, what really came to mind for me was Jim Harrison’s classic western novella, Revenge. Like Revenge, Ghosts of the Desert opens with a poor soul being physically dismantled by an implacable enemy. Ireland’s prose has kinetic, muscular feel to it.

He lost his footing and toppled to the ground. His shoulder glanced off a rock. His leg twisted. His ankle throbbed from where he sprained it on a low-laying gravemarker. As he skidded to the flat bottom arroyo his ear grated on the hardpacked soil. The force of the final impact thumped the air from his lungs, leaving his jaw yawping at nothing, his neck straining upward and
his teeth opening and shutting, biting at the sky above him. Dust blinded him and he blinked rapidly. Yet, the wound under his arm occupied his mind — it burned as if the wire still dragged long and slow through the skin.

Norman heads out to Utah on a research grant to study ghost towns. He left behind Grace, a wild child semi-archaeologist in Indiana. In what state he left her, we’re not exactly sure. Is he still sleeping with her? Has she run off with someone? Is she still alive? We’re not sure. On his way from Indiana, Norman stops at a truck stop and we’re treated to a wonderful rendition of truck stop culture and the paranoia of every easterner who’s ever wandered into a small joint and drew the unwelcome attention of everyone in the room.

While he’s exploring the desert, he encounters Jacoby, the post-apocalyptic leader of a group of lost souls living in the desert, very much as people might have lived in the 1800s. Jacob is a philosophizer, interested in stripping away the thin veneer of civilization we all carry around with us. He’s also a seller of bodies, a killer of men, an amoral survival of the fittest cult leader. What follows feels very much like Heart of Darkness meets Mad Max. Norman has a variety of experiences, most of them unpleasant, and a variety of philosophical conversations, most of them unsatisfactory for Norman. Events spiral out of control and we learn a great deal about Norman and what he’s willing to do to stay alive.

Ghost of the Desert is an odd novel. Near revolting in places, it’s not entirely clear what Ireland was aiming for. But it’s gripping; it’s scenic, and it’s philosophical. The right reader will absolutely get a kick out of it.

And it’s no spoiler to say that Gollum, or something very much like him, makes an appearance.

(I received a free advance reader copy from Edelweiss in exchange for a review)

Books, Career, Startups

It’s all your fault.

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sepThis is the second in a series of leadership posts brought on by my latest reading of Shogun. As a reminder, Blackthorne is an English ship navigator marooned in Japan (loosely based on the exploits of the historical figure William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan and the first western Samurai). Samurai had a fierce sense of honor and committed ritual suicide if they failed in their duty, hence the tongue in cheek image.

Shogun

SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES * A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life. All brought together in an extraordinary saga aflame with passion, conflict, ambition, and the struggle for power.Here is the world-famous novel of Japan that is the earliest book in James Clavell’s masterly Asian saga.

There’s a natural tendency amongst first time CEOs (and first time managers) to blame subordinates when something goes wrong. After all, they probably did make a mistake. But, it’s always your fault. You are responsible. If not for doing the task correctly, then for ensuring that it is done correctly. That the mission is clear. That the right resources are available; that there’s no roadblocks; that the right person is leading the activity. If something big goes wrong, it’s your fault.

Shogun contains an interesting illustrative example. Blackthorne is in the process of becoming Samurai, via the Japanese daimyo (lord) Toranaga, his sponsor and protector. Blackthorne has been given possession of a household and servants, and raised to Samurai class. But he’s not quite made the jump to Japanese food, and so he is hanging a pheasant near the house for it to improve in flavor, and the bird is beginning to decompose and attract flies. An old gardener volunteers to remove the bird from the house during Blackthorne’s absence. Samurai have the power of life and death over their subjects and violating an order is punishable by death. So the gardener is put to death by Blackthorne’s Japanese wife, also Samurai. After raging at her for the unnecessary death,

He wept because a good man was dead unnecessary and because he now knew that he had murdered him. “Lord God forgive me. I’m responsible — not Fujiko. I killed him. I ordered that no one was to touch the pheasant but me. I asked her if everyone understood and she said yes. I ordered it with mock gravity but that doesn’t matter now. I gave the orders, knowing their law and knowing their customs. The old man broke my stupid order so what else could Fujiko-san do? I’m to blame.”

If you’re the CEO, it’s your fault. And sometimes you have to fall on your sword for it, metaphorically speaking. But embrace the responsibility and this way of thinking, and you’ll find that things don’t go wrong very often.

 

Books, Career, Favorites, Startups

Playing the long game

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shogun

Fred Wilson recently posted a great article entitled Don’t Kick the Can Down the Road. It exhorts entrepreneurs to not avoid making hard decisions. Great advice — and yet, sometimes you need the patience to let things develop, or not make a decision before you need to. (Ironically, many VCs — not necessarily Fred — are past masters at not making a decision, happily telling entrepreneurs “come back when you have more data” vs. just telling them no and getting it over with).

I recently read Shogun, James Clavell’s enormously entertaining and informative novel about set in feudal Japan. It is a master class in how patience is necessary to achieve big goals.

Shogun

SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES * A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life. All brought together in an extraordinary saga aflame with passion, conflict, ambition, and the struggle for power.Here is the world-famous novel of Japan that is the earliest book in James Clavell’s masterly Asian saga.

Blackthorne is an English ship navigator marooned in Japan (loosely based on the exploits of the real historical figure William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan and the first western Samurai). He is made Samurai by lord Toranaga (a fictionalized version of the historical figure Tokugawa Ieyasu). The novel is ostensibly focused on Blackthorne but the true central figure of the book is Toranaga. Toranaga secretly desires to become Shogun, the supreme military commander of Japan, and de facto ruler of the country. But against him are an array of other leaders, with a stronger political position and bigger armies. Toranaga is the master of not making a decision until he has to, or the time is right:

though in reality it was only a cover to gain time, continuing his lifelong pattern of negotiation, delay, and seeming retreat, always waiting patiently until a chink in the armor appeared over a jugular, then stabbing home viciously, without hesitation.

or

“Doesn’t this explain Toranaga? Doesn’t this intrigue fit him like a skin? Isn’t he doing what he’s always doing, just waiting like always, playing for time like always, a day here a day there and soon a month has passed and again he has an overwhelming force to sweep all opposition aside? He’s gained almost a month since Zataki brought the summons to Yokose.”

In the end, it is all about patience, or as Toranaga says:

Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don’t give way to the seven you are patient, then you’ll soon understand all manner of things…

If you’re building a business, you don’t have to raise venture capital. The tech press romanticize this path. You can bootstrap, but that requires patience (and resources or a very low burn rate). But if you are patient, passionate, and committed, you can build a very interesting company this way.

This strategy doesn’t lend itself well to fast-developing, winner-take-all markets. Competing with an Uber or a Groupon, you have to scale fast or get run over. In venture-backed companies, you are on the “shot clock” as soon as you take money — investors want a return. Conversely you become addicted to the funding and can’t survive without it, so you have to succeed quickly or you’ll run out of money.

In more slowly developing markets, or markets that are small enough that big money or big companies aren’t a threat, patience can be a virtue, or even a requirement. Books are an interesting example. The market develops slowly. The few major success stories, say Goodreads or Wattpad, were almost a decade in the making. Any number of innovative startups (e.g. discovery engine Small Demons, subscription reading platform Oyster) produced great products but were unable to fund operations long enough to achieve critical mass.

So, with my book discovery engine, The Hawaii Project, I’m playing the long game. I’m not raising funding and going for the big splash, because I know the market will take longer to develop than the shot clock will permit. I’m self funding. Cloud computing and open software have made it possible for a single person to build very interesting products, and let them run for long periods of time at very little cost. I can wait out the competition; most of them will run out of money.

When I meet with young entrepreneurs embarking on something, one of my first questions is, “Do you care enough about this problem to spend 5 or 10 years of your life on it?”. Because that is what it’s going to take.

Books

The Travelers, by Chris Pavone

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For a long time, I’ve wondered about how to characterize the difference between a spy novel and and a spy thriller. After reading a review copy of Chris Pavone’s The Travelers, I think I can now express it precisely. Both have secret agents, intelligence agencies, dead drops, tradecraft, double-crosses and other staples of the genre.

It’s all about the plausibility of the events. In a Le Carré novel, everything is completely plausible. No James Bond unrealistic derring-do. No jumping out of airplanes without a parachute. No complete civilians discovering crazy secrets and getting pursued by mysterious strangers. Just real people betraying something or someone, or trying not to.

The Hawaii Project

The Hawaii Project – personalized book recommendations

Which puts Chris Pavone’s thoroughly enjoyable The Travelers squarely in the Spy Thriller camp. It has many elements you’d find in Le Carre – skepticism about the nature and motives of Intelligence agencies, a morally grey world view where most everyone is a bad guy of some sort. But most of the book is an adventure, a fun but not very plausible one.

The Travelers’ is Pavone’s third novel, after The Expats and The Accident. He specializes in “normal” people (who often turn out to be not that normal), getting caught up in intrigues. Will Rhodes is a not-very-sympathetic character – a newly married travel writer with a wandering eye and questionable morals. He’s married to Chloe and working for Travelers magazine, with operations around the world and activities that might be more than just writing articles….and Chloe might not be who she seems either…before long Will’s made some bad choices, and events hurtle him from New York to Paris to cabins in the forest of Iceland to Ireland to Yachts in the Mediterranean to …well the book is so peripatetic that the section headers are location names.

If you’re looking for a great thriller, The Travelers will keep you entertained for hours. If you’re looking for deep insights into the human condition, you might want to head for Le Carré or Graham Greene.

I received a free copy of The Travelers through LibraryThing’s wonderful Early Reviewers program.

Books

The Last days of Magic by Mark Tompkins

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The Last Days of Magic is a quasi-historical fantasy set in Ireland. Drawn from the legends of Ireland and from (believe it or not!) the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Last Days of Magic tells the story of the Nephilim, the hybrid offspring of angels and humans, and the Sidhe (“shee”), the Irish faeries of whom much has been written.

The Last Days of Magic

“Fantastic . . . an honest, beautifully detailed book and an entertaining read.” -DIANA GABALDON, THE WASHINGTON POST”A fantastical treat.” -PEOPLE”Simultaneously sweeping and intricate . . . Tompkins’s amazing debut novel conjures an epic battle for the soul of Ireland.

I wanted to like this book. No, I wanted to love it. As someone with a lifelong interest in Druids, Faeries, and books like The King of Elfland’s Daughter, The Mabinogion and Thomas the Rhymer, I was looking forward to a magical tale of otherworldly beings. And this book tries so hard. The erudition of Mark Tompkins is beyond question, and his passion and love of this subject matter is evident on every page. Faeries, Nephilim, Sidhe, Gnomes, Brownies, Sluaghs, Pixies, Fire Sprites, Leprechauns, Dryads, Woodwoses, and other creatures drip from the pages.

That’s kind of the problem. Every time the story works up a bit of momentum, we stop for a diversion into another creature, another king, another tribe, another history, and by the time that’s done, you’ve forgotten what was happening. I’m surprised an editor didn’t rein this in.

If you are deeply interested in the history and lore of faeries, you will find this book interesting and informative. If you’re just looking for a good historical fantasy with Druids and Faeries, there are easier ways to get it.

(I received a free Advance Reader Copy from Edelweiss in return for an honest review).