PopCo

PopCo is a little like Apple - An enigmatic and messianic CEO, Senior Executives with eccentricities bordering on whimsy all veiling a maniacal obsession with market domination. Alice Butler finds herself in the creative department of a PopCo division via a job setting crosswords for a provincial weekly. When you’ve been raised by your grandparents, one a pure mathematician, the other a cryptanalyst it’s probably inevitable that your breakthrough product is a spy kit. With that kind of pedigree and a day-job in junior code-breaking she’s a walking illustration of geek-chic.

The invite to the annual PopCo conference may come from left-of-field but we find there was some fuzzy-logic to this decision. With references to planned obsolescence, viral marketing, negative-brands and ideation this is a novel with ambition, but not over-burdened by it. The childhood reminiscences, a vehicle for the introduction of the Maths and cryptanalysis, are a perfectly pitched relief. PopCo’s “Thought Camp” has its eye on the holy grail of marketing – the killer product for teenage girls. Alice eventually unearths a more literal treasure - Her grandfather placed the key to the location of a 17th century pirate’s booty in her locket and when she finds it it makes PopCo's "market-cap" look tiny.

A book dealing with corporate cyncism could be as soul-less as it's subject matter. Fortunately PopCo's flashbacks to childhood add emotional depth. Alice’s grandparents may have effectively bequeathed a multi-billion pound fortune but there’s more than a suggestion that the real treasure is the memory of the time spent with them.

The Right To Be Lazy

There's a whiff of "New Labour" about "The Craftsman" particularly the talk about organised labour's failure to "embrace" new technology. Paul Lafargue ( Karl Marx's son-in-law ) comes at it from a different angle ( and tradition )

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/index.htm

Going Out

The last time Matt saw sunlight it almost put his lights out for good.
Confined to his house his only contact with the outside world is Julie. Julie has problems of her own though. Whilst Matt can’t engage with the real world, Julie doesn’t want to. She’s so full of neuroses there’s nothing much left.

A chance virtual meeting with a lifestyle guru extending the possibility of a cure sees them and a motley crew of friends and associates load up a camper van and head for North Wales. Throw in some wicca, testicular cancer, a latent mathematical prodigy, and Matt wrapped in tin foil and we’ve all the ingredients for a re-working of The Wizard Of Oz. ( It’s not that difficult to spot and there’s an epigraph and a post script that give the game away ). Like the Wizard of Oz the storyline is the hook for some gentle satire. Only this time it’s consumerism, and brand saturation that take the hit.

The only real weakness is the idea that every character seems to have some neurotic apsect to their character. Anyway, I’m now going to take off the white gloves and replace "Going Out", spine un-broken, on the shelf next to the rest of the chronologically ordered, mylar protected, Scarlett Thomas first editions ( I’m joking about the gloves – I only wear them for hardbacks! )

Foie Humain is the the first story in Will Self''s short story collection "Liver". In it he gives full reign to his legendary verbomania. The writing is overly rich and relentless - It's the literary equivalent of being force fed butter. It's also, obviously, deliberate. The story relates the making of human foie-gras and the writing seems to reflect the experience. As I said I think this "self-similarity" is intended

The Craftsman reminded me a little of this. The first 2 sections felt like an "apprenticeship" - You're introduced to a few new tools but they don't sit comfortably in your hand. But you persevere. After many false starts and a few wrong turns, finally everything comes together. It's just a matter of patience, doggedness and a little extra time ( but thankfully not 10,000 hours! )

How us craftsmen manage our book collections....

On the subject of dealing with huge piles of books - I'm a big fan of Alexandria Book Collection Manager on my laptop.

Its free

It is very intuitive and user friendly

You can enter the info about your book collection by either importing a document/spreadsheet or by typing in author surname or title keyword(s)

- it then finds full title, author details, publisher, ISBN etc and also downloads a little thumbnail of the cover (the default image is the original hardback cover, for you lovers of first editions).

It is yet to fail me in terms of finding a book and cover image, but you can enter the book details manually and a scanned image of the cover if needs be.

You can also have sub folders and tags to organise things properly (one of the default folders it comes with is 'books out on loan', as if any real bibliophile would need such a category..)

It also comes with an 'owned' subfolder; 'borrowed'; 'read' and 'favorite' (its from the US of A). It also comes with a 'wishlist' folder that you can send to other people as a hint for that special present.

And each book entry comes with a 'notes' page where you can record your thoughts about the book, copy links to interesting websites etc. (And you can rate the book out of five stars).

And it is only available on Linux for us craftsmen that are still tending the flame of Hepatitus (or whatever his name is..)