Cute book, interesting enough characters (though, seriously, why the hell is that girl’s name Door?), smooth, interesting and relatively creative plot line. I liked it – kind of fun, light reading. I think it might have been a bit fantasy-heavy for me (I prefer fantasy with more of a sci-fi twist), but I’d certainly recommend it. Très steampunk.

I definitely agree with Atomboy’s statement that it reads like a film – of course, I realized after I got the book that I think the BBC 2 series was made FIRST, then the book so that makes sense.

I’m about 1/3 through and while certain passages will get me excited, as far as I can tell there’s really no plot whatsoever, which means there’s very little forward momentum. Which is okay, but it seems like 150+ pages is a bit long for that kind of thing.

My favorite passage so far is as follows (page 29):

The rain fell down in loose swirling skeins, the kind a child makes with string between his fingers. The string was black and fell tangled like a shadow of itself, dissolving into puddles that covered the Place Montparnasse in front of the station like backless mirrors from which the gray quicksilver of light still drained.

Very short book and VERY light reading – I breezed through it. There’s not much meat to it. I think the primary value might be to use it basically as talking points.

The 21 ways are fine, but you really don’t need all the other rambling and the author’s addiction to idioms and poor style of introducing them is quite annoying: “You have heard the old question…” (Page 13), “It has been said for many years that…” (Page 2), “It has also been said that…” (Page 2), “You remember the story of…” (Page 5), “There is an old saying that…” (Page 67)

The concepts are solid, and remind me of Zen Habits (specifically the Most Important Thing), but I think Leo does it better.

The 21 Ways are as follows (also featured in the conclusion section, which may very well be all you need to read):
1) Set the table Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin.
2) Plan every day in advance Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you five to ten in execution.
3) Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20 percent.
4) Consider the consequences Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive of negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else.
5) Practice the ABCDE Method continually Before you work on a list of tasks, take a few moments to organize them by value and priority so you can be sure of working on your most important activities. [A, B, C are pretty obvious, D stands for Delegate and E for Eliminate]
6) Focus on key result areas Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long.
7) Obey the Law of Forced Efficiency There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things. What are they?
8) Prepare thoroughly before you begin Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance.
9) Do your homework The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at key tasks, the faster your start them and the sooner you get them done.
10) Leverage your special talents Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well.
11) Identify your key constraints Determine that bottlenecks or choke points, internally or externally, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals, and focus on alleviating them.
12) Take it one oil barrel at a time You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time.
13) Put the pressure on yourself Imagine that you have to leave town for a month and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left.
14) Maximize your personal powers Identify your periods of highest mental and physical energy each day and structure your most important and demanding tasks around these times. Get lots of rest so you can perform at best.
15) Motivate yourself into action Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive.
16) Practice creative procrastination Since you can’t do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count.
17) Do the most difficult task first Begin each day with your most difficult task, the one task that can make the greatest contribution to yourself and your work, and resolve to stay at it until it is complete.
18) Slice and dice the task Break large, complex tasks down into bite-sized pieces and then just do one small part of the task to get started.
19) Create large chunks of time Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate fore extended periods on your most important tasks.
20) Develop a sense of urgency Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become well known as a person who does things quickly and well.
21) Single handle every task Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task, and then work without stopping until the job is 100 percent complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

Most of the tracks are not fun to listen to – more ambient in my opinion, OK as background, but as songs, meh.

However, I do like the last couple tracks:
[Track 11] Distant Dreams (Part 2) – one of my favorite songs, period; it also makes me smile that there is no “Distant Dreams (Part 1)”
[Track 12] Something Came Over Me – classic, funny track, but it goes on too long

Why do I keep wasting time watching this trash on TV?

I actually started this without terribly high hopes – I just picked it up off the shelf while staying at my in-laws for the holidays – but I actually liked it very much.

The vignettes are elegantly written and intertwined. I found it very readable and perhaps especially interesting as I live in San Francisco and I could see in my mind’s eye some of the exact places and occurrences mentioned in the book.

Educational about Chinese culture and immigration and the following generation(s), but this book also resonates on a human level.

Well, I wanted to like it. I truly did. Right to the end.

And right to the end I didn’t.

You can do quirky characters well (Amélie) and you can do them poorly (Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Poorly = annoying.

I also found it bizarre the amount of utter crap he filled pages with – seriously, like 15 pages of library searches?? 5 pages of some fax he found? If I wanted to marvel at random shit, there is plenty of it all around me.

The insights weren’t insightful and I felt like I was reading the memoirs of a mentally deficient person.

Now, I also didn’t HATE it, but I did not like it. It was mostly boring and pointless.

You know, this is always ticketed as inspirational, and the movie was atrocious, but I did like the book.

I don’t find it to be that much of a “tribute to the resilience of the human spirit” or whathaveyou.

The author was certainly much more likeable in this version versus the film (in which Julian Schnabel put too much of himself, and he is an utter ass, and added in a few bits of Hollywood sizzle with love interests that never existed and the bizarre bit about the guy who got abducted because Jean-Do gave him his seat on the plane, ignored the fact that he could move his head as well, not just his eye).

The thought/emotion that it primarily evoked in me is something more along the lines of, no matter what, life goes on – his emotions did not seem to change extremely, the things that caused him pleasure and pain, his thoughts remained among the same lines, the things he reminisced on seemed not a sea change from how life was when he was not the living dead. I did not sense a “oh I am just so happy to still be alive” sentiment at all, but a recognition of how things are – pain, pleasure, frustration, fun, sorrow. It read to me like thoughts on life, not specifically the wailings of an invalid, which is all the more a beautiful thing.

I actually started this without terribly high hopes – I just picked it up off the shelf while staying at my in-laws for the holidays – but I actually liked it very much.

The vignettes are elegantly written and intertwined. I found it very readable and perhaps especially interesting as I live in San Francisco and I could see in my mind’s eye some of the exact places and occurrences mentioned in the book.

Educational about Chinese culture and immigration and the following generation(s), but this book also resonates on a human level.

When I first read this book, I was actually working one of her average-Joe type jobs, for which I was overqualified. I was doing it mostly for similar reasons (I wanted to see what it was like to work the lower rungs of retail), so I was definitely intrigued when I heard of this book.

I didn’t like it when I first read it; I tried it again and I still didn’t like it.

She seems distant, pretentious and superior. Very much “oh look at these poor people, and I am such an interesting character that I spent my time among them, we should help them blah blah blah.” Now, yes, we should as a society do something to give minimum wage workers a better life, but she never seems to connect to them on a human level. The most emotion I see in the book is when she is freaking out and spending unreasonable sums of money on detox kits because she’s afraid they’ll find that she toked up.

If you are actually isolated from the lower classes, if you don’t see the cashiers and janitors and maids as people, sure, this will bring you a bit closer to earth, but the distance she maintains from the people she is claiming to be an advocate for leaves a bad taste in my mouth.