Rogan Shannon

Video: http://youtu.be/jUf-W5f399M

Let’s talk about books. Hello, I’m Rogan and welcome! As you can see from the picture above, I have a new background! This is just for now, I’m working on a better set-up for future videos. (I’m sitting on the floor so it’s slightly uncomfortable, and by the time I had finished filming, both of my feet had fallen asleep.) I have no plans for this, I’m just going with it. I will do a brief review of a couple books that I’ve already read, then I’ll tell you what I’m reading right now. I have no idea how this series will look – will it be a review of several books at one, or will it be individual videos for individual books? I don’t know. I think it might be a few books at once because I feel like it might be a little too much to do one video for each book. That’s a lot of books and a lot of videos so… Probably not individually. To give you an idea of how many books I have at a time… If you saw my “Books” video asking about this, you will have seen a stack of books. They’re due soon. I just went to the library, and er, got more books. So I currently have the stack of books you see in the picture above. And that’s just from the library! I have some books on my shelves, not a lot, but there are a few that I haven’t read yet. There’s also some in my room that I haven’t read. So… Yeah. Okay, now the couple books that I’ve already read.

The most recent book that I finished reading is actually the third Harry Potter book. [Note: This was at the time I made the video. By the time I had edited and published, I had finished all of them.] But I’m not reviewing those, because I will do a video about all seven together. So put a hold on that.

The first book is Lost In Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World. It’s a great book, it’s not really a heavy on words book. One page has a picture of the word, and the basic definition, the other page has kind of a short story that goes with the word. If you watch the video, I show you a few pages from the book. The words I showed were: Swedish – mångata, Icelandic – tíma, Arabic – gurfa, Swedish – resfeber, German – drachenfutter. It’s pretty cool. It has over 80 different words or something like that, I don’t remember how many — but it’s a lot! I’m planning to use some of those words to title some of my videos, so keep an eye out for that! I think the book’s a great book because it gives you kind of a glimpse into how other cultures think. It’s interesting to see how different cultures come up with a word for a certain feeling or a certain thing when English doesn’t. We DO have some words, but most of those words are borrowed from another language. Typical, my first book that I “review” is about language. Anyway.

Next book is Mindsharing. I thought this was a really fascinating topic. The author, Lior Zoref, uses this word to describe crowd sourcing. Like crowdfunding, using Facebook to answer a question or things like that. Zoref brought an actual ox onstage for a TEDTalk, and asked the crowd to estimate how much they think the ox weighs. Then he collected the estimates, averaged the number of all guesses, and that number turned out to be only 3 or 4 pounds off the actual weight! That’s pretty impressive! He’s trying to show that the crowd’s estimate is almost as good as the experts’. Mindsharing isn’t for asking basic questions like, “Oh what should I do tomorrow?” No, it’s more for asking things like, “I’m thinking about buying a family car, so I need one that’s good for family, good on gas, whatever else. What do you all recommend?” Then looking at the recommendations and finding what the most common recommendation is. You’re using that as a way to find what to buy, and that often actually matches up with what experts would recommend. The basic point of mindsharing is that the crowd can be just as wise as experts, if done correctly. Zoref goes into detail in the book on a lot of different topics, showing how you can harness mindsharing to benefit you. He talks about how you can use it to bolster your own life, health, turn your dreams into reality. Like himself, Zoref left his Microsoft job, and didn’t know what he wanted to do as a career next. So what should he do? He asked his crowd (Facebook friends, Twitter, LinkedIn) what he should do next, and found his answer in the crowd. It’s kind of hard to describe in detail what this book is about, because it’s an incredibly detailed book. So I would really recommend you read this book if you can.

Now, what I’m currently reading. The first one is Merger of the Century. It talks about why Canada and the US should become one country. It’s a very fascinating book! I’ve been reading this for like the past three months because I keep reading a little, leaving it, renewing it, returning it to the library, then getting it back.
But I have just a little bit left, so I will finish it within the next week. Century gives a lot of good reasons and explains how a merger would work between Canada and the US. It’s really fascinating. I will go more in-depth later. The second book I’m currently reading is Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It. I won’t go in-depth about this one, but it’s interesting so far. It’s a little heavy to read, so it might take me a while to finish reading it. And that’s all for what I’m currently reading, other than the Harry Potter books. But I digress.

You saw that whole stack of books I’m planning to read. I don’t know if I can actually finish that in three weeks, but we’ll see. That was pretty basic for a first book post. I don’t know, what do you think? Give me ideas on how I should do this. Maybe once a month about all of the books I’ve read, or… Honestly, I don’t know. Well, I guess I will just end here and… Leave comments below the video on books you want to see me “review,” or books that I should read anyway, even if I don’t review them. Hope you enjoyed it, thanks for reading, and see you next time.