Kelsi’s Comments (group member since Oct 19, 2012)

Kelsi’s comments from the BOOKD group.

In the book, Pink claims that 40% of the average person's work day is spent engaging in non-sales selling. What percentage of the day do you spend trying to move others?

Personally, I would say I spend the vast majority of my day in non-sales selling (subscribe to THNKR!) - but sales really has taken on a new meaning. Look at the internet - at overt marketplaces like Etsy, but also more subtle marketplaces like Pinterest, Facebook, even GoodReads. Every time we say, "Check this out..." it's an attempt to sell our followers on content that we find meaningful. But it's less about selling and more about sharing.

I think our capacity for sharing and selling each other on ideas in this climate of hyper-communication and abundant information is really exciting, despite its tendency to consume us.

Do you think it's a good or bad thing?

In The Areas of My Expertise, the first book in the trilogy that John Hodgman affectionately calls "a massive exercise of derangement," Hodgman comes up with no less than 700 hobo names.

What were some of your favorites? Or, better yet, what would your hobo name be? (Watch our episode to get some ideas!)

Personal favorites: Holden the Expert Dreamtwister, and Monk, the Monkey Man

What do you think of Timothy Ferriss? I love his unconventional book trailers (http://youtu.be/PEFblr3j-ro & http://youtu.be/Jdbd0k7BZ4s) but haven't read The 4-Hour Chef yet. I'm a little skeptical. It can't be that simple, right?

Good question! I love how overt Mitchell is in his acknowledgement of this criticism. I would argue that it is neither - and either way, it wouldn't have mattered to me as a reader. Call it what you want, Cloud Atlas was a unique reading experience and I think an honest experimentation on Mitchell's part. In my opinion, the writing was inventive enough and the stories compelling enough that the book would have garnered similar acclaim had it had a different structure. Not a gimmick, not a revolution - just a great read.

I think it's impossible to know how we will react to extreme circumstances until we are faced with them, so it's hard to compare ourselves to Zamperini. I don't think Zamperini is a superhuman, but I do think he possessed, even before the war, the inherent qualities - courage, perseverance, strength of character - that allowed him to withstand the trials he eventually faced. That said, I think those traits exist in each of us in varying degrees, and can be cultivated. Not all of us could survive what Zamperini survived, but I think all of us would be surprised at what we could withstand if we had no other choice. This is a pretty frequently reoccurring theme in literature - Lord of the Flies, Night, even The Hunger Games. We cannot always control our circumstances, but we can control, to some extent, the attitude and attributes with which we meet them.

Not my favorite passage - I might have to second Jim's excerpt for that - but the eloquence and accuracy of this insight really struck me:

“All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.”

I had high hopes for the movie after seeing the trailer. Recognizing the ambitious nature of the project, I still felt that it fell a little short. There's some poignancy to Mitchell's prose that couldn't quite translate to the screen and instead came off as cliche. I felt that the directors didn't give viewers enough credit, relying too heavily on action and over-dramatization and not enough on the simple, subtle beauty of the relationships in Mitchell's book. That said, the movie was undeniably entertaining, and created worlds that I couldn't have imagined with my mind's eye. Both great experiences - just different.

Hey! I'm Kelsi, the THNKR Production Assistant. Despite my lifelong obsession with fiction writing, I am a terribly slow reader and tend to fall asleep on a pile of half read books. Currently occupying my bed: Bossypants by Tina Fey, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and more than a few collections of poetry. Excited to be here!