Two Books

My project isn't unusual. It's to figure myself out, to find out who I am and who I might become, to plot a path into some future. You know, the usual. One way I do all this is to read books.

Last week, on the advice of someone I respect, I began reading This Is Marketing by Seth Godin, a guy I've not read before but about whom I was vaguely suspicious. He seemed a guru with too many slick answers, but I was willing to give him a shot.

I tried to see what the book had to teach me, but I've taken the bookmark from between pages eighty-six and eighty-seven and placed it into a new book, Handmade: Creative Focus In The Age Of Distraction by Gary Rogowski. Though the bookmark is only between pages twelve and thirteen I feel better already. Rogowski talks of sawdust, Robert M. Pirsig, learning, and hiking. It's as though I can touch each thing to which he is referring.

In eighty-six pages, Seth Godin gave me two things to touch. Two. I kept waiting for more than platitudes. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with marketing to get the book. Then again, I'm not much of a woodworker and Rogowski already has me in his hands. He keeps talking plainly and telling stories. He doesn't seem all that concerned about persuading me. He's convinced and that's enough.

I wanted to learn from Godin and maybe I have. Moving the bookmark from his to Rogowski's book tells me a lot. I'm not sure just yet what all of that might be, but I'm getting a strong, strong feeling that might just be some kind of understanding.