User Profile

Christo

Joined 2 years, 3 months ago

Reading is my escape, my empowerment, and one of my preferred ways of learning about the world. While I primarily seem to be reading speculative fiction these days, there will be a smattering of other things.

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Christo's books

To Read

Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith: A City on Mars (Hardcover, 2023, Penguin Press, Penguin Publishing Group)

Read (View all 7)

Ben Macintyre: Agent Zigzag (2007, Harmony)

Roger Forsgren: Lean Knowledge Management (2021, Business Expert Press)

P. Djèlí Clark: A Dead Djinn in Cairo (EBook, 2016, Tom Doherty Associates)

2024 Reading Goal

16% complete! Christo has read 2 of 12 books.

User Activity

Christo reviewed Lean Knowledge Management by Roger Forsgren

A short book on creating an effective knowledge management (KM) approach. The approach is based …

Not bad, but not as tactical / practical as I had hoped

3 stars

I expected a lot from a book that claims to be the basis for the Knowledge Management Program put into place at NASA after the various shuttle disasters. While the book makes some very good points, they can be summed up briefly as 1. Define your audience and their primary mission. Focus on this. 2. Define your stakeholders and get their support. 3. Who will you report your KM progress to? Who will benefit, who's decisions will it help the most? 4. Give credit to your team, champion, and stakeholders when you share KM successes. 5. Gather and Filter the knowledge from information to knowledge.

Based on it being created in response to the Shuttle accidents, I can see why it seems to focus almost exclusively on what we call Lessons Learned (as in, mistakes that have occurred, and what we learned from them) and case studies as being the …

Maybe this is the case, but it seems to miss a lot of practical knowledge that would also be critical.

Christo reviewed Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also …

A book with a slow burn, and a lot of details about espionage during WWII

4 stars

Content warning Well, not really spoilers, since we know going in he's a double agent, but still, I'm telling some of the bits that really hooked me in this book.

This book was given to me by my stepfather after a visit. It didn't really draw my attention, and I had one false start reading it almost exactly a year ago. It didn't really grip me the first time through. The main character, Eddie Chapman, a charming thief, didn't strike me as sympathetic, making it hard to get absorbed in the book, especially since this is not fiction, but more of a biography of Eddie's time as a spy for the UK.

I was hooked when Eddie, having been trained in explosives and sabotage by the Abwehr in France, parachuted into England and immediately turned himself in, I was hooked: that was a plot twist I had not expected.

The details about how the UK managed its double agents was an unexpected bonus in this book, highlighting how they had to manage what information Eddie could give the Germans which would support the illusion that he was working for the Abwehr while not actually giving them anything useful.

The whole ruse they concocted to make it look like they had blown up the Mosquito factory was excellent, complete with magic tricks to make it look real from the air if the Germans managed to photograph the site.

The use of 2 double agents to misdirect the targeting of the V-1 and V2 bombs on London was both brilliant and cold, since it conned the Germans into targeting south of London, which still endangered people.

The preparation for Eddie's return was also an excellent bit, where they trained him to tell as much truth as possible relating to the events that had happened so that during interrogations by the Germans he would not get caught in lies.

While I wouldn't give it 5 stars, it definitely is well written, entertaining, informative, and something I might reread at a later date if I need the material for a #TTRPG game.