Book Report: How to Win Friends and Influence People

The first thing I noticed when reading this book is how familiar it all sounds. This book was published before World War II and it has been thoroughly absorbed into our culture. The principles he outlines seem patently obvious these days.

Since these principles are now such a cornerstone of how we do business and interact, they almost sound trite. Like they're part of the problem, these days. I know I've read at least a million threads about bad behavior in public that's aided and abetted by how people and businesses implement Carnegie's principles -- "give people what they want", "don't criticize", etc.

So in some ways, this book reads as a "How to be obsequious and get walked all over" manual because 21st-century people don't react the way the people in his Depression-era stories do.

But I don't think that human nature changes all that much. Not the essential human nature. I don't think Carnegie is wrong, just that the implementation is out of date.

The second thing I noticed was how often I've seen these principles observed, but insincerely and/or by formula. I can't speak for anybody else, but there's so much praise out there and people seem to dole it out so easily that I don't put a lot of value on it. Especially if people use canned, vague phrases. "You must've worked hard on that." "We appreciate your contributions."

We suffer from a certain amount of hyperbole in modern life -- "EXTREME CAUTION!!!" on a cup of coffee. Because of statistical outliers and the horrible stories they generate, we all have to swaddle ourselves in bubble wrap. We're jaded and quick to assume insincerity.

Or maybe that's just me. I don't take the warnings on coffee cups seriously.

From a writing point of view -- and I picked up the book to try to fill out my character Maggie a little more -- it's good to see the principles laid out clearly. And it's good to read his dated stories and ask one's self, "But how would you do it nowadays? How do we show sincerity in a world that's saturated with advertising propaganda?"

Or, "How will they be showing sincerity in a culture that's getting thrown back to its frontier roots?"

How do people demonstrate sincerity in your universe?

Book Report: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky

I read Kurlansky's Cod, too, and these books are packed with information. He's a good nonfiction writer, on the whole, but limiting the book to a single topic does result in some repetition.

Don't miss: McIllhenny's adventures in the salt business before he got his crazy idea about hot pepper sauce and Gandhi's salt campaign as the flash point for Indian independence.

If you're writing fantasy, it's something to think about. Salting and pickling were some of the leading ways to preserve food for thousands of years, so salt's production needed to be constant and it was usually taxed because everybody needed it. Although rock salt can be easier to get, sea salt has always been more popular. Producing sea salt takes up a lot of space and requires a lot of cheap fuel if you're not in a hot climate. Mining salt is full of its own problems.

If you're interested in how to set up salt production in your fantasy world, this is a must read. Plenty of detail about evaporation ponds, pan boiling, working brine wells, removing impurities, preserving fish and meats, pickling, and systems of taxation which led to public outrage. 

I'm currently writing science fiction, but it's not exactly economical to create sodium chloride entirely from chemical reactions. Or is it? Is there rock salt out in the asteroids?

Hmmm...