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“Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn’t a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their own song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their songs instead.”

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A couple of months ago we stopped in the town of Wexford on a Saturday when their book festival was being held. Author Colm Tóibín was doing a reading, but we were unable to stick around until he was up. I found a couple of his non-fiction books, Bad Blood and Sign of the Cross, purchased them and left them to be signed and mailed to us. When they arrived in Tramore, I devoured them. Tóibín’s style in non-fiction is very conversational and quite an easy read.

In Bad Blood, he writes of a summer spent walking along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland at the tail end of the Troubles. He seems to be almost fearless in his ability to get into some fairly sketchy situations and ask blunt questions, just like we’d all like to do if we could do it without the risk. I felt like I came away from reading Bad Blood with a better sense of what it was like to live in Ireland when relations between the North and the Republic weren’t quite so tame as they are today.

In Sign of the Cross, Tóibín writes about traveling around Catholic Europe. Again, in a very simples style he tells of his conversations with strangers all over the continent. The sense you get is of someone trying to connect with or understand people’s feelings towards the religion in which he himself was raised, something I can sympathize with.

That had been the extent of my exposure to Tóibín’s works until a couple of weeks ago when a good friend gave me a gift of his Mothers and Sons short-story collection. While I thought his non-fiction was a great read, I’ve learned that fiction is Tóibín’s true gift. This collection of stories is one of the best books I’ve ever read, which I suppose explains why I got through it in only a day-and-a-half. Each of the stories is based on interesting characters with tangled relationships, and an interesting and not-always-predictable plot. But where they really shine is in Tóibín’s use of language. Where his non-fiction is conversational and simple (not in a bad way), the language of his fiction is complex and nothing short of profound. He is one of those writers where you find yourself going back and reading paragraphs over and over to fully grasp and enjoy what he’s saying through his characters. I look forward to picking up more of Tóibín’s fiction next time we hit the bookstore.

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Management guru Tom Peters has a great list of his favorite books up on his blog. I’ve read a few of them, and am currently working on the wonderful The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I’ll have a write-up on that one when I finish it.

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Sub-titled “The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions,” this is a great, fast read. It chronicles the story of the so-called MIT Blackjack Team, a group of whiz kids who, with funding from anonymous backers, spent several years working as a card-counting team at casinos around the country.

Blackjack, it turns out, is one casino game that is statistically beatable. This is largely a result of the rules that govern the dealer’s play. Card-counters take advantage of these rules, and, through careful observation of the game’s conditions, can vary their bets to maximize their chance of profit. Unfortunately, an individual counting cards must work in a fairly well-defined pattern in order to win. Though counting cards is not illegal, casinos have the right to kick out anyone they wish. Casinos keep a close eye on players, and generally when they spot the behavior of a card-counter the player is asked to leave.

The team came up with a method of play that used several people, each handling one of the card-counting tasks. By splitting their behavior this way, it was much more difficult for the casinos to spot counting behavior. The team would head for Vegas, Atlantic City or any number of riverboats and Indian casinos each weekend, usually hauling a stake of $500,000 or more. Over several years they earned their investors a profit of more than 30%, even after paying the team members. The team members, in the meantime, lived the life of high rollers, treated to free rooms, free meals and shows by the casinos, who viewed them as big-time players - while it lasted. The team viewed the casinos as large corporations, and so never feared punishment, but they did eventually learn to what extent casinos would go to protect their profits.

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Parker Palmer is an educator, speaker and researcher who has spent most of his adult life thinking about community. His latest work begins with a discussion of the necessity of individuals living lives of integrity, of being true to your inner self. He contends (and I agree) that there is a price to be paid for living a divided life, a life without integrity of purpose. Community wholeness, Parker points out, can only come after the wholeness and happiness of individuals.

The second part of the book explores ways that communities of people can support individuals. Drawing from his years of living in Quaker communities, Palmer explains the creation of “circles of trust”, discussion circles that can help individuals to explore their inner self. Members of these circles do not offer advice to one another, but rather serve the role of probing questioners, helping to guide each individual to their own decisions. While we all probably have a best friend who plays that role for us, the Quaker and other communities in which Palmer has lived offer a more formal process.

I’d highly recommend all of Palmer’s books. He’s an insightful thinker and a talented author. Reading one of his books is like sitting down for a one-on-one chat with someone who’s given a lot more thought to life than you have. Click here to see a list of Palmer’s on Amazon.

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Keith Ferrazzi has been writing a column for Fast Company Magazine, sharing his networking secrets. A master networker who counts Bill Clinton, Jack Valenti and countless other powerful people as members of his network, has some good tidbits to share. I meet a lot of people in business who believe that networking is about finding people who can do things for you - finding sales targets. Mr. Ferrazzi repeatedly makes the point that true networking is finding people for whom you can do things, with the knowledge that all of business is about give-and-take. In my opinion this is a point that can’t be made often enough. Networking is about a long-term investment in people. You have to truly care about people to be a successful networker.

Mr. Ferrazzi’s company is Ferrazzi Greenlight, http://www.ferrazzigreenlight.com/.

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Mr. Thomas recently came to Menomonie to speak at a presentation put on by the Red Cedar Peace Initiative. As a veteran of the Vietnam War who since converted to Buddhism, he offered a unique perspective. My next-door neighbors are organizers of the Menomonie peace group, and they hosted Mr. Thomas during his visit. I happened to be at the computer in my office, which overlooks the street, when Mr. Thomas and his assistant arrived. He was dressed in the traditional robes of a Buddhist monk, but I was immediately struck by the intensity with which he carried himself.

That evening, I arrived at the church where the talk was to be held. When my neighbor Warren introduced Mr. Thomas, I was again struck by his intensity. I’ve been to talks given by a number of Buddhist monks, and each one exuded the calm, peaceful manner that is the stereotype of any monk, Buddhist or otherwise I guess. Mr. Thomas, though, didn’t. When I described it to Kathleen later, the best description I could come up with was that he looked like an Army drill instructor crossed with a Buddhist monk. He sucked on an enormous jawbreaker through the entire talk, and he paced back and forth like someone who just didn’t have enough time to accomplish all he wished for.

After an average, but abusive, childhood in Pennsylvania, Mr. Thomas joined the army at 17, volunteering for duty in Vietnam. Upon arrival in-country, he became a helicopter mechanic, then crew-chief. In those positions, one of his responsibilities was to serve as the door-gunner on flight missions. If you’re familiar at all with the Vietnam War, you know that the people in those positions were the people in a position to do a lot of killing. Mr. Thomas was blunt about what he did during the war, graphically enough that some people in the audience squirmed with discomfort. They weren’t hearing, I’m sure, the kind of talk they expected from a monk.

When Mr. Thomas returned to the states from his tour in Vietnam, he experienced the difficult homecoming that so many veterans of that war did. Having been trained and encouraged to kill at will, he found himself in a society that frowned on that a bit. He got heavily into drugs and alcohol. Along the way he married, fathered a son, left, and wandered from job to job. After years of this, he finally began counseling, and during a session his counselor suggested he go to a Buddhist retreat for veterans. He did so, only to find that the retreat leader was Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk. With the shock of seeing a Vietnamese person in charge of his healing retreat, he got off to a rocky start. He stuck with it though, and eventually ended up living at Plum Village, the retreat center run by Thich Nhat Hanh. Over time, he decided to pursue ordination as a Zen Priest. Since that time, he’s traveled the world leading retreats and pilgrimages focused on peace and non-violence.

During the Q&A after the talk, I was surprised to find that there were a number of Vietnam vets in the audience. Mr. Thomas spoke very frankly about the fact that the war has never left him - since returning to the U.S. in 1972, he’s not slept more than 2 hours straight due to nightmares. My initial reaction was “Gee, that doesn’t sound like someone at peace,” but as he explained finding peace with yourself isn’t accomplished by fixing everything you don’t like, but accepting that some things won’t change, at least not immediately, and therefore finding ways to incorporate that into your life.

One last thing I’ll mention. One of the central precepts of meditation is focusing on your breath, letting your mind go free. In explaining that, Mr. Thomas performed a demonstration that impressed me for it’s simplicity in communicating the message. He talked about how it’s hard to remember what’s important in the rush of day-to-day life. He asked the audience “What’s the most important thing to you?” He got answers like “My family,” “my spouse,” “peace,” etc. He then had his assistant come up to help him, and he told the audience “Imagine for a moment you’re me.” His assistant covered his mouth and nose so he couldn’t breathe. He stood quietly like that for 30 seconds or so, then pulled his assistant’s hands away from his face and took a big breath of air. “In that moment, what was the most important thing to me? My next breath. The thing is, that’s always the most important thing - without that next breath, nothing matters, not your family, not your spouse, nothing. Take time each day to just take that next breath.”

Anyway, the book is just slightly longer than this entry, so pick up a copy and read it. He speaks of peace from the perspective of someone who knows what war really is. You can learn more about Mr. Thomas at his web site, http://www.zaltho.org/

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Malcolm Gladwell does it again. His first work, The Tipping Point, became a hot bestseller during the internet craze in the 1990s. His second book, Blink, discusses how people make rapid decisions, and the ramifications of those decisions. Contrary to what you might think, he makes the case that it’s sometimes possible to make better decisions by gathering and evaluating less data. Overall, this book is a good look at part of the decision-making process. I think there’s a lot of information here that’s important to policy-makers and other leaders with a need to get people behind their decisions.

You can check out a number of Gladwell’s New Yorker articles for free at his web site, http://www.gladwell.com.