What TNW is reading (week 6)

Ah, welcome welcome. I see you enjoyed last week’s edition and are back for more. Well we won’t disappoint. For the uninitiated (go back and start at post one, please) the team at TNW has made a New Year’s Resolution to read a bit more. So every week, a select number of our team will be sharing with you what’s currently living on their nightstand, or saved in Pocket, or is sitting in that browser tab begging to be read.

This week we have pearls of wisdom from Tina Fey, the rise, fall and who-knows-what-will-happen-next story of Yahoo, a riveting read on a time-traveling mercenary and a thought piece on whether the globe trotting Fashion Week is about to become a thing of the past.

Bossypants – Tina Fey

If you want to actually laugh out loud, like the good old days, I highly recommend picking up Tina Fey’s Bossypants.

She is honest, blunt and to the point about growing up clueless and dealing with being a working mom and comedic star. She talks about her own insecurities and her uphill battle with the man and men in general. You can’t help but love her for sharing a bit of herself whilst also trying to give us all a few tips on how to get by.

It’s not a tell-all biography and it’s not one big joke, it’s Tina through and through. Whether you love her from SNL and 30 Rock or you live under a rock this is a must read!

– Brittany Emery, Campaign Manager

Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! – Nicholas Carlson

I just finished reading Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! by Nicholas Carlson which I can highly recommend to every entrepreneur or anyone who went online between 1995 and 2005 and followed online developments around that time.

It is a very entertaining read with lots of juicy details of what went on at the company. If often feels like being in the room when amazing things were happening and you’ll almost feel the tension or embarrassment that those people present must have felt. The fact that the book ends but the story continues for Marissa and Yahoo! makes it even more intriguing to read.

I look forward to reading part II in a few years, and wonder if we will ever see the final chapter.

– Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, CEO

The Use of Weapons – Ian M. Banks

The Use of Weapons is part of the Culture series – a set of novels first penned in the late 80s and halted only recently when the author was wrested from us by cancer in 2013. Occurring thousands of years apart, all of the novels take place in the same utopian, post-scarcity society of humanoids and aliens, living in semi-anarchist habitats across a galaxy and overseen by sentient machines.

While that’s a great deal to take in, all you really need to know is that The Use of Weapons tells the story of a mercenary, hired by the Culture, to dabble in less-advanced societal affairs through war. But this is certainly no war novel.

The setting that Banks chose for this novel allows him to tell the story of an individual who has lived, loved, waged wars and died across a spectrum of civilisations that stretch from shamanic tribes to hyper-advanced; allowing us to catch a glimpse, not just into the life of a paid soldier, but into the different role that war could play across cultures separated by space and time.

Physical fighting aside, The Use of Weapons is an elegantly constructed tale of the destruction of a human soul, told in true postmodern fashion, and compelling to read until the very end.

– Matthew Elworthy, Marketing Manager for TNW Events

Is This the End for Fashion Week? – The Atlantic

I recently picked up Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. Sadly, I haven’t made it too far into the first chapter. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of time.

If it’s not in blog (or picture!) form, I probably haven’t seen it. I did, however, read a recent article on one of my secret passions: fashion design. In my early 20’s I was accepted to fashion design school.

While you won’t find my designs in a Vogue near you, I still try to keep up with the latest news. So when I saw The Atlantic’s ‘Is This the End for Fashion Week?’ I was intrigued… is this really the end? Read for yourself.

– Lauren Gilmore, Commissioning Editor

This is a #TNWLife article, a look into the lives of those that work at The Next Web.