Agent Palmer

Five-Point Play is an uncommon book about leadership in that it doesn’t preach. It is written by Duke Blue Devils Basketball Hall of Fame Coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) with Donald T. Phillips, and it documents the 2000-01 season from the preseason to the 2001 National Championship.

The premier philosophy featured in this book is Coach K’s “The Fist.” The Fist has five points, thus the title of the book: Communication, Trust, Care, Collective Responsibility, and Pride.

In order to discuss paring down one’s own personal library of books, it is important to recognize two important facts, especially for the avid reader. One: there is no such thing as a complete library; and two: having too many books is a binary experience. You either have too few or too many. There is no in between.

So with that in mind, why am I writing a post about purging books? Because I found that I had too many, and so I went searching for ways to decide how to shrink my personal library.

It’s easy to say there were 10 things I learned or was excited to read within The Creative Act. Truthfully, I made 28 notes reading it cover to cover. Perhaps at another time I would have made 18 or 48. This book is unique.

While it is, in fact, a linear read about the inspirations, actions, energies, meditations, collaborations, and many other pieces that form the act of creating art, I kept getting the feeling that this stuff could just be picked up at any time and any piece might hit you as important.

I don’t know why I have this book. But more curiously, I don’t know why I knew some of the stories within it. 

You see, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell is basically stories and reformatted blog posts from author Tucker Max’s blog. I didn’t read Max’s blog, I didn’t know who he is, and yet, I knew the stories. Perhaps they were “viral” before we were really using that term.