Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog (John Grogan) Rating: Comment: Dog lovers can easily identify with this story. The author celebrated the life of Marley with 3 million over readers! You never how much a dog, which is very much an integral part of a family, make a difference until they are no longer around.

Just finish the book “Marley & Me“. This is a simple book, telling the life of Marley, a labrador retriever with his family. Dog owners and lover can easily identify with the book. It help me to recall all the good times of Toby as well. There’re times where some will think I am probably too emotionally attached to the dog, but this book really identify with my family feelings of losing our beloved pet. We never know how much a dog plays a part in your family, until when he no longer around.

My family likes to gather in my room aka Toby’s room. Everytime my sister come back, the first stop will be to my room, to say hello to Toby. Often you find him change in one motion from sleeping to jumping around. My mother often come into my room to have a chat with him and feed him medicine, and his first reaction will be to bark at my mother, because he doesn’t like eating medicine. Even til his last day, he repeated the same feat jump off the bed and bark at my mum. From there he will tail me all around the house, refusing to be leave alone… So now it is weird, no one tailing me, no dog barking at my mother, my sister find the new routine of coming to my room a little awkward…

Dog is an extremely loyal animal. I used to have another dog, called Bobby, he will sent you to the bus stop, wait with you. Ensure you board the bus, before he goes home. But they are often the most neglected one in the family, sometimes we play with them when we want, when we are busy we chuck them aside. But they love their owners unconditionally. Many people is not aware of the commitment it takes care of a dog. They are forever babies, entirely dependent on you! And the tough thing is you will almost always outlive your pet, so you got to be brave to face the day when he/she say goodbye! Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to finding another family friend aka dog.

From Publishers Weekly
The premise behind Roam’s book is simple: anybody with a pen and a scrap of paper can use visual thinking to work through complex business ideas. Management consultant and lecturer Roam begins with a watershed moment: asked, at the last minute, to give a talk to top government officials, he sketched a diagram on a napkin. The clarity and power of that image allowed him to communicate directly with his audience. From this starting point, Roam has developed a remarkably comprehensive system of ideas. Everything in the book is broken down into steps, providing the reader with tools and rules to facilitate picture making. There are the four steps of visual thinking, the six ways of seeing and the SQVID– a clumsy acronym for a full brain visual work out designed to focus ideas. Nonetheless, for forward-thinking management types, there is enough content in these pages to drive many a brainstorming session. Illus. (Mar 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

My Take: This book is absolutely simple and fun to read, but equally convincing how the techniques can be apply to our modem day world of problem-solving. Recently I had an ecounter, where a simple slide of key items in a presentation, works so much better than 10 of slides trying to describe the matter. And more importantly this book follow the natural pattern of how our brain function, making the methods straight-foward and natural to follow.

There are some great resources on the book site, including some quick sheets.