Four Great Books I Bought While in Taiwan 201.0

Four interesting books to support a habit that is almost a vice

As is my habit, I visited the biggest bookstore in town and ended up buying two books.

In Taipei, the biggest is Eslite Bookstore sitting on 8,000 square meters in its own Mall on Xinyi. It has many branches in Taipei and all over the island of Taiwan.

In other Asian cities, these must-visits are for Swindon’s on Lock Street in Tsimshatsui, Hongkong, for the Kinokuniya stores in Ngee An City, Orchard Road in Singapore, in the Emporium on Sukhumvit in Bangkok, and the Petronas Towers in KL. I still get a discount in Swindon’s, Hongkong.

I was in Taipei from April 15 – 18, 2010 to attend the 7th Asialics Conference.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, and David Meerman Scott (Hardcover – Oct. 19, 2009) is well recommended for innovative marketing with social media including blogging.

I have long wanted to buy Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller since it was first published in early 2009 if only because the two authors denote a potent combination. I finally spotted the new paperback edition (Feb. 21, 2010) in Eslite and just grabbed it.

I also bought two well recommended books off my Kindle for Mac while in Taipei.

Beyond Late Development: Taiwan’s Upgrading Policies by Alice H. Amsden and Wan-wen Chu (Kindle Edition – June 1, 2003). One of the authors, the very impressive Professor Wen-Wen Chu, was a roundtable speaker at the conclusion 7th Asialics. I thought her uncluttered mind and logical, extemporaneous talk on a subject that is of great interest to me and SYNTHESiST – second-mover advantage and how Taiwan took advantage of it in the 1970s -1990s – made the book a great buy.

Finally, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli (Kindle Edition – Apr. 1, 2009) came very well recommended by Dr. Jos Leitjen, a Dutch innovation scholar based in Belgium. He recommended the book, over late lunch of Vietnamese noodles and the usual stimulating conversation with Dr. Dinesh Abrol, as a great story that teaches from a unique perspective.

So these four books are my loot from Taipei.

It was great to find the impressively large Eslite Bookstore thriving in a modern Mall in Taipei. The Chinese have always had great respect for knowledge and teachers.

Maybe, it helps that most of the books are in Chinese and still not vulnerable to Amazon’s Kindle and the Apple’s iPad for now.

With copies of the papers’ read, two of which, I intend to comment on and one interesting post on the new, dangerous fruits of Thailand, I have a treasure trove of new information to build into my Pages on Innovation and on Change.