As a teaser, here’s a story that seems small but strikes deep (Publishers Weekly): Kindle owners in the US are now enabled to borrow e-books from some 11,000 public libraries over there. The stats of e-book borrowing are staggering, growing insanely and worth the read.

So much material, so little time. We wish we could bundle all this in a PDF and print it – OK, maybe that’s passé, so we’d read the PDF in an iPad.

Meanwhile, Europe is apparently playing catch-up in e-books, according to the NYT. Interesting to try to draw conclusions about Brazil.

Kevin Kelly’s 2008 post “The Fate of The Book” predicted much of the debate. Very interesting and full of links to other interesting people, although to read it all you’d need a constant flow of Brazilian-style holidays such as the one starting tomorrow (it’s a double-holiday joining with a weekend starting tomorrow – more accurately tonight).

He also wrote a piece for the Smithsonian Magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue. The issue (Aug. 2010) had 40 pieces with views of the future, and to check out the other 39 texts click here. Some seem interesting.

Mr. Kelly spoke at the 2011 TOC (Tools of Change) Conference, which he thinks is a great place to discuss the future of the ebook. Here’s the 26-minute talk:

Finally, this post has KK staring at a real library and having “second thoughts”.

“Wait a second”, loyal readers say, “aren’t you the guys who live-blogged the 2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting?” Yes… but there were three of us at that meeting (we note that all travel expenses for that meeting were borne by the analysts themselves). The blogger – yours truly – was in his third trip to Omaha and relied on the other two to share their thoughts later.

From the Farnam Street blog comes an article about the advantages of reading/ thinking alone in some situations. While teamwork is vital, and we can’t stress enough how much we believe in it and foster it internally, it doesn’t exclude the need for the occasional time for reflexive/ deep thinking by oneself.

Finally, in our Feb. 2011 post called “Aha! moments vs. strategy”, we alluded to the “calm state of mind that precedes insight” part of that story by repeating Charlie Munger’s quote about his habits: “We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.”

It won’t work for everyone, it won’t work every time, but one should try it.

A post on Seth Godin’s blog over Mother’s Day weekend had one sentence that “clicked” right away: “The best ideas come out of the corner of our eye, the edge of our consciousness, in a flash. They are the result of misdirection and random collisions (…)”

Nicholas Nassim Taleb had this to say about going to parties: “Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.”

From a recent NYT article on the American University in Cairo and how it challenges students to “unlearn” in the first year: “Who am I? What does it mean to be human? These are the kinds of questions posed to undergraduate students entering this 90-year-old university during what the president, David D. Arnold, called a first year of “disorientation.” During disorientation, the students — 85 percent of them Egyptians — are taught to learn in ways quite at odds with the traditional method of teaching in this country, where instructors lecture, students memorize and tests are exercises in regurgitation.”

Charlie Munger has always talked about this: “Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”

We’re sure we could come up with more “pieces” to this puzzle, and so could you, but we’ll let Mr. Munger himself sum it up perfectly for us:

“Experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables. And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.”

There are many ways to “be prepared”, so here’s one: Build your own mental models with discipline and drive, sourcing as diversely as possible but always focusing on what’s really relevant, collaborating with a team of bright people both inside and outside your firm – better yet, people brighter than you.

It’s hard, patient, disciplined and long-term work, but it’s well worth it.

Hey, it’s free!

That said, the “Is it remarkable?” question is applicable in far more walks of life than just product development. Investment insights? Check. Content strategy for a website? Yep, that too.

See the video inside, it’s worth it.