Book Review: The Sex Lives of Cannibals

In The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost, Maarten spends a couple years with his girlfriend living in the little-known country of Kiribati on the also little-known island of Tarawa. His tales of adventure and, more frequently, misadventure are entertaining and frankly somewhat hard to believe as a first-world dweller. Had I not been to Africa a couple of times, I think I definitely would have been questioning some of the stories. I definitely enjoyed the stories of travels - and the book has definitely itched my travel bug (probably partially combined with summertime as well). The book left me dreaming of travels, adventures, and blue seas with sandy beaches. The ending was also hilarious, as the couple tries to blend back into their American lives, taking a bit of time to adjust.

Book Review: Gang Leader for a Day

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh is a true story in which Sudhir, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, befriends a gang leader to study how the gang functions within its community. (Sudhir is also the sociologist whose gang research is referenced in Freakonomics.) Sudhir hangs out with the gang leader for 6 years, learning many of the ins and outs of life in a gang and life in the projects of Chicago. Sudhir works to understand the finances of the gang and the roles played by the gang in the community. Sudhir also meets other leaders and members of the gang, as well as members of the project community, and gains an insight into their lives not typically seen by others.

Book Review: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is a historical fiction novel set in World War II era Seattle. The main character in the book is a boy whose parents came to the US from China. In the book, he deals with cultural barriers, racism, and a war torn world. He falls in love with a Japanese girl, causing him to be practically disowned by his father. Meanwhile, the Japanese families from Seattle are all sent to internment camps to "protect" them (according to the US government). This book was not only fascinating from a historical perspective, it also told a great story of a boy growing up and finding love. The book flips between present time - the relationship between son and father, and memories from the past - and the past relationship between father and son. This is a must-read if you enjoy historical fiction!

Book Review: Basic Black

Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) by Cathie Black is the best career book I've ever read. Its target audience is women, but I think it is applicable across both genders, and there are only a couple of paragraphs in the whole book that are female specific. Cathie Black is the President of Hearst Magazines, and in this book she offers advice and anecdotes she has learned along the way.

Often I find career books, especially career books aimed at women, to be demoralizing. They seem to spend a lot of time trying to convince you that in order to get ahead you need to be someone you're not. However, I found this book to be motivating, inspiring, and genuine. Cathie coaches her readers to use their inherent strengths to their advantage.


My favorite piece of advice from the book was:
Value yourself by your aspirations, not your limitations.

Cathie shared this advice paired with her personal experiences of starting her career. When she first graduated from college, she didn't have any skills that would distinguish her from a secretary, though she defined herself by where she wanted to go, not where she currently was. This mentality helped her look for and gain job opportunities that launched her on an upward path. I think it's pretty easy for all of us to think we can't do something because we don't have a particular skill, but focusing on the positive and looking for opportunities will keep us headed in the direction we want to go.

Book Review: A Sniper in the Tower

This will be the first of a few book reviews in a row as I've gotten a little behind!

A Sniper in the Tower: The Murders of Charles Whitman is about just what it sounds like! This book is pretty fascinating, well I guess if you're fascinated by that sort of thing! Especially if you know all the sights and locations discussed in this book as it goes through Charles Whitman's life and preparations to carry out the very first random mass murder in the country, this book is captivating from beginning to end.

Probably most fascinating was that everyone seemed to think Whitman was a pretty normal and nice guy. Even decades later, his friends would still say they thought he was a very nice guy. He did have a brain tumor (found during autopsy) and he was taking some drugs (though due to being immediately embalmed, they couldn't determine if he had taken them prior to the murders), but neither of these seemed to impact his actions. His murders were calculated and planned in advance. He started typing a letter explaining why he killed his wife and mother hours before carrying out those actions, while his wife was still at work.

If you're sickly fascinated by the unthinkable, from Austin, or went to UT, you should definitely read this book! I can't wait to watch the TV special and tour the campus again with Matt so we can recount all we learned from the book!

Book Review: Same Kind of Different as Me

Same Kind of Different as Me is a great book! The book tells the stories of two men who become unlikely best friends - a wealthy art dealer and a homeless man. As I'm sure anyone who has ever provided any charitable service knows, many times the people you are serving turn out to bless you more than could have imagined, and definitely more than you'd expect. That is definitely the case in this story, as the homeless man shares his outlook on life and wisdom he has gained through his tough breaks in life.

The book also tells a different version of the homeless person's story - one you don't get from driving down an inner city street or watching the news. Often we think that the homeless are responsible for the situations they are in, and surely everyone makes choices that impact their destiny, but some people are definitely dealt a bad hand coming into this life.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I know it ain't non of my business, but does you own somethin that each one of them keys fits?" I glanced at the keys; there were about ten of them. "I suppose," I replied, not really ever having thought about it. "Are you sure you own them, or does they own you?"

"There's somethin I learned when I was homeless: Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over." (This one reminds me of being in Africa. On those trips you frequently get so far out of your comfort zone, and that is just when you see what God can do. It also makes sense out of the counter-intuitive "For when I am weak, then I am strong" of 2 Cor 12:10.)

"You was the onlyest person that looked past my skin and past my meanness and saw that there was somebody on the inside worth savin. I don't know how, but you knowed that most a' the time when I acted like a bad fella, it was just so folks wouldn't get too close. I didn't want nobody close to me. It wadn't worth the trouble... You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life."

"I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different - the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us."

The whole book also reminded me of how to really make a difference (in the life of a friend, people you're working with through a charity, people at work, whoever, wherever), you have to get out of your comfort zone and get into people's lives. It's really easy to hand out some money or some food, and those things shouldn't be overlooked because people need the basics to survive and have a sense of dignity before they can even begin to move forward in their lives. But people's lives are where changes are made, and people are messy. You gotta get in a get dirty to have a big impact, but it sure isn't easy.

Book Review: My Life in France

My Life in France is an autobiography by Julia Child mostly, as the title would indicate, about the time she and her husband spent in France after the Second World War. Before going to France, Julia and her husband Paul had recently gotten married after they met working for the US government in Asia during the war (Julia Child was actually a spy! But that didn't come out until Fall 2008 when the CIA released their old records.)

Julia didn't know how to cook at all when she married Paul and moved to France, and immediately upon arriving on French soil, she fell in love with her first French meal. After that, she took to the kitchen and enrolled at the Cordon Bleu. From the start, Julia took her cooking very seriously, yet she still had fun with it.

What I loved most about the book was Julia's passion for cooking and enjoying life. She definitely had a stop-and-smell-the-roses type of attitude about their time in France. She tried all sorts of new food items and learned how to make them and even improve upon some. Once she took up cooking and cook book writing, she was so passionate about inspiring others, making sure they had fun, and getting every last detail in the cookbook right. She would try recipes 20 or more times to make sure every detail and explanation was accurately captured! Now that's dedication!

The book made me want to slow down a bit and enjoy my surroundings, whatever they may be. It made me really glad that we have a St Louis to-do list (all of fun things) and that we're slowly ticking each one off the list!

Book Review: Julie and Julia

In Julie and Julia, Julie cooks her way through every recipe in Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. Julie is from Austin but living in The City with her husband, in a dead end temp job that turned into a permanent job. The book is laugh-out-loud funny, and some of my favorite parts is where Julie yells and cusses at Julia about her commentary on "easy" recipes in MtAoFC.

I love Julie's relationship with her husband and how he encourages her in her crazy, random goal and even helps her cook through the recipes. He knows when she is on a rampage and he needs to duck out of the way and he knows when she needs to be calmed or helped. (Sad that they are now divorced, but that happened post-book. :() OMG Their kitchen sounds so gross, especially since they are constantly feeding friends and even TV crews out of it... the part where Julie found the maggots under the dish rack made me almost nauseous and reminded me of other vivid scenes of maggots (The Dante Club definitely takes the cake - I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to put the book down; the CSI: Miami episode where maggots from a dead body in a condo come through the light fixture to the condo below takes second place).

Throughout Julie's cooking project, she blogs about her trials and tribulations and gains a wide-spread reader base (hence the book deal later). She has regular readers who become a part of her life and are very worried about her if she takes short breaks from her blogging. Her mother reads her blog and at first is very concerned and tries to convince her to stop the Julie/Julia Project. By the end of The Project however, her mother comes around. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Julie goes home to Austin and cooks for family and friends and notes that even her Texan mother was appalled at the amount of butter she was cooking with. LOL Totally like my Texan family... seriously, the only thing you can ever count on finding in their fridge is butter, multiple tubs of butter.

By the end of the Julie/Julia Project, Julie is still in her dead end job, but has found a sense of passion and purpose in her life. (And gets a book deal!) This book made me want to try some more adventurous recipes in the kitchen instead of my usual easy faves... and it probably helped that I was reading this when we tackled the Pupcake Project in Florida!

Book Review: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman is about what psychological forces frequently cause people to make bad decisions. Turns out, our decisions are often unduly shaped by commitments and expectations. It makes sense when you think about it - frequently we get so wrapped up in a situation, that it's hard to take a step back and think about it completely logically. Among many examples used in the book (a deadly plane crash, a new coaching strategy for the Florida Gators, and a lot more - I mean, enough to fill a book!) they also talk about decisions we make while driving in traffic, like quickly swerving around a slow car we can't see around it and it really wouldn't hurt us at all to wait a few extra seconds.

Based on the findings of this book, I've decided that I'm going to act and think young, think that everyone I meet is really attractive, and drive dangerously. Apparently, 'feeling' old actually makes you age faster, and thinking that someone is attractive would causes you to unknowingly send signals that would make them like you too. There was also a story about men walking over a bridge and then meeting a woman at the end of it and she gives her phone number to them. The ones that went over a shaky bridge were extremely more likely to call her than the ones who went on the steady bridge because the anxiety and adrenaline caused by the scary bridge were much like the feelings of falling in love. So, if I want a guy to like me, maybe I need to almost get us killed in a car wreck? Sounds like a fine plan to me. So ta-da! The magic formula for being young forever, making friends, and finding true love. I'm so glad I have that all figured out.

The book talks a lot about taking a step back and looking at situations from a long-term perspective. I think this is especially applicable in our current economy. I know it sucks, but these things are cyclical! You can't worry too much about your 401k or stock accounts dive bombing because they're going to go on many-a roller coaster ride before we retire (this sentence obviously aimed at those in my age demographic). You have to stay focused on what is best for your long-term goals. Similarly, if you're committed to a project, situation, or way of doing things, sometimes it seems like you're in too deep to turn the ship around. However, if you take a perspective of an outsider or devil's advocate, it frequently becomes a lot easier to see the best path forward.

These are just a few things that I found pretty interesting - the book is full of findings from studies basically about what makes people tick. The book is a quick read and interesting, so if you see it at the store or library, I'd recommend picking it up and giving it a flip-through!

Book Review: The Audacity of Hope

Our most recent book club book was The Audacity of Hope.  We actually just had our cross-continental meeting about it today, and at the beginning I felt the need to warn Farrah (the newest member of our book club who worked for a think tank while she was getting a masters in some sort of international politics degree) that this book club might not be quite as intellectual as she is hoping.  Our book club (over 2 years running!) meetings usually include about 10-20 minutes of book review and discussion and then 40 minutes of girl talk.  When we were scheduling the meeting, Farrah was concerned that she had a hard stop an hour after the start of our meeting.  Oh Farrah, you need not worry!

Anyway, back to the book.  For anyone who hasn’t read The Audacity of Hope, I highly recommend it!  Regardless of your political affiliations, I think it’s interesting and useful to know the standings of our President-Elect. 

Before reading the book, I was already an Obama fan.  I voted for him for three main reasons:

1) He inspires people, which I think our country needs right now (as evidence, see record voter turn out statistics)

2) He comes across as well-spoken and fair, which I think our world needs right now (I’ve always thought that if G. W. Bush worked for my company, we wouldn’t be able to put him in front of a client because, regardless of whatever intelligence he may or may not have, he sounds like an idiot)

3)    The Republicans have effed everything up for 8 years and someone else should have a shot at it, for better or for worse

After reading the book, I went from liking and respecting Obama to loving Obama.  Being fairly moderate in my political beliefs, I was relieved to find that most of Obama’s standings are fairly moderate as well.  Even more relieving, he seems to genuinely consider any counter-arguments to his platforms.  There were several stories he shared in the book about times he encountered people with very different beliefs than his.  Each time he considered their stories and input and recalled them in the future when making decisions.

One of my favorite quotes of the book is actually Obama quoting Warren Buffett:

The free market’s the best mechanism ever devised to put resources to their most efficient and productive use.  The government isn’t particularly good at that.  But the market isn’t so good at making sure that the wealth that’s produced is being distributed fairly or wisely.  Some of that wealth has to be plowed back into education, so that the next generation has a fair chance, and to maintain our infrastructure, and provide some sort of safety net for those who lose out in a market economy.  And it just makes sense that those of us who’ve benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share.  *

Another point that ties in with this and wasn’t explicitly stated in the book, but was somewhat of an underlying theme, is that something needs to be done to keep our middle class afloat.  Over the past decades, we’ve seen a shrinking middle class and growing lower class.  It’s become increasingly harder for a single-working-person family to make ends meet.  I think the middle class is the stabilization of our economy.  A strong middle class means lots of discretionary income.  Discretionary income also gives people a bit of cushion between the ups and downs in life, a little bit of padding to try something new and think outside of the box.  While I don’t think the answer is to completely stop moving certain types of jobs overseas (globalization is here, there’s no stopping it – we can choose to change our businesses accordingly and stay competitive, or our businesses can all die a slow death), I do think that the circumstances can be made better for the employees losing their jobs.  The companies and/or government can offer a stronger safety net, retrain employees for a different type of job with equal pay.  During our book club meeting, Rose had a great example of this.  Her dad’s hometown used to be a factory town, but then the factory closed.  Lots of years later, Dole has opened a food processing plant there, reusing some of the same factory buildings and employing the aid of nearby universities to do research.  Granted there was a big time gap in this example, but it wouldn’t have to be that way.

Anyway, I could go on forever, but I’m tired!  Moral of this very long post is: Obama sure has his work cut out for him!  But honestly I think he’s just the man for the job.  There were a few times in the book when Obama referenced meeting people around Illinois and on occasion people would say to him in more or less words, “Please don’t let us down.”  I think 60% of the people in the country are holding their breath, thinking the same thing.  The stakes are too high.  Please don’t let us down.

*Most right-wing people don't like this idea of wealth redistribution.  I certainly would agree that there have to be 'incentives' for succeeding in the market economy.  However most of those right-wing people also claim to be Christians, so I would like to remind them of the following:

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." -Luke 12:48