103. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

This is a great novel by Barbara Kingsolver about a missionary family (the Prices) that goes to the Congo in the 1960's. The story is narrated by the five women of the Price family: the mother, Orleanna; Rachel; Leah and Adah (twins); and Ruth May.
Each girl goes through her own struggle as she tries to adapt to the African village and to her father's issues with women and borderline narcissism. I could relate to the girls' struggle based on my experiences when I went to live in Benin when I was in seventh grade (in the story, the girls actually visit Benin and go to some of the same places that I did - I was thrilled, it was quite accurate). This part in particular made me smile - Rachel is upset that her father, the overzealous Baptist minister, seems to want to stay in the Congo forever. It reminded me a little of myself back then, melodrama and all:

I screamed and kicked the furniture until one whole leg came off the table and threw a hissy fit they could probably hear all the way to Egypt. Listen, what else can a girl to but try. Stay here? When everybody else gets to go home and do the bunny hop and drink Cokes? It is a sheer tapestry of justice.

This part made me laugh out loud (also, from Rachel):

I stood and prayed to the Lord Jesus if he was listening to take me home to Georgia, where I could sit down in a White Castle and order a hamburger without having to see its eyes roll back in its head and the blood come spurting out of its corpse.

The girls' father is determined to stay in the Congo and "dunk the head of every last person in that village into the river." But after the youngest daughter (Ruth May) dies, and the women realize that they have worn out their welcome in the village, they give up and each go their separate ways.
To me, this is where the story got the most interesting. Rachel stays in the Congo - though she seems to have the most contempt for Africa out of everyone in the family. She is very beautiful and conceited - characteristics that probably ultimately help her run the hotel that she opens in the Congo.

Of course you have to look the other way when the train goes by the townships, because those people don't have any perspective of what good scenery is, that's for sure. They will make their houses out of a piece of rusted tin or the side of a crate - and leave the writing part on the outside for all to see! But you just have to try to understand, they don't have the same ethics as us. That is one part of living here. Being understanding of the differences.

Adah ends up going to school at Emory and becomes a successful epidemiologist. Leah marries a Congolese named Anatole and has four boys with him. Leah works tirelessly with Anatole to improve the lives of the Congolese and, of the four daughters, she is the most upset about the cultural arrogance of the West.

I wake up in love, and work my skin to darkness under the equatorial sun. I look at my four boys, who are the colors of silt, loam, dust, and clay, an infinite palette for children of their own, and I understand that time erases whiteness all together.

At one point, Leah and Anatole visit Adah in Atlanta. Being in Atlanta now, I had to appreciate this part:

[Anatole] laughs out loud at the nearly naked women on giant billboards, and befriends the bums who inhabit the street corners of Atlanta, asking them detailed questions about where they sleep and how they kill their food. The answers are interesting. You might be surprised to know how many pigeons roosting in the eaves of Atlanta's Public Library have ended up roasting over fires in Grant Park.

Classic - don't you love the alliteration in "roosting" and "roasting"?! The character development of Rachel, Adah, and Leah is wonderful. The only bad thing I can say about this book is that it was waaaay too long. Almost 550 pages! But if you have the time and/or the patience, it's a wonderful work of fiction - one that really makes you think.

102. The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions, and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace - Shaunti Feldhahn

I would sum this book up as the workplace edition of Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. Written by Shaunti Feldhahn (she also wrote the For Women Only and For Men Only series), this book is based on confidential interviews that she conducted with more than three thousand men about how men tend to think in work environments. Some of the information is basic - for example, it's almost common knowledge now that women are often better at multi-tasking, while men tend to have one-track minds. But Feldhahn explores this issue a bit deeper (and uses a great analogy of women being like a computer that can have many windows open at once that you can click and switch between; and men being like a computer than can only have one window open at a time, and you have to close one before you can open another) by explaining how this can affect how men and women in the workplace. For example, we know that women (generally) tend to be more emotional than men. But because men have more of a one-track mind, when a man perceives a woman as being emotional about something at work, he is more likely to assume that she is not getting work done because he figures that she is like him and can't do more than one thing at one time (i.e. be emotional and be effective at work).
Further, men are much more likely to perceive someone who is emotional as violating the rules of the business world - i.e. being "unbusinesslike." So what's the moral of the story, per Feldhahn? "If something might evoke personal world, don't let a man see it."

Here's a passage from the chapter on emotion:

The issue of managing emotion was one of the top topics that came up in my interviews; men clearly thought that an inability to manage emotion well was a way talented women sometimes shot themselves in the foot. Yet these same men often commended women for their superior empathetic, listening, and interpersonal skills. In short, many men clearly saw the benefits of someone who was "relational" but not "emotional."

Another interesting point that Feldhahn made is that women to be very interested in the process, and men tend to be more interested in the end result. So if an associate is explaining his or her research to a male partner, the partner is much more likely to be interested in the very narrow answer to his question, rather than, "Well, I didn't find anything here, so I checked this resource, but then I had to ask this partner this question because ... and then ultimately I found ..." As one man in Feldhahn's survey put it: "Don't tell me about the pain; just show me the baby!"

Oh - and what about the short skirts and low-cut tops in the workplace?! Even if you don't think your male colleague is looking at your body ... he probably is.

Neuroscientists have consistently found that more areas of the male brain are devoted to visual-spatial processing than in the female brain. By contrast, more areas of the female brain are devoted to verbal and emotional processing. Where a woman's brain predisposes her to experience the world more relationally, a man's brain predisposes him to experience the world more visually.

On top of that - because of hormones like testosterone, men are more likely to perceive certain stimuli as sexual in the first place. So even if you think what you're wearing is "high fashion," a man is more likely to think, "She must want me to look at her chest!"

Of course some people can write off some of what's in this book as "stereotypes," "overgeneralizations," etc. - but to that I say take from it what you will. I'd definitely recommend it to any working woman.

101. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

This classic business and self-improvement book was first published in 1937, and is arguably one of the most famous self-improvement books today (more than 30 million copies have been sold). It is based on author Napoleon Hill's prior work, The Law of Success, which was the result of research on Hill's close association with people who achieved great wealth during their lifetimes like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles Schwab. Apparently, Andrew Carnegie asked Hill to study the characteristics of these men, and from this Hill developed 15 laws of success and 13 principles of personal achievement.
Some of Hill's "laws" are admittedly a bit "obvious": desire, faith, persistence, etc. But the anecdotes from men like those mentioned above certainly do make this a great read. Also, Hill combines these laws with concrete, practical steps by which by which "desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent."
One of my favorite chapters discusses the "six basic fears" that are centered around negative emotions and can hold you back from achieving success. They are: the fear of poverty; the fear of criticism; the fear of ill health; the fear of loss of love; the fear of old age; and the fear of death.
There's also a great chapter called "The Mystery of Sex Transmutation." From that chapter:

Sex, alone, is a mighty urge to action, but its forces are like a cyclone--they are often uncontrollable. When the emotion of love begins to mix itself with the emotion of sex, the result is calmness of purpose, poise, accuracy of judgment, and balance .... When driven by his desire to please a woman, based solely upon the emotion of sex, a man may be, and usually is, capable of great achievement, but his actions may be disorganized, distorted, and totally destructive. When driven by his desire to please a woman, based upon the motive of sex alone, a man may steal, cheat, and even commit murder. But when the emotion of LOVE is mixed with the emotion of sex, that same man will guide his actions with more sanity, balance, and reason.

After I read this book, I realized that all other business/self-improvement books I've read get their wisdom from this one. So instead of reading all the other ones that are out there, just check out this must-read classic.