The Library of Alexandria

119. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire

2011-01-27T20:17:00.002-05:00

[currently reading]

118. The Next Big Story: My Journey Through The Land of Possibilities - Soledad O'Brien

2011-01-02T18:21:00.004-05:00

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I'm a huge CNN junkie - so naturally I had to read the autobiography of one of my favorite anchors (I woke up to her on American Morning every morning when I was in law school). I also had to get it autographed when she was doing a book signing at the CNN Center!

Soledad (I can call her that - she told me when I met her :) ) shares her life story - from growing up in an all-white town in Long Island as the daughter of a white man from Australia and a black woman from Cuba - to her discovery of her true calling to become a journalist - to her amazing stories from working at CNN, including her Black in America and Latino in America documentaries.

One of the stories that stood on the most to me was when she was discussing with Rev. Jesse Jackson how CNN needed more black anchors. He started ranting and saying that there were no black anchors on the network at all. Soledad interrupts him to remind him that she's the anchor of American Morning (which he knew - he had been a guest on the show!). "He looks me in the eye and reaches his fingers over to tap a spot of skin on my right hand. He shakes his head. 'You don't count,' he says." Apparently she spoke to him later and found out that he honestly didn't know that she was black. Her point was poignant: "That is how precise the game of race is played in our country, that we are so easily reduced to our skin tone. That even someone as prominent in African-American society as Reverend Jackson has one box to check for black and one for white. No one gets to be in between."

Soledad's stories from New Orleans after Katrina and from Haiti after the earthquake brought tears to my eyes. I love one point she made about Haiti: "It is almost as if the Americans are responding to a disaster in this nearby foreign country as a way of making up for Katrina. The land is peopled up by another group of black folks crying out for help. There is something about this that feels a bit redemptive, like folks who just took matters into their own hands and collectively screamed: We care."

My only complaint is the writing style - I usually love the writing styles of journalists (Malcolm Gladwell, Anderson Cooper), but I found the style of this book a bit choppy. Still the life story of someone who can identify as black, Latina, and Irish; who grew up as one of six kids, every single one of whom went to Harvard; and who is an amazing journalist would of course give rise to a great book - and it definitely did.

117. Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man - Steve Harvey

2010-12-16T23:26:00.008-05:00

As much as my mom and I loved Steve Harvey's last book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, (she still quotes from it like it's the Bible!), I pre-ordered this book on Amazon as soon as I heard about it. I should have known that the second is never as good as the first.

The main crux of this book is to explain what motivates men - and how women can use that to get more of what they need from relationships. In my opinion, one of the better chapters was on how to minimize nagging (something that, according to my boyfriend, I could use some help with!). Something as simple as a man saying he'll do the dishes can turn into a huge argument if his woman goes into the kitchen at 10 p.m. and sees that they're not done. A lot of women would blow up - which, of course, would ruin the mood for everyone. But Harvey gives advice on how to talk to a man in a way that moves him to action - and keeps the peace. Although sometimes commonsensical, Harvey gives some advice that's good to remember: adjust your tone, let your man get to what needs to be done in his own time, choose your bottles, understand what's a priority for men, and don't take over the task - especially with an attitude.

There was also a great chapter on how showing some gratitude can go a long way. "[M]en and women are both expert on taking each other for granted. We treat the everyday efforts we make on behalf of each other as commonplace - something as unnoticeable as our own heartbeats. But just like we praise God for waking us up every morning with the blood still pumping though our veins, we could stand to look our partners in the eyes and say, 'thank you for all that you do.'" SO true!

Harvey also discusses other topics: how women need to get over the whole "men are intimidated by me because I'm successful" thing (it's more because if a woman keeps saying that she has everything and doesn't need a man - then she probably doesn't); and how if you're single and looking, "presentation is everything" (don't write it off: he makes good points).

The reason I don't rave about this book is that it seems that Harvey was just trying to publish another book while he is still hot, knowing that women (like me) who loved the first one would run to buy the second one. However, he didn't say much of anything new. It wasn't a waste of time to read it - but it was probably a waste of money to have bought it.

116. Love Your Life: Living Happy, Healthy, and Whole - Victoria Osteen

2010-12-16T23:23:00.004-05:00

I'm a huge fan of Joel Osteen, so I figured I'd be willing to give his wife's book a shot. While it wasn't a complete waste of time or money, I have to be honest and say that Victoria definitely didn't discuss anything new or groundbreaking. This was a pretty run-of-the-mill "self-help" book for women from a Christian perspective. She gives a lot of general advice about things like well-balanced relationships, gaining confidence, and keeping the right perspective on life through various anecdotes and stories from the Bible.

I have to admit that there were a few stories that really touched me. In the chapter about living with confidence, Victoria tells the story about Miss USA competing in the Miss Universe pageant in 2007. During the evening gown competition, she fell on her "backside" in front of the entire ... well, universe! But she got right back up and finished her walk. During the final phase of the competition, a judge asked her: "If you could relive any moment in your life, what moment would you relive?" How many of us would have immediately said something like, "I'd like to relive my life about ten minutes ago in a different pair of heels?" So many times we want to relive our mistakes or our embarrassing moments. But Miss USA talked about reliving the time that she worked with orphans in South Africa. She chose instead to focus on her strengths and relive those instead of focusing on her weaknesses. What a great lesson!

Victoria also gives some great lessons about having patience and communicating well in relationships. One part that really stuck with me is when she said, "Our relationships are precious, valuable treasures from heaven, and we should handle them carefully, always looking for ways to build bridges to each other's hearts. It is so important that we choose to focus on the long-term effects of our decisions instead of the gratification of the moment."

Although this was a decent book, I think the only reason it was a New York Times Bestseller was because of the name recognition from her husband. I wouldn't recommend that anyone put it on their must-read list.

115. Call Me Ted - Ted Turner

2010-11-21T23:27:00.003-05:00

It's impossible to live in Atlanta and not see the influence that Ted Turner has had over the city ... Turner Field; CNN Studios; Atlanta Braves; Atlanta Hawks. What I didn't understand is the influence that he has had over the media industry, the nation, and the world.

Turner is a man who is part narcissistic; part humanitarian; and completely fascinating. Even though he never finished college, his intelligence and experiences with his dad's billboard business led him to become one of the wealthiest men in the world. In his book, he shares stories of his tyrannical father who sent him off to boarding school at age four; his passion for sailing; his difficulty in maintaining his marriages, including his most recent marriage to Jane Fonda; and his insane idea to start a 24-hour news service (read my review of CNN: The Inside Story to learn more!).

This is a book worth reading on so many levels. The maneuvering of Turner Broadcasting taught me a lot about business. Apparently, after Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner, someone had the idea to merge with AOL during the dot com boom. By that point, Ted Turner was no longer on the Board of Directors - so he essentially wasn't running his own company anymore. AOL's stock was completely overvalued, so after the merger Turner ended up losing millions of dollars from the deal. The book also talks about the difficulties in starting CNN taught me about the media industry. I even learned more about the United Nations (who knew that he donated $1 billion to the United Nations Foundation?!).

The last paragraph in this book was so powerful:

I've often considered and joked about what I might want written on my tombstone. At one point, when I felt like I couldn't get out of the way of the press, "You can't interview me here" was a leading candidate. In the middle of my career, I considered, "Here lies Ted Turner. He never owned a broadcast network." These days, I'm leading toward "I have nothing more to say."

Ted Turner has his faults, but he is truly an amazing man. I can't recommend this book more highly.

114. CNN: The Inside Story - Hank Whittemore

2010-08-25T21:01:00.007-04:00

The fact that I read this book - about the history of CNN - proves that I'm a CNN addict! (I found it at a used bookstore in Marietta for 50 cents. It was written in 1990 ... but hey, history doesn't change!).

Most people know that Ted Turner started CNN, but they don't know all that he was up against when he did it. He had already done really well for himself after he took over his father's billboard business by investing in radio and TV stations. He got the idea in the 1970's to start a 24-hour cable TV station (back when cable TV was still pretty new) ... and absolutely everyone told him he was crazy. The "three networks" (CBS, NBC, ABC) each had yearly budgets of about $100-150 million, and CNN had a projected budget for its first year of $30 million.

The stories about how CNN got up and running were great - and the anecdotes about Turner were even better. The man is crazy - CNN wasn't even profitable yet, and he started CNN2 (now HLN) to cover all bases to exclude his competition (CNN had a one-hour news cycle - he wanted one with a 30-minute news cycle). And he definitely wasn't afraid of suing people to get what he wanted! But honestly, he's an entrepreneurial genius ... and that's why he is where he is now (I work near the CNN headquarters, Turner Broadcasting, and Turner Field ... you get the point). That's why I've decided to read his autobiography next ... honestly, this book was a bit hard to get through. The author sometimes told the same stories from several different points of view, which got a bit long. So while the stories about Turner and many of the stories about how CNN finally got off the ground were great, I think Turner's autobiography might be better than this book.

113. The Help - Kathryn Stockett

2010-08-05T10:52:00.005-04:00

Without a doubt, this book has jumped to the number one spot of my "best fiction books" list. My blog followers know that I hate reading books that are more than 400 pages long - but I couldn't put this 458-pager down. It was worth every page!

The story follows black maids and the white families they work for in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960's. It's told from the perspective of three different women. Skeeter Phelan is a white, college-educated woman who wants to be a writer, but her mother won't be happy until Skeeter's frizzy hair is tamed, she keeps lipstick on, and she finds a husband. Aibileen (my favorite) is the maid for the family of Skeeter's friend, Elizabeth Leefolt. Aibileen is an amazing and brave woman who has raised seventeen white children, but who still feels pain over the loss of her own son several years ago. Minny is Aibileen's best friend, and has a mouth on her that's gotten her fired from almost twenty different jobs. But she can cook better than anyone, so with some finagling from Aibileen, she manages to land a job working for Miss Celia - a busty blond who "wears more goo on her face than a hooker" and who the other white women in Jackson can't stand.

When Skeeter has a shot at writing a book that could get in front of the eyes of a New York editor, she decides to write anonymously about the experiences of black maids in Jackson. After the difficulty of convincing these black women with families to share their stories with an inexperienced white woman during the tumultuous '60's, Skeeter hears stories of the pain behind them being forced by their employers to use separate bathrooms - usually, out in the garage - because of "Negro diseases" and the white children they raise who call them "mama" and then grow up ordering them around and accuse them of stealing. The maids risk a lot to come together and share their stories with Skeeter, who has her own problems with her friends in the Junior League finding out what she's doing and accusing her of being an integrationist, her ailing mother, and her relationship with the son of a prominent state senator.

The dialect in which most of the book is written; the depth of the characters; the detail with which Stockett writes ... when I was at work for the past few days, all I wanted to do was run home and read this book! I couldn't recommend anything any more highly. I know this book came out last year, but Stockett lives in Atlanta and so I hope she makes a stop for a reading/signing at a local Borders; and it's already being made into a movie, so I will be first in line for tickets when it comes out!!

112. Addicted - Zane

2010-08-03T23:07:00.007-04:00

This was definitely the most disturbing book I've read in a while.
I've been hearing about the infamous Zane for years, and after going the slightly more edgy route with A Reliable Wife, I decided to give her a try.

The main character, Zoe, is a beautiful woman with the perfect life: perfect husband, children, and job. But the one thing she's missing is sexual satisfaction. Her husband, Jason, is unwilling to do more than two minutes of missionary style sex. Despite her attempts to get him to try new things and to communicate her dissatisfaction with him, Jason won't budge.

And here begins Zoe's affairs. Zoe ultimately has three affairs going on at the same time, all while she's still married to Jason. My faithful blog readers know that I usually share passages that jump out to me, but I can't even go there with this book. My mom might read this! I had heard about Zane's infamous sex scenes, but those scenes along with the anger, violence, and flat out dysfunctional people actually gave me nightmares for two nights. This book was extremely graphic (note: my best friend tells me I'm "soft," so take from that what you will). But I have to admit, the book is incredibly suspenseful - the foreshadowing is great and there are new twists and turns in every chapter. It took me a while to stop being irritated by Zane's writing style (I'm not used to a narrator saying things like "I wish that nucca would" and "Lawd only knows," but hey, I'm open) - but once I did, it was an easy read.

I'd be willing to try another Zane book down the road - but I'd need a recommendation of one that's not so violent and traumatizing.

111. Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors - Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.

2010-07-02T10:35:00.004-04:00

Come on People is based on the theme of Cosby's popular "call out" sessions where he has drawn attention to the crises among the black community in America and where he has challenged African Americans to restore their families and communities. In this book, Cosby and Poussaint give a very in-depth analysis of issues like violence, drugs, lack of education obesity, poverty, and broken families. From the chapter about violence:

Low self-esteem can cause a kid to do things that are physically and mentally self-destructive. These are lost, mixed-up youths. Kids who are depressed, angry, or suffering from mental illnesses need to get counseling. They may cry out in desperation, but they do not know how to ask for help and too often reject it when it is offered. They'd rather kill to gain a modicum of self-respect than come in from the cold.

The book is written as more of a guide than as just complaints about the state of black America. Cosby and Poussaint encourage readers to be actively involved in the education and upbringing of their children; to stay out of credit card debt; to listen to music that uplifts rather than degrades; and to take their neighborhoods back from drug dealers. In the chapter about going from poverty to prosperity, the authors encourage readers to find legitimate jobs.

Parents and caregivers, have you heard a kid say, "Well I can either flip burgers or go out here and make some real money selling drugs" ? When you hear that, do you stop that child and say, "Wait a minute, fool. You don't flip burgers for the rest of your life. You flip them to become the manager of that place. You flip burgers to move from manager to owner of the damn franchise" ?

While I appreciate the valuable suggestions on ways to overcome these hardships, it was very obvious to me while reading this book that the people who need it most would likely (sadly) not be reading. The authors tell parents to stop using the television to babysit their children; they also tell mothers whose children might admit that they are being fondled by an adult not to allow it to continue just because that adult might be helping with rent or bills. Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but would the mother who sits her kids in front of the TV and who allows her boyfriend who's paying the rent to fondler her daughter really be sitting down to read this book? I hope that it is able to reach the academics, sociologists, clergy, and teachers ... and also the target audience that really needs it.

110. A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick

2010-06-28T14:42:00.008-04:00

Don't be fooled by the chaste title and conservative cover of this book! Set in a small Wisconsin town in the early 1900's, A Reliable Wife tells the story of Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman who places an advertisement for a wife in newspapers across the country: "Country businessman seeks reliable wife. Compelled by practical not romantic reasons ..."
The woman he ends up choosing is Catherine Land - a woman who describes herself as "a simple, honest woman," though she is far from that. I don't want to give away too much, but her past is haunted by sex and lies that all tie in with her choosing to move to Wisconsin to become Ralph's wife. The crux of her plan in moving there was to slowly poison Ralph with arsenic and then to become a wealthy widow - she did not count on actually falling in love with him. But Ralph certainly harbors some twisted secrets of his own.
The plot keeps this book interesting, but the writing makes it amazing. Here is an excerpt from when Ralph is waiting for Catherine to arrive in Wisconsin at the train station:

Standing in the center of the crowd, his solitude was enormous. He felt that in all the vast and frozen space in which he lived his life- every hand needy, every heart wanting something from him- everybody had a reason to be and a place to land. Everybody but him. For him there was nothing. In all the cold and bitter world, there was not a single place for him to sit down.

And here's an example of why I said this book is not as chaste and conservative as the title and cover may make it seem:

Her blood was water. Her eyes were blind. She was not Catherine. She was not anybody. Nobody knew where she was ... She stood in the kingdom of touch, and it was ecstasy to her. They made love as if someone were watching ... She was on his bed, her clothes in ruins on the floor, and he was naked too, she lying sideways on the bed, her bones gone, he moving above and on and at her, his tongue expertly bringing her to climax so fast and so deeply that she went on rolling with warmth and pleasure as he entered her and brought himself to coming, letting out a cry as he did so, his only sound. It was his own masculinity he was making love to, which drove him as he rode inside her, rapture at his own skill, his own pleasures, the tenderness, the savagery, ripping through her as though for the first time ...

Yeah - I wasn't ready for all of that, either! I wish I could have seen my facial expressions as I was reading this book - Goolrick paints such a beautifully detailed picture of each and every scene. The only reason I'm not putting it on my top 10 list of fiction books is that many parts were too obviously written by a man. Some of the passionate scenes were beautiful, but Goolrick simply didn't capture them from a woman's perspective. If he was writing for men, then that's great - and I'd be interested to hear men's views of this book. But for me, there was only about an 80% connection. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a tasteful yet slightly edgy fiction book, this is it.

109. Planet Google - Randall Stross

2010-06-28T09:24:00.003-04:00

In Planet Google, New York Times columnist Randall Stross provides a behind-the-scenes look at Google's massively ambitious plan: to become the one-stop shop for the world's information needs. Stross explains how one of the philosophies behind Google's plan is that information should be open and accessible ... which is part of why Google hated Facebook at first (since Facebook was a "closed-network model" - meaning "the more members that Facebook signed up, and the more time that they spent within its cozy but closed confines, out of reach of Google's spider, the slower the pool of searchable information for Google to find on the open Web grew").
Stross also has a few chapters on the infamous algorithm that Google uses to process its search results. Apparently, Google is determined to have the algorithm, and not human bias, determine search results, even when (for example) anti-Semitic websites may be toward the top of the list when you search for the word "Jew." Stross also discussed the business side of Google and how company after company, including Microsoft and Yahoo, underestimated Google's technology and advertising model. Lawyers reading this book will also appreciate the brief discussion of the copyright issues brought up in the lawsuits filed against Google for scanning books into "Google Books."
Overall, there is something in here for everyone - the only downside is that some parts got a bit too tech-y for the average reader. I'm sure there is a better book about Google out there, but this one was good enough.

108. 7 Things He'll Never Tell You ... But You Need to Know - Dr. Kevin Leman

2010-05-26T21:40:00.005-04:00

In a similar vein as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, but written more for women, Dr. Kevin Leman breaks down what men need in relationships and explains how women can improve at giving it to them. I know that sounds like it's a book about how to be a subservient doormat to your man ... but it's really more a manual of how to get what you want (and deserve!) in your relationship!
Each chapter covers a different thing that men "won't tell you, but you need to know" - though I don't know that each "thing" was ever summed up in one sentence. At any rate, a common theme throughout the seven chapters is that men, at their cores, need three things: to be loved, to be respected, and to be needed.
My favorite chapter discussed men and sex. According to Dr. Leman (who, by the way, wrote this book from a very Christian perspective), sex is energizing and is the driving force behind a man. It builds his confidence and ego and improves his overall sense of well-being. "If he's in an unfulfilling job, he gets the strength to keep on doing what he's doing because he knows that there is a purpose for his work ... and a willing wife waiting as a reward at the end of his long day." Amazing how men and women can both be of the same species (scientifically speaking) but can view something like sex so differently! [Sidenote - I hope there's a book out there for men on what sex means for women!] Anyway, Dr. Leman also said this:

It's been said that women need a reason for sex. Men only need a place . . . . Men are wired by God to enjoy the feminine form. It's normal for a man who loves his wife to walk by another beautiful woman in a red dress and think, Wow, she's gorgeous. Or for him to turn his head in a restaurant to follow a young woman in a red miniskirt. The wife who thinks, How could you? That's so dirty! is missing the point. The wife who thinks, Hey, so he notices women in red? Mmm, what do I have in my wardrobe? has grasped the point. Later, she will undoubtedly grasp her husband's full attention by wearing that red little something she's got tucked in the back of her closet.

I know, it's much easier said than done to think like that!
In the chapter about men's need to be respected, Dr. Leman breaks down the apostle Paul's rules for marriage in Ephesians, including the verse that people often forget: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." He also gives a very helpful list of rules about how to fight fairly (if you have to fight):

1. Remember that fighting is an act of cooperation.
2. Stay on the subject at hand.
3. Don't be a bone digger, bringing up past stuff.
4. Avoid the words you and never, as in "You never listen to me!"
5. Face each other and hold hands.
6. Have one person talk at a time. Do not interrupt.
7. When one person's done, the other person can respond.
8. After that exchange, clarify only if the issue needs to be clarified (i.e., someone has the wrong perception). Don't kill a dead horse.
9. If things get too hot, call a time out. Kids need recess, and you may too!
10. Don't avoid the topic. After your break, tackle it again the same day. Do not let the sun go down on your anger (Ephesians 4:26).

It's been a while since I've read Men are from Mars so I can't say whether to read that book or this one, but I highly recommend this book for all women - single or taken!

107. The Essential Writings of Machiavelli - Niccolo Machiavelli

2010-04-05T23:05:00.005-04:00

The Prince instantly became one of my favorite books - so I had to go out and buy The Essential Writings of Machiavelli. This book has more of his political essays, as well as historical and philosophical essays, personal letters, and even some satire/fiction. I'll just share my thoughts on some of the pieces that jumped out to me the most:

The Discourses
For all of those who think of Machiavelli only as being the pejorative adjective created from his name, read The Discourses! True, The Prince was about how to be the ideal autocratic ruler - but The Discourses actually advocates for a republican form of government. Although it was written around 1513, the similarities between Machiavelli's lessons and how the United States was established are striking. In chapter two, he discusses checks and balances, the strength of a tri-partite political structure, and how a republic is superior to a principality.

In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.

In another chapter, Machiavelli argues that a ruler who wants to reform an old system of government in a free state must "keep at least a veneer" of the older institutions ... because "Men cherish something that seems like the real thing as much as they do the real thing itself: In fact, they are more often affected by that which seems than by that which is."

I do have to admit that while Machiavelli provides a lot of advice on how to establish a republic, he also provides advice on how to overthrow one.

Rules for an Elegant Social Circle
This short piece is a hilarious satire of 16th century Florentine culture, and is essentially a list of rules for dinner parties.

The lady or gentleman of the circle who can say the most while meaning the least will be held in highest esteem and honored above all others of the company ...

No lady of the company may have a mother-in-law. Should one of the ladies be inconvenienced by one, said lady will have to dispose of her within six months by a purgative or some such means, which may also be used against a husband who does not fulfill his obligations.

Ha!!! Some of the pieces (i.e. Florentine Histories) were quite dry and uninteresting in my opinion - but I recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Prince and to anyone who thinks that "Machiavellian" writing is all that Machiavelli had to offer!

106. How to Be Safe in an Unsafe World - Harold H. Bloomfield & Robert K. Cooper

2010-02-23T18:30:00.004-05:00

The blog lives! But I'm sorry that I had to bring it back with this book ...
This book is about what the authors call "safety intelligence." The discussion of inner security reminded me a lot of what Malcolm Gladwell talked about in Blink: how to avoid "emotional paralysis" by observing a situation in a small amount of time and maintaining a state of heightened awareness, calmness, and power.
The authors also offer practical tips to increase your sense of inner security and external safety that I, living in a big city, found quite helpful. For example, research demonstrates that it takes only seven seconds for an attacker to "size up" a potential victim - and that even by changing the way that you walk can deter an attack. Research also shows that yelling "help" when confronted with danger actually discourages assistance; but yelling "fire" will distract an assailant and will be more likely to attract the aid of bystanders. The book also gives suggestions on what to do if confronted with a stalker; if you're carjacked; if you're the victim of an incident of road rage; and also if you have to deal with an aggressive date or co-worker.
One reason I bought this book was because of the forward by Deepak Chopra (if his name is on it, it has to be good!), but I feel like there are better books out there on the same topic. I suggest you don't waste your time on this one.

105. Game Change - John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

2010-02-15T23:06:00.003-05:00

This book (a.k.a. political thriller) is about the 2008 presidential election. Yes, this is the one that you heard about in the news - the one in which Harry Reid was quoted as saying that Obama had a chance at winning the election because he was a "light-skinned African American" with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." It starts with laying out the candidates' decisions to run; covers the bitter debates; and goes into so much more in between.
What really struck me was how the authors exposed sides of the candidates that the public would never see. Some of my favorite parts ...

When Hillary Clinton found out that Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill said on TV, "I think [Bill Clinton] has been a great leader, but I don't want my daughter near him," ...

The phone went quiet. Hillary was speechless. A few more seconds passed, and then finally came her voice, hot with fury.
"Fuck her," Hillary said - and then called Solis Doyle and summarily canceled the fundraiser.

According to Heilemann and Halperin, so much of Hillary's campaign was centered around (and ultimately hurt by) issues with Bill: his alleged continuing affairs; how to control his mouth; and his borderline comments about race (e.g. that Obama would surely win South Carolina during the primaries, because Jesse Jackson did in 1984 and 1988). The "race issues" were quite funny to read about, though. At one point, Hillary wanted to make a commercial portraying Obama as a chameleon.

Penn and Grunwald (Clinton advisers) theorized that Obama, the darling of the left, was pandering to conservative Democrats in northern Nevada. He’s become a chameleon, one of them said.
“He has! We should call him that!” Hillary said, proposing a TV ad that somehow pictured Obama as a color-shifting lizard. “We need a visual,” she said.
“We can’t,” Grunwald replied.
“Why?” Hillary asked.
The color thing, Grunwald said. We’d get hit for dabbling with race.
“Oh Gawwwd,” Hillary groaned. “Give me a break.”

There were also so many fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about Obama. Apparently, he's a lot more cocky than a lot of people might think. Then again ... don't you have to be in order to have the guts to run for president of the United States?? But he also apparently has his emotional side. At one point, Valerie Jarrett threw a book party for him in her backyard soon after The Audacity of Hope had come out.

Jarrett introduced Obama and spoke about Audacity’s final chapter, in which he wrote about the stress that the demands of his career put on his marriage, the
disruptions to his family life. As Jarrett went on, talking about the sacrifices his wife and girls were making, she saw that Obama was crying-to the point where he couldn’t manage to speak when it came his turn. Michelle walked over, put her arm around him, and began to cry as well.
Even Obama’s closest friends had never seen him choke up in public before. He’s not emoting about the past, Jarrett thought. He’s emoting about the future. About the fact the sacrifices he’s imposed on his family are only just beginning.

The writers also exposed a lot about the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter story. How ironic that John Edwards finally came forward two weeks before this book came out and admitted that he had fathered her child. Many of his campaign staffers had been trying so hard to keep her away from him, knowing what was going on. And not that this in any way justifies his actions, but Elizabeth was apparently "an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazy-woman" who walked all over Edwards. What a stark contrast from her image as the cancer-surviving, supportive politician's wife.

I wish the authors had included more about the McCain-Palin side of the story. But a few funny pieces were that one of McCain's favorite outfits off-camera is a dress shirt and boxer shorts (eww) and that McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman would watch the YouTube clip of John Edwards fixing his hair and roll on the floor with laughter. Also, the media has already exposed stories about McCain's temper, but this part was funny:

McCain was erupting over everything. At a scheduling meeting to discuss [his daughter] Meghan’s college graduation, McCain learned that the commencement was a multiday affair that would require him to make several round trips to New York. “How many fucking times do I have to go to fucking New York this week?” he yelled. “How many fucking times can you fucking graduate from fucking Columbia?”

There wasn't anything too shocking about Palin in there - I think the media has already done a pretty good job exposing her ridiculousness. But a small excerpt shows just how hardcore these campaigns are ... something had come up about Palin, and the staffers were not getting direct answers from her and so they had to check it out themselves.

Schmidt wanted to get them on the horn and have the history of her AIP registration checked out immediately.
"But it's two in the morning in Alaska," someone said.
"The phones don't work at fucking night there?" Schmidt bellowed. "Call them! And keep calling them until they pick up!"

Overall, the writing was exquisitely entertaining. The authors call Hillary's camp "Hillaryland" and Edwards' camp "the Edwardsphere." And read how they describe one of Obama's speeches in Iowa:

With a law professor's attention to detail and a litigator's argumentativeness -- plus a hint of the defensiveness of a politician under fire -- he included rebuttals to almost every criticism that Clinton had hurled at him down the homestretch.

Brilliant! It's interesting to note that a lot of the "quotes" are actually not in quotation marks ... in the preface, the authors point out that this was purposeful and was to show that the person remembering the supposed "quote" might not have been able to remember the exact verbiage - but that the idea was close enough.

This was a long book ... but unlike The Poisonwood Bible (notwithstanding the completely different genre), it was impossible to put down.

104. The Secret of Divine Civilizaiton - Abdu'l-Baha

2010-02-15T23:01:00.003-05:00

This book was first written by Abdu'l-Baha in 1875 and was addressed to the people of Persia (Iran). It is known for its attempt to improve the degraded conditions of Persia: the poverty, corrupt government, and lack of education, especially for women. This book actually sort of reminded me of Plato's Republic (at least, the small amount I understood from The Republic!) in that Abdu'l-Baha examines what is needed to make a "just society." He argues that religion should be a binding force for love and not of ignorant prejudice, and he tries to reconcile the schism between religion and politics.
It's interesting to compare many of the issues that were being debated back then to what is in the news about Iran now: such as whether modernize and accept Western technology, or to reject Western culture and rely on technology developed in the Islamic world. In this book, Abdu'l-Baha shows the great changes that took place in Western culture as a result of the revelations of Jesus.
In discussing the government of Persia, Abdu'l-Baha warned that great results cannot be expected unless the members elected are qualified: "righteous, God-fearing, high-minded, incorruptible ... fully cognizant ... versed in the rules which govern the management of internal affairs and the conduct of foreign relations, skilled in the useful arts of civilization, and content with their lawful emoluments." He also discussed in depth a quote from Muhammad as it relates to this issue of finding the right people to serve in the government needed to improve the country: "As for him who is one of the learned: he must guard himself, defend his faith, oppose his passions and obey the commandments of his Lord."
To be honest, this book was very, very hard for me to read. You can tell that it was translated from Arabic (or Farsi) into English and that it was written over a century ago, because the English was very old and formal. Nonetheless, a good read.

103. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

2010-01-14T12:44:00.006-05:00

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

2010-01-10T23:58:00.004-05:00

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

2010-01-06T19:22:00.002-05:00

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.

100. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli

2009-12-31T19:05:00.005-05:00

100!! I did it!!

What a fascinating book! Published in 1532, this political treatise is basically Machiavelli's master plan for seizing and holding power. Apparently, Machiavelli sent it to Lorenzo de Medici, a member of the Florentine family that basically ruled the center of the Renaissance. In it, Machiavelli discusses the qualities of principalities (basically, what a prince has control over) and the reasons for their successes and failures. He also shows how many men try to acquire and keep these principalities, and discusses means of attack and defense that can be applied to defend them.

Some of Machiavelli's assertions are, in my opinion, quite true and realistic ... while others are quite disturbing. While I was reading this book, I found myself taking so many notes: this will definitely be a book that I buy and will have to re-read. I'll share some parts that stood out to me.

Cruelty can be called well used (if it is even permitted to use the word "well" in connection with evil) if it is executed at a single stroke out of the necessity to secure one's power, and then is not continued but converted into the greatest possible benefit for one's subjects. Badly used cruelty is cruelty that, even if initially limited, increases with time rather than subsiding.

Also, from the chapter entitled "Of The Different Types of Armies, and of Mercenaries":

The prince must therefore never shift his attention from the exercise of war, even in times of peace, and he must do this both in action and in mind. As for action, he must not only keep his troops well trained and organized, but must also himself continuously go out hunting, keeping his body accustomed to hardship, while learning the lay of the land ... He must do this with the greatest application[.]

In other words: be prepared, and know your enemies! This is a great quote that every president should read:

The choice of advisers is very important for a prince: Advisers are able or not, depending on the prince's wisdom. One can assess a prince's intelligence by looking at men with whom he surrounds himself. If they are capable and loyal, one can consider the prince prudent, because he was able to discern their ability and managed to keep them loyal. But when these men are lacking in quality, one can consider the prince as deficient because it is in choosing his advisers that he can make his first mistake.

I also loved the chapter on whether it is better to be feared or loved. I would absolutely love to read what other writers have said about it: it's only four pages, but it is so deep! Someone should write a book applying that idea to the concept of how we view God. God is supposed to be the the Creator, the All-Merciful, the All-Loving ... but it's considered a positive attribute to be "God-fearing." Is it better that we love God - or fear God?

I'm glad I ended on such a great piece of work. Thank you SO much to all who have been following my blog and for your thoughtful and insightful comments. I'll be taking a break from reading for a few days ... but don't worry, I'll be back! :)

99. What Is This Thing Called I? - Allen C. Carter

2009-12-31T18:40:00.004-05:00

In this book, clinical psychologist Allen Carter explains how our minds often function by obeying "commandments" dictated by false gods that he calls "the creator god," "the we-god," and the "i-god." He explains how we can overcome being victims of these commandments by identifying who we truly are, through what Carter calls "the ten acceptances and their gifts."

In the chapter about one of the "i-god" commandments about how we often believe that we are unworthy and guilty with shameful pasts, Carter explains how forgiveness can often free us from these feelings of guilt.

True forgiveness recognizes that there is no guilt and never was! People just do what they do. Behavior is neutral. It is our judgment that makes the behavior right or wrong ... Yet, what about those others who hurt us, who did not love us, who used us, or abused us? What about them? The answer, dear reader, is "Forgive them for they know not what they do," or more accurately, they do not know who they are. They do not know that they are loved unconditionally. If they did, they would not hurt us, abuse us, or leave us.

I wasn't a fan of the first part of this book: it's supposed to the dialog in a class that he taught at Morehouse College, though the "dialog" seemed a bit phony and forced. But the next four parts were written better. The book fits pretty squarely into the lump category of self-help books by Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and others. The only difference is that it was by a black author and he often talks about the black experience while exploring these subjects. Overall: a decent book.

98. Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2009-12-30T22:04:00.002-05:00

The first line of this book shows how absolutely bizarre it is:

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

Wow. The unnamed protagonist has never been married or been in love, and has had a relatively sad, lonely, and unexciting life in Colombia. In fact, when he was twenty, he started keeping a record listing the name, age, place, and "a brief notation of the circumstances and style of lovemaking": by the time he was fifty, there were 514 women with whom he had been at least once. (I was amazed at how similar this was to what Florentino Ariza did in Love in the Time of Cholera by the same author). He approaches Rosa Cabarcas, the "madame" at the city's best brothel, to help him with his wish. He meets a fourteen year old girl with whom he becomes infatuated, and ultimately makes arrangements with Rosa to continue seeing her outside of the brothel.

As frightening and pedophile-ish as this all sounds, the old man really ends up seeming more like a tender voyeur than a sex-starved nonagenarian. He meets with the girl ... and watches her sleep. He says:

This was something new for me. I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and
always in the dark, so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were ... That night I discovered the improbably pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is such an amazing writer. I loved this part:

I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

Ultimately, this seems to be a twisted story of love - and also of the old man finally finding himself at ninety years of age.

[whew. two more books to go! ...]

97. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream - Barack Obama

2009-12-30T21:30:00.005-05:00

For some reason, I thought that this book would be a "part 2" to Dreams from My Father, but it was definitely much different: less biographical, a lot more about "the issues." In this book, Obama writes in depth about his personal views on faith and values, repairing the broken political process, and issues like education, renewable energy, and the partisan divide.

I appreciated the way that Obama did not hide from the fact that he is a Democrat - but he was not as incendiary as Sarah Palin. From one part:

... Conservatives, for instance, tend to bristle when it comes to government interference in the marketplace or their right to bear arms. Yet many of these same conservatives show little to no concern when it comes to government wiretapping without a warrant or government attempts to control people's sexual practices. Conversely, it's easy to get most liberals riled up about government encroachments on freedom of the press or a woman's reproductive freedoms. But if you have a conversation with these same liberals about the potential costs of regulation to a small-business owner, you will often draw a blank stare.

I really admire and respect his more balanced approach - especially because he still stands his ground on what he believes.

I also really liked reading about an insider's perspective of Washington. The stories that he told about his interactions with Senator Byrd and President Bush were great! This part was also revealing:

If you ask my eight-year-old what I do for a living, she might say I make laws. And yet one of the surprising things about Washington is the amount of time spent arguing not about what the law should be, but rather what the law is. The simplest statute - a requirement, say, that companies provide bathroom breaks for their hourly workers - can become the subject of wildly different interpretations, depending on whom you are talking to: the congressman who sponsored the provision, the staffer who delivered it, the department head whose job it is to enforce it, the lawyer whose client finds it inconvenient, or the judge who may be called upon to apply it.

My favorite chapter was actually the last one, entitled "Family." Likely because I want to be Michelle Obama when I grow up ... I loved reading what he had to say about their marriage and their children. I laughed out loud when I read this story:

...I called Michelle from my D.C. office and started explaining the significance of the bill – how shoulder-to-air missiles could threaten commercial air travel if they fell into the wrong hands, how small-arms stockpiles left over from the Cold War continued to feed conflict across the globe. Michelle cut me off.
“We have ants.”
“Huh?”
“I found ants in the kitchen. And in the bathroom upstairs.”
“Okay…”
“I need you to buy some ant traps on your way home tomorrow. I’d get them myself, but I’ve got to take the girls to their doctor’s appointment after school. Can you do that for me?”
“Right. Ant traps.”
“Ant traps. Don’t forget, okay honey? And buy more than one. Listen, I need to go to a meeting. Love you.”
I hung up the receiver, wondering if Ted Kennedy or John McCain bought ant traps on the way home from work.

Perfection! Obama is a ridiculously amazing writer - and he makes even some of the drier topics sound quite interesting. I'll probably re-read this book some time in the near future.

96. Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process Race and the American Legal Process - A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

2009-12-29T12:41:00.006-05:00

I was incredibly impressed by this well-researched and well-documented book by Higginbotham, a former Third Circuit judge. He gives a very thorough analysis of the "interaction between the law and racial oppression in America" (from the back of the book - but said so well). The first part of the book explains how perceptions of black inferiority developed, and how they came to influence our society so much. He also discusses the U.S. Constitution's references to slavery; the Supreme Court's sanction of racism in decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sanford; and the unequal criminal justice system.
One passage that jumped out to me was from a part in which Higginbotham was discussing Harriet Beecher Stowe's book, Uncle Tom's Cabin:

Those who are oppressed may have the capacity to be brave and noble like everyone else, but the oppression itself is probably not what makes them brave and noble. Those who are oppressed may be in possession of certain absolute and simple truths beyond the knowledge of others, but chief among those truths is that freedom is preferable to oppression. Yet those who insist on seeing beauty in oppression often do so to assuage their guilt for contributing to that oppression. That is why the temptation to find beauty and nobility in suffering and oppression has a long and distinguished history.

Also, from the Dred Scott decision: did you know that Chief Justice Taney made twenty-one references to African Americans as inferior and to whites as dominant or superior? (i.e. African Americans being an "inferior class of beings"; an "unfortunate race"; and "unfit to associate with the white race"). And of course we all know that blacks were unable to serve as witnesses or jurors in court. This especially posed problems where a white man was sued by a black man, or was prosecuted for a crime against a black man, because the black man could not testify; nor could black witnesses. Clearly, this often led to a miscarriage of justice. To imagine a time where such things overtly pervaded our legal system.

And from President Abraham Lincoln:

I am not, nor have I ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races .... and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

I think a lot of people forget how pervasive these beliefs were, and how they really influenced not only behavior but legislation and jurisprudence!

How humbling to have finished reading this book the same day that I was sworn in as a lawyer.

95. What Your Doctor Doesn't Know about Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You - Ray D. Strand

2009-12-26T00:25:00.006-05:00

In this book, Dr. Strand puts forth his arguments in favor of "nutritional medicine" - vitamins, minerals, and other supplements - and how these are essential to combating a lot of diseases. He defines "nutritional medicine" as a way to supplement pharmaceuticals (if needed) - to be distinguished from "alternative medicine," which is an alternative to pharmaceuticals. According to Strand:

Scientific research has established beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that oxidative stress, or cell damage caused by free radicals, is the root cause of more than seventy chronic degenerative diseases.

He devotes a good amount of time to explaining diseases such as fibromyalgia, lung disease, and diabetes. In the chapter about diabetes, he explains how Americans tend to eat way too many high-glycemic foods like white bread, white flour, pasta, and rice (meaning they cause blood sugars to rise very rapidly and stimulate the release of insulin). When our blood sugar drops, we feel hungry - so we eat again sooner. After a while, the release of insulin becomes overstimulated so often that our bodies become less sensitive to it.

It was interesting for me to have read Fast Food Nation recently, because Strand talks about a lot of the same things that Schlosser did. He explains that the RDAs (recommended daily allowances) set forth by the FDA are not very useful. Also: 17% of the American population does not eat any vegetables; and if we exclude French fries and baked potatoes - more than half of the population is not eating any vegetables!

Strand definitely made it clearer to me what these "free radicals" are that I keep hearing about; as well as what anti-oxidants are and why they're so important.

94. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

2009-12-25T18:50:00.005-05:00

In this book, Richard Dawkins argues for the "gene-centered" view of evolution: in other words, that natural selection operates at the level of the gene rather than the organism, and that organisms are responsible for transmitting genes across generations.
Dawkins explains that even though we are born "selfish," we can overcome this selfishness by developing and improving ourselves as human beings through altruism and education. In one chapter that I enjoyed, he explains that "nice people finish first" - i.e. they're more likely to survive and prosper. He also argues against the premise that evolutionary theory somehow inspires selfish, aggressive, and competitive behavior.
I also enjoyed the chapter on "memes" - units of cultural transmission - as important contributors to human evolution (i.e. songs, rituals, religions, prejudices, etc.).
I have to admit that a lot of what Dawkins was talking about was over my head. I understood most of it - but I wasn't always sure how it all fit in with his overall premise. I also didn't find some of the material that interesting just because I don't consider myself to be so wrapped up in the whole debate about evolution as a lot of people are!

93. Gideon's Trumpet - Anthony Lewis

2009-12-23T22:13:00.005-05:00

I was supposed to read this book the summer before I started law school (but never did). Now that I've finally read it three years later, I can definitely understand why it was assigned! This book tells the story behind Gideon v. Wainwright, the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision which held that states are required under the Sixth Amendment (of course, as incorporated through the Fourteenth) to provide counsel for criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys. I say that I now understand why it was assigned because Lewis does a fantastic job of explaining how a case gets all the way up to the Supreme Court; the procedure behind four justices deciding whether to grant a writ of certiorari; the role of the law clerks; etc. What I particularly enjoyed about this book was how Lewis gave so much context and background of the case itself, such as including letters that the defendant (Gideon) wrote to his lawyers.
For example, when Gideon learned that attorney Abe Fortas, had been appointed to represent him for his appeal to the Supreme Court, he wrote to Fortas asking him if there was any information he could provide that would help with the case. Fortas replied and told Gideon that "a little background" would help ... Gideon replied with a twenty-two page letter about his entire life that concluded as follows:

I have no illusions about law and courts or the people who are involved in them. I have read the complete history of law ever since the Romans first started writing them down and before of the laws of religions. I believe that each new era finds an improvement in law each year brings something new for the benefit of mankind. Maybe this will be one of those small steps forward, in the past thirty-five years I have seen great advancement in Courts in penal servitude. Thank you for reading all of this. Please try to believe that all I want now from life is the chance for the love of my children the only real love I have ever had.

Doesn't that put such a human face on such a landmark decision?! In the decision itself, the Court overruled Betts v. Brady and held that the right to the assistance of counsel was a fundamental right, essential for a fair trial, and emphasized the procedural safeguards needed for due process of law.

The amount of detail might make this book more likeable by lawyers and/or people who are interested in the law. Although some of the case law discussed is a bit outdated (this book was published in 1964), it's a great read.

92. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance - Barack Obama

2009-12-20T22:01:00.011-05:00

Dreams from My Father is the autobiography of President Obama, published in 1995 after he was elected to be the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, but before the start of his political career. In addition to telling the story of his life, Obama talks a lot about his personal experiences with race and discovering his identity.

Most of us know the basics of Obama's life: he was born in Hawaii to a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, and his parents separated when he was just two years old. Obama's image of his absent father was created by stories told by his mother and her parents; he didn't get to spend time with his father until he was ten years old when his father came to Hawaii for a month-long visit. His father died in a drunk driving car accident in 1982.

Obama moved with his mother to Indonesia when she married Lolo Soetoro, but returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents when he was ten years old for better educational opportunities. He stayed there until the end of high school, after which he moved to LA where he attended Occidental College. In discussing his freshman year, Obama says:

... [O]ur worries seemed indistinguishable from those of the white kids around us. Surviving classes. Finding a well-paying gig after graduation. Trying to get laid. I had stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about black people: that most of us weren’t interested in revolt; that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time; that if we preferred to keep to ourselves it was mainly because that was the easiest way to stop thinking about it, easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.

Even though this next passage is a bit long, it has so much depth:

That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don’t have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America’s happy, faceless marketplace; and we’re never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we’re bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives--although that's what we tell ourselves--but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.

Obama finished up his last two years of college at Columbia University and then moved to Chicago where he worked for a non-profit organization doing community organizing for the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the South Side. It was during this time that he decided to visit Kenya for the first time. On his way there, the flight attendant looks at Obama and asks him if he is related to Dr. Obama (i.e. Obama Sr.). It turns out their families were close.

I found myself trying to prolong the conversation, encouraged less by Miss Omoro’s beauty – she had mentioned a fiance’ – than by the fact that she’d recognized my name. That had never happened before, I realized; not in Hawaii, not in Indonesia, not in L.A. or New York or Chicago. For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people’s memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, “Oh, you are so and so’s son.” No one here in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue.

Something that came to mind after having read this book and Sarah Palin's book was Palin's comment during the 2008 campaign about how she loved to visit the "pro-America" parts of the country - implicitly implying that there were some parts of the country that she believed to not be "pro-America." Even though she later apologized for that comment, her book, in my opinion, maintained that same tone: the people who are "patriotic" and "so American" are the people who are most similar to her America. This memoir by Obama was very revealing and deep (and nonpartisan) and told so much about his life and lives of the poor black people in Chicago's projects. I hope Sarah Palin some day realizes that those people are just as "American" as the white farmers in rural America and "Joe the plumber."

Definitely a wonderful book, and I look forward to reading The Audacity of Hope.

91. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal - Eric Schlosser

2009-12-20T21:05:00.008-05:00

Eric Schlosser does an amazing, in-depth survey of almost anything you can think of that has to do with fast food: he shares history of the most of the core fast food restaurants, e.g. McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and Carl's Jr.; he interviews the teenagers and immigrants who work at these restaurants; he uncovers secrets of the contemporary meatpacking industry; and he discusses marketing and globalization as it relates to fast food. He even explains how franchising fast food restaurants works: apparently the primary business of McDonald's isn't really fast food, it's real estate! The McDonald's Corporation owns the real estate of all of the 15,000 McDonald's restaurants in this country and it leases out the property to its franchisees. (Also, according to Schlosser, Subway is one of the worst companies of which you could become a franchisee.)

To understand just how much fast food has taken over our society:

[I]n 2000, [Americans] spent more than $110 billion [on fast food]. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music - combined.

The marketing strategies used by fast food establishments are amazing. The bulk of their advertising is directed toward children, since children are "surrogate salesmen" - they have the ability to persuade others, usually their parents, to buy what they want. Soft drink marketers try to get their products into elementary schools because children establish their tastes and habits early - and soda has the highest profit margins out of any product at fast food restaurants.
The part of the book that was the most disturbing was the part about the slaughterhouses and the meatpacking industry. It was basically a modern day version of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Did you know that American beef can't even be exported to most countries in Europe, because American cows are fed things that Europe has banned? They are given bovine growth hormone (banned in Europe) - and they're also fed ground up cows and poultry. Yes - cows, which are really supposed to be grain- or grass- fed, are now omnivorous. Oh - and if you are a vegetarian, you might want to reconsider eating McDonald's fries - part of what gives them their unique taste is that they're cooked in oil with beef tallow and beef extract.

This was a great book - I decided to read this book after it was quoted several times in The Hungry Gene. Schlosser really revealed a lot about the fast food industry ... probably a lot more than I ever wanted to know! Even though it won't prevent me from eating fast food, I appreciate having a better understanding of what McDonald's (et al.) is doing to lure me to eat its food and I appreciate knowing what exactly I might be putting in my mouth.

90. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

2009-12-16T11:18:00.004-05:00

[90 down - 10 to go!!!]
Told from the point of view of Claudia MacTeer, an African American girl growing up in Ohio in the 1930's, this story is mostly about a girl that Claudia's parents take into their home named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola is eleven years old and has a hard life: her parents, Paulina and Cholly, are always fighting, and Cholly is often drunk. Pecola's brother, Sammy, often runs away to get away from the family; Pecola, on the other hand, prays for blue eyes. She believes that if she had blue eyes, her life would be much better and people would stop telling her that she is so ugly.

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights - if those eyes of hers were
different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different .... If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove, too. Maybe they'd say, "Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes" .... Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year, she prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time.

Pauline treats the daughter of the wealthy white family (the Fosters) that she works for better than she treats Pecola, her own daughter. The Fosters' daughter has blond curls and blue eyes, and their lifestyle is the closest that Pauline will ever get to having it herself.
Eventually, Pecola goes to live with the MacTeers because Cholly burns down her family's home. Claudia MacTeer and her sister Frieda become friends with Pecola and go through a lot of typical pre-adolescent experiences together (e.g. being fascinated when Pecola is the first to start "ministrating").

It becomes apparent that Cholly, Pecola's father, has a thing for little girls. One day, while Pecola is doing dishes, he rapes her. Morrison's writing is exquisite - and the story is really heart-wrenching.

Following the disintegration - the falling away - of sexual desire, he was conscious of her wet, soapy hands on his wrists, the fingers clenching, but whether her grup was from a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free, or from some other emotion, he could not tell. Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted. Cholly stood up and could only see her grayish panties, so sad and limp around her ankles. Again the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her. So when the child regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her.

Claudia and Frieda hear that Pecola is pregnant by her father and feel sorry for her. They decide not to sell the marigold seeds they were planning on selling: they plant them and determine that if they bloom, then that would mean that everything would be fine. The seeds do not bloom. The story concludes (from Clauda's point of view):

I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.

I'm surprised that two common themes in several well-known works of African American literature I've read recently are child molestation and incest (this, The Color Purple, and Push). Though very sad, this was a great book.

89. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

2009-12-15T22:37:00.007-05:00

This is a beautifully written story about four generations of the Dead family, centered around the main character Macon "Milkman" Dead III. Milkman got his unfortunate nickname because he was breastfed for too long and was, in essence, a "mama's boy." His mother, Ruth Foster Dead, is the daughter of the town's only black doctor. She completely idolizes her father and often makes her husband feel inadequate. (side note - this seems to be a common theme several books I've read recently, including The Color Purple and A Raisin in the Sun. Interesting).

Milkman has a sister, Pilate, who does not have a navel (not sure of the significance of that). Pilate has a daughter, Reba, and Reba has a daughter, Hagar - and Hagar is obsessed with Milkman and tries to kill him several times. Milkman's best friend, Guitar, also tries to kill Milkman when he suspects that Milkman has cheated him out of some gold that Guitar is trying to steal to help fund a group of which he is part. The group is called "Seven Days," and their goal is to commit revenge killings against white people in response to the killings of black people. For example, after the four little girls were killed in the church bombing, they go kill four little white girls to "even out" the killings.

There are a lot of complicated characters and themes in this book, so a brief overview really doesn't do the book justice. But I'll share some of my favorite quotes anyway! Here's one from Guitar, from a conversation he has with Milkman:

And black women, they want your whole self. Love, they call it, and understanding. "Why don’t you understand me?" What they mean is, Don’t love anything on earth except me. They say, "Be responsible," but what they mean is, Don’t go anywhere where I ain’t. You try to climb Mount Everest, they’ll tie up your ropes. Tell them you want to go to the bottom of the sea—just for a look—they’ll hide your oxygen tank .... You blow your lungs out on the horn and they want what breath you got left to hear about how you love them. They want your full attention.

This description of Hagar made me smile (and think it's sad that men really talk like this):

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

(Isn't that passage, crass as it is, so incredibly poetic?!) Ultimately, Milkman ends up in Virginia searching for the gold, and meets a woman who tells him about his family history. There, he learns about his great grandfather Solomon who was said to have escaped slavery by "flying back to Africa."

I won't spoil the ending for those who haven't read it. I think what makes this book so good (and part of the reason why Toni Morrison won a Nobel Prize for Literature!) is how it's not just well-written - it's almost poetic in some parts. She really draws you into the story. The characters are also complex and certainly grow throughout the book. Definitely a good read - thanks to Jessica for the recommendation, Chris for lending it to me, and of course my mom for introducing me to Toni Morrison's books when I was just four years old :)

88. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

2009-12-14T22:34:00.003-05:00

This is a very unique story about a 16 year old boy named Piscine ("Pi") Patel who comes from a family of zookeepers. He loves learning about different religions and practices Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity - all at the same time! When Pi's father decides to pack up the family and their business (the zoo) and move to Canada, they board a huge Japanese cargo ship ... with many of their animals. But after the ship sinks, Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
The majority of the story is about the relationship between Pi and Richard Parker, who end up being the last two to survive. They drift through the Pacific Ocean for almost a year, and Pi has to use his faith and training as a zookeeper to fight sharks, hunger, and the elements while keeping himself and Richard Parker alive.

I loved this passage from the beginning of the book when clergy of all the religions that Pi is practicing find out that he is indeed practicing all three religions:

“Piscine, can this be true?” asked the imam earnestly. “Hindus and Christians are idolaters. They have many gods.”
“And Muslims have many wives,” responded the pandit.
The priest looked askance at both of them. “Piscine,” he nearly whispered, “there is salvation only in Jesus.”
“Balderdash! Christians know nothing about religion,” said the pandit.
“They strayed long ago from God’s path,” said the imam.
“Where’s God in your religion?” snapped the priest. “You don’t have a single miracle to show for it. What kind of religion is that, without miracles?”
“It isn’t a circus with dead people jumping out of tombs all the time, that’s what! We Muslims stick to the essential miracle of existence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing—these are miracles enough for us.”
“Feathers and rain are all very nice, but we like to know that God is truly with us.”

I also liked this part, after Pi has started fishing (keeping in mind that before being stranded on the lifeboat, he had always been a vegetarian):

You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies else where. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.

It took me around fifty pages or so to get into this book - but once I did, I couldn't put it down. I was so into it, I even forgot how completely implausible the whole story was! ... until the ending, when things sort of came together (I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it).
One thing I don't understand, however, is how the first part of the book about Pi's love for learning about different religions ties in with the second part of the book where he is stranded on the life boat with Richard Parker. Is it just the idea of faith - i.e. what gets him through the ordeal?
This was a fabulous book - thanks to Jade for the recommendation :)

87. How to Be Invisible: A Step-By-Step Guide To Protecting Your Assets, Your Identity, And Your Life - J.J. Luna

2009-12-13T20:47:00.004-05:00

With frightening real-life stories, Luna makes his case for why personal privacy has basically disappeared in the age of technology; and how you can get yours back (and why you want to!). For example, what if someone with the same name as you is committing criminal activity, and you start being investigated? Do you really want government agents listening to all of your phone calls? And of course there are always (unfortunately) weird stalkers, so single women especially should not have their home address readily available in the public domain.
Some of the information was definitely helpful - i.e. how you can construct an alternative mail drop and ghost address, how to keep your real domicile unknown (a rule that he emphasized throughout the book: NEVER couple your name with your real home address), and how to avoid using your social security number and birth date for identification purposes.
But while a lot of his suggestions really seem like they are useful for undercover cops and women with stalkers (and criminals), I think they're a bit over the top for anyone else. For example, Luna explains how to set up limited liability companies and says that you should have your car, home, etc. titled in the LLC instead of in your own name; he also says that in lieu of giving a utility or phone company your social security number to run a credit check when you first sign up for service, you should give them a $1,000 deposit and ask that it be returned to you if/when you've made all of your payments on time after a year. I can understand the rationale behind those suggestions - you never known when a private investigator might be after you, or when the phone company's records would be hacked and someone gets a hold of your SSN - but what about those of us who are not yet at the point in life where we can just drop $1,000 deposits?
Still, just knowing how easily a criminal/stalker can get a hold of and exploit your personal information will make you want to use at least some of the suggestions in this book and protect yourself more.

86. The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and The Future of Thin - Ellen Ruppell Shell

2009-12-11T18:52:00.005-05:00

This book, written by science journalist Ellen Ruppell Shell, is about why Americans are so fat, including the roles of genetics, drug companies, the food industry, and social class; and what crazy things we do to try to lose weight. $33 billion - yes, billion - a year are spent on weight loss products! - and bariatric surgeries like gastric bypass are becoming more common.

I found the first and last thirds (or so) of the book were the most interesting. The middle section on isolating leptin, the gene that helps to regulate energy intake and energy expenditure, including appetite and metabolism, got a bit dry. The first third talked a lot about the types of surgeries that people are going through to lose weight. Did you know that some doctors used to actually use a "slice and dice" approach - they'd actually cut you open and cut out layers of fat from your stomach!

The last third was definitely where I couldn't put the book down. One particularly interesting section explained how children of parents of ethnicities who tend to be smaller-framed (i.e. a lot of Hispanics and Asians) are especially prone to being obese when they start eating more Westernized diets (i.e. McDonald's, Coca-Cola, etc.). People in the Philippines have started drinking more Coke per capita than any other country - and their obesity rate has shot up dramatically in the past decade.

Shell also does a great job of uncovering the food industry. This part is so true:

Convenience is more than a buzzword in the food industry; it's a matter of life or death. Millions of advertising dollars are spent reminding us that we do not have the time or patience to shop for, cook, or thoroughly consume our meals. And we are convinced. In the 1960s homemakers spent about two and a half hours making dinner each night. In 1996, the latest year for which figures are available, dinner preparation had shrunk to fifteen minutes.

Another interesting thing to think about: why don't nice restaurants ever supersize, for example, your lobster tail? It's only the cheap places, like fast food restaurants, that do things like that. Well ...

"You're getting extra French fries, more soft drink, cheap stuff that is essentially filler ... You think you're getting a deal here, but you're really not.' Salads are rarely part of these "value meals" and for good reason - fresh vegetables are pricey to buy, prepare, and store. (Salads also take longer to eat, anathema to the fast food world.) Servers are trained to remind customers of the "good deal" they'll get by super-sizing their meal for the very sound reason that super-sizing is not a good deal ...

... because it only costs fast food places three more cents to add some more fries ... but just think of how many more calories that is for us!!

I'm definitely a fan of Shell's journalistic writing style - although to be completely honest, the chapters that talk about isolating leptin got a bit dry. I don't think it was her fault - she did the best job she could - it was just the material. Anyway, both books I've read by her have been great (this one and Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture), and I definitely recommend both of them.

85. Going Rogue: An American Life - Sarah Palin

2009-12-07T23:19:00.008-05:00

In this 400+ page biography/memoir that really should have been no more than 250 pages, Sarah Palin paints a portrait of her life growing up in Alaska; meeting and falling in love with Todd Palin; raising their five children; and of course, rehashing the 2008 election and the plethora of issues surrounding it. For example, she discusses how she read the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, etc. ... and then says,

Perhaps that's why I was so shocked during the VP campaign when Katie Couric wondered which papers and magazines I read. Maybe I should have asked her what she reads. She didn't sound very informed on our energy issues.

I feel like Palin makes a lot of cheap shots and distorts some serious issues. For example, at one point she's talking about how her son Track, at age 17, was injured while playing hockey:
Apologetically, the nurse explained that they couldn't even let him walk down the hall to the drinking fountain because if he needed surgery his stomach should be empty, and they couldn't treat him without me. Of course I understood, but I still fumed inside. I even wondered out loud about why this big, strapping, nearly grown man who was overcome with pain couldn't even get a drink of water without parental consent, yet a thirteen-year-old girl could undergo a painful, invasive, and scary abortion and no parent even had to be notified.
Ummm ... it'd be helpful to note that only six states in the country don't require parental notification: in the majority of states, notification of at least one parent is required. What she said was technically accurate in the small world of Alaska - but just a little misleading for most people who'd be reading this book.

I do have to give it to her for a few good points, like this one ...

Everything in government attracts an obligatory acronym it seems ... Political terms are meant to paint a picture. For example, liberals prefer the term "social justice" over "welfare" and why conservatives prefer "marriage protection amendment" over "gay marriage ban."

... (weird phrasing of that last sentence in original).

Overall, I definitely do not think that this is a well-written book. She jumps around all over the place: at one point, she's talking about her five kids; then goes on to talk about the birth of Trig, her fifth child. She also makes a lot of cheap shots at the Obamas - and not only with regard to policy. She came down on Michelle Obama for saying that for the first time in her adult life, she was proud of her country ... honestly, if she understood the reality of being black in America, maybe she'd be a bit more sensitive to that. As Tim Wise said in his book - Sarah Palin is a proud defender of the Second Amendment when she's shown on the cover of Newsweek with a rifle ... but what would America have said if Michelle Obama were on the cover of a magazine with a gun?! Angry, scary black woman. I don't think Palin is great at understanding people outside of her America.
Anyway ... don't waste your time reading this book (not that my lowly review will matter: it's already sold more than one million copies). If you want to read a well-written right-wing book, check out Common Sense by Glenn Beck - the writing is much better and it cuts to the chase about the issues without the cheap, personal shots and drama.

84. Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama - Tim Wise

2009-12-07T23:02:00.005-05:00

In this book, Tim Wise does a great job of analyzing racism and race relations post-Obama's victory as the first black president. He argues that "Racism 1.0," or typical, overt bigotry, has morphed into "Racism 2.0" - the idea that Obama has "transcended race" and that he is "different from regular black people." Wise argues that
White folks may "need" black folks to be Obama-like in style, affect, erudition, and educational background in order to be considered competent or trustworthy ...

... and that ultimately, this hurts African Americans. I was very impressed by Wise's analysis - as a white American, he really seemed to have done his research and to understand a lot of nuances of the issues he discusses. I was nodding emphatically while reading the book when Wise was explaining how Obama is "the Cliff Huxtable of politics" and that he is "attaining the lofty pinnacle of 'Huxtability.'"

Another quote I really like (that's actually from Michael Eric Dyson):

In a sense, if one conceives of racism as a cell phone, then active malice is the ring tone on its highest volume, while passive indifference is the ring tone on vibrate. In either case, whether loudly or silently, the consequence is the same: a call is transmitted, a racial message is communicated.

Wise also argues that many white Americans do not realize how they continue to benefit from a system of "entrenched privileges." While a lot of what he said was not new, I really liked how Wise was able to make his arguments in the context of "post-Obama America." And what a catchy title!

83. Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential - Joel Osteen

2009-12-06T21:13:00.005-05:00

In this self-improvement book (ahem, or book on CD ...), televangelist Joel Osteen, a.k.a. the "smiling pastor" shares seven principles that he used to help him get to where he is in life. The crux of Osteen's message is that you can achieve a successul and prosperous life if you stop blaming yourself for the past and if you make the most of the present by using you God-given talents and strengths.
The seven principles (steps) are: (1) Enlarge Your Vision; (2) Develop a Healthy Self-Image; (3) Discover the Power of Your Thoughts and Words; (4) Let go of the Past; (5) Find Strength Through Adversity; (6) Live to Give; and (7) Choose to Be Happy.
I love Joel Osteen because he uses Christian teachings to share very universal messages; he also weaves in anecdotes from his own life and experiences told to him by his parishioners. One part that I definitely plan on keeping at the forefront of my mind:

... you must rid yourself of that small-minded thinking and start expecting God's blessing, start anticipating promotion and supernatural increase. You must conceive it in your heart and mind before you can receive it. In other words, you must make room for increase in your own thinking, then God will bring those things to pass. Until you learn how to enlarge your vision, seeing the future through your eyes of faith, your own wrong thinking will prevent good things from happening in your life. God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessings into old attitudes.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants some practical steps on how to better themselves, regardless of their religion.

82. The Greatest Salesman in the World - Og Mandino

2009-12-06T19:58:00.005-05:00

This short book, in the form of a parable, was packed with powerful principles behind salesmanship though the principles are definitely universal. The story is about a man named Hafid in pre-Christianity Jerusalem who learns from a wealthy and successful trader. When the trader was a young man, he was given ten scrolls by a man with instructions to guard them with his life but to pass them on before he died. So the trader decides to share the lessons on the scrolls with Hafid. The first lesson is entitled "Today I begin a new life" and has instructions for forming the habit that will lead to the successful adoption of the principles contained in the following scrolls. The other scrolls contain lessons like, "I will greet this day with love in my heart"; "I will persist until I succeed"; "I am nature's greatest miracle and I am a unique creature of nature"; and "I will live this day as if it is my last."

One of my favorite lessons is from scroll II:

Henceforth will I look on all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.

I also loved this passage, from scroll VII:

For all worldly things shall indeed pass. When I am heavy will heartache I shall console myself that this too shall pass; when I am puffed with success I shall warn myself that this too shall pass. When I am strangled in poverty I shall tell my self that this too will pass: when I am burdened with wealth I shall tell myself that this too shall pass. Yea, verily, where is he who built the pyramid, one day, not also be buried under sand? If all things shall pass why should I be concerned for today?

This is a more unique variety of self-improvement book that I would definitely recommend reading. Thank you to Justin for lending it to me!

81. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

2009-12-04T12:04:00.011-05:00

I have been reading some books by some fabulous authors recently! This is the third book by Mitch Albom that I've read (others: For One More Day and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, pre-blog), and I've been super-impressed by all of them.
Anyway, this is a non-fiction book about Morrie Schwartz, a sociology professor at Brandeis University, who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. The author, Mitch Albom, had taken Morrie's classes back in college and was actually very close to him - but he had not corresponded with Morrie for several years (although he had promised to). After Albom sees a story about Morrie on Nightline, he tracks Morrie down and begins to visit him regularly. Morrie is at peace with the idea that he is going to die very soon - he has even come to peace with the fact that someone has to "wipe his ass" since he is no longer able to do it himself.

I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie, who could
no longer dance, swim, bathe, or walk; Morrie, who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could
he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with his fork, picking at a
piece of tomato, missing it the first two times - a pathetic scene, and yet I
could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the
same calm breeze that soothed me back in college.

During their visits, Morrie imparts a lot of life lessons to Albom. I especially liked the lessons in the chapter entitled "We Talk about Marriage":

"Well, I feel sorry for your generation," Morrie said. "In this culture, it's so important to find a loving relationship with someone because so much of the culture does not give you that. But the poor kids today, either they're too selfish to take part in a real loving relationship, or they rush into marriage and then six months later, they get divorced. They don't know what they want in a partner. They don't know who they are themselves - so how can they know who they're marrying? ...
There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
And the biggest one of those values, Mitch? ... Your belief in the importance of your marriage."

Woven in with these lessons are hints at what is going on in Albom's life (he seems to care a lot more about work than his family) and in larger society (the O.J. Simpson trial) ... events which are in stark contrast to what Morrie is trying to teach.

What I like the most about Albom is that all of the books I've read by him are of the self-help/self-improvement variety - but they're all so different. I feel like books by other self-help authors like Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra are all the same after a while. Instead of just telling you a worthwhile life lesson, Albom weaves lessons into beautifully written stories, and it's more up to you to pull from them what you need to. I think For One More Day is still my favorite Albom book, but I most definitely recommend this one, too.

80. Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture - Ellen Ruppel Shell

2009-12-04T08:42:00.006-05:00

In this very thoroughly researched book, Shell argues that there are a lot of hidden costs that we pay in our obsession with low-cost goods. In addition, she argues that even though the prices of many consumer goods have gone down in the past few decades, the overall cost of living has gone up in other ways. For example:

"Compared with the early 1970's, in 2007 we spent 32 percent less on clothes, 18 percent less on food, 52 less on appliances, and 24 percent less on owning and maintaining a car ..."

"...any savings from low-priced consumer goods was more than wiped out by the rising costs of nondurable goods and services: a 76 percent increase in mortgage payments; a 74 percent increase in health insurance costs; a 25 percent increase in tax costs; and, because it barely existed in 1971, a monumental increase in child care costs."

This is in part why so many working class folks are overweight: it's hard to afford the cost of health insurance, but it's a lot easier to pay $3 for a basket of cholesterol-laden shrimp from Church's!

Shell really hits a wide range of issues in addressing our consumer culture. For example, the psychology of shopping and how retailers manipulate us is quite interesting: the MSRP or suggested retail price is not only arbitrary, but it's really set to convince us to buy a product because it's a "good deal" when it's 30% off. Some of this information is pretty basic, but Shell does a great job with setting forth specifics and anecdotes to prove her point. Also, retailers make a killing off of those rebates ... what percentage of people do you think actually send away for the rebate you get from buying a cell phone or other electronic? 5-10%!! That's why retailers are starting to use rebates more - because they know that people won't send away for them. In fact, if more than 30% of people send away for them, they figure that the process is way too easy and try to figure out ways to make it more complicated.

Shell also talks about down-side of globalization, like buying farm-raised shrimp from Thailand that have likely been treated with antibiotics and tended to by maltreated workers; or buying toys made in China that, as we all know now, were sprayed with lead paint. "... increasing the wages of, for example, apparel workers in Mexico by 25 or even 30 percent would raise the price of a shirt in the United States by 1.2 percent. That is, a 30 percent increase in wages for the workers results in a leap in price of a $20 shirt to $20.24. Surveys indicate that most American consumers are willing to accept this additional cost without fuss, especially if they understand the reasons for it. So far, several small producers have taken up the challenge, but few multinationals have been willing to put it to the test."

Lastly, check out this brilliant writing:

"Cheap fuel, cheap loans, cheap consumer goods do not pave the road to salvation. On the contrary, our Faustian pact with bargains contributed to the worst recession of two generations. The economics of Cheap cramps innovation, contributes to the decline of once flourishing industries, and threatens our proud heritage of craftsmanship. The ennoblement of Cheap marks a radical departure in American culture and a titanic shift in our national priorities."

This was a fascinating book - the style reminded me a bit of Malcolm Gladwell's (journalistic style of writing; basic premises, but great research to back them up). I plan to check out one of Shell's other books, The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry, next week.

79. Sweet Summer: Growing up with and without My Dad - Bebe Moore Campbell

2009-12-02T22:27:00.008-05:00

What a wonderfully written book ... then again, what can I expect from a soror?! :)
This is a beautiful story about Bebe Moore Campbell's life growing up with her divorced parents: her mom who lived in Philly, and her dad (a paraplegic) who lived in North Carolina. As a young girl, Bebe completely idolizes her father even though she's not with him for at least nine months out of the year ... but as she grows up, she comes to see his many flaws. Nonetheless, she still maintains a relationship with him. "My father took care of me. Our separation didn't stunt me or condemn me to a lesser humanity. His absence never made me a fatherless child. I'm not fatherless now."
Even though this book didn't change my perspective on life - which is what would have earned it a spot in my "best non-fiction books" list - it is possibly one of the best-written books I've read, right up there with Malcolm Gladwell's works. Campbell does an exquisite job of capturing the essence of a child's thoughts and expresses them in an adult way, if that makes any sense. Check out this passage:

"I turned around and took a quick look at the front door. Coast was clear. I stuck my wet thumb back in my mouth and covered it with my other hand, just in case Nana or Mommy came outside. My mother was paying me ten cents a day not to suck my thumb and I'd already collected my dime. The rhythmic sucking flooded my body with tranquility for a minute until the urge for even greater pleasure made me bold and I took away my "cover" hand, reached up and started pulling my ear with it. Ahhhh. I hadn't been sucking and pulling for a good ten seconds when a green Buick slowed down as it approached my house. I jerked my hands away from my face, wiped my dripping thumb on the inside of my shorts and stood up, craning my neck to see if the person driving the car was my daddy ..."

How great is that passage?! Definitely a beautiful story about father-daughter relationships, and families in general ... highly recommended.

78. A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry

2009-12-01T22:39:00.014-05:00

This is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry in the 1950's. It's about a poor black family living in Chicago - Walter and Ruth, their son Travis, and Walter's mom and sister (Beneatha). Walter is barely making ends meet as a limo driver - so when his mom gets an insurance check in the amount of $10,000, he pressures her into giving him a good chunk of it for him to invest. She puts some down on a new house (in an all-white neighborhood), and gives Walter the rest - making him promise that he save some for his sister's education. Walker ends up making some poor decisions with the money and loses it. The family does get to keep the home, however; and they turn down a neighbor's offer to buy it from them to alleviate some of the racial tension that he believes their move will cause.

George, Beneatha's Nigerian boyfriend, is an interesting character: he seems to think he's a lot better than Walter, especially because he is in medical school, and starts influencing Beneatha in many ways. For example, he tells her that she is assimilating herself into white ways by "mutilating" (straightening) her hair; so she starts wearing traditional African clothing and ends up moving to Nigeria with George.

Like the last book I read, this play has a great but complicated plot that I won't bother fully explaining ... but one of the themes does seem to be about relationships. I love this part:

Ruth: Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you every day, every night and every morning, and you never say nothing new. (Shrugging). . So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffeur. So -- I would rather be living in Buckingham Palace.

Walter: That is just what is wrong with the colored women in this world... Don't understand nothing about building their men up and and making 'em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.

Ruth: (Drily, but to hurt): There are colored men who do things.

Walter: No thanks to the colored woman.

Ruth: Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can't help myself none.

I also like this part, when Beneatha lets her hair go natural:

George: Oh, don't be so proud of yourself, Bennie - just because you look eccentric.

Beneatha: How can something that's natural be eccentric?

George: That's what being eccentric means - being natural. Get dressed.

Lastly, a tidbit of info: the name of the play comes from the poem "Harlem," a.k.a. "A Dream Deferred," by Langston Hughes ...

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-- And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

77. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

2009-12-01T22:09:00.005-05:00

I'm embarrassed that I'm just now reading this ... this is such a fabulous novel!

This classic by Alice Walker is told mostly from the point of view of a girl named Celie in the form of diary entries. Celie is raped and impregnated twice by a man she calls Pa (after reading this and Push, I need to find some cheerier fiction!). The children are taken from her, and she ends up marrying a man referred to in the book as "Mr. ____." Mr. ___ has a mistress who goes by Shug Avery, who comes to live with Mr. ___ and Celie. It seems at first that Shug demeans Celie, like Mr. ____ does; but later, Shug and Celie become intimate and Shug helps Celie to discovery her sexuality.

Celie also has a sister, Nettie, who Celie's husband tries to seduce. When he couldn't, he forces Nettie to leave. Celie doesn't hear from Nettie for years, and so she assumes that Nettie is dead; but eventually it comes out through Shug that Mr. ____ was hiding letters from Nettie in a trunk. Nettie had been traveling in Africa with a missionary couple, Sam and Corrine, and their adopted children ... who turn out to be Celie's long-lost children.

The plot is complicated, so I won't go any further into it, but it is such a beautiful story. Maybe it's just my selection of books, but I haven't read much about homosexual relationships in African American literature - so I was surprised at Shug and Celie's relationship. It seems Shug had shallow relationships and Celie had physically and emotionally abusive relationships - so their relationship with each other was really the first time that they both seemed to experience love.

One of my favorite quotes comes from when Nettie is explaining how Corrine has started to think that the adopted children are really Nettie's children, because they look like Nettie - which would mean that Sam had cheated on Corinne with Nettie. In reality, the children look like Nettie because she is their aunt - but of course they don't know that at that point. But Nettie says, "She gets weaker and weaker, and unless she can believe us and start to feel something for her children, I fear we will lose her. Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly."

I also love the part where Celie has left her husband and gone to Memphis with Shug: she has started her own business and is doing really well for herself, and starts off her letter to Nettie with: "Dear Nettie, I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time!" It's just so powerful in the context of the story because things have finally started looking up for Celie!

Definitely a beautiful classic piece of literature that I would recommend reading! Now I'll definitely have to see the play ...

76. The Associate - John Grisham

2009-11-28T02:31:00.006-05:00

My first John Grisham novel! ... though to be honest, I was only mildly impressed.

This book (legal thriller #20 for Grisham) is about Kyle McAvoy, an impressive Yale law student whose dreams of working a public service job after law school are forced to change when shadowy figures emerge and start blackmailing him with a videotape that revives a five-year-old rape accusation. Kyle does as his blackmailers tell him, and accepts a job at a huge Wall Street firm that represents a military contractor involved in a hefty lawsuit. That client is the blackmailers' reason for blackmailing Kyle: as long as he feeds them information about the $800 billion case, then they won't expose his past.

Honestly ... it's a decent story, but I thought it would be more of an intellectual legal thriller. It was really more of a simple story which happened to take place at a law firm. And it could have easily been told in way less than 400 pages! I think the middle hundred or so pages could be shortened dramatically. Some parts were quite unbelievable, like this part explaining Kyle's experiences growing up with his dad, an attorney:

"Every lawyer and every judge in York knew Kyle, and it was not unusual for him to slip into an empty courtroom, present a motion to a judge, argue its merits if necessary, then leave with a signed order."

A high school student?? Really?! However, there were other parts that I could totally relate to and smile about, like when Kyle was studying for the bar exam, and this part about billing:

"It took an hour to read every word in the file. One point two hours to be exact, and suddenly he had no reluctance in billing Placid for 1.2 hours, or $360 for the review. Not long ago, say about ninety minutes, he found it hard to believe he was worth $300 an hour. He hadn't even passed the bar! Now, though, he had been converted."

Despite my critiques, I'll definitely be willing to check out the movie when it comes out in 2010 (yes - Grisham must have movie rights lined up while he's still writing!) - and I'm willing to read some more Grisham novels. He's got enough to choose from!

Oh - and many thanks to my buddy Cole for giving me this book to add to my library!! :)

75. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

2009-11-28T01:57:00.005-05:00

The main character in this book, Janie Crawford, is a middle-aged black woman who has just returned to Florida after being gone for a while. The people in the town start to gossip about her and try to speculate what happened to her most recent husband, Tea Cake, after he's found dead, and the plot of the majority of the book is framed by the story as Janie relates it to her friend Pheoby ...

Janie's life can be divided up into three time periods, during each of which she was married to three very different men. First: her marriage to Logan is unromantic and uninspired. She then runs away with Joe, who forbids her to associate with "common folk"; Joe's goal seems to be to shape Janie into what he considers to be the perfect wife through both physical and emotional abuse.

"He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, [Janie] pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again ... The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired."

Joe eventually dies, and Janie seems quite relieved at finally achieving her freedom from him. She starts seeing a man who goes by the name of Tea Cake - a man twelve years younger than her. One part in the book that really shocked me is where Janie is discussing her relationship with a neighbor, Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner refuses to have a black doctor see her; she also refuses to go into black-owned business because "colored folks don't know nothin' 'bout not business." Even worse:

"Ah ain't got no flat nose and liver lips. Ah'm uh featured woman. Ah got white folks' features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain't fair. Even if dey don't take us in wid de whites, dey oughta make us uh class tuh ourselves."

Apparently this extended exchange with Mrs. Turner received a lot of criticism from Harlem Renaissance writers: many said that it "favored" lighter-skinned African Americans, though I didn't see it as such (I agree with some other critics in that it more "exposed" the division between light-skinned and dark-skinned African Americans).

Anyway, at the end of the story, Tea Cake gets bitten by a rabid dog and gradually gets very sick and delusional. I won't spoil the ending, though I will share one of my mom's favorite passages:

"The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees."

My mom pointed out the alliteration in that paragraph ... true, something that I likely would not have picked up on! I really enjoyed reading this book, though it was very hard for me to get into the phonetic spelling of the dialect spoken by all of the characters. I think I finally stopped having to re-read every page maybe a third of a way through the book. But this is definitely a classic piece of American literature that I wouldn't mind re-reading some other time to try to more fully enjoy all of its symbolism and literary devices.

74. Body Language 101 - David Lambert

2009-11-25T19:29:00.006-05:00

This book is basically a guide to understanding body language. The material is divided into categories like "signs of conflict, "getting together" (including an interesting subcategory called "courtship"), and "keeping your distance," complete with color illustrations and even research from zoology and kinesics to describe the origins of the body language. I was also very impressed with the author's extensive explanations of gender and cultural differences.
Though much of the material was common sensical, the book does have some interesting tidbits: i.e. you know how people cross their fingers for "good luck"? Apparently that actually originated as a symbol of the cross on which Jesus died, and so "crossing your fingers" used to be a way to ask for God's protection. It seems so secular now! Some other parts I found particularly interesting:

"The consensus among researchers appears to be that women display more courting signals than men .... Women give off subtler courtship signals than men and are sharper at spotting those made by the opposite sex."

Also: not that I thought about it much, but I would have guessed that handshaking has been around for centuries. Apparently, I was wrong: "As a gesture of openness showing that the hand is empty of weapons, handshaking would seem to have early origins. Some people think it goes back to the Roman practice of grasping the forearm, but handshaking as we usually do it today perhaps began only two centuries ago."

Next time you observe two men getting into an argument, if you see either of them display this type of body language you might smile: "Two men who are strangers and feeling unsure of themselves might try to proclaim their masculinity by standing with hands on hips, or fingers or thumbs tucked into the front of the belt, a gesture which draws attention to the genital region. Some researchers claim this posture means 'I can dominate you because I am virile.'"

73. My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness - Patricia Raybon

2009-11-25T19:02:00.006-05:00

How about this for the first page in a book:

"God help me.
I stopped hating white people on purpose about a year ago. I didn't tell anybody. I couldn't. If I did, I would have to explain how I started hating in the first place. And I really didn't know then myself.
I just hated."

In this very heartfelt book that is part memoir, part social commentary, and part self-help, Raybon explains how she found herself hating white people for years. Eventually, she decides to trace her journey from "rage and racial reasoning" and starts trying to practice forgiveness. She realizes that she would first have to hunt out the flaws in herself; and in the words of the gospel, realize that "It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer."

Part of what I loved so much about this book was the author's candor - she incredibly real. She really draws the reader into feeling her anger and her pain - whether it's from the perspective of sympathy or empathy. From one part:

"'Tell me I'm OK. Befriend me, hire me, admire me, give me a good table at your restaurant, sell me a house in your neighborhood, talk to me, listen to me, look at me, love me.' But white people can't satisfy all these needs - because nobody externally can possibly fill up somebody else's internal longings. That inability, of white folks to satisfy my emotional needs, has been part of my disappointment with white people. I hated them, indeed, for not filling me up."

I also really liked this book because it followed how the author went from feeling such anger to achieving forgiveness. That is of course a skill that is useful in any context, not just racial forgiveness.
Thank you to my dear line sister Andrea for this great recommendation :)

72. Black is the New White - Paul Mooney

2009-11-22T17:25:00.004-05:00

I had no idea that Paul Mooney was the writer behind Richard Pryor; not to mention his significant work for In Living Color and Saturday Night Live! (of course, most of us younger folks know his work on The Chappelle Show). This is an interesting combination of a biography/memoir and an absolutely hilarious commentary on race and society. Mooney helped a lot of comedians "make it" - i.e. Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Sandra Bernhard, etc. - while he mostly stayed behind the scenes. He's got great stories of life in Hollywood with these big names, and he of course tells these stories in a hilarious way. One part I've thought about several times since I've read the book:

"For white people, Bill [Cosby] is the perfect Negro. He's the Sidney Poitier of comedy, very clean-cut and articulate. White folks love to use that word to describe us. Articulate. It means we don't grunt like jungle savages."

Ha! Another funny part:

"...We decide to keep all of my money in Mama's bra, since that's the equivalent of hiding it under the mattress. There's a lot of room in there. My money goes into the left cup. I always know where it is. I do my business at the Bank of Mama's Left Tit."

Clearly, if you aren't one for the "m-f word" or a lot of crude humor - this book is not for you. It wasn't a fabulous memoir or book of humor, but I'd give it a solid three and a half stars out of five.

71. House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus III

2009-11-19T13:13:00.006-05:00

Instantly a top-5 choice. A simply beautiful story.
The book begins from the point of view of Colonel Behrani, a man who was once wealthy in Iran and is now a struggling immigrant in California. He has blown most of his money trying to keep up appearances in the U.S., and is struggling to make ends meet for his family. He sinks what money he has left into a house that he buys at an auction, not knowing the direction in which the purchase would lead his family ...
The next chapter is told from the point of view of Kathy Niccolo, the former owner of the house that Colonel Behrani bought. Kathy is incredibly emotionally unstable: her husband has recently left her, and the house (an inheritance from her dad) is all that she has left. When the house is foreclosed upon, Sheriff Lester Burdon helps her try to get it back - but ends up falling in love with her. Lester ultimately becomes obsessed with Kathy and with helping her try to get the house back.
For the majority of the book, the chapters alternate in terms of from whose point of view they are told. The author does an excellent job of making the reader feel what the character was feeling. He perfectly captures the way in which Colonel Behrani and his family, as recent Iranian immigrants, speak English; he also does a great job at weaving in a lot of Persian/Iranian culture. I could feel how determined Colonel Behrani is to keep the house: to him, it's his key to the American dream and to redeeming himself as the provider for his family.
In the chapters told from Kathy's point of view, I could feel her desperation and her feelings for Lester. Some chapters later in the book are told in third person, and in those chapters I could feel Lester's confusion and how torn he was between his developing obsession for Kathy and his pain in leaving his wife and children.
While I was reading this, I was so into it that I got annoyed when the phone would ring and interrupt me. I didn't want to put it down! I plan on renting the movie this weekend (it was made into a movie that came out in 2003) - I hope it doesn't disappoint me!

70. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

2009-11-18T22:07:00.008-05:00

What a strange book ...
In the first chapter, Arthur Dent is upset that bulldozers are about to demolish his house. His neighbor, Ford Prefect (an alien who's been posing as an out of work actor on earth), comes over and tells Arthur that he has to tell Arthur the most important thing he's ever heard ... that the earth is about to be demolished to make space for a freeway. Suddenly, the loss of Arthur's house doesn't seem that terrible ...
The rest of the book is about Arthur and Ford's adventures as they travel through the galaxy. Some parts of this book were just downright strange ... maybe they were above my head, or not just my kind of humor? Although I do know that I'm not much of a sci-fi fan, except for Star Trek (I know, go figure). But it definitely did have its funny points. One of my favorites:

A voice comes in and announces that "the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route" ... and that "regrettably, [earth] is one of those scheduled for demolition." When the people of earth start panicking and objecting, the voice tells them that all of the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in Alpha Centauri for fifty years ... so they've "had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now ... What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light-years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

I also like this part:

"One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."

There are some die hard Douglas Adams fans out there, so even though I was left a bit bewildered ... maybe it was just me. Give this book a try :)

69. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography - Sidney Poitier

2009-11-15T22:28:00.009-05:00

This is a great story (although I'm not quite sure what makes it a "spiritual autobiography") of the life of actor Sidney Poitier. Poitier talks about growing up very poor in the Bahamas; moving to Miami with his brother when he was a teenager; and eventually moving to New York where he worked as a dishwasher and eventually started taking drama classes and started acting.
The first few chapters moved a bit slowly for me; the book picked up a bit about a quarter of the way through when he talks about his time in the army. After having joined the army, Poitier realized that it had been a bad decision. His anger about the decision started seeping out, and he threw a chair at the head of one of his senior officers. Here is a passage from when he's talking about being faced with a court martial:

"...The act was premeditated. Yes. And calculatedly designed. Yes. But not to do harm. My scenario called for the chair to miss that officer by inches. And in fact it did ... My overall purpose was aimed at something other than that officer's head. An excuse was my immediate objective. My actions were a shameful attempt to establish an excuse that would allow me to eventually walk away from obligations I had freely and solemnly assumed. Simply put, I wanted to get the hell out of the army."

Some parts of the book were quite interesting - like Poitier's description of his first interaction with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn before they filmed Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; his explanation of how he goes deep inside himself to to make a connection with the character he's playing when he's acting; and also his work with the play A Raisin in the Sun. So although the story of Poitier's life is certainly interesting, I wouldn't say that the book itself was spectacular.

68. Animal Farm - George Orwell

2009-11-13T22:55:00.007-05:00

What a strange/interesting/hilarious book ...
Animal Farm is a brilliant commentary on the corruption of the Russian Revolution ... in the form of a satire. A barnyard full of animals revolt against their human masters in the hopes of achieving an idealistic state of justice and progress. The revolt is initially a success: the animals meet to debate farm policy and complete the harvest. The pigs are the most intelligent animals and are therefore put in charge; Napoleon (one of the pigs) is initially the leader of all of the animals. Some premises behind the revolt ...

"Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes up on four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco ... All habits of Man are evil."

They even set forth the "Seven Commandments," one of which is "No animal shall sleep in a bed." Yet throughout the story, when Napoleon and the other pigs start (among other things) sleeping in beds ... the commandment changes to, "No animal shall sleep in a bed ... with sheets."

The farm is doing well, although "it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer ..." except, of course, for the pigs. The pigs start taking on many qualities of their human oppressors, including walking on their hind legs and gambling. The Seven Commandments are eventually reduced to a single law: "All animals are equal; but some animals are more equal than others." The book ends with a drawing (yes, it has sketches!) of the pigs sitting around a table playing cards ... looking like strange pig-human hybrids.

I might have appreciated the book even more than I did if I knew a bit more about the Russian Revolution; nonetheless, I know enough about Communism to have gotten the gist and to have definitely found the book very, very funny!

67. Push - Sapphire

2009-11-11T23:57:00.006-05:00

This incredibly sad and moving book was the basis for Tyler Perry's most recent movie, Precious. The story is about Claireece Precious Jones: an obese, illiterate, dark-skinned, HIV positive teenager in Harlem - who had a daughter at twelve by her sexually abusive father, and who was pregnant again with another one of his children by the age of sixteen. It's impossible to read this book and not be overwhelmed with emotion for this poor girl. From one passage, where Precious was describing her life not long after the birth of her first child who has Down Syndrome:

"Sometimes I wish I was not alive. But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how hard I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning. I hardly have not seen my daughter since she was a little baby. I never stick my bresses in her mouth. My muver say what for? It's outta style ... She say I never do you. What that child of yours need tittie for? She retarded. Mongoloid. Down Sinder."

She actually called the baby "Little Mongo" throughout the book ... I was hoping that was some awful nickname that she gave the baby, but no other name was ever shared. From another passage, talking about her son ...

"When he grow up he gonna laff big black girls? He gon' laff at dark skin like he got? One thing I say about Farrakhan and Alice Walker they help me like being black. I wish I wasn't fat but I am. Maybe one day I like that too, who knows."

The author certainly doesn't hold back: some parts were incredibly, incredibly ... raw. I was shocked. Other parts aren't as explicit but make you want to cry:

"I always thought I was someone different on the inside. That I was just fat and black and ugly to people on the OUTSIDE. And if they could see inside me they would see something lovely and not keep laughing at me, throwing spitballs (shit one time nigger at school just spit on me when I was pregnant) and polly seed shells at me, that Mama and Daddy would recognize me as ... as, I don't know, Precious!"

Definitely one of those books that leaves you feeling very emotionally drained; but thankfully, the ending does leave the reader with hope.

66. The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Story of America's Wealthy - Thomas J. Stankley and William D. Danko

2009-11-11T23:29:00.010-05:00

How do the rich people in this county become wealthy? Not in the ways that you may think! In this fascinating book, the authors share their research based on interviews spanning over twenty years with America's millionaires (those with a net worth of more than $1 million). An important point to make: your net worth is definitely not the same as your income. In fact, the authors use an interesting formula in computing one's net worth: "Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be." So someone can have a really high income but low net wealth ... which is actually the case of a huge percentage of America's high income earners. Too often, the high income earners become overly concerned with displaying a high social status and therefore don't accumulate the net worth that they should, relative to their incomes, to be considered "wealthy." "It is much easier in America to earn a lot than it is to accumulate wealth." Take this into consideration:

"... approximately 70,000 Mercedes were sold in this country last year. This translates into about one-half of 1 percent of the more than fourteen million motor vehicles sold. At the same time, there were nearly 3.5 million millionaire households. What does this tell us? It suggests that the members of most wealthy households don't drive luxury imports. The fact is that two out of three purchasers or leasers of foreign luxury motor vehicles in this country are not millionaires."

... and I bet 90% of those people live right here in flashy Atlanta! The authors share fascinating information, summed up into seven common denominators, among those who successfully build wealth. There's no point in my listing them all here because they won't make much sense without context; but they include living below their means; allocating time, energy, and money in ways conducive to building wealth; believing that financial independence is more important than displaying social status; and choosing the "right" occupation.

An interesting overall point: 80% of America's millionaires are first-generation millionaires - i.e. they did not inherit their wealth from their parents! Maybe if some of us were as quick to invest in the stock market and real estate as we were to go buy a Benz as soon as we come across any money, we would be a lot better off.

This book is definitely top-5 status. A must-read!

65. The Physics of Star Trek - Lawrence M. Krauss

2009-11-09T22:43:00.006-05:00

I know, I know. My secret's out.

I'm a Trekkie.

As much as I want to say that "anyone can enjoy this book" (in the way that I think anyone could enjoy many of the movies), the truth is that you will probably miss 95% of what the author is talking about if you've never seen an episode of Star Trek. But ... bear with me anyway :)

Krauss explores the physics behind the show (all spinoffs except the most recent one, Enterprise) and speculates about which pieces of technology might actually exist some day - and which are completely against the laws of physics.

One of my favorite chapters was about the transporter (non-Trekkies: the thing they use to "beam" from one location to another; think, "Beam me up, Scotty!" ... although Captain Kirk never actually said that phrase in any episode or movie! The closest he came was, "Scotty, beam us up" ... but I digress.). The idea came about because Gene Roddenberry's design of the Enterprise was such that the ship glided through space easily; but it would have a lot of trouble with its footing if it ever tried to land. Plus, "...the meager budget for a weekly television show precluded landing a huge starship every week." And what kind of plot would you have if you didn't interact with the people on the planets you encounter?! Cutting through all the techno-jargon, Krauss basically explains that transporter beams will never work; though holodecks and holograms are quite possible. Just look at the holographic technology that exists already!

One of my other favorite chapters was a list of the author's favorite physics "bloopers" on Star Trek. (I'm quite aware that I've lost 90% of my cool points by now). An example: whenever someone shoots a phaser beam, we see the beam of light. But that's a problem because light is not visible unless it reflects off of something.

"If you have ever been to a lecture given with the help of a laser pointer ... you may recall that you see only the spot where the beam hits the screen, and not anything in between. The only way to make the whole beam visible is to make the room dusty ... Thus, unless empty space is particularly dusty, we shouldn't see the phase beam except where it hits."

How disappointing! But honestly, the most interesting parts of this book were those that showed some absolutely amazing accuracy and even foresight in some instances on the part of the writers.

Clearly, if you're a Trekkie, you'll enjoy this book. If you're not ... moving on to book #66 ...

64. The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke - Suze Orman

2009-11-08T20:56:00.004-05:00

Financial guru Suze Orman provides her savvy financial advice in this book geared towards "Generation Broke" - those in their (our) twenties and thirties who have recently entered the working world and are buried in student loans and/or credit cards; trying to figure out what a 401(k) is; and interested in figuring out how to save up for a down payment for a home.
There is an incredible amount of information in this book, i.e. explaining what your FICO score is and why it's so important; how to deal with student loan debt; tips on dealing with finances for newlyweds (interesting tip - make a commitment to sit down once a year with your significant other and check your FICO scores together!); explaining the difference between 401(k)s and Roth IRAs; the best way to deal with and pay off your student loan debt; how to figure out if you're in the position to be able to buy a home; and why credit cards aren't always bad ... and why it's sometimes a bad idea to cancel them!
This is definitely a book I'd have to reference again as I reach certain stages in my life ... I'm not the type to take everything that one person says as gospel, but this did seem to have some great information. I also really appreciated having a book that was geared towards younger, just-starting-out folks (why keep telling recent college grads that we need to have eight months of expenses in an emergency fund when we've barely started working?!).

63. Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine - Glenn Beck

2009-11-07T21:51:00.006-05:00

The premise of this book is that Americans in 1776 were woken up by Common Sense (by Thomas Paine) and realized that "an oppressive English government was out of step with the Laws of Nature." Beck argues that "our government is once again out of step with the Laws of Nature. The government by, of, and for the people has been turned on its head."
Given Beck's reputation, I was surprised that he actually seems to take shots at both sides in this book. It wasn't as divisive (Republican v. Democrat) as I thought it'd be. He does make some great points and is a good and entertaining writer.
In one chapter, he explains what a Ponzi scheme is and then says that "Social Security is a great example of a 'legal Ponzi scheme.' Every time you're paid for work, the government takes a portion of your hard-earned dollars to 'invest' in the Social Security Trust Fund, where it sits, collecting interest, until you retire and are eligible to start receiving your Social Security checks. At least, that's the way most of us think that it works. The truth is that your money isn't set aside until you retire. In the meantime it's spent by the government and an IOU is put in the trust fund in its place."

Another good point about the overly-complicated tax code: "If you're a friend to those in power and fail to pay your taxes, it's considered a simple oversight and you move on to become secretary of the treasury. But if you're considered hostile to those in power, then the same mistake will be used to destroy your reputation ... Do you think it's purely a coincidence that Martin Luther King, Jr., was targeted as a tax cheat or that both Jesse Owens and Joe Louis were investigated for tax-code violations after they spoke out against the government?"

I did start to roll my eyes, however, when he used in support of his argument that the government will always say that anything is for the "common good" - like when it put Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II "for the common good." A little extreme - I don't think a health care bill is quite on the same level as interning American citizens based on their ethnicity.

I was disappointed when I realized that only part 1 of this book (i.e. the first hundred or so pages) is actually from Beck - part 2 is the original "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine! Only someone with name recognition could sell half a book like this and have it do so well.

62. The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want

2009-11-07T21:23:00.007-05:00

In this book, Deepak Chopra shares twenty spiritual lessons for taking control of your spiritual journey. Raging from love to selflessness to identity, Chopra presents these lessons from a sort of philosophical - slash - religious perspective.
Much of the book was a bit too mushy and "new-agey" for my taste; but there were some great lessons. For example:

"When you say you are in love, what you're really saying is that an image you carry around has been satisfied. This is how attachment begins, with attachment to an image ... Look beyond your emotions, which will always change, and ask what lies behind the image."

Also: "In the same way most of the events you call misfortunes or even divine punishment are really born of compassion, for God always takes the kindest way to correct imbalances in nature. It is you who build up these imbalances , which He must purify in order to save you from deeper misfortune."

The main thing that makes this book different from Chopra's other self-improvement books (or really, anyone else's since they all start to seem the same after a while) is the way in which it's told - it's divided up into twenty lessons, and each lesson is divided up into a story of a lesson that Arthur learns from Merlin the Wizard (because each of us have a "wizard" within us); a section about understanding the lessons; and one about living the lesson.

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

2009-11-04T13:45:00.007-05:00

Definitely a classic piece of American literature ... that I think I was supposed to read in high school but never did :) This book is about two migrant workers in California - George and Lennie. Lennie seems to be mildly retarded - but is incredibly strong and is thus a great worker. Lennie is also somewhat obsessed with petting soft things; but because of his strength, he often accidentally hurts them (i.e. mice and puppies). Because Lennie dreams of having a farm with lots of rabbits, George tries to protect Lennie and prevent him from getting into trouble by saying that if Lennie doesn't do what he's supposed to do, he won't be able to "tend to the rabbits" on the farm they're going to buy.

However, Lennie gets into trouble when the wife of Curley, the farm owner, starts flirting with him. Knowing that Lennie likes to touch soft things, she tells Lennie to touch her hair; but in doing so, he accidentally breaks her neck. He runs away, and the other farm workers (including Curley) form a mob that starts looking for him to try to kill him. To spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the mob - and perhaps for selfish reasons as well, the story ends with George shooting Lennie in the back of the head.
I can't seem to figure out why George took responsibility for Lennie to begin with - they don't seem to be related. It's also interesting to note that Steinbeck never gives the name of the woman that Lennie accidentally kills - she is just "Curley's wife."

This is a well-written (and sad!) story. It almost seems like a play - it's really easy to envision the setting and the characters from the way that Steinbeck writes.

60. Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now - Maya Angelou

2009-11-04T08:35:00.006-05:00

This is a beautiful collection of short, inspirational pieces by poet Maya Angelou. Angelou shares her thoughts on topics like morality, perseverance, friendship, love, and manners, and weaves in her own life experiences.
This passage epitomizes the theme throughout the book:

"...by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends."

One of my favorite pieces is called "Getups":

"If I am comfortable inside my skin, I have the ability to make other people comfortable inside their skins although their feelings are not my primary reason for making my fashion choice ... then I am so comfortable that whatever I wear looks good on me even to the external fashion arbiters .... Seek the fashion which truly fits and befits you. You will always be in fashion if you are true to yourself, and only if you are true to yourself."

Reading this book reminded me of when I took Dr. Angelou's class at Wake Forest ... and how whenever we would beg her to read to us one of her poems, she would make sure that we weren't following along in our books because she would always change the words!
This was a beautiful, quick read - a great gift idea, as well.

59. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

2009-10-29T23:31:00.006-04:00

I wanted to read this book to figure out where the term "catch 22" came from. Though it took a very long 400+ pages to get there ... I think I've finally got it :)
The main character of this book is Joseph Yossarian, an American army pilot who is serving off the coast of Italy during World War II. Everyone thinks that Yossarian is crazy because he believes that millions of people are trying to kill him; though I don't think he was really crazy. It seemed more to be his way of avoiding the war - he's angry that his life is always in danger through no fault of his own. Therefore, he keeps trying to rotate out of active flight duty ... but his commander keeps raising the number of missions the men in the squadron have to fly before he will allow them to rotate out. That's where the infamous law, Catch-22, comes in:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

Because Heller appears to be making a social commentary about the absurdity of war and the ineffectiveness of bureaucracies, I thought that the premise behind Catch-22 had more to do with laws and/or government; but circular logic seems to be a theme throughout the book. There is one part (that almost made me go cross-eyed) where Yossarian is with a woman named Luciana; after he sleeps with her, he decides that he wants to marry her. When he tells her that, she tells him that no man will marry her because she is not a virgin; and when Yossarian tells her that he still wants to marry her, she starts acting crazy and starts telling him that he is crazy for wanting to marry a non-virgin like herself ... and that she can't marry a crazy man!
Heller is a very clever and witty writer. One part I found really funny:

"... Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was."

Although this book took me forever to finish! ... I would say it's definitely a classic worth reading.

58. What the Dog Saw, And Other Adventures - Malcolm Gladwell

2009-10-25T21:40:00.014-04:00

From my post after reading Outliers ... "I'll be first in line whenever [Gladwell's] next book comes out." So how thrilled was I when I walked into Borders for my Sunday afternoon reading ... and I saw a brand new Malcolm Gladwell book on display?! (It just came out four days ago, on October 20).

Maybe a little too excited ... because I was a little disappointed.
What the Dog Saw is basically the equivalent of "The Best of [fill in your favorite music artist here]" - it's Gladwell's favorite articles that he's written for the New Yorker since he joined the staff in 1996. They're pretty much mini-versions of his first three books: the world according to Gladwell, written in an engaging, witty, and persuasive way.

The book is divided into three categories. Part 1 is about people Gladwell calls "minor geniuses": "people like Ron Popeil, the pitchman who by himself conceived, created, and sold the Showtime rotisserie oven to millions on TV, breaking every rule of the modern economy."

Part 2 is about theories, or ways of organizing experience. My favorite article in this section is "Something Borrowed: Whether a Charge of Plagiarism Should Ruin Your Life." In this article, Gladwell discusses plagiarism and whether the punishment for it has gone too far. What makes this article most interesting is that he discusses a personal story in which he was not given credit for something he wrote. I thought Gladwell did a good job of summarizing copyright law, and distinguishing plagiarism (a lot of people confuse the two). In part, he says, "... plagiarism is different, and that's what's so strange about it. The ethical rules that govern when it's acceptable for one writer to copy another are even more extreme than the most extreme position of the intellectual-property crowd: when it comes to literature, we have somehow decided that copying is never acceptable." I think this article epitomizes Gladwell's strengths: he presents information about an important topic in a way that's easy to understand, and he makes it engaging by weaving in anecdotes (in this case, from a personal story ... though I have a feeling that more are personal than it may seem, he just may not always let us know that!).

In Part 3, Gladwell examines the predictions we make about people, like how we think we know whether someone is smart, bad, good at their profession, etc. Some articles in this section discuss how educators evaluate young teachers; how the FBI profiles criminals, and how job interviewers form snap judgments of job candidates (all of which are quite reminiscent of the idea behind Blink). One of my favorite articles in this section was "The Art of Failure," about why some people "choke" and others "panic." According to Gladwell, "[c]hoking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart .... there are clearly cases when how failure happens is central to understanding why failure happens."

It was great to read these articles since I love Gladwell's writing and I'm unfortunately not a regular New Yorker reader. But one thing that a lot of his critics say is that he never writes about anything new - he just presents it in a different way. In my opinion, that's genius enough ... especially given the millions of books that he's sold. But I think Gladwell got a lot of the ideas from his first three books from these articles that he's written over the past decade: so for me, having read all of his books, I'd have to agree with his critics ... not so much because the ideas aren't new within the whole realm of ideas in the world, but because they're not new within the realm of Gladwell's world.

So here's my theory: he wanted to rake in a little extra Christmas shopping money and decided to bundle some articles together and sell them. Hey - not a bad idea. But it'll be interesting to see how well this book does - especially since you can download all of his articles for free on his website.

57. Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown - Stephen Jay Gould

2009-10-25T20:50:00.007-04:00

In this book, published in 1997, author Stephen Jay Gould asks and answers three main questions about the then-looming millennium ... (1) What exactly is the millennium, and how has its meaning shifted over time?; (2) When exactly will the millennium begin?; and (3) Why are our calendars so complex, leading to a search for arbitrary regularity?
The gist of the answers is that most of what's behind the interest in the millennium is the human interest in the idea of an apocalypse; and also a compulsion to measure and organize time.

Much of this book was sort of convoluted, though it did have its interesting parts ... do you know why Jehovah's Witnesses don't salute the flag or undertake military service? Their founder, Charles Taze Russell, was strongly influenced by millenarian doctrines; and Witnesses believe that Satan is currently in control and that secular powers are "unwittingly under his domination."

Another interesting part talks about the "real" birth of Jesus - Gould cites a lot of information leading to his conclusion that the calculation of the millennium is off because Jesus was born around 4 B.C., if not earlier.

Gould is a great, witty writer - but not as witty as my favorite author (Malcolm Gladwell). This was an interesting read, though I wouldn't recommend anyone push it to the top of their "must read" list.

56. Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream - Lerone Bennett, Jr.

2009-10-23T22:20:00.007-04:00

With such a fascinating and "charged" title, this must be a great book ... right? Not entirely ...
Bennett makes the argument that Lincoln is not "the great emancipator" as many have made him out to be. Rather, "history - the movement and orchestration of the dominant forces of the age - freed the slaves." Many of the premises of this book, I'd heard before: the Emancipation Proclamation didn't really free the slaves because the act "did not itself free a single negro," and it "carefully, deliberately, studiously excluded all Negroes within 'our military reach'" ... and of course, the Confederate States were not within the Union's "military reach" during the Civil War.
Although the book is very well-researched, and Bennett cites a lot of seemingly reputable sources, his own commentary gets a bit distracting. For example, he continuously argues that Lincoln was a racist, in part because of his use of the word "n----r." Although that is of course a horrible and hateful word, I think it's important to note the context. It's a lot worse now than it was back in the mid-1800's. If, according to the United States Constitution, a black person was only considered 3/5 of a person ... are they really going to have ground to argue against the use of the n-word? (who knew that the three-fifths compromise was still in the Constitution, even though it's been superseded - Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3. What a reminder.) Anyway, if Bennett made that point once, or even twice over the course of the 600-page book, that'd be fine - but he seemed to bring it up at least five times in each chapter.
Additionally, Bennett makes a compelling argument that Lincoln wanted blacks to return to Africa rather than staying in America. This would be a fine point to make in support of his argument ... though I do think that a president saying that in the 21st or even the 20th century would be a lot different than a president saying that in the 19th century. But then Bennett distracts from his point with phrases like this: "If Lincoln had had his way, there would be no Blacks in America. None. Harlem would be a white way, the South Sides would be pale sides and there would be a deafening silence and holes the size of the Grand Canyon where Bojangles and Louis and Duke and Martin Luther King and Michael Jordan and Toni Morrison would be."
An interesting premise behind this book, but 1) the author's rants were distracting, and 2) it was waaaay too long! If you're going to read it, check out the table of contents and just pick the chapters that you think will interest you the most :)

55. Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea - Gary Kinder

2009-10-21T23:55:00.007-04:00

This book, like In the Heart of the Sea, is another great example of a way to learn a lot about a historical event ... with the excitement of a fiction novel and not the boring tone of a historian. Ship of Gold is about the sinking of the SS Central America, a ship that was bringing passengers and a whole lot of gold from California to New York just after the gold rush in 1857. When it encountered a storm off the coast of North Carolina, the ship sank - along with its 400 passengers and 21 tons of gold.
I enjoyed how the author told this story: he weaves together the plot from the 1850's - the time of the sinking of the ship in 1857 - with the plot from the 1980's, when a discovery group began its attempt at recovering the ship, more than 8,000 feet under water.
Some scenes really make you feel the story. From one passage, as the ship is sinking:

"Others shot upward through black water, bursting to the surface with a desperate gasp, struggling to breathe, coughing salt water, the night dark and the wind still fierce, the waves rolling over them, choking them, and suddenly rocketing upward from deep in the sea came the missiles from a battered ship, the spars, the hatch covers, the stateroom doors, the planking, the heavy timbers propelled up from the water and into the air before falling back with a heavy crash, to stun them, crush them, knock them unconscious, to kill many of those who had survived ..."

I found it fascinating to learn about how scientist/entrepreneur Tommy Thompson was able to get investors to fund the project; the technological challenges he faced; as well as the competitors and legal battles he had to deal with. Eventually, several insurance companies filed suit against the discovery group, claiming that because they paid damages for the lost gold, they had the right to it. Thompson's team argued that the gold had been abandoned.

I learned a lot from this book ... did you know that it was the largest salvage award in the history of admiralty? The total value of the gold recovered was $150 million, and one piece of gold weighed 80 pounds and sold for $8 million! Kinder clearly did his research to be able to write this book ... though I must say, I do feel it could have been done in a lot fewer than 500 pages.

54. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

2009-10-18T20:03:00.007-04:00

My first Hemingway book ... A Farewell to Arms is written from the point of view of Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver for the Italian army during World War I. Henry begins a relationship with Catherine Barkley, a nurse for the British army. Although he initially keeps telling himself that he does not love Catherine, but that their relationship is "a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards" ... he does ultimately seem to fall in love with her.
In the course of the war, there was supposedly an act of treachery that led to the Italian defeat. So when Henry realizes that Italian officers are being interrogated and executed because of the defeat, he escapes by jumping into a river. By that point, Catherine is three months pregnant, and she and Henry escape Italy by rowing to Switzerland in a rowboat.
The gender dynamics between Catherine and Henry are interesting ... old-fashioned and slightly melodramatic, but interesting. One passage:

[Catherine]: "How many people have you ever loved?"
[Henry]: "Nobody."
"Not even me?"
"Yes, you."
"How many others really?"
"None."
"How many have you—how do you say it?—stayed with?"
"None."
"You’re lying to me."
"Yes."
"It’s all right. Keep right on lying to me. That’s what I want you to do."

I was rooting for them after Henry seemed to accept his feelings for Catherine, and was sad at the ending! (which I won't spoil).
This is the second war story I've read (the first was Miracle at St. Anna) - and to be honest, both have left me a bit confused. I feel like I might have missed some themes ... and I'm realizing that I prefer nonfiction (over fiction). Nonetheless, an enjoyable book.

53. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick

2009-10-17T22:43:00.007-04:00

In the Heart of the Sea is the story about the whaleship Essex - the story that was Melville's inspiration behind Moby Dick. The Essex left Nantucket in 1819 to hunt whales in the Pacific. Back then, whale oil was expensive and used a lot for lamps and candle wax. Here's a passage that describes very vividly the process of "whaling":

"...finding 'the life' of a giant swimming mammal encased in a thick layer of blubber was not easy. Sometimes the mate would be forced to stab it as many as fifteen times, probing for a group of coiled arteries in the vicinity of the lungs with a violent churning motion that soon surrounded the whaleboat in a rushing river of bright red blood."

While in the Pacific Ocean, a huge whale rammed the ship twice and sank it. The sailors managed to escape in three small boats before the Essex sank, but the boats had no where near enough food or water. Much of the book tells the sad stories of the sickness that the sailors endured, and the death of some of the sailors and the cannibalism that ensued. Interestingly, none of the black sailors survived - because they started the voyage in poorer health than the white sailors and also got poorer quality food during the trip, they died first and thus were eaten first.
This part, describing how an 18th century British ship resorted to cannibalism, really messed me up: "... they began by removing the most obvious signs of the corpse's humanity - the head, hands, feet, and skin - and consigned them to the sea."

This is an extremely well-written book. The first two or three chapters moved a bit slowly for me, but it picked up. I also liked this book because it's non-fiction (and very well-researched - check out the endnotes!) but is written like a very readable fiction novel.

52. The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships - Hill Harper

2009-10-17T00:16:00.009-04:00

I was a bit apprehensive before reading this book. "Hill Harper is single - so what gives him the authority to write this?" But he in no way comes off as a know-it-all about relationships. Really, he comes off as part of "the conversation," too - learning along with his readers.

The premise behind this book is that the lack of communication between black men and women is threatening the relationships that are necessary to sustain the black family. Harper discusses a wide range of issues - finances, sex, what men want, what women want, interracial relationships, etc. - in his analysis of why only 30% of black children are being raised in two-parent households and why not enough black couples are able to hold a marriage together.

This books has elements of advice (some parts reminded me of Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, but ... well, more Hill Harper and less Steve Harvey) and stories about Harper's own life ... but it's unique in the way Harper intertwines lessons that he's learned from conversations with people in his life (married/single/divorced).

Here's one part that I found particularly interesting in a passage about how finances often cause the most arguments in relationships:

"As a group, Blacks are the largest debtors in the world. Living with debt hanging over out heads causes stress. That stress affects our moods, our quality of life, and our ability to connect with others ... We as a people have indebtgestion even though we are earning more money than we ever have before. Part of the problem is that we are running through our credit at alarming rates, and the resulting debt is affecting our relationships. This indebtgestion may be the true cause of why the Black family is ill."

This was a wonderful book; to my knowledge, his first that is geared towards adults.

51. Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny - Hill Harper

2009-10-16T12:26:00.008-04:00

This is a great book by the beautiful Hill Harper (CSI: NY; Get on the Bus ... Brown University; Harvard Law with Obama; etc.). Written in the style of letters to a teenage girl going through all sorts of typical teenage issues, Harper offers advice on topics such as relationships, family, men, racism, sexism, self-empowerment, career choices, faith, and service. At the end of each chapter are questions posed via email, answered by famous women including Michelle Obama, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Nikki Giovanni, Ruby Dee, and Ciara.

One thing Harper said that I really like was about the "high-tech/low-touch society" we are living in.

"Because so many of us are using technology ... to communicate rather than being face-to-face, it allows us men to lie much more easily. Attempting to have a serious, real conversation with someone using technology is not the way to do it. You can't look them in the eye, see their expression or their body language, or all those other things that allow your intuition to get a feel for whether what you're hearing is the truth or a lie."

I do feel that this book is more suited for a younger audience, i.e. adolescents, maybe college students. For example, an email asks, "Hill, a lot of my friends and people on TV say that boys are liars, boys are jerks ... What do you think I should look for in a boy?" Nonetheless, grown women can definitely benefit from and be reminded of these lessons, too. And reading this book made it an easy choice for what I'll get my cousin who just started high school, and her slightly older brother, for Christmas! (Harper also wrote Letters to a Young Brother).

The next book I plan on reading is Harper's newest book, The Conversation: How Black Men and Black Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships. I'm sure that one is geared a little more towards my age group, and am looking forward to it!

(Oh - and how many people knew that his full name is Francis Hill Harper? That's okay. I'd still marry him.)

50. The Real Coke, The Real Story - Thomas Oliver

2009-10-13T23:05:00.011-04:00

[My 50th book ... I'm halfway there, ahead of schedule!]
I had no idea there was such a fascinating story behind the Coca-Cola Company! In the first couple of chapters, Oliver (a staff writer for what's now the Atlanta Journal Constitution) tells some history about the company. Yes, it's true that the original Coca-Cola (called "French Wine Cola") had cocaine in it ... as well as wine, and a few other ingredients. Oliver also talks about the early members of the company's board of directors (which completely explains why every other building at Emory University is named either "Woodruff" or "Goizueta"!).

But by far the most interesting part of the book is the story of what happened when Coke introduced "new Coke." Pepsi started its "Pepsi Challenge" back in the '70s, and Coke executives started getting concerned because Americans were saying that they liked the taste of Pepsi better than that of Coke. So in an attempt to maintain its market share, Coke pulled its original formula and introduced new Coke - a sweeter cola, more similar to Pepsi. The uproar was ridiculous! Coke got 8,000 calls a day and thousands of letters and petitions from people who were simply outraged. It wasn't so much that they hated the new Coke - they were just mad that the company took something away that was so quintessentially American.

So, despite the millions that had been spent on introducing new Coke ... the old Coke (now, "Coca-Cola Classic") was brought back. The day the company made the announcement, it received 18,000 phone calls from people saying thank you! "One woman called and said she had just found out she was pregnant and didn't know which her husband would be happier about - their first child or old Coke's return." Ha!

A funny tidbit:

"Coke had turned down Michael Jackson as a candidate for its advertising because he was considered too flashy and his androgynous appearance didn't jibe with the company's image of the all-American boy." Pepsi got him instead ... and we all know what happened after that (the incident during the filming of the commercial).

A random thought I had while reading this: some of Coke's most significant board members in the 20th century were incredibly diverse for the time ... a first-generation Mexican was in charge of bottling operations; an Argentinean in charge of Coca Cola USA; an Egyptian chief financial officer ... the vice-president of the Americas group often joked that he was the "token American" on the board. In fact, there is some speculation that because these key folks were not American, they didn't understand the patriotism behind the old Coke - and why Americans were so upset when new Coke was rolled out. But ... my thought is that it's interesting how the fact that Coke is sold around the globe is often cited as showing how "globalization = Americanization." Of course I understand the basis for saying that ... but still, quite interesting for a good ol' southern company that was led by quite the diverse group of immigrants.

Clearly, due to the length of this post and the excitement with which I'm writing it ... this was a fabulous book. I didn't want to put it down - the way Oliver wrote about the whole diet Coke and new Coke fiascos made this work of non-fiction incredibly fascinating and suspenseful. Highly recommended!

*Ahh, but one note ... something my mom heard on the radio: "A non-fiction book that doesn't have an index is not a serious book." Maybe that says something about the quality of this book (since there was no index) ... oh well, it was still a great read.

49. Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness - Suzanne Somers

2009-10-12T20:12:00.007-04:00

This was my first Suzanne Somers book (who knew she's written 17?!) ... and since all I really knew of her was from Three's Company and Step by Step, I was relatively impressed.

Somers is a huge proponent of finding ways "to live a long, healthy, energetic life without drugs." This book is a collection of information that Somers has researched based on her experience with breast cancer, as well as interviews with doctors about the "eight steps to wellness": (1) bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT); (2) avoid chemicals and detoxify your body; (3) take nutrition seriously; (4) create a healthy GI tract; (5) avoid pharmaceuticals unless absolutely necessary; (6) supplement your diet; (7) exercise regularly; and (8) get proper sleep.

There are a lot of useful bits of information woven into this book - i.e. about melatonin (an over-the-counter hormone that helps you sleep, which is a much better option than prescription drugs; it also helps fight free radicals); natural ways to cure bladder infections; and why alcohol and caffeine can make it really hard for you to lose weight. But the bulk of it really would be more useful to me in about 10 years. At 25, I don't need to worry about anti-aging stuff like BHRT - and from what I hear, it's also very expensive! Lastly, I felt that the interview style of the book made it about 100 pages longer than it needed to be - there are interviews with different doctors under each heading, and sometimes the things that the doctors say overlap.

The main reason I'd hesitate to recommend this book is because I feel that there's another one out there that says many of the same things but in an easier-to-read style and in fewer pages.

48. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word - Randall Kennedy

2009-10-12T19:12:00.004-04:00

I know - what a loaded title! I refuse to use that word, so it's hard for me to talk about this book ... as much as I want to, because it was a fantastic one.

Written by Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, this book is about so much more than just the history of the word. Kennedy discusses the use of the word in its many contexts in this country. One example: after Paul Robeson got his degree from Columbia Law School, he quit his job at a firm because the stenographer said that she "refused to take dictation from a nigger." Kennedy also discusses the use of the word in literature (i.e. the passage I quoted in my review of The Autobiography of Malcolm X); rap music; the O.J. Simpson trial; and, most interesting to me, in the legal context. Kennedy gives an overview of how the "n-word" has played a role in sometimes mitigating homicides from murder to manslaughter; and also, though rarely, as a basis for an IIED claim (intentional infliction of emotional distress).

I was impressed at Kennedy's obvious intelligence and at his ability to write in a way that was very readable (even while dealing with the legal stuff). I also didn't feel that he was writing with a goal to either persuade black people to stop using the word or to encourage its reclamation - just a well-researched and interesting work.

47. Confessions of a Video Vixen - Karrine Steffans

2009-10-10T22:43:00.007-04:00

I know. I'm embarrassed that I read this. I was especially embarassed reading it in Borders - and it didn't help that there's a big color photo spread in the middle of the book!
Confessions is the biography/memoir/"cautionary tale" of Karrine Steffans, the infamous music video vixen (and now housewife). Originally from St. Thomas, she moved to Florida with her mom when she was little. In the first part of the book, Steffans tells some really sad stories about how her mom abused her; how she lost her virginity by rape; how her ex-husband and father of her son would force her to perform oral sex on him ... once for two hours until her nose bled.
After Steffans left her husband, she moved to L.A. and eventually got a lucky break and started performing in music videos. She appeared in videos of artists like Jay-Z, LL Cool J, and R. Kelly; she also was in a movie with Larenz Tate and Vin Diesel. While telling her life story, Steffans of course weaves in all the stuff that the book has become famous for - her tell-all tales of sexual escapades with Vin Diesel; Shaquille O'Neal; Usher; Bobby Brown; Ray J; Fred Durst; Method Man (oh, sorry - code name: "Papa"); Irv Gotti; P Diddy; Dr. Dre ... the list goes on. And on. And on.
After reading the first couple of chapters, my heart really went out to her ... by the end, I was wondering how long you can claim "I did it because I had no father in my life and my mother abused me" ... you have to realize what you're doing isn't right at some point ... no? I was also wondering if I could catch something from her just by reading the book. Interesting: no tell-all about the health risks of everything she was doing? She had to have caught something at some point.
The writing was so-so - she (or the woman who actually wrote it) skipped around chronologically, which confused me. I wonder if the New York Times was embarrassed that this ended up as a best-seller. Don't waste your money on this book.

46. Bridges of Madison County - Robert James Waller

2009-10-10T21:59:00.005-04:00

A beautiful "new romance classic." The story is about Francesca, a farmer's wife in Iowa, and Robert, a photographer for National Geographic. The two meet when Robert visits Iowa to take pictures of several covered bridges and happens to stop and ask Francesca for directions while her husband and two children are out of town. The two have an incredible attraction to each other and end up spending several days together and falling deeply in love. Robert wants Francesca to leave with him, but she ultimately does not because she can't bear the thought of abandoning her family. The story is told from Francesca's point of view 22 years later as she's reminiscing on her time with Robert.

It's interesting to compare this to The Awakening by Kate Chopin - both are books written from the point of view of married women with children; in both books, the women cheat on their husbands; neither can deny the attraction they have toward these men, but they both have feelings of remorse and confusion. But The Awakening was written in 1890's, Bridges in the 1990's; in The Awakening, Edna leaves her husband and then kills herself; in Bridges, Francesca stays with her husband although she never stops loving Robert; The Awakening was written by a woman; Bridges written by a man.

I'm still not sure why this book sold 50 million copies! ... but it was a wonderful story. I'd love to check out the movie.

45. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 - Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

2009-10-07T23:00:00.004-04:00

Overall ... this was a good book. The authors first talk about emotional intelligence ("EQ"): the ability to identify and manage one's own emotions and to be aware of others' emotions. An interesting piece of information about the "science side" of EQ is that our brains are hard-wired to give emotions the upper hand (over logic):

"[E]verything you see, smell, hear, taste and touch travels through your body in the form of electric signals. The signals pass from cell to cell until they reach their ultimate destination, your brain. They enter your brain at the base near the spinal cord, but must travel to your frontal lobe ... before reaching the place where rational, logical thinking takes place. The trouble is, they pass through your limbic system along the way - the place where emotions are produced. This journey ensures you experience things emotionally before your reason can kick into gear."

Also, according to the authors, IQ (intelligence quotient) is fixed at birth, absent a traumatic event like a brain injury. "Intelligence is your ability to learn, and is the same at age 15 as it is at age 50. EQ, on the other hand, is a flexible skill that can be learned."

The bulk of this book sets forth strategies on increasing your EQ based on four key EQ skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Like so many other books, this one was very cutesy-story-heavy (if you've been keeping up with my blog, I'm clearly not a fan of that!). And maybe I've been reading too much, but I really didn't think it said anything new. [Also - how does the Dalai Lama manage to write the forward for every book that deals with emotional intelligence?!]

If you want to read something about emotional intelligence I'd recommend Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman.

44. The Five Love Languages: Singles Edition - Gary Chapman

2009-10-07T22:34:00.004-04:00

I'd heard a lot about this book a few years ago - and I'm glad I finally read it. The premise behind it is that people are best able to speak and understand emotional love when it is expressed through one of five "languages": quality time; words of affirmation; receiving gifts; acts of service; or physical touch. Chapman argues that many of us may be able to speak and understand several of these, but that everyone has a primary or "native" language in which we are most comfortable expressing and receiving love. Chapman writes from a Christian perspective and I like his use of passages from the Bible in support of his arguments.

The original book is supposedly more geared towards married couples; this one (the "singles edition") explains how understanding these love languages can be helpful while dating, and also in relationships within your family, among your friends, and at work.

This book was rather anecdote-heavy (which I'm not a fan of; other may like that); but the core message was great. Although Chapman doesn't talk much about gender differences, I believe that they play a huge role as well ...that's why Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus remains one of my all-time favorite books! This book has my recommendation - but skim through the anecdotes, they get mushy and all sound the same after a while.

43. Rich Woman: A Book on Investing for Women - Because I Hate Being Told What to Do! - Kim Kiyosaki

2009-10-04T22:12:00.006-04:00

Kim Kiyosaki applies the same principles as her husband, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, in this book that is geared towards women. She gives financial advice to women who want to be financially independent - "without depending on a man, family, company, or government to take care of them."

Although her strategies are pretty duplicative of her husband's (see previous blog post) I appreciated reading this book because it spoke directly to concerns that I and (I'm sure) a lot of women may have about investing: that we're not "smart enough"; don't have the financial know-how; are risk-averse (which can actually be a good thing), etc. She also presents a lot of great ideas about what to invest in, but most of her advice centers around real estate, where she supposedly made her millions.

The plot of this book centers around Kiyosaki sharing financial advice with her group of girlfriends. Sometimes the girl talk gets a bit distracting, but the overall message was great and it was certainly much more interesting than a generic "how-to" book.

42. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not! - Robert Kiyosaki

2009-10-04T21:49:00.007-04:00

I understand why everyone kept telling me to read this book! This seems to be a great lesson on - as the author says - how to make your money work for you rather than you always working for your money. The title comes from Kiyosaki's two dads - one was his incredibly intelligent biological dad who was a superintendent of education and died broke; the other was his best friend's dad who dropped out of school when he was 13 and ultimately became one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. Kiyosaki uses the stories of these two men and their differing financial strategies to show how to achieve financial success.

One thing that really stood out to me was the way Kiyosaki defined assets and liabilities. So many people say that "your home is your greatest asset" - but per Kiyosaki, nothing is an asset unless it is putting money into your pocket.

According to the author, wealth is measured as the number of days the income from your assets will sustain you, and financial independence is achieved when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses.

I'm hesitant to use this book as my financial roadmap, however, because it definitely does have its critics (one real estate investor says that Kiyosaki is more of a salesman than a real estate investor - which, even if true, is alright with me. I don't think he claims to be solely a real estate investor - he seems pretty diversified!). But this book has its good pieces of information that I definitely plan to put to use.

*Note: every investor I've talked to swears this guy is a fraud! How disappointing - after I read it, I was all inspired to go out and buy some investment properties. Check out John T. Reed's critique of Kiyosaki here.

41. Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News - Bernard Goldberg

2009-10-04T21:22:00.006-04:00

Bernard Goldberg presents an ... interesting ... argument for the mainstream media's liberal bias. Goldberg had some pretty good support for this argument - i.e. 50% of journalists identify with being Democrats, while only 4% identify with being Republicans. But my question is ... why are there more Democratic journalists? Are Republicans ... discriminated against in the journalism industry?

Even if he does present a good amount of support for this argument - some "support" left me a bit confused. For example, he has a whole chapter on "the network color bar" - explaining why so many "victims" on network news are blond-haired and blue-eyed. Goldberg says, "We know who our viewers are. We know what they look like. And we know that they would be drawn more to stories about homeless people who looked just like their mothers and fathers and sons and daughters than homeless people who looked like, well, homeless people." He says that if journalists win sympathy for "them" ("people who look like our next door neighbors"), then they had a chance of winning sympathy for the less sympathetic homeless - which might translate into a new homeless shelter. But if this is true - why is something that is classified as a "liberal bias"?? Are liberals the only people who would want to do something to garner support for something like a new homeless shelter?

In my opinion, Goldberg tries to appeal to conservative emotion more than present hardcore facts. An interesting book - but I'm not convinced. Don't waste your time.

40. Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete - William C. Rhoden

2009-10-01T23:07:00.010-04:00

Rhoden presents a very persuasive argument that although integration was a major step forward in the history of the black athlete, it brought with it a lot of problems: "a destructive power dynamic between black talent and white ownership; a chronic psychological burden for black athletes who constantly had to prove their worth; disconnection of the athlete from his or her community; and the emergence of the apolitical black athlete, who had to be careful about what he or she said or stood for, so as not to offend white paymasters."
Rhoden clearly knows his stuff, and gives a lot of really interesting background and anecdotes. A lot of things I knew (i.e. the disproportionate number of black athletes and white coaches/owners); but some things I maybe should have known and hadn't realized (i.e. how Michael Jordan was incredibly apolitical and almost refused to talk about any race issues in public).
To be honest, I thought that first half of this book, the historical context, was a bit dry - some was important to know, but still a bit dry. It was interesting, though, to learn that three of the greatest landmarks of African American sports history took place outside of the U.S. - Tom Molineaux fought for the boxing championship in England; Jack Johnson won the championship in Australia; and Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in Canada. I also really liked learning more about Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays - according to Rhoden, Robinson had to be apolitical, non-controversial, and had to hold down his temper since he was the first (hmmm .. Obama?); but Willie Mays had much more of a swagger and a style that became typical of a lot of black athletes.
Also, I thought this was cute - a young girl at an elementary school in NY asked Rhoden, "Who was the first white player to integrate the NBA?" Ha!
This is a great book for anyone to read - I especially think all black athletes should read it.

39. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

2009-10-01T12:29:00.004-04:00

This is a book by Azar Nafisi, an Iranian professor, about her experiences teaching in Iran during and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Much of the book centers around the class on "forbidden Western classics" (The Great Gatsby; Lolita; etc.) that Nafisi teaches to a small group of female Iranian students. The author very eloquently weaves in themes from the books that her class reads with the changing Iranian culture and also with what is going on in their personal lives. The book is divided into four sections - each section dealing with a different time period and having a different theme. My favorite section, Gatsby, is set right as the revolution is starting. Nafisi compares the "American dream" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby with the dream of the Iranian Revolution, and how this Iranian "dream" changed the lives of women in Iran. When one of her students gets really upset about the book because he says it condones adultery, they decide to hold a "trial" in their class - and they prosecute the book! I like Nafisi's conclusion ...

"What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this dream that became our obsession and took over our reality, this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven."

When Nafisi returns to Iran years later after the revolution, she asks, "Who will pay for the snapshots of the murdered and the executed that we hid in our shoes and closets as we moved on to other things? ... Tell me, Mr. Bahri - or, to use that odd expression of Gatsby's, Tell me, old sport - what shall we do with all these corpses on our hands?"

This was a great book - but a bit slow for my taste. There were some parts that seemed to go on for longer than they needed to. But overall, it shared a lot that I didn't know about Iranian culture (despite all the Persian friends I have - shame on me!) and was a beautifully written story.

38. The Autobiography of Malcolm X - As Told to Alex Haley

2009-09-28T22:52:00.005-04:00

Possibly one of the greatest books of all time.
Most people know the general story of Malcolm X - his upbringing in Michigan; his experiences as a young adult in Boston; the years he spent in prison where he first learned about Islam; his activism with the Nation of Islam; and, towards the end of his life, his travels to Mecca and Africa. But there is so much depth in the stories told and the lessons learned ... and certain passages (which I will discuss later) really affected me, given where I am in my life right now.
Alex Haley did an amazing job of really transporting the reader into Malcolm's thoughts and emotions. While there were hints of foreshadowing (i.e. when talking about Elijah Muhammad, he mentioned once "little did I know how things would change") ... I felt incredibly absorbed in and swept up by reading about each segment of Malcolm's life. I definitely had my emotional moments throughout the whole book, but it was the last chapter that really got to me. One of my favorite passages:

"I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come."

Given where I am in my life, it was incredibly humbling to read about when Malcolm was in 8th grade and told his teacher that he was thinking about becoming a lawyer.

"Mr. Ostrowski looked surprised, I remember, and leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He kind of half-smiled and said, 'Malcolm, one of life's first needs is for us to be realistic. Don't misunderstand me now. We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to be realistic about being a nigger. A lawyer - that's no realistic goal for a nigger.'"
Then later, after Malcolm returns from his trip to Mecca and Africa:

"My greatest lack has been, I believe, that I don’t have the kind of academic education I wish I had been able to get – to have been a lawyer, perhaps. I do believe that I might have made a good lawyer. I have always loved verbal battle, and challenge ... [and] I don't begin to be academically equipped for so many of the interests that I have. For instance, I love languages. I wish I were an accomplished linguist. I don't know anything more frustrating than to be around people talking something you can't understand."

Here I am, days away from achieving my childhood dream of becoming a lawyer; and trilingual. Words can't express how humbling it is to read about what Malcolm X dreamed of achieving, but never could. Reading this book really made me more aware of and appreciate the opportunities that have been afforded to me ... and reminded me that there is so much more that I could be doing to help others achieve their dreams.

Another interesting passage: "I'm speaking from personal experience when I say of any black man who conks today, or any white-wigged black woman, that if they gave the brains in their heads just half as much attention as they do their hair, they would be a thousand times better off."

Beyonce ... need I say more?? Wigs, weaves, relaxers ... Jihan recently told me that the chemical used in relaxers is the same chemical used in Drain-O (it's used to break the bonds in the hair, thus straightening it). Are we in a worse position than we were in 50 years ago, with commercials for "Urban Beauty" and "Virgin Remy Indian Hair" weave coming on prime time TV in Atlanta?!?!

I'm thrilled that I got to see the original of Malcolm X's diary at the America I Am exhibit ... what a remarkable piece of history. This book is a must-read for everyone.

The Miseducation of the Negro - Carter G. Woodson

2009-09-27T19:37:00.009-04:00

This was a fascinating book to read more than 70 years after it was written. There were some passages that were sadly still so accurate ... yet others that I'd at least like to think are no longer true. For example, from the chapter entitled "Political Education Neglected":

"The undesirable aspect of the affair is that the Negro ... is never brought into the inner circle of the party with which he is affiliated. He is always kept on the outside and is used as a means to an end."

Tupac Shakur said something similar more than 60 years later when he recorded his song "Changes" - "And although it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black president ..." Has President Obama changed all this? Or, even if he's brought into the "inner circle" - is he still being used as a "means to an end"?

Another interesting passage from Woodson:

The New Negro in politics, moreover, must not be a politician. He must be a man. He must try to give the world something rather than extract something from it. The world, as he should see it, does not owe him anything[.]"

Is Barack Obama this "New Negro"? Woodson also talks a lot about how the "educated Negroes have been taught facts of history, but have never learned to think;" and how they have completely lost touch with the general black community ("After having this honor conferred upon them, these so-called scholars often rest on their oars.").

This was a fabulous (and very deep) book. It would have been great to read and discuss over coffee at Borders ... but since I'm already on to book #38, feel free to post a comment instead ...

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

2009-09-27T18:50:00.004-04:00

This book, first published in 1899, is one of the first pieces of American feminist literature. The main character, Edna Pontellier, is a 28-year old wife and mother living with her family in New Orleans. Throughout the story, Edna struggles with the role that she is expected to play as a woman (at one point, her father tells her husband, "You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce ... Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it."). Although Edna does seem to care for her family, she also wants her freedom.

So while her husband is away on business and her kids go stay with his parents, Edna falls in love with another man, and she starts having an affair (with yet another man).

I won't spoil the ending ... but this was a good, quick, classic read. Apparently, the book was banned for many years because of Edna's pursuit of her emotional and sexual independence - at a time when women were supposed to be dedicated wives and mothers. Though I wouldn't say to run out and buy this book tomorrow, I'd recommend it because of its importance in American literature Chopin's beautiful writing style.

Legends of Our Time - Elie Wiesel

2009-09-24T22:50:00.004-04:00

This is a memoir written by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. He shares his recollections - in the form of short stories - of watching Nazi Germany come in and change his way of life and the way it affected people around him. For example, in one chapter, a dinner guest at his father's home is talking angrily about how he felt that God had abandoned the Jews. In another chapter, Wiesel is on a bus in Tel Aviv and recognizes a man who was a barracks chief at Monovitz concentration camp.

"...you had jurisdiction over the life and death of hundreds of human beings who never dared watch as you ate the dishes prepared specifically for you. It was a sin, a crime of treason, to catch you unaware during one of your meals. And what about now? Tell me, do you eat well? With appetite?"

There was a lot of depth in this book - to be honest, I think some things might have been over my head (i.e. why Wiesel thought the dinner guest was the return of the prophet Elijah). But this book gave an interesting insight on the Holocaust - not with harsh and gory details, but by conveying the emotions that Wiesel must have endured.

The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

2009-09-23T21:10:00.004-04:00

This is a beautiful story about four mothers who emigrate from China to San Francisco and their four daughters who grow up here in the States. The mothers call themselves the "Joy Luck Club" and meet to eat, talk, invest in stocks, and play mahjong (a Chinese board game). The eight women's stories center around one woman's trip to China to meet her half-sisters, who her mother left on the side of a road in China while trying to escape the Japanese invasion during World War II.

It's hard to elaborate more on the plot because the stories are so complex and interwoven. But here's one passage I thought was so well-written and said so much, from the perspective of one of the mothers:

"It's my fault she is this way. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it’s no lasting shame… If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody- you do not have to sit like Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head… In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. She learned these things, but I couldn’t teach her about Chinese character. How to obey parents, and listen to your mothers mind. How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities.. Why Chinese thinking is best.”

I know I'm not very familiar with Asian-American literature, but this book was very different from anything I've read ... and it definitely deserves all the praise it's received. The triumphs and tragedies that the mothers endured in China and in the States give a glimpse into Chinese culture; they are also beautiful stories about mother-daughter relationships.

33. 1984 - George Orwell

2009-09-20T20:32:00.012-04:00

Written in 1949, this is Orwell's classic book about an oppressive, totalitarian regime ("the Party") in the year 1984. Part of the regime are the "Thought Police" who use constant surveillance to punish those who even think about challenging authority ("thoughtcrime"). There are constant reminders to citizens that "Big Brother is Watching" - though I couldn't figure out if Big Brother was an actual person or just a way to further the authority's propaganda. The main character, Winston Smith, is a government employee who has the job of falsifying historical records and newspaper articles so that it seems like the government is always right. It's fascinating to see how many phenomena Orwell seems to have "predicted":

"With the development of the television, and the technological advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen ... could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed." Wow! Cell phones; wiretaps, GPS ... not to mention how we put our "private lives" in the public sphere on Facebook, Twitter, etc.!

I decided to read this book after Chris and I discovered the Latitude application on our Blackberrys that allows us to track each others' exact real-time location. Forget "Big Brother is watching" - Chris Walker was watching me! There is a Star Trek: TNG episode that lifts a torture scene out of this book; also, the movie Minority Report has lots of "Orwellian" elements. I recommend this book not only because it's a great story - but because it's truly a part of cultural literacy.

32. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

2009-09-20T19:27:00.006-04:00

This is an absolutely beautiful story that starts in Afghanistan in the 1970's. Amir, the son of a wealthy Afghani businessman, has a servant named Hassan. The two boys are inseparable, even though Hassan is a member of a lesser class and of the discriminated-against Hazara ethnic group, until something horrible happens to Hassan which changes their relationship forever. The event haunts Amir even years later after he and his father move to the United States. Part of what makes this work of fiction so beautiful, besides the great plot, is the way in which Hosseini shares his Afghani culture and weaves in stories of life in Afghanistan after the rise of the Taliban. The characters have such depth and the reader can identify with them and their struggles on so many levels. In one passage, Amir describes what he remembers after he goes back to Afghanistan and has a run-in with the Taliban:

"...Getting hurled against the wall. The knuckles shattering my jaw. Choking on my own teeth, swallowing them, thinking about all the countless hours I'd spent flossing and brushing. Getting hurled against the wall. Lying on the floor, blood from my split upper lip staining the mauve carpet, pain ripping through my belt, and wondering when I'd be able to breathe again."

Another quote I love is when Amir is meeting with a lawyer in Pakistan: "I grew up in the U.S., Amir. If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar. But, as your lawyer, I have to give you the facts."

Thanks to Jade for recommending this beautiful book. I'd give it four and a half stars out of five - and I'm planning to see the movie and see how it holds up now that I've read the book.

31. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture - Taylor Clark

2009-09-19T23:32:00.011-04:00

This is a fascinating book about how former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz "took two cheap and simple ingredients, coffee and milk, and used them to spark a national craze, develop a powerful brand, [and] twist Wall Street around his little finger[.]" Though Clark does seem to have a slight anti-Starbucks bias, he does an excellent job of exploring Starbucks' marketing and employment strategies, its impact on globalization, and examining the actual coffee (which, I agree, is made from charred and overroasted beans - hence the very bitter taste and the nickname "Charbucks").

One thing Clark examines is how Starbucks became so trendy. Apparently, Starbucks' R&D now goes so far as to anticipate what colors will be hot in the fashion world the next season so that Frappuccino flavors will match the outfits of trendy customers. Starbucks is also now "a place with awesome potential for romance, an ideal environment in which to absentmindedly flaunt your battered copy of Ulysses while showing off your taste in the finer things."

A couple of other random interesting tidbits: some critics of Starbucks call it a "glorified McDonald's" due to the company's high volume and focus on efficiency. Clark talks a lot about this, but distinguishes Starbucks because its drinks are never discounted (Schultz wanted the customer to view Starbucks as "the epitome of opulence, and would you ever see a 'buy one, get one free' deal at a Jaguar dealership?"). Starbucks is also always coming out with new flavors that God never intended to see paired with coffee ("As of a decade ago, no coffee drinker in history had ever looked down at his mug and said to himself, ''You know what would make this so much better? Banana puree and coconut flakes!'").

**Sidenote: As a Minnesotan, I am a staunch supporter of my home-grown Caribou Coffee. I've even thought seriously about putting a "Friends Don't Let Friends Drink Starbucks" bumper sticker on my car. Nonetheless, I had to go sit in Starbucks while I read this book. While reading the chapter explaining how Starbucks managed to get Americans to pay the same amount for a whole bunch of steamed milk with a bit of espresso as they do for an extra value meal, I glanced outside and saw a homeless man digging in a trash can. He pulled out three paper Starbucks cups, consolidated the leftover drops of coffee and whipped cream into one cup, and turned and walked down Peachtree in the rain, sipping his ... whatever drink he created for himself. Can we say "ironic"?!

This was a fantastic book - slightly biased, but very thorough, well-written, and absolutely hilarious!!!

30. How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else - Michael Gates Gill

2009-09-18T11:25:00.015-04:00

Michael Gates Gill, the son of a well-known writer for The New Yorker, led a privileged childhood. When he told his parents that he wanted to take piano lessons, they bought him a Steinway grand piano that a crane had to lift into their 25-room mansion. After being educated at Yale, he was basically handed a job as a prosperous advertising executive. This job provided him with (lots of) financial security - even if it meant rarely spending time at home with his wife and four children. Then, three things happened: (1) he got fired, (2) he got another woman pregnant and his wife left him, and (3) he learned he had a brain tumor. He ended up getting a job at Starbucks - an experience that changed his life.
Gill is such a charismatic writer and I was surprised at - and admire - his candor in this book. His boss at Starbucks is a black woman, and he has to adjust to being the only white person working there. From one part:

"I had been a classic hypocritical member of an old boys' club, congratulating myself for believing in minority advancement in the abstract, while doing everything possible in the practical world of the workplace - which I controlled - to make such opportunity impossible."

Although my situation is certainly not as extreme as his was, I do see a lot of parallels in our lives - and I learned a lot from him and the way he approached his new job.

"My old job involved sitting as a customer in Starbucks unable to find customers of my own. What a relief to have customers eager to greet me rather than my calling for clients like I had done in my old business, and no one wanting to take my calls. I loved greeting these early morning Guests, and serving them. They probably had no idea what a gift it was simply to have them waiting eagerly in line to see me."

This was such a great, inspiring, genuine, and funny book. It almost made me want to give up my loyalty to Caribou Coffee and Borders and test the waters at Starbucks again ... almost :)

29. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino

2009-09-18T11:24:00.008-04:00

Italo Calvino is a pretty well-known contemporary Italian author who has written many short stories and novels that have been translated into English. From what I read about him, he has a fascinating background. But I was so confused by chapter four that I had to cheat and look up the book online to figure out what was going on! You definitely have to be sharp to follow the story.
Chapter one introduces a "Reader" who is actually trying to read a book called If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Every other chapter goes back to this scene (we'll call these the odd numbered chapters, although the chapters aren't numbered in succession). While reading, the Reader discovers that his copy of the book is defective and so he returns it to the bookstore. There, he meets another reader, Ludmilla. They discover that there are two books of the same name - one by an Italian author, and one by a Polish author. Both pick the Polish author, only to discover that the second copy is written by yet another writer - as is the next copy, and the next. What's interesting is that these odd numbered chapters are written in second person - as if you're the Reader.
Each even numbered chapter is the first chapter of different novels. Basically, the idea is that while the Reader is reading these even numbered chapters, he discovers something defective about the book - for example, the Reader discovers that the rest of the pages in the book are blank or the first chapter is repeated over and over.
To read this book, you almost have to step outside of yourself and follow the story of someone who's also reading it. I have never read anything like it! It's not a book you can just breeze through - you have to pay close attention to the chapter number and to what is going on. It was definitely a mental exercise! I'm not sure what types of books would be considered "intellectual thrillers," but that seems like an appropriate classification for this one.

28. The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference - Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

2009-09-15T00:01:00.012-04:00

Most of us are too busy to realize it: but paying attention to the smaller things in life can improve your effectiveness in professional and personal situations. That's the crux of this quick, simple read by two marketing businesswomen. They talk about how small things like face to face contact instead of emailing all the time can really do wonders for your professional and personal relationships. A New York Times journalist said that Facebook is like an "endless cocktail party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow post-it note on the refrigerator." Thaler and Koval make the point that this type of internet and technology phenomenon is a huge reason why social phobia has become the third most common mental illness in the U.S.
They also mention something that psychiatrist Edward Hallowell calls ADT - "attention deficit trait." From some research, I found that ADT is different from ADD because it is the result of the modern workplace "where the constant and relentless chatter coming from our computers, phones and other high-tech devices is diluting our mental powers." [That is exactly what I was saying when I noticed my vocabulary decreasing after I got my Blackberry and got on Twitter. Yet another reason for this read-a-thon ... I have to counterbalance for my Generation Y addictions!] I need to find a book by this guy - but in the meantime, here's a great article about ADT: http://news.cnet.com/Why-cant-you-pay-attention-anymore/2008-1022_3-5637632.html
The authors make other great points like discussing the principles behind remembering to take a moment to thank someone for a job interview, taking baby steps in accomplishing your goals, and doing random acts of kindness like escorting an old man to a room he's looking for (I did that once last year - and the man turned out to be the judge in my final trial for trial practice!). Like Expect to Win, I didn't think this was a ground-breaking book ... but sometimes it's good to be reminded of these principles, and this book does so in a positive, articulate, and easily readable way.

27. Expect to Win: Proven Strategies for Success from a Wall Street Vet - Carla Harris

2009-09-14T21:57:00.008-04:00

This was my first book from the "business" section of Borders - and I'd like to start frequenting that section more often. The author, Carla Harris, is a managing director at Morgan Stanley. She offers her "pearls" of guidance - lessons she learned from twenty years of experience on Wall Street that can help anyone (especially great advice for women) maneuver through challenges of the workplace. My favorite tidbits:

- In discussing self-presentation, Harris gives a formula that is great to keep in mind: "Your self-presentation + the baggage of the beholder = the perception about you in the marketplace."

- In creating a perception and conditioning people to think of you in the way that you want them to, ask yourself this question: "How do I want people to describe me when I'm not in the room?" Harris recommends that you identify at least three adjectives you would want people to use when they talk about you when you are not present. This is important, she says, because all of the major decisions about your career are made when you are not in the room and can't speak for yourself!

- The best chapter, in my opinion, was the one on finding a mentor. Harris identifies three categories of what most people generically call "mentors": (1) the adviser, (2) the mentor, and (3) the sponsor. The adviser is someone you turn to for discrete advice - someone preferably in your field and company. The mentor is the person you can talk to about the "good, the bad, and the ugly" of your career - and with whom you can share more of your personal business and goals. The sponsor is someone in your field - preferably a supervisor - who has clout in your company and can stick up for you.

Unfortunately, this book was a typical women's self-help book in a lot of ways: "know what you want," "know your goals and go after them," etc., and lots of cutesy anecdotes. I did notice a few typos ("roll model"? Really?) - I know I'm not a perfect writer, but I can't stand when I pay for something and there are typos in it! [Barbri ... take note of that!]

All in all, this was a good read as I'm coming out of school and getting ready to start work. Thanks to Kyle for the rec on this one. If anyone has recommendations of other books in this genre - please post a comment and let me know!

26. The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

2009-09-14T00:04:00.005-04:00

The author of this book, Randy Pausch, was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon. He was asked to give a talk entitled "The Last Lecture" - one in which he'd "be asked to consider his demise and ruminate on what mattered most to him." Most professors try to impart what they would want to share with their students if they knew it was their last chance. But Pausch didn't have to imagine it'd be his last lecture, because he had just been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer - so he already knew it'd be one of his last.

In his lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his childhood dreams and about enabling the dreams of others. Two of my favorite lessons:

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

"A lot of people want a shortcut. And the best shortcut is the long way which is basically two words: work hard."

This was a great book, written in such a positive, touching, and humorous way - I was really rooting for Pausch and praying for him to beat his cancer, until I realized the book was published in April 2008 and he died that July. I felt really impacted by the pain he felt in knowing that he was going to leave his children without a father; and also by what his wife must have been going through. In one chapter, Pausch explained that he was scheduled to travel and give his lecture on the day of his wife's birthday. So when he finished the lecture, he had a birthday cake wheeled out and had the whole auditorium sing happy birthday to her. When she went up on stage to give him a hug, she held on tightly to him and whispered in his ear, "Please don't die ..." Even though I was reading in Borders, I definitely shed a few tears when I got to that part.

Pausch shares beautiful and touching life lessons in this book ... interwoven with his very real and tragic life experiences. Thanks to Dana for the recommendation :)

25. Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

2009-09-13T23:26:00.006-04:00

Three for three. I heart Malcolm Gladwell.

Now that he's brilliantly explained the three agents of change in The Tipping Point and the concept of thin slicing in Blink ... Gladwell tackles the question of what makes some people so successful, while so many others never reach their potential.

In the first part of the book, he argues that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: "when and where you are born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were[.]" One example: why are a disproportionate number of hockey players born in the first three months of the year? Youth hockey leagues determine eligibility by calendar year, and so children born on January 1 of one year play in the same league as those born on December 31 ... and since adolescents born earlier in the year are going to be bigger and more mature than the younger players in the same league, they are often identified early on (maybe too early!) as better athletes, which means more encouragement, extra coaching, and a higher likelihood of being selected to participate in elite hockey leagues.

In the second part of the book, Gladwell argues that we can learn why people succeed and how to make people better at what they do looking at cultural legacies. He shares a fascinating case study on why Asians are better at math - it'll take up several pages if I try to explain it here, but the gist of it is the words for the actual numbers in many Asian languages. "The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten one. Twelve is ten two. Twenty-four is two ten four, and so on." Therefore: "Ask an English seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty two, in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is nine and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens nine."

I've read some critics who have said that his ideas are not "new," but honestly - are any ideas "new" anymore? I think he makes many points that have not been expounded upon in such a way before ... and besides that, Gladwell's writing style is exquisite and engaging, and his case studies are fascinating. Screw the critics! Gladwell deserves every bit of the praise he's gotten for all three of his books - all of which happen to be #1 New York Times bestsellers. I give this book five stars out of five - and I'll be first in line whenever his next book comes out.

24. Song Yet Sung - James McBride

2009-09-12T01:50:00.007-04:00

This was the first modern fiction slave narrative that I've read. It's about a runaway slave named Liz who can see the future in her dreams - from the civil rights movement to hiphop. The visions in her dreams help her and other slaves to escape - but not without a great plot. From one scene:

"Holding the pike between her front teeth, she drove her head into his beautiful neck full force, drilling the pike deep in, striking the Adam's apple from the side. His roar was muffled by the awful spurt of air and blood hissing out his exposed esophagus."

Isn't that intense?! Liz is chased by several brutal slave catchers, and is helped by an older woman who teaches runaway slaves about the "Code" which helps them to find friends on their path to freedom.

Sometimes this book was hard for me to follow because McBride follows the style of using a long dash to show the start of a quotation, rather than just quotation marks around the dialog. But this was a great story - an interesting twist on a fiction slave narrative with its interwoven commentaries on contemporary culture.

23. Never Make the Same Mistake Twice - Nene Leakes

2009-09-10T01:47:00.015-04:00

Yes ... Nene Leakes. As in, Real Housewives of Atlanta. I know, I know - I was wary, too. The title didn't grab me by the throat ... and do you really need the quote on the back from Anderson Cooper that she's his "favorite housewife"?
But you know what? ... it was actually a great book!

There apparently is a lot more to Nene than what's on Bravo. As Jihan pointed out about Sheree (and why we dislike her so much on the show) - the editors of the show probably follow those women around for weeks - months? - and they are the ones who choose what we see or don't see. We all know about Nene's drama with finding out that Curtis wasn't really her father ... but did you know that her mom remarried while Nene was still young, and treated her and her husband's kids (Nene's stepdad) as her "real" kids and pretty much abandoned Nene and her brother? Or that Nene really was a stripper at a big Atlanta strip club ... and the juicy stories that go along with that? Or what Nene really thinks of Sheree and Kim?? (there's a whole chapter devoted to each!)

So, you ask ... does Nene think she's ghetto?

"People say I'm hood and ghetto and I'll take that because I do know how to get hood. I didn't grow up in any financially depressed household. Though my aunt and uncle weren't rich, we sure didn't want for anything and so I can't and won't claim the ghetto. But I do have ghetto tendencies. I know how to hold a meeting down and be professional, but if I'm riding in the car and I happen to be eating some chicken, I might just toss the bone out the window. [HA!] ... you might catch me getting a little loud and wrong while I'm drinking from a straw. I tend to slurp a little bit."

How can you not love that?! Another glimpse:

"...while what you saw of me on Real Housewives is real, it's only part of me that's real. It's my story, but it's not my complete story. There are many other facets to me. The truth of the matter is that drama sells. No matter how much people claimed they were embarrassed by my in-your-face personality, they love to hear about my drama. Big time. Nobody wants to see me going out and starting businesses, or having lunch with my kids, or cleaning the bathroom and cooking dinner. But I do these things. And anyone who says she cares to read about me doing those things is lying. Celebrities with no drama get no play and they don't last. Period.
I understand the game and I have no regrets about being on the show and how I was portrayed. Not one."

Interesting that the woman who co-authored this book with Nene is the same woman who co-authored Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man with Steve Harvey. There were some parts of the book that were a bit redundant ... but because it exceeded my expectations, I'd give it a generous four stars out of five. But wait for the paperback.

22. 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace - Dr. Wayne Dyer

2009-09-10T01:46:00.011-04:00

You can never go wrong with Dr. Dyer! Although Borders always classifies these books as "self-help," I'm not a fan of that term. It sounds like something is wrong with you for going to that section - like you need "help." I prefer "self-improvement," or something of the sort.
Anyway, this book talks about ten great principles for "improving" your life. Instead of listing all of them, I'll just highlight my favorite three:

There are no justified resentments. Dr. Dyer is so right when he says that "anytime you're filled with resentment, you're turning the controls of your emotional life over to others to manipulate." It takes so much more energy to be angry at people - it burdens your soul even more than you probably realize. "At the root of virtually all spiritual practices is the notion of forgiveness. This was what came out of Jesus of Nazareth while he was being tortured on a cross by a Roman soldier throwing a spear into his side. It is perhaps the most healing thing that you can do to remove the low energies of revenge and resentment from your life completely." Even though many of us try to justify why we are angry at others for what they have done to us - it ends up causing us more harm. "Resentment is like venom that continues to pour through your system, doing its poisonous damage long after being bitten by the snake. It's not the bite that kills you; it's the venom. You can remove venom by making a decision to let go of resentments."
It's a tough lesson - but one that is so true.

Treat yourself as if you already are what you'd like to be. This principle helps to keep you inspired; and that inspiration (from the words "in" and "spirit") is what guides us to work for what we want out of life. "When you become inspired and act as if what you want is already here, you'll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to make this your reality."
I also love what he says about synchronicity and inspiration - "There are no coincidences. Anything that coincides is said to fit together powerfully ... You'll think about a particular person and that individual will 'mysteriously' appear ... these so-called mysteries will soon be viewed by you as part of the synchronicity of the universe working with you and your highly energized thoughts." I used to doubt this - until I started realizing that this is really the idea behind prayer. When we ask God to help us with something, we are sending energy to Him and toward that particular desire.

Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you. Dr. Dyer explains that shame is the thought that makes people the weakest, followed by guilt, apathy, fear, and anger. We can switch from these low-vibration thoughts to higher-vibration thoughts (like love and forgiveness) by asking God to help us - "You'll be surprised by how quickly that higher energy of love will nullify and dissolve your fearful thoughts and empower you at the same time."

Like The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, this is a wonderful book to go to when you are going through a difficult time and you need to look at something for spiritual guidance. It's also a great gift idea!

21. Cover Girls - T.D. Jakes

2009-09-10T01:28:00.007-04:00

I know a lot of people who have raved about T.D. Jakes books, but maybe I need to give a different one a try. I think this was his first book ... so I'm willing to give him a break. This was a so-so fiction novel about the lives of four women - Michelle, Tonya, Mrs. Judson, and Miz Ida - and the ways in which their lives are intertwined and the lessons they learn from each other. Michelle has an abusive past and is going through a rough period of separation from her husband. She also works for Tonya and hates how Tonya meddles in her life and her "holier than thou" mentality. Mrs. Judson is Michelle and Tonya's supervisor and doesn't have much patience for either woman until a traumatic experience in her own life forces her to listen; and Miz Ida is the older, wise woman who keeps Michelle in line.
The experiences that each woman goes through are very real, and the women do seem to learn some valuable lessons. It was overall a good story; just not one that I would rave about. Maybe three stars out of five.

20. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

2009-09-08T01:19:00.005-04:00

This Pulitizer-Prize winning play is one of my favorites by Tennessee Williams. It's about an alcoholic former athlete named Brick, whose family has fathered for his father's ("Big Daddy") birthday party and to celebrate the news that Big Daddy is not really suffering from cancer, as was previously reported. But things go downhill when Maggie, Brick's wife, starts verbally attacking him over his alcoholism and his failure to get her pregnant, and Brick and Big Daddy have a confrontation when Big Daddy suspects that Brick is gay ... and when they find out that Big Daddy really does have cancer.
This is a great story that anyone with a family can likely relate to. Everyone in this story has their own issues but they all seem to have a lot of problems communicating about them. My favorite character was Maggie - I felt sorry for her, though I could see how annoying and nagging she was. I'd love to see this on stage.