I'll Take What She Has

Finished February 27
I'll Take What She Has by Samantha Wilde

This book alternates chapters between two friends, Annie and Nora. The two have been friends since they were young children in Iowa. Years ago, when a job opened up at the boarding school near Boston that Annie's partner Ted taught at, she called Nora to urge her to apply. Nora has blossomed there, gaining a loyal following of students and getting married to a local lawyer Alfie. Now Nora desperately wants children and is worried that nothing is happening after months of trying. Annie seems consumed by anger, anger at her boisterous children, anger at her husband's long separated wife for not signing the divorce papers, anger at the other woman at the children's centre she goes to, anger at being short of money all the time, anger at her own anger. When a new teacher arrives and seems to embody perfection, and get all the things the two women thought they wanted, they react in different ways, Nora by spending lots of time with her and Annie by pushing Nora away and becoming even more angry. When Nora's relations start to arrive with their own agendas, she isn't sure how to react.
This is a book about envy, about self-knowledge, about love and family. A feel-good book about everyday life.

Science Book Challenge

I first heard of this challenge through the blogger Indextrious Reader last year, and had been checking the site regularly to see whether they were going to have a challenge again this year, and now they have!
Of course, Indextrious Reader has joined again, and this will be my first time participating in this challenge. I've always had a love of math and science (was actually in Honors Mathematics my first year at university), so look forward to pushing myself to read more in this area.

Here is how the challenge works.

The 2013 Science Book Challenge

1. Read three (or more!) nonfiction books in 2013 related to the theme "Science & Culture". Your books should have something to do with science, scientists, how science operates, or the relationship of science with our culture. Your books might be popularizations of science, they might be histories, they might be biographies, they might be anthologies; they can be recent titles or older books, from the bookstore or your local library. We take a very broad view of what makes for interesting and informative science reading, looking for perspectives on science as part of culture and history.
2. After you've read a book, write a short note about it giving your opinions of the book. Tell us what you'd tell a friend if you wanted to convince your friend to read it--or avoid it. You can read some of the existing Book Notes for ideas. You might like to read our Book-note ratings for ideas about how to evaluate your books; we include ratings with every book note.
3. Don't worry if you find that you've read a book someone else has also read; we welcome multiple notes on one title.
4. Get your book note to us and we'll post it with the other notes in our Book Note section. Use the book-note form or the comment form to get in touch with us.
5. Spread the scienticity and tell other people about the Science Book Challenge, either here,http://scienticity.net/wiki/Science_Book_Challenge, or at our Facebook group.

Probably my favourite areas of science are natural science and physics, but I'll be checking through my unread piles to see what fits, and scanning the new books at work to see what appeals in this area. 

So Good They Can't Ignore You

Finished February 24
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport

I'd seen a mention of this book and was intrigued. The book captured me right from the get go. It counters the prevalent mindset (started for real purposes in the 1970's) that to have work you really enjoy, find what you are passionate about and make a job out of that. Newport digs deep into this premise, finding that it isn't as simple as that. He comes up with four rules around finding work you love.
Rule #1 is Don't Follow Your Passion. He looks at successful people, including many who espouse the "follow your passion" mantra and finds that even they didn't follow that path. Those that do have a passion, and follow that without proper preparation find themselves failing. So following it can actually be dangerous to your continued happiness.
Rule #2 is Be So Good They Can't Ignore You (or, the Importance of Skill). Newport looks at a number of people who are working in something they are passionate about and thus loving their work, and finds the truth behind their stories is getting really good at what they do, even better if it is something relatively rare. He calls this Career Capital. Trying to work at a passion without the practiced skills won't get you where you want to go. Here is where I hear my parents' voices exhorting hard work, because hard work, not just lots of work, but work that is actually challenging and difficult and success with it takes you to the next level is what is necessary. You have to be willing to seek out that work, and keep doing it, getting better with every iteration, until others see that skill in you and are willing to pay you for it. That pay may be in money, time, or other things, but that is what takes you further toward working with real passion.
Rule #3 is Turn Down a Promotion (or, the Importance of Control). Here, Newport shows that finding real passion in one's work means having a certain level of control about what you do and how you do it. Again, this is not something you can try without having those skills in place. This is about choosing what path you take, knowing that you can make a successful life with your skills in different ways and choosing the path that offers you the level of control you want, even if others try to dissuade you. As he says, because you have those skills, others are likely to try to talk you out of taking this path. Employers may value you highly and not want to give up even a portion of your time, colleagues may not understand you turning down a promotion that limits your control of your work due to the high compensation associated with it. That is why skills are important here, because if you try to exert control without having those skills, then you won't get that control. Here he talks about control traps and the law of financial viability, which is "using money as a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit".
His Rule #4 is Think Small, Act Big (or, the Importance of Mission) which is about finding that unifying mission to your professional life that gives you that satisfaction or love of work which we aspire to. Again, he finds that you have to get things in the right order and finding a true mission only comes when we have gained those skills and control that we can see the possibilities and links between things. Visibility is important here, where you can market those ideas in a venue that draws you recognition. This means that you need to have the skills to be one of the top in your field (and this field can be quite narrow) so that you are working at the leading edge of discovery, in what he calls the adjacent possible. He also talks about the importance of the law of remarkability, the need for a project to be remarkable both in the drawing attention meaning and the venue that is conducive to such attention.
He wraps up the book with how he has applied and is applying these rules to his own life, the thought processes he follows for each and the actions he takes to further his career.
This book offers a lot to think about, and would be a great gift for a graduate to get them on the right track earlier.

The Rug Merchant

Finished February 23
The Rug Merchant by Meg Mullins

Ushman Khan is a rug merchant in New York City. He came to the United States from Iran three years, leaving his wife and invalid mother back home. His wife arranged his emigration, defeated after five miscarriages. She chooses the rugs and ships them to him and he sells them, support his family back home, waiting for the day when his wife will join him.
But one day, he is told that this will never happen, that his wife has found another man, is having a baby, and is leaving him forever. Ushman is devastated and finds himself wandering, trying to get past his loneliness, trying to find a way forward. When he encounters Stella, a young college student, with her own sadness, there is a connection and the unlikely couple find themselves comforting each other, and beginning to care about each other. The story also involves one of Ushman's best clients, Mrs. Roberts, a woman who has bought many carpets from him, and seems to always want more than he can give her. As Mrs. Roberts reveals her own sadness, Ushman finds himself offering her comfort as well.
This is an interesting book about connecting with others, about the essential humanity in all of us, about the fact that while we will all encounter sadness, we will also all encounter joy.

Give Me Everything You Have

Finished February 21
Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun, read by Robin Sachs

James Lasdun gives an insightful and open account of his stalking by a former student. Starting as a straightforward exchange when she was working on a novel, chapters of which he had read and encouraged her in when she was his student, this relationship gradually devolves into something else entirely. The student approached him a couple of years after the met when she was in his creative writing class, and as he really thought her writing good, he encouraged her and even introduced her to people he thought would be helpful to her writing career.
But the email interactions first became overly friendly, and then hateful and aggressive. She eventually moved into posting comments online, making public accusations of plagiarism and sexually inappropriate behaviour, and impersonating others when making such statements. She progressed into attacks on others he had professional and personal relationships with and sent emails to current and potential employers.
Despite these things, Lasdun found he had little recourse in any legal sense, an interesting development of the Internet Age, showing that some aspects haven't entirely caught up to the realities yet.
He touches on mental illness, reputation, racism, and social norms and looks into his own reactions and how he learns to control what he can and learns to deal with what he can't control.
A window on a very difficult and increasingly present phenomenon.

The Advantage

Finished February 20
The Advantage: why organizational health trumps everything else in business by Patrick Lencioni

The Globe and Mail said this was one of the top business books of 2012, and since I am interested in continuously improving our organizational health, I was interested.
Lencioni lays out the process clearly here, giving short examples where appropriate and referring to his own experiences, good and bad. The process uses a mode with four disciplines, each building on the one before. They are: Build a Cohesive Leadership Team; Create Clarity; Overcommunicate Clarity; and Reinforce Clarity. Interestingly, we had already been doing some of the steps in each discipline at my work, and have been particularly finding ourselves beginning to gel as a management team. I took copious notes while reading and shared a detailed summary with the team, hoping to initiate discussion. The book also includes a great chapter on meetings, some of which I can definitely use (harder in an environment such as mine where there is shift work). In short, I can definitely see why this made the top ten and look forward to applying the things I learned from it.

Harvest

Finished February 20
Harvest by Jim Crace

This novel is set at a remote village in England at some unspecified time in the pre-industrial age. It is a time when sheep are becoming a more prominent fixture on farming estates, and there is a movement of workers from rural to urban areas. A time of change.
In this remote estate, Walter Thirsk is a bit of a misfit. He came to the estate as a young man with his master as a result of his master's marriage. He married a local estate worker, and tried to fit in. Now he is aging, his own wife has died, as has his master's wife, and change is coming. This harvest season a man has come to the estate and is working on a chart of the land and its features. Master Kent asks Walter to assist this man, and Walter learns in confidence that the estate will be converted to sheep farming.
One morning the workers awake to two fires. One is the master's stable and dovecote, and the other the fire burned by newly arrived workers, a traditional sign of occupancy recognized as a right to stay. Even though signs point to some local men as being responsible for the stable fire, the blame is placed on the newcomers, and that act and its subsequent repercussions result in a drastic change in the lives of the workers, as much as the coming change to the farming itself.
Walter is both removed and a part of this settlement, and finds himself distanced and able to describe the course of events as both an outsider and as a vital part of the community.
A novel of change and choices.

Taken

Finished February 18
Taken by Edward Bloor

This book is set in the future, in 2035. Charity Meyers lives on a gated estate in Florida with her father and her ex-stepmother. Yes, you read that right. Her father and stepmother are in the process of divorcing, but her stepmother,Mickie, still lives some of the time in the family home. Mickie is a journalist specializing in telling stories, and lately she has been telling stories in which Charity plays a leading role. Right now she is doing "An Edwardian Christmas" from the decorations and songs down to the food, expecting Charity to do what she is told and respond to the prompts she is given. Charity has one friend, Patience, in her small class, taught to children of that age in the estate. She also gets classes via teleconference from Manhattan. She is not happy, and hasn't been since her mother died a few years ago of melanoma. Her father, a doctor, threw himself into work, inventing a self-tanning concoction that sells like hotcakes, attracting said stepmother.
After moving to the estate, Charity's only real comforter was the main, Victoria, a Hispanic woman, working as a servant to save money to go to college.
Kidnapping is rampant, and the children are trained in what to do. Charity has even written a paper on the subject for school. But when she is kidnapped, things don't happen as she expected, and she isn't prepared for what they really want of her.
A tale of humanity, of the growing division between classes, of ignorance and of real life. It reminds you to take the time to enjoy living.

New York Drawings

Finished February 16
New York Drawings: a decade of covers, comics, illustrations, and sketches from the pages of The New Yorker and beyond by Adrian Tomine

This collection intrigued me from the cover, which was actually a The New Yorker cover. It shows a young woman on a subway train reading a book, looking through a window to see a young man on another subway train going in the opposite direction, reading the same book. I liked the image, and was interested to see what else he had done.
The book is structured with the images, placed nicely on the page, with just their titles, where they were published, and the date of publication. There is a section of notes at the end that explains the context of the images: what they were accompanying, if anything; the artist's intention (sometimes), and other commentary. I didn't discover the notes until I'd looked through all the images, so then I went back to the beginning again and looked through them all again, checking the notes as I went.
Because I hadn't seem the images in context originally, when they were published, my first round left me unclear for many what their context and purpose were. The notes helped immensely with this and I found them very useful. I am of two minds as to whether they should have been included with the image, as I think they would have cluttered the clear pages, but they were essential to my understanding and appreciating the images.

Dear Mr. Longfellow

Finished February 16
Dear Mr. Longfellow: Letters to and from the Children's Poet by Sydelle Pearl

This short book combines letters with a simple biography of Longfellow, along with some of his poetry. Although it isn't explicitly stated, I inferred from some of the writing that this book is aimed at children.
I found the letters interesting. The author includes facsimiles of the letters as well as separate text versions of the letters. The facsimiles were interesting to see the style and quality of the handwriting of that period by children. There weren't a lot of letters included, but the book isn't that long either. One gets a sense of the period from the letters too.
I would say that this book is a good introduction to Longfellow, especially for the younger crowd.
I was unfamiliar with his personal life and story before reading this and found it enlightening. One interesting coincidence is that a book I read earlier this year, The Fort by Bernard Cornwell, has as one of its main characters the real life figure of General Peleg Wadsworth, who was Longfellow's grandfather. I always enjoy finding links between books I have read.