Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg

J. Howard Miller, We Can Do It!, 1942

(August 13) I didn't have any expectations about this at all… why did I read it? I have in my notes “because short and trendy.” It is well known and I kept seeing it recommended, but I don't remember whose recommendation tipped the scale… maybe Michele Landsberg's?

And then it was much more interesting than I thought it would be! I had this bias against people with MBAs: I have found them usually to be formulaic, best-practices-oriented, and phobic about originality or quirkiness, and since Sheryl Sandberg had worked for Facebook and Google, I assumed Lean In would be a business mogul's how-I-got-here story, offering a few tips and tricks to her fellow women, along formulaic lines.

But it was not that. Sandberg has taken a long, hard look at what holds women back from both the outside and the inside, and she offers solutions that are not easy-breezy and have to be grudgingly accepted. No "tips" or "tricks."

Sad but true: people, both men and women, don’t like to see women succeed in business. They criticize women for failings they would never even notice in a man. There is so much wanting to pull women down. So Sandberg says women must be nice, must jump through hoops successful men don't have to, must accommodate that negative attitude, until we get enough women in place that they don't have to do those things anymore. It's maddening, but she's right. The point is to get more women into positions of power.

Every fibre of my feminist being resents that women have to do anything different from men to get … anything! And it is so sad to accept that many people blame the victim.

But Sandberg is right.

So this is a practical approach to feminism from a practical MBA / manager type of person. Her theory on pregnancy / maternity leave: “don’t withdraw: work like a dog” was different and interesting, and no doubt absolutely correct.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

Victor Borisov-Musatov, Boy With a Dog, 1895

(June 14) I was surprised to find this so compelling: because it’s a novelty narrator, you feel like the focus might be on the verisimilitude and not on the bare plot... but I found I wanted to know what was going to happen to Christopher and was sorry to see the book end. This is part of the surprise -- that Christopher is so endearing -- given that he’s autistic spectrum condition and is without affect. At least one reviewer on Amazon said it was hard to like Christopher because he was so lacking in empathy for his fellow human beings... but I found him likable -- he is so scrupulously honest, consistent and curious... and you certainly can’t hold the lack of empathy against him.

 Whether this is really how autistic people think, it’s a compelling story.

 Another Amazon review said: “Although Christopher cannot grasp subtlety and nuances, the reader can, and that's where the true force of this exceptional novel lies.”

I noticed that, too -- being made to see how important it is to be able to interpret behaviour. There are these compliments to the reader.

But I wonder if I’m partially autistic, because I thought Christopher’s reactions to certain situations -- particularly to the “incident of the dog” -- are better, more admirable, than the behaviours of the so-called “normal” people.

 I wonder too about the consistency of the portrayal or whether autistic people themselves think they are something they are not. Christopher says he believes only in what is real, but he also has dreams and imagination -- about space if nothing else, but about his A levels and so on.

The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

Crystal Cook, Whispers and Trust, 2012

(June 8) Funny and sad at the same time, but in such an interesting and unusual way. “Funny and sad” is not a new combination and you are warned that this book is “that” well before you read it... but it is truly done in a lovely way in this book.

It was hard to find an image for it... I liked this first off, because of simply the broken girl, but the further you go the more you realize the broken boy is important, too, as well as the broken love. But it’s not at all sentimental... which rules out something like this or this,which are otherwise obvious (because of the evanescence... and the separation... and the way they suggest the eerie light of radiation! lol).

I settled on the image above because it suggests a couple of true things about the book -- the boy and girl are very much in love, and they also have to comfort each other quite a bit. These two aspects are well captured above. But it doesn’t capture the humour, which is also a huge part of the book. Alas, there is no artwork that would capture that.

They are such likable people and they are in such a sad situation.

Noted while reading: John Green must have felt weird when Newtown and the Boston marathon happened. O_O

Many resonances for me: “we all have the same culture, man!” Prufrock, Magritte, Gatsby, "The Red Wheelbarrow," Nothing Gold Can Stay... it is odd that this generation (16-year-olds in 2012) has the very same cultural touchstones as my generation. Like, no.

But who doesn’t love to see all their own touchstones anyway!

Also, BiPAPs! (and other nasal gear!)

Very enjoyable -- but, again, it’s weird to be saying something so sad is enjoyable.

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier

John R. Chapin, In the Trenches at Cold Harbor, 1890

(October 2) I found this a very powerful book -- very hard to read, actually -- I had to steel myself to it every time I read it, as much as I loved it, and I spoke to more than one person who found it too hard to finish. Pat said it was “too violent” which is true, but it’s not always man vs. man violence -- in fact, it’s much more just the regular violence of nature and what it’s like to live in the mountains in the 1860s in the middle of a war. Frazier is a graphic, vivid describer and can be heartless with the details. He plays hard ball. It makes the stakes high. I especially had to steel myself to read the ending, for you had no idea whether he would spare Inman and Ada.

It’s kind of picaresque, but there is this overarching form of Inman returning to Ada, a quest whose significance increases and becomes ever more gripping even though the two are apart for so long. It’s a clever device. The more time we spend with Ada and Inman, the more we get of their memories, which at the beginning don’t hint at the depth of the relationship. It’s definitely Odysseus returning to Penelope and his kingdom, but here the relationship is so much more the driving passion.

The vivid details of mid-19th-century life in the southern U.S. are amazing, totally engrossing. I feel like Frazier got the habits of speech right, too. There are oddnesses of expression and vocabulary that you see in letters and newspapers of the time.

Was surprised by some of the Penthouse scenes at the end. LOL

Had a great writing style in general… very rich. Anything Inman thinks or says is interesting (“a sermon of Monroe’s, dense to the point of clotting”) and on and on.

The love story -- so moving -- so excruciating -- like a Jane Austen parlour.

Gripping, bracing, all those words that convey high-tension wire binding you thrillingly to a dangerous ride.

A passage I found very profound: “And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life. Certainly neither she nor Inman were the people they had been the last time they were together. And she believed maybe she liked them both better now.”

The most treacherous, perfidious, soul-wrenching sentence I have ever read in a book: “Even after all this time and three children together, Ada still found them clasping each other at the oddest moments.” It was the first sentence of the epilogue, titled “October of 1874.”

Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

Andy Warhol, Diana Vreeland Rampant, 1984

(June 1) Was previously interested in Diana Vreeland, but was astonished by the level of interesting she actually was. I loved Vogue in the '70s when it was high-art wacky, and never realized this was just specifically because of Diana Vreeland. It was her crazy, and her crazy only.

This was a good biography, because the biographer is a responsible scholar who is also aware of what is interesting to read, and she can furthermore write beautifully.

Despite this goodness, you feel like you have gotten only the slightest taste of Diana, because you just want to hear a steady stream of her riffing off of things she liked, not just tidbits of it in between biographical facts.

Dark Places, Gillian Flynn

Edward Gorey, from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, 1963

(July 19) An unofficial motto can be found on p. 145: “life was grim.”

For the first three-quarters or so of this book, I was like -- yecchh -- this is just one long gross-out -- but I did want to read to the end to see how Flynn wrapped it up. Dark Places definitely has that grabs-your-interest thing going, like her others -- it just seems even more obsessed with the disgusting, sordid, gross details of daily life than the other two, and they were pretty bad. It’s almost like Flynn is an adolescent boy. She overdoes the ew factor.

In terms of “world-making,” though Flynn acknowledges advice from agricultural experts in the Acknowledgements, it’s clear she doesn’t know how a farm is run, and this bugged me.

And, she equates poverty with smelly laundry and unwashed clothes in general -- such items get described in full at every opportunity. It’s like people with income problems wouldn’t be so pathetic if they just washed their clothes a little more. ::eye roll::

These things give the book an amateurish feel, which only makes sense since it was a first novel.

A lot of the Amazon reviewers who awarded Dark Places only one star say the same as I do -- “loved Gone Girl, read this because of that, but this is so depressing and revolting I almost didn’t finish it.”

So, at the three-quarter mark, I was thinking I’d be giving this book less than 3 stars -- even though I was kind of hooked on the story. At that point I thought I would pretty much be constantly on the verge of vomiting through the last 70 or 80 pages just to reach the denouement.

BUT THEN

At roughly the three-quarters mark, the plot got so unbelievably interesting. I mean, my curiosity was already piqued or I would have stopped reading, but -- pow. All of a sudden a lot of unexpected resolutions to the main mystery start to make some weird kind of sense. And there is a scene with the narrator and a niece that is a horror-movie classic and yet is done with words on the page.... pretty amazing.

This made the whole book suddenly seem way more clever and well-crafted. Maybe a reader gets played by the book like this, with the icky but neutral story line going on for so long. Lulled by the ick.

So. 3 stars. Or even 3.5.

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

Alphonse Mucha, Medea, 1898

(January 1) Got this (Flynn's first novel) because I liked Gone Girl so much. This was a little harder to love.

It seems to me from both books that Flynn's not sure if she wants to be a horror writer or a mystery writer -- there's a lot of random monstrousness from the get-go, with hints that the randomness is maybe not so.

Even though gross, this book's first part is engrossing... heh heh heh... but, halfway or two-thirds through, the pacing suddenly changes and the whole thing ends very abruptly. To me, it felt like the classic author-just-wanting-to-get-this-done rush (there’s a little of this in Gone Girl, too, actually: there's initial enthusiasm for the great idea, but the momentum dies away).

I was also lukewarm on the Southern Gothic elements. Macabre Southernness is so popular: why?

Third strike for me: Sharp Objects tries to be triple-x-rated sexy, which is weird when mixed in with the grotesque elements of the story.

And yet: overall not so terrible that I didn't want to finish it!

The Age of Persuasion, Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant

(December 20) Really enjoyed this -- really like the topic already, but Terry O’Reilly provides a lot of added value. Interesting insights and big-picturing. Inspired me to look up old TV commercials I saw as a kid and had forgotten... couldn’t believe how weird they now seem, e.g., "Sold American."

Book was also cool for its layout and editing. There were no real graphics, only whatever you could do with sidebars... which was a great deal with these people. And they were all worked in so beautifully... was all very creative while at the same time respectful of the reader (unlike some books that throw in six pages of plates and illustrations in the middle of a sentence, this layout did not cause you to lose the flow of the reading). Great book, but I really admired the editing.

Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter

Edward Hopper, People in the Sun

(November 24) Liked the story, liked the narrative structure: everyone is writing a book or a screenplay or a play or a memoir or a movie treatment... some people's lives are being turned into movies or books as soon as they live them and some people are living stories that came out of books or movies... basically, it's all these stories going on... plus the overlay of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (the history of whose relationship I just read and I think this author did too).

Liked all the stories. Wanted a separate novel for each one.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

William E. Elston, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Self at 17 Yrs.), 1983

(November 5) Although it uses all the popular components of YA (teen) novels I’ve read lately -- the standard suicide, sexual abuse, confusion about sexual identity and an abortion -- it isn't a totally predictable book, and that's a redeeming feature.

Charlie is more than just a compendium of all the teen traits... he does have them all, but he’s really endearing. So the novel is quite likable overall.

But there's big question for me at the end: who is Charlie writing to? Apparently I am not alone, for this is a highly googled question surrounding the novel. No one has a convincing answer. Many suggest "you, the reader" ...which is... ::sigh::

A mystery set up as tantalizingly as this one should offer a clue to a satisfying answer... even multiple satisfying answers would be fine..."satisfying" is the operative idea here.

I liked Charlie's definition of a good movie: "you feel different afterward." Agree.

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Buddy Nestor, Jana Brike, 2010

(September 30) So, so good. Inhaled this. First book I’ve read in a long time that made me want to call in sick to work in order to stay home and read it.

Very twisty and turny, not unlike Fingersmith -- but here the pleasure was in knowing that a surprise was coming ...or many surprises were coming... or maybe they weren’t! It was that kind of clever book. The hints that cast suspicions are so broad that you know there will be some kind of undercutting of that.... but there could also very well not be!

Psychological thriller, though, rather than just con-man gaming, as with Fingersmith.

Such acute observations of the difficulties that can arise in marriage.

I loved it but then read reviews at the Jezebel book club and had to agree that the last part is not as satisfying as the first... possibly because Flynn could not devote a proportionate amount to time to the denouement as she did to the set-up. Most everyone can come up with an ending clever enough to match the beginning, so Flynn could have, too... but she probably didn’t want to waste two brilliant ideas on only one novel.

But I really loved it and (maybe until I read the negative reviews) I was willing to forgive Flynn for copping out a bit on the ending.

I want to read more Flynn... apparently, there are two others: Sharp Objects and Dark Places.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, Alexander McCall Smith

Chidi Okoye, Images of Face Series 27, 2005

(September 6) I really liked it. Ultimately, McCall Smith doesn’t disappoint, though I have complained about a little grinding in the past. 

A lot more happens in these later books than in the first few -- now people’s lives are really in jeopardy -- there are serious crises to avert. Still, it all remains so cozy and likable. There were several sweet scenes between Phuti and Mma Makutsi, e.g.

It was interesting, or an interesting premise, to have the Clovis Andersen twist... but I don’t think the talking shoes are as funny as McCall Smith thinks they are, and so on.

Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself, Rich Roll

(August 11) Got this because of Judy Aldridge’s comments on Atlantis Home... both there and on the Amazon website, the book comes off as a mid-life crisis thing... as if the author had been an average Joe who re-invented himself as an elite athlete... the Amazon intro says: “incredible-but-true account of achieving one of the most awe-inspiring mid-life physical transformations ever.”

So I thought this would be interesting because the person would have discovered the same thing I have -- that you can get stronger in middle (and older) age. You don’t have to get weak. But that’s not what it is at all -- Roll was never an average Joe -- he was an elite athlete as a youth and young man, then succumbed to alcoholism for a decade or so.

Mind you, when he brings himself back to health and fitness, he is healthier and more fit than he ever was in his youth, and he did it all as a vegan... which is pretty amazing. But basically he’s an extreme guy. Everything he’s done has been done extremely.

So not quite the narrative I expected... and, really, the point of the book is to get you interested in the endurance-training vegan products Roll sells. Kind of an extended commercial for those things. (He’s creating his muse, à la the Four-Hour Work Week guy, whom he mentions, although he doesn't hint that he’s setting up a "muse.")

Still, it was an interesting story and he’s competent at telling it... there’s a familiar formula with these kinds of books -- a series of detailed highlights from nadirs or zeniths on the journey, then background filled in. But it was fine, not annoying.

And this is the first time I've ever found veganism appealing. He makes it so. Kudos there. He made me want to eat more healthily, and to try coconut water and almond milk.

He did not make me want to take up endurance sports at all.

The Hundred Dresses, Erin McKean

Donna Mehalko, The Breakfast at Tiffany's, 2013

(July 24) I already like the author and have followed her blog A Dress a Day for years, because she talks very entertainingly about dresses, and it’s a huge subject. There’s a lot of interesting engineering and physics in the making and wearing of dresses, not to mention the fascinating threads of history, philosophy, cultural anthropology and art woven into them.

A Dress a Day hits all those notes and more, just as you might expect from a lexicographer, and is by times funny, uplifting, poignant and wise, just as you do expect from a good writer.

This book gives McKean a chance to talk about dresses in terms of a Big Theme, and she does make the most of it. At first, you might think there can’t be 100 different modern dresses, and even if you created such a listicle you'd swear there couldn’t be a great deal one could say about each them, but very soon you realize McKean had to leave out many iconic dresses and you wish she'd had room to go on and on about some of them.

I liked the book because McKean is an entertaining writer, but I probably really liked it because it is a species of feminist manifesto: “Here are 100 different kinds of interesting women and what they wanted to think and do... and, oh, yeah, btw, here’s what they wore.” It is much more than a look at fashion.

The illustrations by Donna Mehalko are amazing -- she nails the essence of each dress with just a few spare strokes.

Remarkable Creatures: A Novel, Tracy Chevalier

Mary Anning With Her Dog Tray and the Golden Cap Outcrop in the Background, Natural History Museum, London, by an unknown artist, dated before 1842

(July 13) Recommended by Andrea -- she quite liked this author after reading Girl With a Pearl Earring and pursuing all her other work. She really, really liked this book.

I liked this book, too, but my initial enthusiasm for it began to dwindle as I realized it was a fiction based on real-life characters rather than a fiction "just borrowing" from real-life miscellanea. These “recreations” of real people’s lives rarely sit well with me... I'm bothered by the strain to hit all the notes in the historical figure’s Wikipedia page and the pointlessness of imagining “what might have happened” to this real person, which usually involves giving them all kinds of sexual preoccupations (because those are interesting to readers).

If you really are inspired by a real life, just plagiarize it and write a full-blown fiction, fergawdsake. What is the advantage of the half-fake?

On the other hand, there is a bit of a history lesson here -- you learn some history in a palatable way. But when I realize that's the intention, I resent it; it detracts from a book for me. Note to authors: please hide your condescension. At the same time, it is a terrible shame that Mary Anning’s importance was never a proper part of history before now. The book is a redress of an injury.

But, basically, this is like Mistress of Nothing, in that a real life is “imagined” using a lot of “true facts” so that it all seems more credible.

Though Chevalier is a very competent writer, I was disappointed by a few choices in this book. For example, she had a character describing the way So-and-So “peppered the world with” something or other (papers or dogma or such like). I doubt people of the the early 19th century used that expression that way. The same character explains a problem by mentioning the “tensions between” two groups of people. Again, a modern turn of phrase, probably incoherent to a 1824 ear. These two incidents were quite close together and coming from the same character, so maybe that’s part of the issue, but it was a bit jarring -- elsewhere Chevalier tries to mimic an early-19th-century habit of expression. Note to authors: be faithful to the speech patterns of your historical period consistently or be consistently unfaithful, one or the other.

Chevalier also sort of undermined the charm of Jane Austen novels for me by parodying a bit of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth from Persuasion.... and then, in case we didn’t get that reference, she fully spells out the possibility that Mary Anning's real life might have been a Jane Austen novel. Because Lyme Regis! Because 1820s!

So, yecch, I felt bit condescended to and lectured at -- over-guided --, and at the same time the discovering-fossils material was enjoyable and made me interested in the real-life person (not unlike The Mistress of Nothing). Grudging respect.

The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, Alexander McCall Smith

Jack Vettriano, Temptress, 2008

(May 23) Alas, these books are over too fast, this one in particular.

The concept is entering its Golden Age now.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective series was my first love ...this series I read just to kill time in between... but now I find I am liking this series better.

This installment offers many lovely interweaving streams; there’s excellent tangentializing by Isabel; and Izz wasn’t disagreeable with anyone, really.

Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen

(May 16) This was mentioned on Gertie’s sewing blog... she was making a white eyelet sundress because of the references to white eyelet dresses in this book (in fact, a white eyelet sundress is mentioned only once and clothing in general maybe three other times, max... so, huh?).

But it was a New York Times Best Seller... and easy to get from the libraries.

Odd combo of Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Like Water for Chocolate, and the Bill-and-Nancy plotline in Oliver Twist (but without the death... so not as odd as it could have been).

Written cheerfully, so easy to read... the points of view lurch around a lot, though, and the plot combo **is** very odd... so I can’t say I loved it, but it was likable. I need a 2.25 rating.

This author gets “Enchanting” and “Magical” from her cover-blurbers, and that is very accurate cover-blurbing.

The Shack, Wm. Paul Young

(May 11) I got this out of the library because I thought it was sci-fi, and it was, after all, a “New York Times bestseller.” Why not give it a try?

When I realized what it was -- a modern-Christian version of a Consolation of Philosophy or Divine Comedy (man talks to God and gets things clearly explained and allegorized) -- I just kept reading it, because ...how often am I going to get that?

The Amazon reviews are strongly and extremely divided (as with Twilight reviews) but even those who give it 5 stars make a point of acknowledging the “poor writing.” It’s really cheesy, but I wouldn’t say the writing is “poor.” It’s C+ writing. I don’t think you should confuse writing and content. Yes, the content is poor.

What I found really off-putting was a rumour I read somewhere that the real spiritual crisis that sparked Young’s vision of Christianity was an extramarital affair (all the other details of the story being autobiographical). Though a rumour, it sounds true -- it would explain some of the guilt and shame “Mack” seems to need, strangely, to expiate, and it would explain why the story of the loss of the child is so unconvincing. It sickens that he tried to fake up a story of the abduction and murder of a child to drive his point home while keeping it “autobiographical.” It’s an insult to parents who have actually experienced this, and at least one Amazon reviewer said he had turned to this book looking for comfort because he had endured that tragedy in real life. The extra-marital affair would have been a much more interesting, because honest, story.

So, shame on you, Paul Young, for being so contriving with your heartfeltedness.

Writing the Revolution, Michele Landsberg

Vanessa Beecroft, VB 52, 2003

(April 30, 2013) I am so retroactively impressed with Michele Landsberg. This woman did a great job -- both originally when she wrote these columns in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and was living the revolution, and again when she compiled this historical review. The book is the perfect blend of at-the-moment engagement with women’s issues and philosophical overview of suffrage afterwards.

Some of the issues are absolutely timeless -- her columns on women’s right to abortion feel like they were written yesterday. I was so riveted reading one of them once I missed my bus stop by two stops.

Actually, it was kind of unsettling to realize how necessary some of these hoary old protests were and still are.

Ai yi yi, it is so tiresome to undo the hatred and greed of 130,000 years of male-dominated human civilization, but clearly the will and the talent to complete the job is out there, and it will eventually happen.

Bejeweled: Great Designers, Celebrity Style, Marion Fasel and Penny Proddow

Joel Arthur Rosenthal, "Mogol" Flower Bracelet, 1987

(April 25) Beautiful, beautiful photos.

No organizing principle, really. The subtitle is “Great Designers, Celebrity Style,” and the book does cover those things, but with no apparent goal in mind. Research is thrown in randomly. You get the feeling there was a desire to do a scholarly inventory of 20th-century jewelry designers, but there was also a desire to gawp at celebrity jewelry -- and the two desires are not harmonized in any way.

It’s a testament to the importance of an organizing principle -- it’s hard to remember information when it’s not clear why and how it matters. I had to reread many passages again and again to understand why they were there. The research was interesting... but evanescent.

The big (beautiful) photos contributed to the disjointedness. The editors allowed the insertion of multiple pages of photo plates (with long cutlines) into the middles of sentences throughout the whole book. This made it very tricky to read.

Other signs of careless editing: at least three proofing errors.