La Seduction by Elaine Sciolino

Just read about Elaine Sciolino's book La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life in the New York Times Book Review.

Like Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French, La Seduction is a book about French culture and ideology from the perspective of an outsider who has spent years in France.

While Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong educates readers (presumably Americans) on why their preconceptions about the French are wrong, La Seduction  frames her book around the idea that the French live for the seduction. Where us Americans have only a way of life, the French have an art de vivre.

While the review by Caroline Weber in the New York Times isn't exactly glowing -- "Carefully researched and lucidly argued, “La Seduction” develops a wonderfully suggestive theory of French pleasure, but in practice, its sometimes schematic thinking and clunky prose would have benefited from a touch more je ne sais quoi — just a little soupçon of seductive allure" -- I would like to read it.

Expect another post about this book if I can find a copy at my local library.

The Corner Office

Last week, the New York Times published an article adapted from The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons From CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed by Adam Bryant.

From interviews with over 70 chief executives and leaders, New York Times columnist Adam Bryant identified 5 essential qualities for leading an organization and getting the corner office:

• Passionate curiosity. Relentlessly questioning everything and having an infectious sense of fascination with everything. 
• Battle-hardened confidence. Overcoming and embracing adversity; the ability to put a positive spin on any circumstance and continue with a sense of purpose and determination.
• Team smarts. Being more than just being a team player by understanding how teams work and getting the most out of the group by mobilizing individuals to collectively achieve a common goal.
• A simple mind-set. Communicating concisely, simply, and clearly.
• Fearlessness. Being comfortable with the unknown (and uncomfortable when things go too smoothly) and taking calculated, informed risks.

Can't wait to get this book from my local library!

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success was a very quick read.

I was not thrilled to read this book but decided to read it only after a friend loaned it to me.

I would rank the quality Gladwell's books in the same order they were published: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and way behind is Outliers: The Story of Success.

Outliers just seemed so contrived.

While each story was interesting, they didn't seem to quite fit into a coherent argument. It felt like Gladwell was trying to turn what should have been a simple article for the New York Times (not even an article for the New York Times Magazine) into a bestselling book.

Also, some of the stories -- particularly the one about the health of residents of Roseto, PA -- are well known to the public, which made it seem like Gladwell was trying even harder to make a book out of a simple essay.

So while I think that folks should read The Tipping Point and maybe even Blink for the educational value, I highly recommend that you not bother with Outliers.

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success

As I anticipated, Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success has quickly become a bestseller.

I have caved and decided to read it even though I thought The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking both started off good but lost momentum part way through the book.

Both those books seem like they could have each been condensed into fantastic New York Times Magazine articles and left at that.

Will write more once I start this book....

Book Club Trouble

I found "Fought Over Any Good Books Lately?" by Joanne Kaufman published December 5, 2008 in the New York Times very interesting:

“Who knew a book group could be such a soap opera?” said Barb Burg, senior vice president at Bantam Dell, which publishes many titles adopted by book groups. “You’d think it would just be about the book. But wherever I go, people want to talk to me about the infighting and the politics.”

I am a member of several online book clubs and while I haven't actually fought with anyone about the book selections I too have been disappointed by some of my book club's selections.

But since they are all online books, I don't feel guilty skipping a book or two or just staying quiet when everyone else loves a book that I hated (or vice versa).

Any thoughts on book clubs?

Untying the Knot

Re-reading Lori Gottlieb's March 2008 Atlantic article about settling -- after being reminded of it by reading Caitlin Flanagan’s recent article in the Atlantic about being reminded of female adolescence and re-reading Lisa Belkin’s October 2003 New York Times Magazine cover story about highly educated women choosing to leave their careers for the joys of motherhood -- has reminded me of yet another article: "Untying the Knot" by Melanie Thernstrom, published August 23, 2003 in the New York Times Magazine.

This article tells the sad story of the courtship, marriage, and divorce of Max and Kate to discuss marriage, divorce and love in modern times.

The truth is that most Americans do not marry for power, money and status. Nor do they marry out of social and economic necessity, as in an earlier era. They marry for love. Yet an enduring truth of our time is that marriage dissolves as often as it holds. So how is it that ordinary love ordinarily fails? If love is, as Wallace Stevens suggests, a dwelling ''in which being there together is enough,'' how does silence fall on a thousand evenings and the possibility of intimacy flicker and die? How do lovers become lonely?

It's a very sad article, but worth reading. A friend sent it to me when it was first published and I've kept it and re-read it about once a year since then.

Marry Him!

Reading Caitlin Flanagan's recent article in the Atlantic about being reminded of female adolescence, re-reading Lisa Belkin’s October 2003 New York Times Magazine cover story about highly educated women choosing to leave their careers for the joys of motherhood, and recent conversations with friends have reminded me of another interesting article published in the Atlantic: "Marry Him!" by Lori Gottlieb (March 2008).

This is an essay by a self-proclaimed feminist making the case for settling:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)

Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option, and even though settling is a rampant phenomenon, talking about it in a positive light makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment, the way a child might look at an older sibling who just informed her that Jerry’s Kids aren’t going to walk, even if you send them money. It’s not only politically incorrect to get behind settling, it’s downright un-American. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is—look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality.

...

What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.

I don’t mean to say that settling is ideal. I’m simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap. As the only single woman in my son’s mommy-and-me group, I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isn’t about cosmic connection—it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.

...

A number of my single women friends admit (in hushed voices and after I swear I won’t use their real names here) that they’d readily settle now but wouldn’t have 10 years ago. They believe that part of the problem is that we grew up idealizing marriage—and that if we’d had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. Instead, we grew up thinking that marriage meant feeling some kind of divine spark, and so we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family.

All marriages, of course, involve compromise, but where’s the cutoff? Where’s the line between compromising and settling, and at what age does that line seem to fade away? Choosing to spend your life with a guy who doesn’t delight in the small things in life might be considered settling at 30, but not at 35. By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?

It's worth reading the whole article, but above I've pasted what I think are Gottlieb's main arguments.

Over the last decade, I have come to believe that we (women) have been fed this unrealistic idea of fairy tale marriages and true love and soul mates (largely due to the way relationships are portrayed on television, movies, and even in books).

I love a good romantic comedy (Love Actually is one of my all-time favorite movies) as much as the next girl. And I don't necessarily advocate settling.

I just think that many women (and some men) would benefit from some serious thought and discussion about what really makes a good marriage.

Also worth reading are these articles also available on the Atlantic online:

• "The Case for Mr. Not-Quite Right" by Sarah Lipka (February 19, 2008)
• "In Search of Mr. Right" by Sage Stossel (December 27, 2002)
• "How Do I Love Thee?" by Lori Gottlieb (March 2006)

Okay, maybe I do advocate settling...

The Opt-Out Revolution

After reading what Steven Greenhouse has to say about Lisa Belkin's October 2003 New York Times Magazine cover story titled "The Opt-Out Revolution" I decided to take a break from reading The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker and re-read this article about highly successful Princeton-educated women leaving their careers to raise families.

I remember when I first read it when it was published and feeling for the first time that my own belief that success should be defined by joyfulness and a happy family (and not by one's accomplishments and career) was perhaps shared by other educated women.

It was such a relief.

Anyway, it was good to re-read this article. Now back to reading The Big Squeeze.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I have read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. I thought The Tipping Point started off great and lost momentum part way through the book. And I felt the same way about Blink.

Now I have just read about his latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, in a New York Times review "It's True: Success Succeeds, and Advantages Can Help" by Michiko Kakutani.

And I am not impressed. Given Gladwell's cult-like following, I have no doubt that Outliers will be a bestseller.

I don't want to read it. But probably will just because everyone else will be raving about Gladwell's new book.

plate lunch

There are many foods I miss from my childhood in Honolulu but the plate lunch about sums it up: two scoops of white rice a side of mayonnaise-loaded macaroni salad (both served using an ice cream scooper to attain perfectly round scoops), with a deliciously greasy portion of meat (or fish or sometimes both).

If the plate lunch takes off on the mainland thanks to Barack Obama's victory, as discussed in this article from the New York Times, I would be overjoyed:

This carbo load — usually piled into a plastic foam container — is paired with a protein, generally of the pan-Asian variety, often slathered in brown gravy. After a morning of hard work (or hard surf), one might opt for Korean kalbi or meat jun, Chinese char siu roast pork, Philippine pork adobo, Hawaiian kalua pork (a luau favorite), Japanese katsu or salmon teriyaki, Portuguese sausage, American-style beef stew, or loco moco — a hamburger patty and a fried egg.

“The cultural significance of the plate lunch is that it illustrates Hawaii as a special place where all of our mixed cultures share their foods with one another,” said Matthew Gray, who runs Hawaii Food Tours, which ferries tourists to Oahu’s plate lunch outlets and other lesser known haunts. “Instead of referring to Hawaii as a melting pot, I prefer to call us a salad bowl, where we all get to share and showcase the individual flavors, aromas and histories of our food.”

The Hawaiian plate lunch traces its roots to the 1880s, when giant fruit and sugar companies controlled much of the local economy. Among other factors, the decimation of the local population by disease made the companies desperate for plantation workers, and they drew a labor pool from China, Japan, Portugal, the Philippines and other areas.

I can vouch for the legitimacy of this article; the must-eat places mentioned -- Rainbow Drive-In, Kaka'ako Kitchen, and Zippy's -- really are places locals eat.

Mmmm . . . I may have to make some chicken katsu or tonkatsu (Japanese fried chicken cutlet or pork cutlet) with or without Japanese brown curry or kalbi (Korean grilled beef short ribs) this weekend with a side of fried spam for a meal his weekend.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

One of my book clubs has just selected yet another Oprah's Book Club book as it's next selection: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski.

Some of the girls in my book club said that Oprah told her viewers not to read the inside cover of the book until they have read the book, and the girls in my book club who have already read the book suggested not reading anything about the book until you've read the book in its entirety.

So all I know about this book is what I read in Janet Maslin's review for the New York Times "Talking to Dogs, Without a Word" published june 13, 2008.

That's all I'll say since I'd hate to spoil the book for anyone.

Click here to visit the author's website where you can read an excerpt, find discussion questions, and much more.

Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie

I just read Natalie Angier's October 27, 2008 New York Times article "The Unappreciated, Holding Our Lives in Balance" which made me think of Scott McCredie's Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense. (Which, of course, I read after I heard about it in the New York Times; click here to read Daniel Smith's New York Times review titled "Without a Net" and published August 19, 2007.)

While I don't have any notes on this book (I read Balance before I started this blog), I remember finding this book thoughtful and well-written. While I wouldn't go so far as to agree with McCredie that Balance should be considered the sixth sense, McCredie did convincingly argue balance's importance on normal human function.

The book managed to be both educational and entertaining. The stories of Karl Wallenda were sweet while stories of pilot's disorientation (and how balance was a contributing factor in the death of John F. Kennedy Jr) were tragic.

I've always had a poor sense of balance despite my love of yoga. So I appreciated McCredie's appendix of exercises. The New York Times (of course) published a great article by Jane Brody in January titled "Preserving a Fundamental Sense: Balance" with simple balance exercises:

To increase stability and strengthen the legs, stand with feet shoulder-width apart and arms straight out in front. Lift one foot behind, bending the knee at 45 degrees. Hold that position for five seconds or longer, if possible.

Repeat this exercise five times. Then switch legs. As you improve, try one-leg stands with your eyes closed.

...

Sit-to-stand exercises once or twice a day increase ankle, leg and hip strength and help the body adjust to changes in position without becoming dizzy after being sedentary for a long time. Sit straight in a firm chair (do not lean against the back) with arms crossed. Stand up straight and sit down again as quickly as you can without using your arms. Repeat the exercise three times and build to 10 repetitions.

Heel-to-toe tandem walking is another anytime exercise, resembling plank walking popular with young children. It is best done on a firm, uncarpeted floor. With stomach muscles tight and chin tucked in, place one foot in front of the other such that the heel of the front foot nearly touches the toe of the back foot. Walk 10 or more feet and repeat the exercise once or twice a day.

Also try walking on your toes and then walking on your heels to strengthen your ankles.

Another helpful exercise is sidestepping. Facing a wall, step sideways with one leg (bring the other foot to it) 10 times in each direction. After mastering that, try a dancelike maneuver that starts with sidestepping once to the right. Then cross the left leg behind, sidestep to the right again and cross the left leg in front. Repeat this 10 times. Then do it in the other direction.

So in addition to your normal workout, make sure you aren't neglecting your vestibular system! Perform this test to assess your current balance:

1. Stand straight, wearing flat, closed shoes, with your arms folded across your chest. Raise one leg, bending the knee about 45 degrees, start a stopwatch and close your eyes.
2. Remain on one leg, stopping the watch immediately if you uncross your arms, tilt sideways more than 45 degrees, move the leg you are standing on or touch the raised leg to the floor.
3. Repeat this test with the other leg.
4. Now, compare your performance to the norms for various ages:
   
   • 20 to 49 years old: 24 to 28 seconds.
   • 50 to 59 years: 21 seconds.
   • 60 to 69 years: 10 seconds.
   • 70 to 79 years: 4 seconds.
   • 80 and older: most cannot do it at all.
   
   

Click here to view the table of contents and download an excerpt from the author's website or here to view the author's FAQ.

The Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics is interesting but I was totally wrong about the premise of the book.

As I've gotten further along, it's become clear that this book is Shermer's treatise on free market economies.

I don't know much about the free market theory -- though I generally believe in it anyway -- so I appreciate the educational aspect of this book, but I don't like feeling mislead about the book's premise.

Will write more when I finish the book -- click here to read an excerpt or here to visit Shermer's website.

Wordwatchers

I've been faithfully reading Dr. James W. Pennebaker's wordwatchers blog since reading Jessica Warner's October 13, 2008 New York Times article "He Counts Your Words (Even Those Pronouns)."

The intriguing blog "explores how we can learn about the candidates' personalities, motives, emotions, and inner selves through their everyday words."

As a MIT nerd, I'm fascinated.

Research over the past several decades have proven that "the ways that individuals talk and write provide windows into their emotional and cognitive worlds."

Dr. Pennebaker invented a software program, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, pronounced luke), to compare text samples to its vast dictionary -- with each word assigned to one or more categories (such as social words, exclusive words, religion words, and dozens of others) -- outputting how many words appear in each category.

This text analysis is so telling that Pennebaker even thinks his software can identify authors of anonymous blogs and e-mail messages. I certainly believe it!

Check out the LIWC website to learn more and make some time to take a look at the wordwatchers blog before election season is over!

The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces by Frank Wilczek

I'd like to read Frank Wilczek's The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces.

If it sounds familiar and you don't know why, it's probably because you've heard of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Fantastic novel (set in Prague), but totally different.

I didn't realize that Wilczek chose this name partly because his favorite novel is The Unbearable Lightness of Being until I took a look at his website just now.

Wilczek, a physics professor at MIT and a Nobel Laureate, also wrote with his wife Betsy Devine Longing for the Harmonies (which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and Fantastic Realities: 49 Mind Journeys And a Trip to Stockholm.

Here's what the publisher has to say about this book:

Physicists’ understanding of the essential nature of reality changed radically over the past quarter century. MIT's Wilczek has played a lead role in establishing the new paradigms. Transcending the clash and mismatch of older ideas about what matter is, and what space is, Wilczek presents here some brilliant and clear syntheses. Space is a dynamic material, the engine of reality; matter is a subtle pattern of disturbance in that material.

Extraordinarily readable and authoritative, The Lightness of Being explores the implications of the newest findings in physics for basic questions about space, mass, energy, and the longed-for possibility of a fully unified theory of Nature. Along the way, Wilczek presents new perspectives on many strange aspects of our fantastic universe. Pointing toward new directions where the great discoveries in fundamental physics are likely to come, he envisions a new Golden Age in physics.

Sounds pretty nerdy huh? It's been some time since I've read a serious science book...

Some of Wilczek theories will be among the first to be tested at the controversial Large Hadron Collider, a $9 billion machine outside of Geneva at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Click here to read an excerpt, click here to view the table of contents, or here to read more about this book from the author's website dedicated to The Lightness of Being.

Also, Wilcek will be speaking about his book on Tuesday, October 28,2008 at 6:45 PM with the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program at the Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC. Tickets cost $20 for the general public, $13 for seniors, and $15 for members.

Click here to register.

Farmer in Chief

If you haven't read Michael Pollan's open letter to John McCain and Barack Obama, published in the New York Times, you ought to take a look.

It's lengthy but worth reading, particularly if you haven't read his recent books In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto (click here to view all my posts about this book) or The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (click here to view all my posts about this book).

And if you have read Michael Pollan's books or essays on food, you'll enjoy this recent essay even more.

Whether the next President of the United States has read this essay or will in any way change his policies based on Pollan's suggestion remains to be seen...

More Library Books

As usual, I went to the library with the intent to leave without picking up any books and failed.

I borrowed Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

I hadn't heard of The Mind of the Market but with the economics crisis I've been drawn to learn more about economics and the psychology of financial market.

This book focuses on the new field of neuroeconomics, investigating how psychology and biology affect the way we think about money. I had a friend in college who did some undergraduate research in this field so I'm looking forward to seeing if his work is featured in this book.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to visit Shermer's website.



Friends have been recommending Legacy of Ashes for months.

I don't know if I believe that this book, based on 50,000 documents (including CIA archives), will be everything folks say it is but I expect it will be full of drama and intrigue. It's been highly praised by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many others -- it even won the National Book Award.

Interestingly, the CIA has condemned this book as incorrect and deceptive . . . I wonder what my friends who work in government think of this book. Hmm . . .

Click here to read an excerpt or here to read a New York Times review by Michael Beschloss titled "The C.I.A.’s Missteps, From Past to Present" published July 12, 2007.

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford

James Bamford -- author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization, and A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies -- has a new book out about the NSA's spying on average Americans. Click here to read a recent article from The New York Times about the author.

As I understand it, Bamford (with the help of former intercept operators) exposes how private contractors have done the sensitive work of storing and processing the voices and written data of Americans and non-Americans alike and that the NSA has created a massive facility in Texs to store such data.

I realize national security isn't of much interest to most folks with the current financial crisis, but The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America seems like an important book.

Click here to submit a question for the author for his 3pm online discussion today (October 14) on the Washington Post website.

White House Ghosts by Robert Schlesinger

I've just started reading Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.

I found out about this book through the New York Times, checked it out from the library after the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and finally got motivated to start reading this lengthy book as I've been eagerly watching the presidential and vice presidential debates and the candidates speeches about the bailout bill.

So far, this book seems very well-researched. Schelsinger is a natural storyteller and expertly weaves the facts into a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of presidents and their speechwriters.

This book is required reading for students of the American presidency.

Click here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher’s website or click here to view the table of contents.

David Cay Johnston on the bailout bill

Whether you were for or against the bailout bill, these three essays by David Cay Johnston, written for The Plank (a blog for The New Republic) are worth reading:

• Who Benefits From the Bailout?
• Celebrating The Bailout Bill's Failure--And Looking Ahead
• Time to Take a Step Back

I've been a long-time fan of Johnston's investigative reporting for The New York Times and after recently reading two of his books -- Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read an excerpt of the book or click here to read my entries on this book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read excerpts and view the table of contents on the author’s website for this book) -- I've come to trust Johnston as an advocate for the common person.

It seems to me that instead of doing concrete research into how the bailout bill might affect Americans and the global economy, most media sources were simply fear-mongering about the chaos that we were doomed to if the bailout failed to pass. I'm also disappointed that Congress appears not to have considered alternatives to the bailout bill initially proposed by Hank Paulson and instead just worked to improve it.

It couldn't have hurt them to talk to some of the world's economists who had differing opinions.

Absent that, we can trust Johnston to speak up for us.