ella minnow pea x mark dunn

Genre: Fiction

Length: 📖208

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book was so cute. Ella Minnow Pea (yes, like LMNOP!) is an exchange of letters and government notices about the goings-on in the fictional island country of Nollop, located off the coast of South Carolina.

So what is going on, exactly?

On the outside of a government building is the sentence

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

written in tiles. In the book, the sentence was by Nevin Nollop, and the country’s philosophies are centered around this man and this sentence - but now the tiles have started falling off. First it was Z, then Q, then J and D, and so on. As the tiles fall, the government council has declared the removal of the letters from their language - all speech, text, songs, communication, etc. Any words or names containing that letter are banned with serious punishment for any resident who violates the growling list of banned letters. Chaos ensues!

The details in the book, how you are also gradually reading fewer letters, are really fun. Sentences start reading monotone. Sentences start becoming difficult to follow. Sentences lack detail. Emotions run rampant in letter exchanges as residents become frustrated with the inability to communicate!

betty ford x lisa mccubbin

Genre: Biography

Length: 🎧15/📖432

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

This is not a memoir, though Betty Ford did write one. I found this book through the TV anthology series The First Lady, where Michelle Pfeiffer plays Betty Ford. There is a scene where Ford dances and poses on a table in the President’s Cabinet Room in the White House for a photographer, and I wanted to see the real image. One of the images from that moment is the cover of this book so it came up in the search results, and as I love learning about women from history who have strength and gumption, I added this to my holds list. Generally I do not like biographies, and am more inclined to read memoirs, but also find I don’t like them as much compared to other genres. A lot of that bias is responsible for the low ranking I gave this otherwise well researched and informative book about one incredible lady.

Let me set the stage real quick. Former dancer Betty Ford was the wife of 38th American President Gerald Ford, a 25 year Republican Congressman who accidentally became Vice President, and after President Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal, became President (1974-1977). Mrs. Ford was a fierce advocate and left behind a legacy of the “Betty Ford Effect” for removing the stigma around breast cancer, substance addictions, face lifts/cosmetic procedures, and AIDS. She was a committed feminist, fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, showing gratitude for the family’s hired help Clara, getting a female Secret Service agent staffed, pushing Mr. Ford to include more women on his team, and maintaining a pro-choice stance on abortion. In the ‘90s she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her lifelong dedication and endless efforts to improving people’s lives.

Betty Ford brought forth a lot of interesting connections. While listening to the audiobook I had also finished watching the Chicago-based TV show Shameless; at one point there is a story line where a central character is running a rehab in his basement and one of the patients references that this program was more effective than the Betty Ford Center, a drug and alcohol addiction rehab facility founded in California by Mrs. Ford. The BFC has a strong reputation from celebrities such as Johnny Cash and Stevie Nicks (who dedicated all her work after 1985 to Betty Ford). Another Chicago-ish connection was after Gerald Ford’s conclusion as president, he and Mrs. Ford received a joint book deal of equal value for the couple to write memoirs - the first of its kind - in a way that so strongly parallels that of the Obama’s media deal with Netflix.

On a personal level, I remembered a book from my childhood (likely purchased at a Scholastic Book Fair) about US Presidents and their family’s exotic pets. I rarely remember that the Fords had many pets, but most odd of all, an alligator. I was also reminded that my grandfather met President Ford during the White House years, a testament to my grandfather’s public service and commitment to his community. Listening to Betty Ford, I warmly observed many similarities between the men and it made me feel closer to my grandfather despite the physical and generational distances.

women’s work x megan k. stack

Genre: Memoir

Length: 📖352

Rating: ⭐⭐

This book was disappointing. I hoped this was going to be a look at the complicated economics, emotions, needs, and desires involved in the culture of domestic work. Soon realizing this was not where it was headed, I wondered will it have an impact similar to The Help. Instead, it felt like a woman complaining about feeling guilty for hiring help from women who come from poverty or uneducated situations and upset at her husband for not being an active parent in the household without expanding beyond this basic dynamic.

Megan K. Stack is a journalist - a former war correspondent - and failed to capture the multi-faceted realities of the people involved on both sides of this labor market. This is surprising since as an author and journalist it is her profession to report on complicated things. It is also surprising as she has first hand experience - Women’s Work is about her time living in China, where her and her husband hire help after the birth of their firstborn, and India, where they hire domestic workers again and has a second child. It is only at the end of the book that she begins to try to understand the lives of the women who have taken care of her family and home, after she has made judgements and opinions (including stalking one on Facebook), all the while feeling “degraded.”

I understand her point, her frustrations and confused emotions toward hiring help. She was in an unique position to bring important dialogue to people, and failed to deliver. It says a lot about where society is today that a successful journalist can cover war and political crises, but not about the multiplicities surrounding domestic work.

managing as designing x richard j. boland, fred collopy

Genre: Non-Fiction

Length: 📖276

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This unassuming book compares management and design (design examples range architecture, music, cars). It does so through a collection of essays and speeches from architects, professors, even tax commissioners, and is structured into three parts; theory, application, and future tense.

Managing as Designing starts by introducing a problem; traditional MBA’s, management, and organizational theories instruct to decide from predetermined solutions, rather than opting for creating solutions tailored to the problem. This creates a sharp divide between management thinking and design thinking, when in practice they have consistent commonalities.

There are many rich examples and anecdotes, one such is of VISA’s formation, posed in contrast to the Titanic. The Titanic was designed to conquer nature, whereas VISA was designed to be resistant to the chaos and order of the world. One sank, and the other is a leading financial institution.

Another is a comparison of two types of musical notation, Chinese qin and Western staff, as a lesson that the way information is communicated leads to different interpretations (think vibrato, rhythm, positioning of the performer, etc). Just as in business, management’s word lead employees to make their own interpretations based on information provided, these words create actions. There are many ways to communicate, but communicating effectively to receive expected results is what counts.

In a later related essay by Youngjin Yoo about music, a passage in particular from stood out to me for its simple commentary on design thinking in management and communication;

“And, he put his feelings and thoughts into the music. Yet, what were left behind were pieces of paper with a set of symbols and, perhaps a few words at the most. However, more than a century later, to a conductor and the members of the orchestra who performed the piano concerto, those limited words and restrained symbols were more than enough. More than enough to stir up their own imaginations, feelings, and thoughts. More than enough to touch an move people who filled the concert hall that night. Yet, the composer never spoke to anyone in the hall.”

I also enjoyed an essay on mindset between design and management. Design faces constraints, any designer will tell you this. Anyone in management will also tell you they face constraints. What is different between the two groups is the response, as those with a design thinking mindset will share that it is a natural part of the work, often where ideas get generated, whereas management thinkers will share it is an obstacle.

This was a great read, both incredibly rich in information and thought provoking. Many of the essays connect throughout the other sections of the book, which helps solidify understanding of the complex ideas being discussed. Published in 2004, it was ahead of it’s time as many of the essays on inclusion of women in business, sustainability, and intersectionality are prominent discussions nearly 20 years later. Though not very long, it is a dense book and takes some time to process through.

range x david epstein

Genre: Non-Fiction

Length: 🎧11/📖339

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was a solid book, mainly because in a sub-genre that can feel preach-y, David Epstein (no known relation to Jeffrey Epstein) makes his case for generalists while understanding the value of specialists. Each are valuable in their own ways. Range examines case studies of various companies, like 3M and Nintendo, and individuals, like Roger Federer, who demonstrate how being a specialist can lead to contradictory performance at creating exceptional breakthroughs and innovations.

Many careers today require hyper-specialization, but generalists provide necessary holistic curiosity without the silo-bias formed by being a specialist. Having someone on a team who carries a wide set of interests and knowledge is critical to making well informed decisions and asking the right questions to move projects, design, research, and companies forward.

Early in the book, Epstein discusses the new era of thinking humans need. As technology has improved, the need for adaptive thinking has developed into a valuable skill that computers haven’t mastered (yet). A great example of this is that while AI can beat humans at chess, they can’t beat them at StarCraft. Epstein stresses in the book that deep learning is slow, and getting a headstart is fast. Fast does not necessarily lead to well-rounded skills or the ability to adapt skills further. This also made me think Range would be a good companion read to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast & Slow.

Overall, Range is best summarized by the figure of speech:

“a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”

a manual for cleaning women x lucia berlin

Genre: Auto-Fiction

Length: 📖399

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

If Joan Didion is to Hugh Prather (cool and observational), then Lucia Berlin is to David Foster Wallace (warm and involved). In this collection of Berlin’s short stories, three main themes are on repeat; mother and son relationships, late adulthood femininity, and alcohol and drug addiction.

Berlin writes about a racist dentist who scrapbooks war memories, about two women who finish each pass of gossip with a line of scripture from The Bible, about a recently divorced woman living with her sons in an “old farmhouse, down by the river”, and compares two laundromats, one stocked with old editions of Good Hygiene and the other with Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and Ms., knowing the character of a place is best judged by the magazine selection in the waiting areas.

One of my favorite stories was “Friends” about an octogenarian couple who develop a deep friendship with a single woman. The couple had traveled around Mexico on archeology digs, and carry that warmth into their relationship, and into this woman’s life. It is one of the sweeter, more tender stories from Berlin. The pages are filled with stories from the southwest United States and Central America, exploring a wide range of situations with drama and irony that add dimension and candor.

I recently started binging the TV show Shameless, and as these two works crossed over, I felt that although very different, they have a kinship in their meaning, humor, and tolerance.

With so many heavy and often unexplored topics at hand, Berlin’s evocative touch and lack of judgement is refreshing and reveals her commitment to self-reflection, narrative, and people.

“Anybody says he knows just how someone else feels is a fool.”