BOOK REVIEW: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

ABOUT THE BOOK (from Amazon):

Nick Hornby returns to his roots-music and messy relationships-in this funny and touching new novel which thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but how they are never beyond redemption. Annie lives in a dull town on England's bleak east coast and is in a relationship with Duncan which mirrors the place; Tucker was once a brilliant songwriter and performer, who's gone into seclusion in rural America-or at least that's what his fans think. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker's work, to the point of derangement, and when Annie dares to go public on her dislike of his latest album, there are quite unexpected, life-changing consequences for all three.

Nick Hornby uses this intriguing canvas to explore why it is we so often let the early promise of relationships, ambition and indeed life evaporate. And he comes to some surprisingly optimistic conclusions about the struggle to live up to one's promise.

MY REVIEW:

I love all things Nick Hornby!  I did not want this book to end.

Juliet, Naked is written from the perspectives of a 30-something woman named Annie and an aging musician, Tucker Crowe.  Their stories are about love (romantic and familial) and regret.

Annie, who lives with her long-time boyfriend Duncan, finds herself unhappy in her relationship and her job and is in therapy.  Duncan has devoted years of his life to studying the works of the mysterious Tucker Crowe, and the couple's blow up argument over Annie's review of a Tucker Crowe album leads to their break-up.

Tucker is a burned out musician who disappeared from the music scene just as his career was taking off.  He then went from relationship to relationship, creating several children over the years with different women, leading to another divorce which leaves him the single father of a 6-year-old boy.

Ironically, Annie connects with Tucker after he reads the review she posted online about his album and this connection changes both of their lives.

Although regret is one of the major themes in the book, it is not as dreary as it sounds.  Annie and Tucker have regrets about the choices they have made in their lives, but they discover that their paths can be altered by making different choices now.

If you like other Nick Hornby books (How to Be Good, High Fidelity, About a Boy), you'll like Juliet, Naked, too.

BOOK REVIEW: Rooms by James L. Rubart

ABOUT THE BOOK (From Amazon):

On a rainy spring day in Seattle, young software tycoon Micah Taylor receives a cryptic, twenty-five-year-old letter from a great uncle he never knew. It claims a home awaits him on the Oregon coast that will turn his world inside out. Suspecting a prank, Micah arrives at Cannon Beach to discover a stunning brand new nine-thousand square foot house. And after meeting Sarah Sabin at a nearby ice cream shop, he has two reasons to visit the beach every weekend.

When bizarre things start happening in the rooms of the home, Micah suspects they have some connection to his enigmatic new friend, Rick, the town mechanic. But Rick will only say the house is spiritual. This unnerves Micah because his faith slipped away like the tide years ago, and he wants to keep it that way. But as he slowly discovers, the home isn’t just spiritual, it’s a physical manifestation of his soul, which God uses to heal Micah’s darkest wounds and lead him into an astonishing new destiny.

MY REVIEW:

Micah Taylor has it all (in the eyes of the world) - he's an entrepreneur in the software industry, a millionaire living in a penthouse apartment in Seattle, dating his business partner.  His mother died when he was young and he has a rocky relationship with his father, but he inherits a beach house from a deceased uncle he barely knew. Although he plans to sell the beach house, Micah spends some time there and begins having very strange experiences, including the discovery of new rooms that weren't there before, an unfinished painting that becomes more complete each time he sees it and a stack of letters written to him years ago by his uncle. When Micah returns to Seattle, things get even stranger as he runs into people who don't remember meeting him and his apartment changes floors. In the end Micah must choose between his extravagant penthouse lifestyle or his relationship with God.

Micah's shifting realities became a little bit too much to try to keep straight, but I also had concerns about some of the themes in the book:

1. Personally, I feel like it's too easy to use a rich, successful person as an example of someone who has "lost their focus on God" because very few of us are millionaires living in penthouse apartments (right?).  And because most of us can't really relate with the main character in that way, some of the message gets lost. I also feel there was a theme here that if you trust in God and give up all of your money and success, your life will be perfect (SPOILER ALERT: you'll get to keep a 9,000 sq. ft. beach house, do the work that you love and still get the girl!).   
2. As soon as Micah went back to Seattle and back to work he didn't feel God's presence any more.  I'm not sure what message Rubart was trying to convey here - that if you are a dedicated business person, you cannot also have faith in God?  I strongly disagree with this message. God uses people in all different fields and calls people for different purposes.

My high school youth pastor recommended this book to me about a year ago.  It happened to be free in the Kindle store for a short period of time and I was able to snag a copy, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I have to be honest, it took me almost an entire year to read - not because it's that long, but because I would get bored and read other books for awhile in between chapters.  Overall the storyline is okay, but I just found it to be lacking in suspense and some of the detail necessary to get the point across.  If you really like Christian fiction, though, you would probably enjoy this book more than me.

BOOK REVIEW: The Peter Principle by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull

ABOUT THE BOOK (From Amazon):

The classic #1 New York Times bestseller that answers the age-old question
Why is incompetence so maddeningly rampant and so vexingly triumphant?

The Peter Principle, the eponymous law Dr. Laurence J. Peter coined, explains that everyone in a hierarchy—from the office intern to the CEO, from the low-level civil servant to a nation’s president—will inevitably rise to his or her level of incompetence. Dr. Peter explains why incompetence is at the root of everything we endeavor to do—why schools bestow ignorance, why governments condone anarchy, why courts dispense injustice, why prosperity causes unhappiness, and why utopian plans never generate utopias.

With the wit of Mark Twain, the psychological acuity of Sigmund Freud, and the theoretical impact of Isaac Newton, Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull’s The Peter Principle brilliantly explains how incompetence and its accompanying symptoms, syndromes, and remedies define the world and the work we do in it.

MY REVIEW:

Someone recently introduced me to the "Peter Principle" and I was so interested in the theory that I had to find the book and read more about it.

The idea of the Peter Principle is that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.”  When people tend to do their job well, they are eligible for promotion and that cycle continues until they are promoted into a role for which they are incompetent to perform the duties.  At that point they have reached their "final placement."  They are no longer eligible for further promotions because they have reached their level of incompetence.

According to Dr. Peter, “work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.”  The many employees who may never realize they have reached their final placement utilize a number of the techniques to stay happily "busy" without producing anything:

1. Perpetual Preparation - confirming the need for the action, studying alternative methods, obtaining expert advise, having the mentality of "first things first."
2. Side Issue Specialization - "Look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves."
3. Image Replaces Performance - "an ounce of image is like a pound of performance."
4. Utter Irrelevance - participating in various committees, boards and other meetings and rarely being in their own office performing a job.
5. Ephemeral Administrology - serving many temporary appointments, as a substitution.
6. Convergent Specialization - becoming extremely specialized in something of little significance.

We all know people who engage the above techniques to get through their work day without really doing their job, right?  Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

I honestly couldn't put this book down.  It was just so funny.  The fact that it was written in 1969 added another level of humor as Dr. Peter briefly discussed computers and the incompetence of housewives.  Here are a couple of the quotes about housewives that made me laugh:

"'Woman's work is never done' is a sad commentary on the high proportion of women who reach their level of incompetence as housewives."

"Many a woman who has reached her level of incompetence as wife and/or mother achieves a happy, successful Substitution by devoting her time and energy to Utter Irrelevance and leaving husband and children to look after themselves."

The Peter Principle is light and entertaining, but is also very relevant.  I would recommend this book for anyone in a position of management.  



BOOK REVIEW: My Antonia by Willa Cather

ABOUT THE BOOK (From Amazon):

Willa Cather's classic "My Antonia" is the story of the daughter of an immigrant family that sets out to farm the untamed prairie land of Nebraska in the late 19th century. Told to us from the perspective of the adoring Jim Burden, an orphan who comes to live at his grandparent's neighboring farm. "My Antonia" is an enduring American classic rich with the spirit that brought so many immigrants to this land in search of a better life and of the beautiful imagery of the midwestern plains. First published in 1918, Will Cather saw "My Antonia" as the best book that she had ever written and it is easy to see why, for it is nothing short of a masterpiece.

MY REVIEW:

I grew up in Nebraska and attended Willa Cather Elementary school, so I have always wanted to read a book by Willa Cather.  As I am slowly making my way through Moderns Library's 100 Best Novels, I found My Antonia on the list and selected it to read in January.

The story is told by the character Jim Burden, who moved from Virginia to live with his grandparents in a small farm community in Nebraska.  During that time period, migrants were coming to the area to farm the land.  At the beginning of the story we meet Antonia, who is the young daughter of a Bohemian family and throughout the story the reader watches Antonia grow up and experience hardships of a migrant girl. 

Although the story is primarily about Antonia, there are other important characters and storylines.  One of the major themes in the book is how the group of poor migrant girls in this community, working as farmhands, nannies and maids, grow up and where their paths lead each of them in life based on the choices they made in their late teens/early twenties.  Antonia is a sweet, hardworking girl, loved by all, and her fate is not what others expected of her. 

Yet, in the end, Antonia is where she wants to be.  There is a part at the end that I found very beautiful, when the narrator describes Antonia's appearance as an older woman: "I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded.  Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of her life.  Her skin, so brown and hardened, had not that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had been secretly drawn away." 

Willa Cather was known for her writing about frontier life and descriptive portraits of the Nebraska landscape.  It is also very interesting to read this book, 100 years after it was written, to understand the history of some of the farming community in the Great Plains. 

My Reading List - January 2012

Last year I posted my reading list for 2011.  As I was preparing my list for 2012, I looked back at that list and was surprised to see I had only read two of the five books I was planning to read.  I read more books last year (I swear), but I apparently skipped the rest of the list for other choices.  I still want to read those three books, so I'll carry them over to this year and add in the others I've accumulated since then.

Here is a list of the books I'm currently reading or planning to read this year in no particular order (reviews to come):

1. Rooms by James L. Rubart - about 50% done
2. My Antonia by Willa Cather - about 10% done
3. Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing Strategies by Ian Lurie
4. If You're Clueless About Starting Your Own Business by Seth Godin
5. All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin
6. Apples Are Square: Thinking Differently About Leadership by Susan Kuczmarski, Thomas D. Kuczmarski
7. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
8. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
9. The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People by Gary Chapman
10. The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister by Carolyn Tomlin, Denise George and Nonna Bannister

I've also received a few books authors have asked me to review.  I'll be reading/reviewing those as I have time.

Have other recommendations for me?  Let me know!