The Savvy Reader Book Club Selection for February 2014

The Savvy Reader Book Club is an online nonfiction book club created for the serious reader. At the beginning of each month I select one or two books; then host discussion posts covering the books throughout the month.

As a reader, one of my favorite things to do is read books that help me understand the world. Last year, when I saw Tanya at Mom's Small Victories was participating in the Around the World in 80 Days Reading Challenge I was intrigued.  The premise of this challenge is to read 80 books that take place in other countries to get a better understanding of that country and culture.  I've decided it's time I join this challenge, though my book selections are going to be nonfiction.  I've created a Pinterest board to track my progress. 

In the spirit of my new challenge, I asked Tanya to make the book club selection this month.  Since Tanya's parents are originally from India,  we decided she would choose a book that takes place in India. Her selection is:

Thrity Umrigar's memoir about her Bombay childhood First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood.

Thrify Umrigar is considered to be one of the finest Indian authors. Her novel The World We Foundis among Tanya's favorite Indian fiction books.  First Darling of the Morning which reviewers state is told with startling honesty and paints an unforgettable picture of middle-class life in contemporary Bombay should make for an interesting read.

Another of my online acquaintances who currently lives in India - Modern Gypsy of Peddler of Dreams - finds India to be such a diverse country she doubts there is a book or two that would really give us a glimpse of Indian culture. As for women, she thinks the country really isn't as bad as it's made out to be online, though it admittedly can be difficult for those in the lower margins of society. She recommends Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Foundby Suketu Mehta a brilliant book on Mumbai and Sonia Falero's Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars. It's about the dance bar culture in the city and the women who work there. I am jotting both of these books down for future reads.

Have you read any of these books? If so, what were your thoughts? Do you have any other nonfiction books you can recommend that take place in India?

In other book club news, I want to let you know I have one more post planned for Debora Spar's book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfectionbefore I close it out. Also, I am sorry to report I did not finish George Packer's book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.  I read about three-quarters of this book and can't seem to go on. I am finding it to be disjointed and have no interest in writing further about it. If you've read it and would like to review it via a guest post, please contact me.

In order for you to plan accordingly, future book club selections I am considering are as follows:

March - for women's history month Madeleine Albright's Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948

April - for financial literacy month Helaine Olen's Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry

May - open

June - books covering women's friendship - more on this to come

Do you have a nonfiction book or theme you would like to recommend for a future book club selection? I am looking for books/themes that will lead to great conversation.

Why Women Opt-Out of Their Careers?

This month, The Savvy Reader Book Club, is discussing Debora L. Spar’s book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. In an earlier post, I revealed a perfume commercial from the 70's was responsible for shaping my life’s vision. Last week, we had an interesting discussion on whether greater sexual freedom meant a loss of power for women. 

Today I am sharing the reasons Spar feels career women continue to crash in to ceilings.

Spar begins by siting Management Women and the New Facts of Life, an article Felice Schwartz wrote for the Harvard Business Review in 1989:

The article argued that if corporations wanted to hire their best and brightest female employees, they needed to create a more flexible and family friendly workforce, one that offered young mothers a variety of ways to structure their working hours and their careers. High potential career women, Schwartz suggested fell naturally into two camps. In the first were “career primary women,” women who essentially behaved like men at work and were willing to undertake the same set of trade-offs. These women were almost certain to remain single or at least childless, Schwartz predicted, and to demand only that their employers “recognize them early, accept them, and clear artificial barriers from their path to the top.” In the second camp were career and family women,” women who wanted children and a career, and who, unlike both men and “career primary women,” were willing to trade some of the demands of promotion for the freedom to spend more time with their children. (Pg. 182)

Schwartz’s piece went viral and the term mommy-track was coined. Unfortunately, the mommy-track did not work out in practice:

Few organizations have found ways to carve their most important positions into anything other than full-time chunks. Today for example, more than twenty years after Schwartz published her article, there are still only eight scientists working part time at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Only 13 percent of women lawyers work part time, as do 2 percent of the female financial managers. It doesn’t seem that the human resource departments of any of these organizations are consciously choosing against part-time positions. But when it comes to putting actual bodies in actual jobs, full-timers simply tend to dominate. As a result, while the number of women who work part time is statistically quite high (roughly a quarter of all female workers), the vast majority of these part-timers are clustered at the lower end of the economic spectrum, working as cashiers, waitresses and sales assistants. (Pg. 183)

I found this to be interesting, since just last week I asked our CFO if I could hire a part-time person for our department. His answer – I would prefer everyone work a few hours of overtime each week rather than add an additional staff person.

I was also reminded of the seminar I had attended on hiring discrimination. The seminar was given by the HR Director of a major corporation in my area. I learned many managers continue to “profile” and discriminate when making hiring decisions. They prefer not to hire married women for IT consulting positions that involve travel – she recommended ladies take off their wedding rings before going on those types of interviews. Also, they tend not to hire or promote women who are in their child bearing years.

Then there are the women who opt-out. I have several friends and co-workers whose experiences mirrored the following:

Many women who have left the full-time workforce, of course, predict that their hiatuses will be brief. As Sylvia Ann Hewlett found in a 2005 study, most women who pull blithely into a career “off-ramp” find the road back far more treacherous than they anticipated. Positions disappear; salaries plummet; professional relationships grow stale. And at the end of the day, only 40 percent of women who try to return to full-time professional jobs actually manage to do so. The rest settle into early retirement or slower paced, lower-ranked jobs. (Pg. 183)

Women simply jump first:

When the choice is between compromising a job and compromising a family, women seem more inclined to focus on the family, men to stick with the job that pays the bills.

Opting-out is particularly high for women who didn’t like their careers that much to begin with or entered them haphazardly:

This mismatch between jobs and desires seems to vary not only with time and gender, but across industries as well. Specifically, there are some fields from which women seem to flee in droves: law, consulting, banking. And some fields in which they stay: medicine, academia, entrepreneurial ventures. Typically, the reasons cited to explain these patterns are the obvious ones – fields like consulting and corporate law, for example, are frequently described as being too demanding on young mothers time and too “male” in their knee-jerk behavior patterns. Commodity trading floors are still rough-edged, often raunchy, places. Would-be partners at major corporate law firms work insanely long hours. (Pg. 187)

Her advice:
Don’t go into a field without first understanding the rules of the game and considering deeply whether you want to play them.

I have mentioned many times before about the number of hours accountants are required to work. When I returned to college to major in accounting I was fully aware of this requirement. It never occurred to me while in my twenties this hour requirement would eventually become cumbersome and if I were to have had children impossible. At the time, my only focus was to enter a career where I’d earn a decent salary.

What rules do you wish you would have known about your chosen career prior to entering it?

Has greater sexual freedom meant a loss of power for women?

This month, The Savvy Reader Book Club, is reading Debora L. Spar’s book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. In last week's discussion, I revealed a perfume commercial from the 70's was responsible for shaping my life’s vision. Today I’d like to discuss chapter 3 – sex and the social contract.

Spar begins by explaining that the courting/dating culture that was common prior to the sexual revolution no longer exists. Today’s young men no longer ask women out on dates or to go steady. Instead they “hook up” - a boy meets a girl at a party and takes her home for sex. In one recent survey of college students, 75 percent of the male respondents and 84 percent of the females reported having hooked up at least once during their college years. (Pg. 68)

Spar feels this greater sexual freedom has resulted in a loss of power for women:

There’s something about hooking up that seems to reflect a diminution of women’s choices rather an expansion, a decrease in women’s power rather than a rise.

Ultimately the crux of the matter is whether women truly enjoy the freedom that comes from uncommitted sex. And it’s not clear that they do. Instead, as Stepp reports in Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, many of the women who embrace the hookup culture for some period of time (usually their freshman year of college) later come to regret it. Rather than feeling empowered by their conquests, they feel abandoned by the men they thought might be their boyfriends. Rather than whisking blithely from one affair to the next, they are waiting by the phone (now, at least conveniently in their pocket) for last night’s encounter to call them back. Because the hookup is so clearly not about commitment, though, he rarely does. And the women are left, longing for something they swore they didn’t want. (Pg. 70)

Then there is the money proponent:

Sex has long been connected to some underlying notion of exchange; to some sense, in other words, that each of the parties in a sexual relationship was getting something- be it property or pleasure or a lifetime of protection – out of it. Hooking up challenges this historical relationship. Echoing the anthem of the sexual revolution, it presumes that men and women are free to have sex whenever they want, with whomever they want, and with no commitment implied by the act. 

The question, though, is whether women truly get equal value from a relationship based on “free” sex. Are they equally content to give-and get-sex for nothing, or have they perhaps given men what they want (easy, cheap sex) without getting much in return? (Pg. 72)

While reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a young woman who lived in my dormitory my freshman year of college. I distinctly remember the afternoon a group of us were sitting around discussing our Saturday night plans when this girl announced she hoped to get lucky. If a guy could have a one-night stand without anyone thinking twice about it, she could too. Later that year, I would find her crying in the restroom because a boy was no longer interested in hooking up with her. A year or two later I would run into her again, she would confide she had just had an abortion. She hadn’t even liked her baby’s father yet terminating her pregnancy was one of the hardest decisions of her life.

Eventually, she would marry and have two daughters.

I would meet her for drinks a few years ago when she was visiting in my area. Her former hook-up lifestyle came up in conversation. This was not the life she wanted for her daughters.

As to the loss of power, I wouldn’t want to go back to the era where women were treated as possessions or a man felt he had to marry a women who became pregnant (then would abuse her), but I do think something can be said for waiting a bit before having sex. People tend to appreciate something they have to work for a little bit more.

This quote from Terry Tempest William’s book When Women Were Birds is a good example of why the hook-up experience is different for a woman than a man:

Because what every woman knows each month when she bleeds is, I am not pregnant. Because what every woman understands each time she makes love is, Life could be in the making now. Which is why when a woman allows a man to enter her, it is not just a physical act, but an act of surrendering to the possibility that her life may no longer be hers alone. Because until she bleeds, she will check her womb every day for the stirrings of life. Because until she bleeds, she wonders if her life will be one or two or three. Because until she bleeds, she imagines every possibility from pleasure to pain to birth to death and how she will do what she needs to do, and until she bleeds, she will worry endlessly, until she bleeds.

Today’s question again comes from The Reading Group Guides discussion questions for Wonder Women:

Compared to women who courted and married before the sexual revolution, do unmarried women today do a better or worse job managing love, money, and sex in the context of their relationships? Do you agree with Spar that greater sexual freedom has meant a loss of power for women? Have men lost anything?

Why I Mute TV Commercials

This month, The Savvy Reader Book Club, is reading Debora L. Spar’s book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. Today is the first in a series of posts I will write throughout the month inspired by this book.

One of the first points Spar, who is roughly the same age as me, makes in Wonder Women is how the perfume commercials we grew up with in the 70’s shaped the visions of our future adult life. She writes:

They stuck somehow in the public consciousness, or at least in the minds of schoolgirls like me, who simply presumed that life in the grown-up world would be just like the ad for Charlie. We'd have careers to skip to, kids to adore us, and men waiting to douse us with perfume the moment we waltzed through the door. Money and great shoes only sweetened the package.

This wasn't of course, the life that our mothers were living. In 1970, only 43 percent of women worked outside the home. In upper-middle-class white families like my own, the number was slightly higher, hovering by 1974 at around 46 percent. Most of these women worked in "traditional" fields such as teaching or nursing, and they rarely wore stilettos to the job. Yet somehow, girls growing up in that era believed - thought, presumed, knew - that they would be different. That instead of replicating their mothers' suburban idylls of parent-teacher conferences and three-tiered Jell-I molds, they-we-would go the way of Charlie, enjoying children and jobs, our husbands' money and our own. And through it all, we would be smiling and singing, gracefully enjoying the combined pleasures of life. (Pg. 16)

I was astonished. I can't believe my entire life's vision had evolved from a commercial. I vividly remember watching the following Enjoli ad on TV and thinking this is the life I am going to have. I even told my friends quoting the famous line: "I can bring home the bacon. Fry it up in a pan. And never forget you're a man. Cause I'm a woman.

This wasn't the first time entire generations of women were influenced by advertisements.  In Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, Betty writes how middle-class white women in the 50's and 60's abandoned their careers so they could buy the latest carpet sweeper and cleaning cleanser. A lifestyle perpetuated by magazine editors who restricted the topics and advertisements portrayed in their magazines. Friedman had studied women’s magazines for decades and found the editorial decisions were made by men who enforced “occupation housewife.” Articles and advertisements only portrayed women as housewives. They didn’t want them to have any other ambitions than to be housewives.

Which brings me to The Reading Group Guides discussion questions for Wonder Women.  The very first question asks:

Do contemporary print and electronic publications (advertising, magazines, blogs) persist in creating impossible ideals of beauty, success, and motherhood in the name of commerce, or has this approach been tempered somewhat through the use of more realistic images and languages?

Umm... I  have to say yes.   Even ads like the following Special K commercial which urges women to shut down the fat talk leaves me feeling embarrassed about my weight:

Fortunately, I don't watch a lot of TV and when I do I either fast forward through the commercials or mute them.

What do you think:

Do contemporary print and electronic publications (advertising, magazines, blogs) persist in creating impossible ideals of beauty, success, and motherhood in the name of commerce, or has this approach been tempered somewhat through the use of more realistic images and languages? Can you site examples?

You Don’t Seem Happy Anymore

It was December 23^rd and I was exhausted from both work and holiday preparations when my husband asked if I’d like to have a glass of wine by the fire.  I half-heartedly said, “Sure” and grabbed the book I’ve been reading - Gretchen Rubin’s Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life. I wanted to read (I am an introvert and need down time when confronted with a lot of social activity) while my husband was looking forward to a nostalgic conversation about the Christmas’s of our past.  His sister is moving to a new home this January and we would be celebrating the holidays in her old home for the last time. No one in the family was interested in having this conversation including myself.  After several failed conversation attempts he finally said:

"You don’t seem happy anymore.  You don’t laugh or joke or want to have fun.  All you do is work and when you are home you are either reading or working on the computer.  When you do engage in conversation you are usually negative. You never used to be this way.  When I met you, you were happy, laughed easily and had a carefree positive attitude. What can I do to help you change back to the person you used to be?"  

This was somewhat of a wake-up call. He is right and the reasons are numerous. Since my bunion surgery last summer, I’ve gained back all of the weight I lost two years ago and still am not back to my normal workout routine.  I feel lethargic and remain continuously behind both at work and at home and from time to time I feel mildly depressed. I don’t take enough time off – nine of my earned vacation days went unused in 2013 - the most vacation I’ve lost ever. In addition, I’m feeling old and trapped in my current life and job.  

My reading of Gretchen’s book Happier at Home suddenly took on new meaning, “How can I be happier at home in 2014.”  One thing I know for sure is my husband can’t do anything to change me.  If I want to change my life I have to do it myself. Here are my goals for 2014:

Interior Design:
I am re-committing to keeping a gratitude journal:
I’ve kept journals in the past and they’ve been helpful especially when going through a rough time.  This year, in addition to writing what I am grateful for, my focus is going to be on writing about the positive aspects of my day and if it includes working with someone who is difficult or annoying I need to write something positive about that person. Also as a way to know myself better, I am going to pay attention to what I envy and what I lie about.  I found it interesting that I was envious of a friend when others commented on how efficient she is. 

Control over possessions and time

Make to-do lists:
I’ve never been a big list maker.  I like to keep things in my head and only write down an important deadline or two on my calendar. Last fall I attended a seminar called “Getting Things Done” based on a book of the same title written by David Allen. At the seminar we were required to do a “Mind Sweep” a process where we were required to write everything we needed to get done both at work and at home on a piece of paper. The idea is to get these tasks out of our minds. I used this list during the month of December and it helped tremendously.  One of my biggest sources of unhappiness is missing appointments or remembering a deadline when it is too late.   

Implement a new filing system both at work and at home.
This was also covered in the “Getting Things Done” seminar. Lost and misplaced items are a huge source of unhappiness for me.  I’ve previously written about my messy desk at work and my files at home are currently packed so tight I couldn’t possibly place another piece of paper in them let alone find anything.  After having difficulty finding financial papers at the end of the year, I began implementing a new filing system both at home and at work.

Suffer for 15 minutes:
I’ve started taking a dreaded task from my above to-do list and spending 15 minutes a day on it.  This is so much better than tackling the entire list on a Saturday.  Setting up a credit-card payment or renewing our DOT fleet license at work are never fun tasks, but ones that can easily be accomplished in 15 minutes or less. It is also much better than waiting ‘til the due date and then frantically searching for passwords.

Teach and delegate:
When asked a question at work I need to teach others where to find the information or how to do the work themselves or delegate it. Taking on too much at work is one of my major sources of inefficiency.

Buy what I need and get rid of what I don’t:
I tend to be an under-buyer and a slight hoarder. This basically means I have a lot of stuff people have given me, I’ve gotten for free, are obsolete, I no longer need and not what I do need.  I find myself scrambling when I run out of printer ink or don’t have warm clothes that fit adequately when the temperatures go below zero. 

Body:
Stop eating sugar:
I am an abstainer. I’ve known this since reading Gretchen's previous book The Happiness Project. She describes an abstainer as someone who finds it easier to abstain from something than to indulge moderately.  Abstainers aren’t tempted by things that are off limits, but once started have trouble stopping.

Moderators, by contrast do better when they act with moderation, because they feel trapped and rebellious at the thought of never “getting” or doing something. Occasional indulgence heightens their pleasure and strengthens their resolve. (Pg. 122)  

I’ve given up sugar in the past and find that completely abstaining is the only way I can keep from binging. Effective immediately I am no longer going to eat any sugary treats.

Seek out a workout that works for me:
I’m still searching for a workout that I enjoy that isn’t too strenuous.   I plan to try a Barre class in the coming weeks and will continue to look for new workouts after my foot heals completely.  I would like to meet with a fitness consultant to help map a workout routine that is tailored to my fitness needs and abilities.

Finding my Calcutta:
One of my major sources of unhappiness comes from my life not “being” about anything.  I feel as if life is passing me by as I sit in my office fixing accounting entries all day. I had a conversation with another male co-worker who feels similar.  He is the manager of one of our company stores and feels he makes a difference in about 30 people’s lives, but that is it.  He thinks the items his store sells are no longer made well and are a huge headache to sell and service. After he retires in a few years he hopes to do something more meaningful with his life.

Lighten-up:
In 2014, I need to stop being so hard on myself.  Perhaps I too can wait until I retire and have more free time to make my life be about something.  I still have this blog which I am attempting to turn into a mentoring club for women.  I started The Savvy Reader Book Club last year and try to write regular posts that hopefully help women.  One of my friends suggests I work on this blog only when I have they time and not to feel guilty when I don't have time. Family and work come first.

Give gold stars:
For me, this means paying more attention to my husband.  Closing my book when he wants to have a conversation or moving away from the computer for a few minutes to actively listen when he tells me about his day.  Acknowledge and thank him for doing something that makes my life easier or better – for having an incredible meal ready when I get home from work on New Year’s Eve or helping with the cleaning when I have to work on Saturdays during January. Or just going outside and spending time with him and our dogs in the back yard instead of checking my twitter feed for the umpteenth time.  

Have you made any resolutions to be happier at home in 2014? 

This post was inspired by Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin where she runs a nine month experiment to create happier surroundings. Join From Left to Write on January 6 we discuss Happier at Home. You can also chat live with Gretchen Rubin on January 7 on Facebook! As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Please Note, I am an Amazon Affiliate

The Savvy Reader Book Club Selections for January 2014

The Savvy Reader Book Club is an online nonfiction book club created for the serious reader. At the beginning of each month I select one or two books; then host discussion posts covering the books throughout the month.  

Last night while watching the "30 Greatest Women in Music" countdown on ABC-TV*, I kept thinking how did we get here? How did we move from the women musicians of my youth - Cher, Karen Carpenter and Pat Benatar to the stars of today Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Katy Perry? It seems like I missed something along the way.  Am I beginning to show my age and - gasp - become irrelevant?

Speaking of missing something along the way the books I am selecting for my January book club help fill in those gaps.  I was born in 1962 and am roughly the same age as Debora L. Spar the author of the book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection.  In her book Spar explores how women's lives evolved since the 70's (remember that Enjoli commercial where the heroine struts home from work in a tight skirt singing, "I can bring home the bacon. Fry it up in a pan. And never forget you're a man. Cause I'm a woman. Enjoli") to where they are today - spinning in an endless quest for perfection.  This book is guaranteed to lead to some interesting conversations.

  

 

 

 



My next selection is George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.  I mentioned in a previous post I've been reading this book and continue to be amazed how the lives of American citizens have changed over the past three decades.  I'm still not completely sure I've gotten my arms around the message of this book or how I want to write about it, but I feel it is an important book to read.  Here is a blurb from inside the book's cover:

The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation. 

 

 

 

* You can find the complete list of "30 Greatest Women in Music" here. 

 

Have you read any of these books? If so, what were your thoughts? Do you have any recommendations to help better understand how the world has changed over the past 40 years?

 

Josh Hanagarne Revitalizes my “BE Strong” Project

When I selected Josh Hanagarne’s book The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family for the December Savvy Reader Book Club I thought it would be the perfect read to close out my Be Strong reading challenge.  To my surprise instead of wrapping up my project this book inspired me to revitalize it.  Josh’s story helped me realize procuring inner-strength is not something that can be accomplished in one year. It is a life-long project.

Josh who began experiencing symptoms of Tourette's syndrome at the age of six describes Tourette’s syndrome as follows:

In any language, the movement disorder comes down to two things: those with the disorder either move involuntarily, makes noises involuntarily, or both.

He writes:

The worst part of Tourette’s wasn’t the bodily harm or even my inability to go outside sometimes. It wasn’t that I was being driven toward increasing isolation. It was the uncertainty. It felt like driving at night, with headlights coming toward me, and every car seemed to be in my lane. I no longer had a destination. I only knew that everything coming toward me had the potential to wreck me, to derail any plan I could make.

To say Josh's journey towards controlling his Tourette's symptoms was difficult would be an understatement. He tried numerous methods from visiting questionable doctors, to ingesting drugs - Klonopin/Clonezepam, Tetrabenazine, Zyprexa, Risperol, Haldol, Clonidine, even a nicotine patch—none of which helped for more than a few days and most had side effects. After his involuntary outbursts turned to screams, he receives botulism toxin injections that paralyze his vocal chords. These injections reduce his speech to a whisper.

As Josh’s symptoms continue to worsen, they cause increasing turmoil in his life. He leaves his Mormon mission early; he is in and out of jobs as well as college. Eventually he ends up refusing to leave his parent’s couch suffering from a debilitating depression. Thinking his son has zero confidence his father convinces him to try weight training.

Eventually Josh’s strength training leads him to Adam Glass, a strongman and former Air Force tech sergeant. Adam describes a good trainer as someone who gets results and shows clients how to figure something out for themselves. Josh writes:

Working with Adam was the first time someone actually asked me to think about what was actually happening to me. My doctors they never asked how I felt. They treated symptoms.

After coming home from spending a week with Adam, Josh has a breakthrough epiphany - his breathing is the key to controlling his Tourette’s symptoms. He practices taking a lung-filling breath that does not result in a tic. These breaths turned into seconds, seconds into days, days into weeks and weeks.

Unfortunately, Josh’s life does not remain symptom free. While under stress after witnessing early signs of Tourette’s in his son Max, they return with a vengeance. Josh has to begin the process of taming them all over again.  

As I mentioned in my book selection post, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family is about much more than Tourette’s, but for me, Josh's battle with Tourette’s is what resonated the most. His trainer Adam says it best:

I don’t know how you do it? Having control of my body is one of the only things that keeps me this sane, and I’m pretty wrecked.

This book has inspired me to improve upon my own inner-strength project. To dig deeper, seek out mentors and trainers that ask the right questions so I too can strengthen my inner core.

Bottom Line:
Despite enjoying The World’s Strongest Librarian and feeling it is a worthwhile read for a strength project it is not a perfect book. Even though - I think - I grasped the gist of the chapter covering the week Josh spent working with Adam it was a cumbersome read that did not improve with a re-reading. I particularly enjoyed learning about his family life, his take on reading, libraries and his experiences working in them. In addition, the section covering the difficulties he and his wife experienced conceiving a child are heartbreaking. Overall though, I am left with a feeling that something is missing.

Have you read this book? If so what were your thoughts?

The Savvy Reader Book Gift List

As I was contemplating what to buy friends and family this holiday season I realized many of my favorite reads of 2013 would make excellent gifts. Here is my hypothetical gift list:

For my friend and colleague Kate:

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. This is the best career book I‘ve read in years and one that I wish I’d read earlier in my career. I recommend this book for any woman who is looking to re-charge her career.

As a companion read I would include:

Debora L. Spar’s Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection.Spar is the president of Barnard College and has written a book about how our culture has evolved in the last 50-years. She details how women struggled to gain power, but instead ended up caught in an endless quest for perfection. I found myself nodding in agreement as Spar describes how women today try to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother and the perfect career person. 

For my sister who is the mother of three children under the age of eight:

Crystal Ponti's The Mother of All Meltdowns: Real Stories of Moms' Finest (Worst, Completely Awful) Moments. When I saw the look on my sister’s face as her 4-year old kept insisting he wasn’t wearing pants or shoes on our outing I realized perhaps motherhood is much harder than I realized. After reading the melt-down moments the authors share in this book I hope my sister learns she is not alone and that there is no such thing as a perfect mom or child. Please see Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection from above.

For my niece who will be moving to Santa Monica by herself next year:

Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us From Violence. This book explores how fear is a gift that can be used to keep us safe and explains how we can spot even subtle signs of danger—before it’s too late. Gavin teaches us how to listen to and trust our intuition. I recommend this book to anyone who will be living on their own for the first time.

For the niece who is graduating from college this December and has nothing constructive to do until grad school begins next fall:

Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. It could be a coincidence, but after reading this book I snapped out of the funk I had been in for almost a year. I recommend this book - a compilation of Strayed’s Dear Sugar advice columns - to any young adult approaching their quarter-life crises.

For my non-fiction loving friend who read and enjoyed Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman after learning of it from this blog post:

George Parker's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. I am currently reading this book and am amazed by how comprehensive it is. Packer follows the lives of several Americans over the past three decades. In doing so he describes how America which was once a super power is beginning to become undone. I recommend this book for anyone who likes to read about current events or who is interested in the increasing disparity between the rich and poor.

 

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What was your favorite reads of the year? Would you give them as gifts?

The Savvy Reader Book Club Selection for December

The Savvy Reader Book Club is an online nonfiction book club created for the serious reader. At the beginning of each month I select one or two books; then host discussion posts covering the books throughout the month.  

Since December will most likely be a busy month, I’ve decided to choose just one book this month. The Savvy Reader Book Club selection for December is:

Josh Hanagarne’s book The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

The title of this book is deceiving. Josh may work as a librarian, but this book is about much more than libraries.  As a young boy playing the role of a “tree” in a school play Josh begins twitching uncontrollably. It turns out he has Tourette Syndrome. Eventually he learns to control his tics by lifting weights. This book is a memoir that includes Josh's thoughts and experiences with Tourette’s, faith, strength the power of family, reading and yes occasionally libraries. 

Since I too have been on a strength challenge – attempting to become a stronger person in my 50th year – this book should be the perfect read to close out my Be Strong Reading Challenge. Be Strong was a reading challenge I created for myself to read books covering topics related to inner strength such as confidence, communication skills, working with difficult people, self-knowledge, willpower, etc.

On another note, as a follow-up to last month’s book club selection Seth Godin's Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, I would like to highlight additional books recommended by readers:

Catherine Gacad is currently reading Randi Zuckerberg's book Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives:
Randi Zuckerberg is the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Her book which is part memoir, part how-to manual addresses issues of privacy, online presence, networking, etiquette, and the future of social change. Hmm… this book sounds like a possible future Savvy Reader book club selection.

Mel of brokeGirlrich likes leadership/business books a lot. She loves the One Minute Manager books, especially The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkeyfor delegating. She also loves "personality" books like Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger's book The Art of SpeedReading People: How to Size People Up and Speak Their Language and David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence which are both Briggs-Meyers related books. I am already a fan of Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger. Their book Do What You Are was instrumental in helping me discover my Myers-Briggs personality type.  I am adding all of these books to my reading list.

Raina Kropp of San Diego HR Mom recommends an alternative book to Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. She likes Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan. According to Amazon:

In Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright show corporate leaders how to first assess their company’s tribal culture and then raise their companies’ tribes to unprecedented heights of success. In a rigorous eight-year study of approximately 24,000 people in over two dozen corporations, Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright discovered a common theme: the success of a company depends on its tribes, the strength of its tribes is determined by the tribal culture, and a thriving corporate culture can be established by an effective tribal leader. Tribal Leadership will show leaders how to employ their companies’ tribes to maximize productivity and profit: the author’s research, backed up with interviews ranging from Brian France (CEO of NASCAR) to “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, shows that over three quarters of the organizations they’ve studied have tribal cultures that are adequate at best.

This book would have made an excellent companion read to Tribes.

Have you read any of these books? If so, what were your thoughts? Do you have any recommendations for future Savvy Reader Book Club selections?

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Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

This month one of The Savvy Reader Book Club selections was Seth Godin’s book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. I chose this book after learning Molly Ford of Smart, Pretty and Awkward recommended reading it.

What is this book about?
Seth Godin describes a tribe as any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader or an idea. In this short book, only 147 pages long, Godin inspires us to embrace our leadership potential and challenge the status quo.

My Thoughts:
I love a good business book. For me a “good” business book helps me understand the current state of business and provides new ideas I can use to improve the organization where I work or to write about on this blog.

Tribes is strong on helping me understand where business is today. Godin feels many organizations are trapped in maintaining the status quo. By doing so they fail to adapt or innovate and end up dying. Think Kodak or the music industry. Much of this is due to companies having a management problem. Godin writes:

Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. Burger franchises hire managers. They know exactly what they need to deliver and they are given resources to do it at low cost. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world striving to make the process as fast and as cheap as possible.

Leadership, on the other hand is about creating change that you believe in. (Pgs. 13 - 14) 

This is where this book begins to fall short for me. I can’t exactly march into my manager’s office tomorrow and recommend he get rid of our managers and begin looking for leaders.

What the book does do is provide encouragement and inspiration to those who have an idea or wish to create a tribe and need a push to do so. Godin spends a fair amount of time writing about fear and thinking your way out of it. He also writes about the naysayers and heretics and how they are ultimately the ones who end up demoted, fired, disgraced and unhappy.

Bottom Line:

It’s possible you missed the checklists, the detailed how-to lists, and the For Dummies style instruction manual that shows you exactly what to do to find a tribe and lead it. (Pg. 146) 

That is because there aren’t any. If that is what you are looking for you will be disappointed with this book. This book is actually more of a motivational guide to inspire you to become a leader or to contribute to a tribe. If that is what you are looking for this book will be perfect for you.

Have you read this book? If so what were your thoughts? What business books do your recommend reading?

Finding Employment with a Fashion Merchandising Degree

I recently had a conversation with a young college grad. She graduated last May with a degree in fashion merchandising from a prominent private college. Unfortunately, the only job she has been able to secure is as a retail associate – a job she also held while in college. She interviewed for a buyer position with a major retailer here in Milwaukee, but did not get the job. 

To learn how to stand-out and get hired with a fashion merchandising degree I turned to Mandi Noel from The Cardigan Confessions. Mandi is 24 years old and has a Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design and a Master’s of Business.

Did you work after receiving your undergraduate degree or go straight to grad school?
I did go straight from undergrad to grad school. It’s not very common for fashion design or merchandising grads to get Master’s degrees, but that’s part of the reason I decided to get one. Anything that can set you apart is a good thing. The two careers I am interested in are apparel product developer and starting my own design business. For both of these, an MBA is a good idea. It’s not a requirement for a buyer, but like I said, it would set you apart, and that’s helpful.

Do you think the above grad needs to move to a larger city? She lives in Milwaukee and has her heart set on becoming a buyer.
As far as the retail job goes, pretty much any job in fashion merchandising requires a certain amount of retail experience. If she didn’t work in retail before graduating, she will most likely have to put in a few years before getting a buyer position. It’s basically like “paying your dues.” Plus, the experience and knowledge you gain is really important to any job you will have in the industry later. Also, it is sometimes easier to move up to a designer or buyer position within a company that you already work with at the store level. I have friends who have become managers at stores and then their district managers have helped them transition into higher positions. As for Milwaukee, I don’t know much about the types of fashion jobs that are available there, but generally, the bigger the city, the more opportunities for fashion jobs. Especially for buyers because many times buying is done at the district level. If Milwaukee is not the district headquarters for many stores, you won’t see a lot of buying positions there. I would say that Chicago probably has the most opportunities in that area of the country.

Anyway, I hope all that is somewhat helpful. I’m not currently working in the industry because my husband is part of a unique program with his job and we’re moving a couple times a year. But I specialize in design, so I’m just doing some artistic stuff on my own for now and am hoping to open a business for myself in a few years.

Another grad is hired as a buyer for the very company my above graduate interviewed with:
Interestingly, as an acquaintance was giving me an update on his daughter – she had just moved to Milwaukee to work as a buyer for a major retailer headquartered here – I realized it was with the very company the graduate from above had interviewed with. His daughter had also graduated in May, with a degree in retail entrepreneurship from the U-W Madison.

What did this graduate have that the graduate from above did not?
According to the new-hire’s father, his daughter’s grades were good, but not stellar. What he thought helped her stand-out from the crowd was her internship. She had spent a semester interning for a prominent retailer in Chicago.

The problem with a degree in Fashion Merchandising is there are usually more applicants than jobs, to stand out from the crowd you need to have experience or qualifications that will out-shine your competition. I recommend the graduate in the above example expand her career search to include companies in Chicago or other major cities. After a few years of relevant work experience, she should then have an easier time finding employment in Milwaukee.  

And for all of you Fashion Merchandising students out there, try to secure the best internship you possibly can while you are in college, even if it means living in an expensive city for a semester.

Do you have recommendations for students studying fashion merchandising to help them stand out from the crowd?