Review: Great Jobs for Everyone 50 +, Updated Edition: Finding Work That Keeps You Happy and Healthy...and Pays the Bills

Great Jobs for Everyone 50 +, Updated Edition: Finding Work That Keeps You Happy and Healthy...and Pays the Bills by Kerry Hannon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first half of this book, written by the author of many jobs articles on the AARP website, documents a large number of jobs that could be appropriate for older workers and for those looking for temporary or part-time work. Each job is described with details, examples, job requirements, typical employers, and possible salaries. I found this to be an interesting list, going into such esoteric jobs as bridge tutor, alumni event planner, and eco-landscaper. (Unfortunately, no circus jobs were mentioned!) According to the author, it’s not just retail work out there. Many of these jobs require advanced training, but the author points out those jobs that require, say a master’s degree compared to those that might require a 100 hour course for a certification. This extensive list opened my eyes to work that I may not have been thinking about for my “golden” years, or for my pre-“golden” years (depending on layoffs and health scares).

The second half of this book is a generic job hunting guide aimed at older workers. This included the typical advice on resumes, LinkedIn, entrepreneurship, and more, and included sections on job hunting for former military and for the disabled. The author aimed broadly here, also including some basic financial, social, and health advice. I found this part of the book to be very similar to many other books I’ve read over the years, so unless you have never read a book about careers, I wouldn’t recommend the second half of this book. Also, while the author lets her pleasant and occasionally humorous personality show in her writing, I found some of the tips in the second half to come across as condescending. Many people she is writing to are up-to-date on topics like email etiquette and the use of LinkedIn. Her advice is not for those people.

View all my reviews

Review: Principles: Life and Work

Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author is a fellow who really likes process, rules, and, yes, principles. I had never heard of the author, but found the first part of the book, the autobiographical part, to be very interesting. This is what I would consider a business biography, but from an entrepreneur’s perspective. You get the birth and growth of the business, yes, but you also get the family background and upbringing that led him to his business style, which is what the second half of the book is about. The author describes in some detail the principals with which he built his business and how he hopes it runs as he reduces his time there. This had the feeling of a story about mean Steve Jobs. When you read about the things that Jobs did to his employees, you thought Apple/Next was quite a unique environment, and were glad you weren’t there. Dalio leaves the same impression with his rulebook on running a company, rules that seem quite extreme compared to the average business, rules that make me think he’s talking about a commercial version of a utopian community. He denies multiple times that his company is a cult – doesn’t that always make you wonder? As I am not planning on building a company with a strong social governance component, I found the second half of the book dry. I did enjoy the first half, though. While I’m sure he’s hiding some of the warts in his story, he does expose a surprising number. I found the story of Dalio’s rise to great wealth and the openness with which he describes many missteps he freely documents to be quite interesting.

View all my reviews

Review: Tribe of Mentors

Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a long book. Ferriss decides that the way to efficiently ask a large number of people that he respects and would consider worthy of being called a mentor is to come up with a short set of common questions and ask them through email and hope for responses. He gets a number of responses answering some of the questions, which he shares in this volume, and a few gracious declines that he also shares.

You learn a few things here. One is that Ferriss’ idea of a good mentor isn’t just business superstars. Here, there are authors, scientists, and an outsized group of fitness experts and specialty athletes. You sense that Ferriss built this list working on his “The Four Hour Body”. You also learn that on certain topics people think alike. There are plenty of mentions of Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” as the book recommended to learn from. And many people relate similar experiences as failures they have learned from – it got a bit repetitive. I was also surprised at the length of most of the answers – there was a lot of effort put into responding by the “tribe”. Most of the answers were very personal, which helped to tell the story. My favorite bit, most related to my work, was Temple Grandin’s explanation of a failure that set her up for success. Her anecdote involved fixing a hog moving problem with technology, only to find it was a management problem. So many people want the “shiny new thing”, but really need to fix the way they do business. (And I’ll remember her vivid description of hogs sitting on a conveyor belt and flipping over backwards when it runs.)

I took my time reading through this, and it took a few weeks. This is one of those books that you get more out of when consumed a bit at a time, with the side effect that it doesn’t feel as repetitive. In my mind the best answers had to do with suggested reading material. The author compiles this “reading list” on his website for reference. The length really was detrimental to my enjoyment, though, as was the mix of mentors. These were not who I would have asked – these were more “mentors who were willing to reply” to Ferriss. I liked the concept.


View all my reviews

Review: New Man Journey: Finding Meaning in Retirement

New Man Journey: Finding Meaning in Retirement by Steve Silver
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If you are looking for a book describing becoming saved as a Christian, this is one. The descriptions are apt for any one at any time, though. The author includes illustrative stories about two couples who find religion after retirement, but the retirement didn’t have all that much to do with the saving. I was expecting more on the retirement aspects of life change, but I found this was more general. I found this similar to other books I’ve come across regarding taking religion more seriously. The author told the story in a voice and style much like you would hear in a sermon. Not what I was looking for, but might be for the right reader.

View all my reviews

Review: The Ask: A Novel

The Ask: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I read a novel that is described with the words comic and style, I expect either a well thought out story that builds to a climax, often madcap, and with a few hilarious scenes along the way. Or I expect what I would call dormroom riffing, turning lots of funny phrases in a short amount of time. The perfect comic novel would be equal parts both, but these books are rare. This is the second kind of book, weighted heavily on the existential and humorous turn of phrase or unaccustomed attention to some thing. Think “Steven Wright wrote a novel”. I found the quips and short anecdotes to be, on average, pretty funny. As a novel-length story, though, I didn’t find it hold together as well as I would have liked. The characters aren’t very likable, they are mostly just odd. I liked the environment of the novel – the development office in a lower-tier college, the uber-rich college buddy, the job angst. The end seemed tame compared to the lead up, which left me feeling more resigned than fulfilled. But I enjoyed the riffing enough to want to read more by this author.

View all my reviews

Review: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Twain at his short essay best. This volume of the autobiography has Twain dictating whatever stories came into his mind while purportedly writing his autobiography over three years of his life. It comes across a lot like a newspaper columnist with free reign to write whatever he wants, knowing the strength of his style and his storytelling capabilities will pull him through with what could well be a gem. There are lots of gems here.

The backstory here is very interesting, and Twain himself tells it near the end of this volume. Throughout this and previous volumes of his autobiography, Twain complains about how the copyright law was taking away the ability for his family to earn revenue off of his work, his writing, after the copyright has expired. He explains in this volume that he wants to provide for daughter Jean. His other living daughter has married and is provided for, but Jean is not. Twain’s way to game the copyright law is to write additions to his autobiography, and to have his daughter release new versions of the autobiography when the copyright is nearing expiration, each new edition containing a few thousand words from this volume of stories. Quite a smart idea. But the bulk of the volume ends when Twain finds his daughter Jean dead, having drowned after an epileptic seizure. He shares his grief in his last dictated sections, his reason for writing the autobiography gone.

There is an addition to the “official” part of the autobiography. In subsequent years, Twain realized that his secretary and his housekeeper had been defrauding him. He writes a story to describe the situation, covering quite a few pages, in the same style and wit he exhibits throughout. The case never went to court, so this story was not released. It contains some interesting details on his life, his finances, and his frame of mind. He was too trusting, and you can feel him just kicking himself on being taken for so long by the people he mindlessly trusted. You learn much of Twain’s character at the twilight of his life from this story.

The essays, or stories themselves are of a wide variety of topics, but all containing Twain wit and style. There are descriptions of investments, including a wireless telephone that takes messages. Twain had a great disdain for President Teddy Roosevelt, pillorying him in a few of his essays. He also took on the media. The writing was fresh, but I found it truly amazing that for a few pages, I would have believed it had been written this week – the topics were how unpresidential the President was acting, followed by a condemnation of the media, printing stories without facts in order to keep advertisers happy. Ripped from today’s headlines, but written 110 years ago!

After listening to the audiobook version of all three volumes of Twain’s autobiography, I got what I was initially looking for – insight into Twain, and a lot of stories told in his style. He was a great writer, and this volume reminds you of this in every section.


View all my reviews

Review: The End the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving

The End the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It seems like I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books, of the genre I will label “pop-urban planning”. Most all have taken a thesis and provided convincing arguments that their thesis is correct. This is of the kind, and takes the popular pro-urbanization tact. In this case, pro-urbanization is anti-suburb, at least in the title and most of the rhetoric. Yet the author also includes anecdotes that describe possible paths forward for those suburbs, including high-density faux urban centers. I’m seeing that in the suburb I live in, with highrise mixed use developments replacing the empty one-story retail centers within 2 blocks of our commuter train station. The dream is a suburban lifestyle without required car ownership, and that seems possible in many places with mixtures of commercial and residential land uses -- just like the big city. I dislike this book’s title, because that is not the entire story revealed in the book. Suburbs aren’t ending, but are, and will continue to be, reconceptualized and rebuilt to meet the changing needs of the population. I found this a good book to bring up some of the issues and the opportunities in suburban development, with good anecdotes illustrating the authors investigations. The answer I saw here wasn’t just flight back to city center, but rebuilding a “change-urb”.

View all my reviews