Review: The Terranauts

The Terranauts by T. Coraghessan Boyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Boyle takes the concept of Biosphere 2 and builds it into what could easily become a TV series. We follow two inhabitants of the desert biosphere and one support worker, who all take turns narrating the story from their point of view. There’s danger, but it’s a kind of manufactured danger due to the cult-like sense of mission. There’s passion, but it revolves among the limited number of characters seeming to pair up in as many combinations as you’d get on a few seasons of Friends. There are surprising occurrences, but they are telegraphed. One character, or rather all characters, are schemers at some level, trying to get what they want. One is played for comic relief (and not surprisingly that was the character I most appreciated). So it was a lot like a typical cable series. While I appreciated the overall discussion on mission and the lengths people go to fulfill one, this didn’t come across to me as a very “literary” book, but more of a pop entertainment story. Enjoyable as such.

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Review: The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow

The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow by Joseph A. Michelli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zappos is known for their excellent customer service. In this book, the author, Joseph Michelli, investigates the company to determine how they have architected their company to provide this service. He breaks it down into 5 sections, but it can truly be focused on creating company process that enables stellar service, and creating HR processes that focus on benefiting the employee and the company. For instance, Michelli describes using anecdotes how employees have responded to customer issues, even those not involving the products being sold. An example is sending flowers to a customer who is dealing with returning shoes bought by her mother, who died before handling the return. An example of HR processes that Michelli highlights is the extensive employee training curriculum offered by the company, and the free use of business books from the company library. (Of course, since they are now owned by Amazon, I can understand the book benefit.) The book did bring up an issue that wasn’t covered in much detail – given this company has a single large office, with a second large office being built during the timeframe of this book, and with a large warehouse, geographically distant, the company would need to ensure their workers in all locations could deliver that high level of customer service. But it seemed from my reading that the training classes and many of the HR tactics to build a cohesive workforce (like invite-a-coworker-to-lunch prompting) generally require co-located employees. A minor miss, but perhaps this will be followed up on by other authors or editions. My favorite gleaning from this book is that Zappos openly calls themselves “weird”. And given many of the examples of employee parties, as well as company processes, that seems an apt description. It’s working for them.

Michelli includes questions within each chapter to help the reader consider adapting Zappos’ ways in their own companies. I enjoyed the author’s voice in this book, and appreciated the way the author categorized Zappos’ somewhat unique way of working. While I am not in a position in my company to enact these strategies and tactics, I can see how these descriptions could change an executive's thinking. Another excellent company dissection by Michelli.


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Review: Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results by Judith E. Glaser
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This really didn’t feel right as a book. It felt as if the author wanted to write a typical business communications book, similar to many that have already been written, but wanted to differentiate this book from the crowd. The choice was to add content that related in scientific terms what might be happening in your head and body when you are happy or when you make decisions. So you learn some science. But knowing this doesn’t really help you communicate, or at least if it does it isn’t explained here.

Strangely for a business communications book, as I read it I kept thinking of things my Mom would tell me, like “put yourself in other people’s shoes”, “people like hearing their own name”, and even “nobody likes to get yelled at”. This is a book that provides guidance that can be summed up with these kinds of platitudes. The author represented a person’s thoughts while communicating as passing through 3 layers:
- an “animal brain”, handling the basic needs, fight or flight, limbic brain.
- What I’d call a political brain, looking for angles to better a person’s standing
- What I’d call a cooperative brain, working for the greater good
The author thought that leader’s communication could be categorized as coming from one of these levels, with that coming from the top level tending to have better outcomes. I’ve run across this concept in many business communication and sales classes over the years, so it ended up being quite familiar. Adding to the familiarity, the book was written with noticeable repetition. Overall, I found this book a reasonable review, and I found the author's voice and choice of examples were good, albeit repetitive at times. But for me it did not tread new ground, and the added science seemed more for show.


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Review: Illinois State University

Illinois State University by April Karlene Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A historic photo book covering Illinois State University. The pictures are of three basic kinds. The first are pictures of people, mostly of the presidents of the university (and, because this is ISU, there’s a picture of basketball star Doug Collins). The second, and most common type of picture is the building picture. The history of the school is, in this case, broadly a history of the buildings of the school. The school has grown over the years, and many buildings were built, then torn down, to be replaced by other buildings that may also have been torn down. The various plans for additional buildings, plans abandoned over the years, are also documented. The third type of picture I would consider candids, pictures of students in their dorms or classrooms being the most common. Each picture includes a paragraph or two of descriptive text, and there are short essays starting each chapter. You can learn a lot about the history of the school. My daughter attends ISU, but I am not that familiar with the many school buildings. I found a weakness of the book is that it assumes you know when describing some of the demolished buildings where they were based on current buildings that replaced them. Including campus maps from the various eras would have helped this Normal visitor get his bearings. There was also very little on the college circus, which I also found surprising, although it is well covered in a separate book.

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Review: Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance

Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good life planning book. I found the thoughts interesting, but really the advice offered was focused on those that have been “successful” in their existing careers but felt that there was something more to do to have lived a complete life. As I consider myself a partial success, perhaps with schlub-ish tendencies, I felt this book spent a lot of time talking over me, to the golden boys that run large businesses. If you can put yourself in the target market’s shoes, you will read some good advice, with plenty of interesting examples of how people have taken a new path for their career when they’ve gotten beyond the value of their first one. The author describes ways to change your career to what you are interested in, as well as ways to support those interests while continuing existing jobs. This is very much a mid-career book – it is not aimed at questions of retirement. I found it of interest, similar to other career books but with a more spiritual/Christian tact, and focused on the winners.

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Review: Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day

Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day by Ken Mogi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author describes ikigai, your reason to get up in the morning. He illustrates this concept by tying it in to five pillars, or aspects of ikigai. These are very simple traits, like starting small, and being in the here and now. They are so common that this seems like new age mantras, repeated in many different self-help books. Here the author includes some interesting examples, mostly from Japanese culture, but also including stories from many well-trodden sources: the book “Flow”, for instance. I liked the Japanese stories, but the bulk of the book felt too generic.

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Review: To Sir, With Love

To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you’ve seen the movie, you know the story. The movie was pretty close to the book, really only adding Lulu and her great song, and downplaying the author’s romance with another teacher. I hadn’t seen the movie in a couple of decades, so I found the details of the book brought to mind many scenes. I really enjoyed this – it is a very good story on dealing with prejudice. I wish there was more to it, especially about Braithwaite and teaching. I wanted to read more about how Braithwaite learned to be a teacher, and about how he learned on the job. Here, this goes from bad to good with one anecdote.

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