Review: Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder

Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder by Chip Conley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This starts off as the title would suggest, describing older workers as mentors to other employees based on their extensive experience. That covers the first half of the book. The last half is a traditional how to find a job when you are older book. I’ve read lots of those, and this is just another one. While the first part was somewhat unique, and of personal interest, there wasn’t much there that I found of personal value. The author uses his own experience, relating many anecdotes of his career in the hospitality industry and of being an older mentor to many employees at AirBnB, including the management team. This was certainly an ego-boosting exercise for the author, as he shared how he was able to provide value to his new employer through his experience. The problem is that this really is at the top level of an organization, one that has a lot of money they are willing to invest in getting some experienced advice. This certainly isn’t a common situation.

So while the first half of the book was about a situation that seems quite rare and personally out of reach, and the second half repeated job finding advice I’m over familiar with, I still enjoyed this. The author’s stories about how AirBnB operates, and how he was able to bring his own hotel experience to play were interesting. I also noticed that in the audiobook version, the author narrated. As he read the chapter headings, which included one or two quotes related to the topic at hand, the author sheepishly would say something like, “This and all other chapters start with some quotes, and the first one is….”. I’ve not run across a narrator explaining what is on a page to that level before, and I’m guessing the author doesn’t listen to a lot of audiobooks. But that personable way to explain his book was very human – I liked it.


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Review: The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth

The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth by Thomas J. Stanley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read the original “Millionaire Next Door” when it came out, and I found it one of the most affirming books I’ve read. This book described how I thought about money, and let me know that that way of thinking, as a “prodigious accumulator of wealth,” is how “balance sheet” millionaires (as opposed to the “income statement” millionaires that make a lot but don’t save at a high rate) think and live. Low key, not flashy. I ended up reading all of Dr. Stanley’s books, and I looked forward to this one when I saw what I thought was his update.

But it isn’t. This is a book written by Dr. Stanley’s daughter, who explains in the introduction that her father was killed by a drunk driver years before. His contribution to the book are a number of blog entries written about the topics he enjoyed writing about. Stanley’s daughter arranged the book loosely in the same kind of organization as the first “Millionaire Next Door”, covering about the same topics. But her father’s contributions to the book are disjointed. While interesting, you still know you are reading loosely organized blog posts, sometimes not very related to the rest of the book, and often setting a different tone. I did not like the way this book was written. I found it a bit of a mess in terms of voice of the author and organization. The author seems to drop in the concept of FIRE (representing financial independence and early retirement) in random places, sometimes where it makes sense, sometimes not, seemingly pandering to this audience. The author is also a statistician, gathering data through research and survey, and focused on the kinds of people profiled in this book. While certainly appropriate for this book, the tone I felt was one of self-promotion. I can live with a little of that – this went a bit over what I was comfortable with. I also found the writing just difficult to read, and found it hard to maintain interest.

To the good, I found the update of research on the practices of millionaires marginally interesting, though for the most part the research showed that nothing has changed. I think this book provides an update to the original, but the original still has this one beat based on readability and impact. While I really wanted to (and expected to) like this one, I would recommend the earlier "Millionaire Next Door" for those interested in this topic.


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Review: Think to Win: Unleashing the Power of Strategic Thinking

Think to Win: Unleashing the Power of Strategic Thinking by John F. Manfredi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a very basic decision-making and planning book. If you’ve seen other decision-making books, or taken strategic thinking classes in college, this will look very familiar. In many of these types of books, there is some verbiage or some steps that make it somewhat unique. This was very vanilla. For example, the most unique step in this planning process was to do a SWOT analysis. Very vanilla. There was also a lot of discussion of holding big meetings to set strategies. This felt dated. You could almost smell the cigar smoke given the descriptions of those meetings. The best part of the book wasn’t the process description but the many examples. The examples weren’t all deep, but were varied enough to provide some interesting discussion. I think this book is best for those who haven’t had business or engineering classes involving decision making, but who are responsible for setting strategies and operating to those strategies. I don’t see this as a primary source for those creating a new strategy process, but I could see it used to add color to your existing strategic processes.

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Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Relationships, in particular friendships within a group, are dissected here by Murakami. Our protagonist is a not so likable guy, a loner who works on his life-long obsession - train stations. We are shown his past life, the highlight of which was being with four friends from high school. Tazaki is the only one that does not have a color as part of his family name, presaging his being forced from the group while in college. The book follows Tazaki’s life through decades, until he is made to reconsider his ostracism decades later, meeting up with the old friends. The book makes you reflect on the differences between friendships in groups, friendship of two people, and dating relationships by describing Tazaki’s thoughts on what went wrong with many relationships and his investigation later in life. You end up liking him more at the end, realizing that he has grown in self-knowledge. I could identify with his situation. I would consider this a “guy’s book” in that if the story was written with a woman main character, the relationships would be much different, and the story wouldn’t have the same conclusions. Murakami’s prose again stands out to me as written by a reasoned, logical person with a poetic heart. He makes architecting and even waiting at train stations sound romantic. This is one of those books that I suspect I'll be thinking about for a long time. A bonus for me was the repeated discussion of a specific CD of Liszt’s music, which caused me to find and listen to the CD. Very nice, and it really does evoke the pace of the book, which was slow and deliberate. The audio version which I listened to also had one of the songs at the end.

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Review: Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This biography of Lawrence of Arabia begins abruptly with a chapter long on action and short on background. The listener of the abridged audio version of this book is thrust into the story midway, and only after this episode’s conclusion is there some context of the situation, early in WWI, mixed in. And only when the bulk of the story is told are we given bits and pieces of Lawrence’s earlier life. The book concludes with what could be considered Lawrence’s second life, that of a lowly soldier and airman, connected and well-off but putting in the hours like the others. The book, and Lawrence’s life, prove how far from the safety of home a man can go, figuratively and metaphorically. And it proves there are second acts, with will, perseverance, and a goal. Note the abridged version that I listened to was over 14 hours long, so I'm not sure how much was cut. The abridgment could have been the cause of the abruptness experienced at the beginning of the book. YMMV. Quite a memorable read, combining real life action, mystery, inventiveness, reward, and, yes, horror.

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Review: An Innocent, a Broad

An Innocent, a Broad by Ann Leary
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading one of Leary’s fiction books and I thought her voice would be entertaining in this more personal memoir telling of her difficult child birth. Her story was quite entertaining. I learned about the British medical system through this book, but I also learned that Leary is like a lot of people, myself included, that read up on a topic and feel that we are smarter than the experts we hire. In this case, Leary time and again worries that these British doctors and nurses don’t know how to do things. We find out throughout the story that, in fact, she was in very capable hands during her extended stay in London after giving birth to a preemie. We also find that with her focus on her child, she missed out on her husband’s increase in fame. You end up seeing Leary as very human. This book evoked some emotion in me, which is rare. I found I wanted to strangle Leary who was showing signs of being a helicopter parent even before her child was born. And I sensed her gradual giving in to the reality of an extended stay in London tied to a hospital. But I also found a few passages caused me to laugh. Well written episode.

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Review: What Comes Next and How to Like It

What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Memoir, with somewhat random reflections on the past, with some self-analysis of the author’s life mixed in along the way. I appreciated that the flow was very much like a daily journaling exercise, and the author has a way to explain things simply, the results of a writer who has spent a lot of time thinking about her life. This shows you how this practice can work to build into a more cohesive story by providing examples of actions and thoughts at different times in the authors life, at different events. It is some attempt at understanding herself, while also acknowledging the bad (like drinking too much vanilla). You are left after reading this considering the author as both very strong and very weak, given how events have unfolded in her life. Her focus here seems to be on relationships with friends, daughters, and dogs. Her marriages didn’t seem to last, so you don’t see as much of that here in the analysis. I enjoyed the audiobook version – it was a nice and calming narration that allowed for personal reflection through comparison.

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