Adventures in Reading

I’ve added a page of some of my favorite books.

I’ll keep that static updated so you’ll always know what my current favorites are, but here’s what’s on it as of today:

Children’s Books
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Novellas
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Shopgirl: a Novella by Steve Martin

Historical Fiction
Forever: A Novel by Pete Hamill
Moloka’i by Alan Brennert
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Time and Again by Jack Finney

Short Stories
Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales by Ray Bradbury

Other Fiction
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Memoirs
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Papillon by Henri Charriere

Business
The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas by Robert H. Frank
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham
The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford

Communication/Negotiation
Crucial Confrontations by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan & Al Switzler
Thank you for Arguing : What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion by Jay Heinrichs
You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen

History
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

Science
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph Ffom the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science by Russ Parsons

Spirituality/Religion
Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths by Bruce Feiler
The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander
The Best Buddhist Writing 2005 by Melvin McLeod
God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch
The Monk & the Philosopher: Father & Son Discuss the Meaning of Life by Jean-Francois Revel & Matthieu Ricard

Women’s Studies
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain
Bachelor Girl: 100 Years of Breaking the Rules–a Social History of Living Single by Betsy Israel

What are some of your favorites?

Just read this NYTimes.com article adapted from Steven Greenhouse’s new book The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. Chapter One is available here on the NYTimes.com website or here on the author’s website.

Greenhouse, a labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, examines the stresses and strains faced by workers at companies like FedEx and Wal-Mart (as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has become virtually nonexistent), and points to Patagonia and Costco and even the casino-hotels of Las Vegas as models for corporate America.

Patagonia sounds like an awesome company to work for! Isn’t that everyone’s dream to be able to go to work wearing whatever you want, take long lunch breaks or leave early to enjoy life, and to get paid to do volunteer work? Okay, probably not, but it certainly is part of my dream.

On the other hand, FedEx has hired most of its drivers as “independent contractors” to increase the company’s earnings. If the same people were employees, they’d have to pay benefits, social security, and would not be able to fire people simply for missing work due to illness.

Reading about this book makes me think of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001). The author left her usual journalist job and spent 1999 and 2000 working jobs paying $7/hour (less than half of a living wage and what millions of low-skilled Americans make). She worked as a waitress in Key West, FL, as a cleaning woman and a nursing home aide in Portland, ME, and in a Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, MN and found that it is nearly impossible for such Americans to lift themselves to middle class.

It also makes me think of Small Giants: companies that choose to be great instead of big by Bo Burlingham, which describes several privately held businesses that have become “giants” in their field without becoming huge corporations. These companies all seemed to honestly care about their employees and the community. I think that many publicly traded companies are focused too much on growth and return — rightfully so since they are obligated to do what is best to increase returns for shareholders — and I think the world would be a better place if companies instead aimed to do what’s best for the community (owners, employees, existing customers, and potential customers).

I highly recommend Small Giants and plan to add The Big Squeeze to my list of books to read.

Funny, even Wal-Mart sells The Big Squeeze.

Spent the afternoon with friends (one of whom owns about 600 books) and got these recommendations:

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by AJ Jacobs - Esquire editor Jacobs’s memoir (released in 2004) of the year he spent reading all 32 volumes of the 2002 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Reading alphabetically (33,000 pages), he figured he’d accumulate huge quantities not learned in formal education and increase his “quirkiness factor.” Supposed to be laugh out loud funny. Definitely something I would read.

Circling My Mother: A Memoir by Mary Gordon- this is novelist Mary Gordon’s new memoir of her mom’s battles with polio, alcoholism, and eventually with senile dementia, and details the author’s acceptance of both “the burdens and blessings of caring for her mother in old age” and her overcoming the grief of her mom’s death in 2002. Supposed to be a very moving account of this mother-daughter relationship. In August 2007 it was featured in the NYTimes Book Review — one of my favorite places to find new books to read — where you can read the first chapter.

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs - a collections of essays recounting stories from Burroughs’s childhood that includes this disclaimer: “Some of the events described happened as related; others were expanded and changed.” Hmm…I don’t know about this one. Still, it was also featured in the NYTimes Book Review. And I may add this to my list of books to read depending on how I like his bestselling Running With Scissors - which I bought at a Library Book Sale last week.

Interesting how all three are memoirs of some sort….