Accidentally in Code

Tag: books

  • Book: Brotopia

    Book: Brotopia

    brotopia.jpgI ordered Brotopia (Amazon) after reading an extract I’d been quoted in. It was pretty interesting, and I appreciated the way that it tied together the things that I knew – and the things that I didn’t. It was pretty fascinating to read about the early Google culture, after experiencing first hand how far away things had gone from the initial focus on hiring women and enabling them to succeed.

    The book captures the history of Silicon Valley (it’s pretty US-centric), including things like the PayPal Mafia – how they met, what they went on to do, how their opinions have evolved (or not). But it also captures the current zeitgeist that’s forcing some change. Parts of it were confronting, but I finished it with a sense of optimism. Worth a read.

  • Book: The Art of Possibility

    Book: The Art of Possibility

    415rroHwgxL._SL250_.jpgThe Art of Possibility (Amazon) was the second book from the AltMBA with a woman co-author (the other was Thanks for the Feedback), and definitely in the top three that I got the most out of (along with Thanks for the Feedback and A Beautiful Constraint).

    It’s written by an orchestra conductor and his therapist, which didn’t seem that auspicious but actually I got a lot out of it. It’s about how your mindset and approach changes things – whether you view things as zero sum, a competition, what your expectations are. Some of it seems very obvious (like don’t yell at volunteers?) but a couple of ideas that really resonated with me are:

    • Giving an A. And not just giving an A, but writing a letter as your future self talking about why you deserved the A. You can give youself an A, but you can also give others an A and free them from your judgement because your expectation is that they succeed.
    • Whether you see yourself as a victim or a player. As I read it I was super wound up about something that was objectively wrong and unfair. It encouraged me to take a different mindset to it, and whilst that situation is still wrong and unfair, I’ve freed myself from being made miserable by it, and making choices as a victim of it.

    Whilst it is by a psychologist, it’s really about going from good to better rather than bad to okay – different from something like The Happiness Trap – and much more focused on our interactions with others than our inner world. All in all, worth a read.

  • Book: Women & Power

    Book: Women & Power

    women_and_power.jpgI was excited to find that Mary Beard had a book – Women & Power: A Manifesto (Amazon) – based on her talks about the silencing of women. Of course I learned about it on The Eloquent Woman, and had appreciated the Famous Speech Friday posts about the talks that it was build on. I think sometimes it doesn’t seem worth buying something that is mostly online, but I much prefer reading on my kindle to anything else, and I’m always happy to support people I admire by buying their books.

    It’s relatively short, but covers a lot of ground. The section on the Medusa image was particularly on point – giving historical context and making some good points on why the image of Hilary Clinton as Medusa was so problematic and so appealing to people who hate her.

    Mary Beard’s writing is pointed and pulls no punches, and yet very matter of fact. I appreciated the undramatic-but-tell-it-as-it-is nature of the book. It’s well worth a read.

  • Book: Open

    Book: Open

    open.jpgI read  Open: An Autobiography – Andre Agassi’s autobiography – out of curiosity and a desire to mix things up; I don’t think I’ve ever read a sports autobiography before. I did not expect to love it, but I did – it had me gripped, and I finished it relatively quickly despite rushing around.

    It’s a story about how much you can achieve when you are both pulled and pushed, but at what cost. It’s a story about the value of coaching – about how finding people who would push him with kindness helped him achieve more than the people who hounded him into terror. It’s a story about building a team, your team, and about how much of sport is not just physical toughness but mental.

    It’s also a story about expectations – from his father and how they drove him forward (but also made him miserable), and about the expectations of the public, especially when you grow up in public, and being unable to meet them. Which makes sense – I learned about it from Gretchen Rubin’s blog.

    Anyway, I loved it and I really recommend it, even if you’re not a fan of tennis – it turns out, neither is he.

  • Book: A Higher Standard

    Book: A Higher Standard

    a-hgher-standard.jpg I was recommended A Higher Standard, and was pretty excited to learn about the first woman to become a 4 Star General (not that I knew what a 4 Star General was at the time… but it seemed impressive). Although, I’m not wild about military analogies and violence of any kind so I wasn’t sure how well I would relate to it. Actually, I loved it, and read it almost entirely on the various planes out to the US. It was really fascinating to get an insight into her career, and how she approached things (including rolling out the first computer system to track military equipment — awesome!). It was more about the ideals of the military rather than the actions, which was less confronting. There was a lot of good insight into training and supporting people, which I really appreciated. Recommend!

  • Book: Option B

    Book: Option B

    optionb.jpgI think I cried reading every chapter of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Amazon), most of which was in public as I read it during my trip to Barcelona. I teared up in various restaurants around town, and on the plane home. It’s a moving book, but also a hopeful one with a lot to learn from in terms of reliance, life after trauma, and supporting those who are experiencing trauma. I’m so glad I read it, and I really recommend it.

    The biggest thing I took from it was to make more effort with my friends who are going through things, and not to shy away from asking about The Thing (but also to give them space not to talk about that). It’s an important lesson – especially right now.

     

  • Book: Men Explain Things To Me

    Book: Men Explain Things To Me

    men-explain-things-to-me.jpg I’ve been meaning to read Men Explain Things To Me for a while, but putting it off because I worried it would leave me feeling even more despondent about the world. I’m so glad I finally got to reading it though – it was so beautifully written and thought provoking. How correcting women relates to silencing and doubting women and how that is tied into rape culture will continue to haunt me.

    A relatively short read, and so worth it.

  • Book: The Gift

    Book: The Gift

    the-gift.jpgI hated The Gift (Amazon). I hated it for seven whole chapters (at 15-20 minutes each, iirc) until I finally liberated myself from it at 48% complete. That’s still hours of my life gone to it though, and I regret them. Usually I don’t let myself write up books I didn’t finish, but I think the world needs more stories about books we didn’t finish and why so that we can save others from trying to read them.

    Important to put here: I’m such a completionist. I can count the number of books I haven’t finished on one hand. There are plenty of books that I think were longer than they needed to be, ranging between “I actually appreciated the time and depth on that topic” and “meh a blog post would have been sufficient”. The information to content in this book was exceptionally low.

    Basically there’s one idea in it; that gifts need to keep being in circulation. I actually really like that idea (I wrote a bit about that here) but it’s an idea for a blogpost, not a book of this length. It’s basically some dude pontificating about social anthropology – various stories, whether fairy tales, or tribes, about gifts moving in circulation. There was some about women being given as gifts in marriage and LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I ENJOYED THAT (I did not enjoy that. At all).

    All in all my conclusion is: do not buy this book, do not start this book, do not pass go.

  • Book: The Future of Happiness

    Book: The Future of Happiness

    future_of_happiness.jpg

    I think the title of The Future of Happiness (Amazon) is perhaps overselling things a bit, but I did find this a worthwhile read. It’s really about mindful choices when it comes to technology – technology can make life better, but only if we are deliberate in how we use it. It’s easy to disappear into it.

    One of the ideas in it is how we can use tech to increase that mindfulness, e.g. wearables. But they should influence and not dictate. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with wearables – for the past  year or so I’ve been wearing a Nike Fuel band that doesn’t sync. Every day my activity resets – and there’s no way to see the history. I used to be much more dilligent about it, until it lost my streak. I’ve never really forgiven it for that (and of course, they were discontinued). I think that one is finally toast, so I’m switching to Fitbit.

    Each chapter contains some tips, but I felt like a lot of it was things I’ve chosen already (although I don’t manage to apply 100%) – always having DND mode on, for example. The tips also captured why I love my kindle – because I can read all the books I want, but it doesn’t really do anything else. Why I have good ideas on planes – because planes are a space away from distraction.

    I expected the book to give me ideas, but instead I’m looking at what I do already, and asking – how do I take what works and do more of it?