Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown

Brené Brown shares her twelve years of research into shame and gives tools on how to increase one’s vulnerability. In this way, she believes each individual can help change the culture of scarcity and pull the world back from a continual cycle of shaming.

We’ll build stronger and deeper relationships, strengthen families and have more productive work places. And, by doing this, we will each, in our own way, live in a manner that “dares greatly” every day.

“I also learned that the people who love me, the people I really depend on, were never the critics who were pointing at me while I stumbled. They weren’t in the bleachers at all. They were with me in the arena. Fighting for me and with me.” pg 56

I’m going to use the information in this book the most in my work life. As a writer, I attach far too much significance to my work product on the audience’s response to it rather than my own feelings about it. As Brown so clearly points out in this book, an outside response will never be good enough or big enough to fill the need that I am looking to fill with their words or their views. Or, if it is wildly praised, perhaps the next work won’t be, and then I’m right back to where I started.

“You still want folks to like, respect, and even admire what you’ve created, but your self-worth is not on the table. You know that you are far more than a painting, an innovative idea, an effective pitch, a good sermon, or a high Amazon.com ranking.” pg 64

This desire for connection and a feeling of worthiness, Brown says, comes from the need to survive by belonging to a group. Our brains have evolved to encourage us to belong and form connections. And when we don’t by not believing in our own self worth or experiencing shame, it is a physically painful emotion. People do all sorts of things to avoid feeling shame including pulling away or striking out. But, in the end, these connections are life itself.

“Buber wrote, “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.” pg 150

As interesting as I found Brown’s research to be, she lost me when she began a discussion about how much vulnerability is enough or too much and walking the tightrope between extremes. So, be authentic, but don’t use it to manipulate people. A few sentences covers what Brown uses 50 pages to unpack.

“When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable.” pg 169

Her message becomes a bit undefined and more general the further the book goes. That’s not to say it couldn’t be useful for readers who are looking for that type of information. I didn’t find it particularly engaging.

Like any self help book, I think sometimes authors and researchers can get lost in the weeds of the problem. I far more prefer to focus on the solution. In this case, that’s being brave enough to show up and be seen, demonstrating vulnerability and willingness to care about whatever is going on wherever we find ourselves throughout the day. As Brown reminds readers, it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about being there. And that’s a message worth spreading.

“To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.” pg 110

I’m game. Are you?

Thanks for reading!

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

The Test is a science fiction short story detailing a sinister new type of citizenship test and a possible dark future humanity could face.

“I am the only one taking the test. Only men. Only between the ages of sixteen and forty-five. She said it was unfair. I told her it was a blessing. I do not care what their motivations are; it is a simple matter of probabilities.” pg 12

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Idir Jalil was a dentist in Teheran. He wants to immigrate with his wife and children to the United Kingdom. But first, he has to pass the test.

“Guns and impunity. This is why we’re here.” pg 21

As technology advances, one can’t help but wonder what sorts of new programs are going to be created. Passports with radio frequency identification chips already exist. Will we soon start putting computer chips in ourselves?

And with all of these changes, how do we hold on to our essential humanity? The test Idir receives has significant consequences for him.

Beyond the question of technology, Sylvain Neuvel also tackles how immigration procedures have a dehumanizing effect. When you’re reducing people to statistics and probabilities, you dismiss everything else that makes someone a person.

Countries around the world continue to struggle with immigration issues. I wish there were easy answers. Aren’t we all citizens of this planet?

Thanks for reading!

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Alice and her mother live their lives on the road. Everywhere they go, they’re haunted by misfortune. Alice calls it bad luck. It could be something worse.

“We moved at least twice a year and sometimes more, but the bad luck always found us.” pg 12, ebook

Her grandmother, Althea Proserpine, was the creator of a whispered-about collection of fairy tale stories. For almost her entire life, Alice has wanted to read the collection but her mother forbids it and copies are impossible to find. Althea lives the life of a hermit on a secluded property called the Hazel Wood.

“My grandmother’s estate, which I’d only seen in photos, felt like a place I remembered from some alternate, imaginary childhood. One where I rode horses and went to summer camp.” pg 10, ebook

One day, Alice’s mother disappears and, in order to find her, Alice is going to have to go into the Hazel Wood, a place that holds secrets darker than she’s ever imagined.

“My situation hit me hard. Homeless. Without my mom. Being stalked, by something I couldn’t see the breadth of or understand.”pg 79

Melissa Albert has created a fairy tale for young adults that I think would have been more fun if she’d gone the non-YA route.

My favorite parts were the fantasy stories themselves within the story. I found them to be very reminiscent of Catherynne Valente, whom Albert lists as one of her favorite authors in the back of this book.

They’re hard-edged, glittering things. These are creepy fairy tales, not made for children.

“On a cold day in a distant kingdom, a daughter was born to a queen and king. Her eyes were shiny and black all over, and the midwife laid her in the queen’s arms and fled.” pg 69

I can understand why some readers didn’t like this book with its twisted stories. They’re unnerving, popping in and out of the narrative. And, as I said before, I felt like this book twisted itself into knots trying to be a young adult read when, in reality, I think it could have just been dark fantasy.

There’s a love interest who, I thought, sort of gets in the way except as a young adult plot device.

The main character, Alice, is a cold young woman with little concern for anyone in her life except her mother. I can also see why readers didn’t warm up to her, but it didn’t bother me all that much. I figured, with someone moving around as much as she did, how would Alice figure out how to have normal relationships? It fit.

In conclusion, I liked The Hazel Wood but didn’t love it. Personally, I think it’s worth the read for the interesting short fantasy stories alone. But if you’re not into that kind of thing, this book probably won’t appeal.

Thanks for reading!

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

Packed with food-related history, trivia and stories, Michael Pollan attempts to explain how four types of plants have had such a large effect on humanity.

“We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests.”

I believe that our lives are intimately intertwined with our environment, even if we can’t quite see how. Pollan removes the veil between apples, tulips, marijuana, potatoes, and mankind in order to illustrate how the plants evolved and what kinds of shenanigans they’ve brought on civilization in the process.

“Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees.”

My favorite chapter was about the tulips. Did you know at one point in the Dutch Republic a tulip bulb cost as much as a house? It was called “tulipmania” and it caused enormous havoc in the local economy when the tulip bubble burst.

I also learned about the evolution of flowers, which I didn’t know anything about before reading this. I had only ever considered them from a spiritual perspective — I think it was Eckhart Tolle who talked about flowers being the “spiritual evolution of plants”. It’s rather interesting actually if you’re into that kind of thing.

“But I do wonder if it isn’t significant that our experience of flowers is so deeply drenched in our sense of time. Maybe there’s a good reason we find their fleetingness so piercing, can scarcely look at a flower in bloom without thinking ahead, whether in hope or regret.

Pollan’s writing style wanders no where quickly, so readers who have little patience for storytelling non-fiction may want to choose a different book. I rather liked it.

I think he may have oversimplified the plants and humanity relationship by picking only one motivating desire per plant. Let’s be real, things are never as simple as that. But for the premise of this book, it worked well enough.

Basically, The Botany of Desire encourages readers to consider what plants get from us as much as what we get from them. It’s a different perspective, like looking at your home from the level of a toddler rather than your usual height. There’s things to learn and puzzle out and discover that you may have never even imagined.

Recommended for readers interested in botany and different worldviews. Thanks for reading!

Zen Cat by Judith Adler

Judith Adler matches peaceful pictures of cats with various quotations from throughout history to create “Zen Cat”.

It’s funny, even though I consider myself a “cat person”, I liked Adler’s Zen Dog more than this feline version.

Cats are so contained. When you’re looking at the photos of the dogs, there’s an exuberance or bottled energy there that just doesn’t seem to show up for the cats.

However, the book does have beautiful photos and quotations. Take this one from Rumi that is arranged next to a photo of a black cat viewing itself in a mirror: “We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.

Or this one by Buddha which is paired with a cat on an urban street: “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.”

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

And finally, a simple photo of a grey cat looking directly at the camera: “I love all solitary places, where we taste the pleasure of believing what we see is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Even though I found the dog version more compelling, cat lovers may still feel the need to have this as a coffee table book. For everybody else, I recommend borrowing it from the library.

Thanks for reading!

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

“I’ve spent the last three years traveling among those who live in worlds currently beyond your imagination. Rather than hating reality, I’ll show you how to bend it to your will. It’s easier than it sounds.”

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Timothy Ferriss promises the stars in the sky in his new-classic business/self help book, The 4-Hour Workweek. Though he gives some good productivity tips, he fails to provide a true road map to freeing yourself from the 9-to-5 grind. Partially, this is because there is no real road map to doing this.

But he does detail how he found his way into a life of his dreams. Readers can take whatever lessons and information from that as they will.

After Ferriss relates a timeline of his life story, he begins by detailing his “DEAL” plan to a four hour work week which consists of “definition, elimination, automation and liberation”. Each step of this process, he says, helps guide the reader to a new world of free time. Though, he admits, traditional bosses may have serious problems with your new program and, perhaps, you should go more “DELA”. Yes, understatement.

“Resolve now to test the concepts as an exercise in lateral thinking. If you try it, you’ll see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, and you won’t ever go back.”

He examines the concepts of “busy work” and suggests boiling your workload down to the most important tasks you complete. Then, just do those as fast as possible. Don’t allow yourself to be derailed by the internet or chatty coworkers. (Not a friendly method, but Ferriss seems to have his eyes on the prize rather than concerning himself with making friends.)

Out of everything he suggests in the first part of this book, I was most taken with the idea of only checking your email once a day or week. There is a definite time-suck there that maybe I have been blinding myself to.

After that, Ferriss enters more conceptual territory with an idea about creating a business for yourself that essentially runs itself or can be run by someone else, cheaply. For example, a website that sells something awesome. But, what exactly that something or muse is, that’s for you, the reader, to discover on your own.

It reminded me of Godin’s Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. You know an awesome product or “purple cow” when you see it, but how exactly to make one isn’t a clear thing. Interesting idea, but necessarily helpful for those looking for actionable items to improve their work life.

The most useful part of the book, in my opinion, is his encouragement to create a dream plan by “dreamlining”. Write down what you want to do. Create a timeline. Crunch the numbers. It may cost less than you thought and, with it on paper, it takes on a bit of reality already. If you don’t get started, how do you know what you might accomplish.

“It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time-and energy-consuming. It is easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000.”

Ferriss’ tone in this book has been criticized by readers and I see what they mean. Some of his ideas are alienating. Sometimes he seems to say: I’ve done this-this-this and this, and it’s so easy that if you can’t figure it out too, especially with the book I’ve put in your hands, then you must be either complacent or dumb.

But I took this book to be written by someone who dared, a nod to Brené Brown, greatly. Ferriss believed his life could be something other than a slog and yours could too. He’s written down some tips to help you along the way that he discovered through real life trial and error. Read it or not. He’ll be over there, living the life of his dreams.

Recommended, with reservations, to folks interested in life-hacking their work/life balance. I think we can achieve whatever dreams we set our minds to while still being friendly.

Thanks for reading!

The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6) by Tana French

“The case comes in, or anyway it comes in to us, on a frozen dawn in the kind of closed-down January that makes you think the sun’s never going to drag itself back above the horizon.” pg 1, ebook.

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And so begins the final book (so far) in Tana French’s masterful Dublin Murder Squad series. This entry follows Detectives Antoinette Conway and Steve Moran, the duo readers met in the last book, as they try to solve, what at first appears to be, a simple domestic disturbance. Little do they know, what they discover will challenge all of their assumptions about their roles in the Murder Squad and their own investigative skills.

“Before we check out the rest of the cottage, I squat down by the body and carefully, one-fingered, hook back her hair from her face. Steve moves in beside me. Every Murder D I’ve ever known does it: takes one long look at the victim’s face.” pg 24

The investigation, especially the interrogation scenes, are intense and what I’ve come to expect from this series. It’s a thrilling who-done-it with complex characters and relationships. I really enjoyed it.

“The pressure level means Murder is balanced so finely that it only takes a few new heads to shift the whole feel of the squad: turn that big cat rogue and edgy, set that rifle warping towards its moment to blow up in your face.” pg 23, ebook

Conway, the only woman on the murder squad, feels as if she has been singled out and shut out of the camaraderie of the rest of the group. So, she feels like she has more to prove when the investigation becomes more complex than she expected.

Conway, the narrator this time around (they change in each book), isn’t my favorite character, but she’s someone I’d respect and give plenty of space so I didn’t come into her crosshairs.

“Unless I missed your promotion, we’re on the same squad, and this is my investigation. Which means you’re the cheeky little bollix who’s getting above himself, and you’re the one who needs to bear in mind who’s who here.” pg 138, ebook.

Frankly, I’m sorry I’ve read the final book French has written for the murder squad. However, in a May 2019 interview, she didn’t dismiss the idea of writing another book for the series at some point in the future. So, readers can rejoice!

It’s just not written yet. Sigh.

Highly recommended for fans of thrillers and mysteries. Thanks for reading!

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses “black swans”, unexpected and life-changing events, and how life is far more uncertain than most believe it to be. He also examines, in-depth, how we fool ourselves into believing reality is otherwise by various means like confirmation bias (we look for evidence to support our existing beliefs) and narrative fallacies (the tendency to describe existence using linear stories when reality is far more complicated).

Mix in a heaping dose of storytelling and autobiographical information and you get The Black Swan.

“This combination of low predictability and large impact makes the Black Swan a great puzzle; but that is not yet the core concern of this book. Add to this phenomenon the fact that we tend to act as if it does not exist!” Prologue xxii

This is a dense read, full of philosophical references and terminology. Basically, beyond black swans having a larger impact on reality than we realize they do, this book can be simplified way down to “beware of because” and “know what you don’t know”.

“Beware of because” because (tee-hee) reality is far more random than most believe it to be. And we suck at predicting the future, for a variety of reasons, but partially because it is impossible to project future events from historical ones.

“Note here that I am not saying causes do not exist; do not use this argument to avoid trying to learn from history. All I am saying is that is it not so simple; be suspicious of the “because” and handle it with care — particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence.” pgs 120-121

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“Silent evidence” is the information not readily apparent for whatever reason. Taleb gives an illustrative example of silent evidence from ancient history of a philosopher being presented an argument that a group of sailors survived a shipwreck because they prayed. The philosopher wonders how many of the sailors who drowned were also praying. The drowned sailors, you see, are the silent evidence.

Biologically, Taleb says, human beings are not set up to be deep thinkers and are fooled by a variety of logical fallacies. This is only a problem because, as time goes on, humanity has less running away to do from things trying to eat us and more dealing with the complexities of modern existence.

But by remembering “to know what we don’t know” and understanding some of the limitations built into our brains by memory and logical fallacies, we can be prepared to make better decisions than before. Or, at least, we’ll have a better grasp on how risky and unknown life is.

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Anyway, this book certainly gave me a lot to think about. The part that struck me the most is when Taleb applies his black swan idea to careers and how this uncertainty applies particularly to authors and artists. For every J.K. Rowling, there will be thousands of writers who never make that break through. I started wondering how many extraordinary books I will never get to read because of this phenomena.

The author’s tone throughout the book, slightly irreverent, didn’t annoy me as much as it seems to have bothered other readers. I enjoyed learning a new way to look at reality, but, as I mentioned before, this is a dense read and I wouldn’t consider it “fun” reading either.

It may appeal most to philosophers and anyone who wants to consider new ways to view reality.

Thanks for reading!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned by Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox talks about his life, career and health. There’s nothing world-shattering in here, but if you enjoy watching Fox as an actor, you’ll probably like this book too.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future reminded me strongly of Steve Job’s 2005 commencement address at Stanford. Both of these men chose not to pursue higher education. They both also found, through their own meandering ways, fulfilling, purposeful, and powerful lives that were rich in meaning for themselves and those who were fortunate enough to fall in with them.

Personally, I don’t think that the messages of “find your passion and live it”, “keep learning even if you’re not in a classroom”, and “fall but get back up” can be repeated enough. Life is filled with unexpected twists and turns — I guess the trick is to view these moments as opportunities instead of stumbling blocks. Fox’s book helps the reader do just that.

Though Fox isn’t a graduate, it would potentially make a good gift for a graduate. It might also be a good gift for anybody who is at a crossroads and needs a bit of a boost to proceed with not only courage but also hope.

Also, if they haven’t seen it yet, play Job’s Stanford address for them. It is available for free off of TED talks: https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_…

Thanks for reading!

The Help Desk Book Blog

Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Tag: book blog

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Zen Cat by Judith Adler

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6) by Tana French

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned by Michael J. Fox

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