The Name Drop

The Name Drop by Susan Lee

A Korean-American girl is looking forward to an internship with a big Korean company in New York. She thinks this will allow her to get a good recommendation to get scholarships to go to college. Her family cannot afford the school, but are not poor enough for financial aid. She has a challenge of over-sharing when under stress. When she goes to check in for her flight she goes in on details, which end up with her showing her id with her korean name. In the airport she also notices a dapper Korean guy.

The dapper Korean guy is the teenage son of the CEO of the company. He is going to HQ for a special internship for children of executives. However, his Korean name is the same as the Korean name of the girl. When he checks in, he gets the seat in the back that she was supposed to have, while she gets the first class seat. She ends up being picked up by the chauffeur and taken to the townhome, while he ends up joining the intern group in the cramped apartment and the minimum wage internship.

They eventually meet to discuss the situation and realize that both of them like it. The girl works to achieve with her responsibilities. He likes to be a regular guy.

The interns put together a hackathon for the company. It is a success, perhaps too much. The CEO shows up. He acts nice to the girl and offers her a scholarship, but also fires his father. The boy is in the bad grace of his father but still gets strings pulled to go to UCLA. In the epilogue, they meet again. Will the romance go somewhere.

The book is a light, superificial story of teenageers going through challenging situation. It showcases the masculine, patriarchal culture in Korean business. Is it still this bad? The boy and girl have a "trading places" vibe. It seems the company has a lot of talented people that are not listened to while those in authority are underqualified. 

Drama: A Graphic Novel

Drama: A Graphic Novel by Raina Telgemeier

This graphic novel is set in middle school, but feels much more like high school. It centers around a drama production at the school. The protagonist, a seventh grade girl, is in charge of set design. She likes a baseball player, and kisses him when he says that he broke up with her girlfriend. But, then he doesn't want to have much to do with her. For the play, a set of twins come to try out for the play. They are both good singers. One is outgoing and willing to try out. The other is shy and ends up on crew. The outgoing boy is out gay, The girl gets a crush on both of them. She hopes the other will invite her to the 8th grade formal. The protagonist spends a while trying to get a cannon to work on stage. The performance seems to go well until the final show. The lead female broke up with her boyfriend and got tripped up on stage in the middle of the performance. The alternates are nowhere to be found. Suddenly, the shy twin ends up in drag in the leading lady role. (He had practiced the female parts with his brother when trying out.) He completes the part, even kissing the leading man at the end. Later at the formal, the girl goes with the boy, but he ends up ditching her to go with another boy. She later finds another drama boy that really likes her. It can be difficult keeping the characters apart. Some of them look and act quite similar. It does feel like way to much relationship drama for middle school.

Good Material: A Novel

Good Material: A Novel by Dolly Alderton

A mediocre comedian broke up with his girlfriend. He struggles with his life. He still has mutual friends with her. Just when things can't get worse, a scathing review of his performance appears online. Eventually, he uses the breakup as a way of reinvigorating his comedy career.  At the end we learn of her side. She also brings up that she is looking for somebody that has the 10% that he lacked, but then realizing the other 90% is missing. I got lost a bit at the start, but book flowed nicely after I got a grasp of what was going on. The change of perspective at the end was a nice touch.

What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal

What makes a relationship successful? It seems like something that you would just know. However, Dr. Gottman set about studying the details. The book has a series of "tests" to analyze the relationship. Some parts are simple. Do people focus on the good or the bad? Are their positive past recollections even when times are currently difficult? Or are the past experiences colored with negativity?

He also provides details of choosing an appropriate therapist when needed. One that encourages people to just "get over" past challenges is not helpful. If there has been some harm or betrayal, this must be fully understood and worked through before getting "over it".

The physical relationship is also an important part of a good relationship. This is an area that is often rife with miscommunication. People have different goals and feelings regarding intimacy. It is important to bring these out in the open and not assume the partner feels the same.

A relationship will never be perfect. However, people need to continual work together to improve it. It would be interesting to strap on some of the monitors that he talks about to evaluate conversations in the process. Maybe we can apply scientific analysis to ourselves to better understand what we are feeling "in the moment". (Then again, watching our recorded "fights" may be especially cringe-worthy.)

The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life

Edith Eva Eger grew up as a Jew in Hungary. As a teenager, she was hauled to a concentration camp and required to dance for a Nazi leader. Her parents were killed, but she lived to be liberated. She later moved to the United States and eventually received a PhD in clinical psychology. In the concentration camp she saw people die because they lost hope. There were many things outside of individual control. An appropriate focus allowed one to keep living, but it was not easy.

She spent years suffering from various types of guilt. One of the points of the book is that guilt is not helpful. There may have been things that could have been done to prevent somebody else's death. However, dwelling over them will not bring them back. It is important to not get brought down by the "might have beens". It is also not useful to hope for a big change that will resolve things. The change will happen inside. Once the internal change happens, the external can them resolve itself. A divorce is just a legal apparatus. It won't help somebody in a bad relationship unless the people really want to change. Conflict is normal. However, it must be dealt with appropriately. Looking to achieve happiness by having other people change is a recipe for failure.

The book has many good bits of advice colored with powerful anecdotes.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert, Revised and Updated

This book is part narrative and part laundry list of actions based on Gottman's relationship research. Successful marriages don't avoid conflict. However, they know how to deal with it. Couples need to identify areas that are negotiable and those that are not. Spend time on the areas where benefit can be achieved. There are also key areas in which men and women often differ. These seem to be present throughout different cultures. Males tend to take a stronger role of authority. Women tend to value cleaning more and are more concerned about feelings. There are many other things that tend to be over-represented in one gender (though that they are applicable to all couples or individuals.)

The seven principles include:

1. Share Love Maps

2. Nurture Your Fondness & Admiration

3. Turn Towards Each Other Instead of Away

4. Let Your Partner Influence You

5. Solve Your Solvable Problems

6. Overcome Gridlock

7. Create Shared Meaning

The book does not advocate a one size fits all "quick fix" to marital problems. The preferred approach may differ from couple to couple. However, using the principles as a guide for building the relationship is highly correlated with a lasting marriage.

The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi

A Jewish housewife is facing a midlife crisis. She loves to cook for her family, but wants more in life. Her husband helps arrange for job for her at a literary agency. She is upset that her daughter plans to get married and fights to stop it. The strong response leads her upset. She takes solace in the book she is reading for work. She eventually strikes up a conversation with the author. This leads to her leaving her husband and her appreciation for Sufi Mysticism. The novel intertwines the "modern story" with a story from a millenia ago. The ancient story deals with some Sufi Muslims that make sacrifices to gain enlightenment. There are parallels between the modern life and the ancient story. However, the ending feels a "cop out".

The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work

In The All-or-Nothing Marriage, Northwestern psychology professor Eli Finkel starts with a history of marriage and relationships in western society. Then he proceeds to cover some of the latest research and dispense with some advice on how to make marriages work.

Gender roles have an interesting place in marriage relationships. In hunter-gatherer societies, men often hunted, while women gathered. (Women would do this even when pregnant.) On the farm, there were also distinct gender roles, with men often engaged with more hard labor in the field, while women would tend to things closer to home. The children were also heavily involved in production at home. At the initial stages of industrialization, children were also valuable laborers. However, this gradually faded. Men and women tended to focus on different types of jobs. During world war 2, many women worked in factories, while men were fighting the war. There were many marriages made before soldiers went off to war. However, these would often fail as people changed during the time away.

The post-war era brought a unique period for society. The GI Bill provided incentives for former soldiers (men). Jobs were abundant and high paying. Industrialized society also experienced a historic increase in birth rate. Families could afford to have the wife stay at home, while the husband went to work. However, even as this was happening, a great number of labor-saving devices reduced the amount of time needed to take care of the household chores. Eventually, the birth rate went down, and more women joined the workforce.

Marriage has gradually worked up Maslow's pyramid. Early marriage offered basic needs and protection. Today, people are often looking for self-discovery and fulfillment. This book provides some life "hacks" to help achieve a quality marriage. Some things are as simple as discussing how each spouse can help the other to achieve their mutual goals. Others explore different aspects of traditional and non-traditional marriage.

Job:A Comedy of Justice

The main character is on a cruise to the Polynesian Islands. They watch a firewalk, and in response to a bet, he attempts to walk on the fires. At the end, he faints. When he wakes up, he is in a world that seems like his. However, there have been some minor changes in the past century, that have left this a totally different world than he knew. (Everybody knows him, but his name is different than the one he had before.) He meets up with a girl, they fall in love, and then they get zapped to more new time periods.

Eventually they are caught in the rapture and he goes to heaven as a saint. She isn't there, so he goes down to hell to find her. She isn't there either - she is actually out fighting with Loki. Eventually, he discovers that he was victim to a game being played, similar to Job. He also finds his girl and becomes happy.

The book has two distinct parts. The first part deals with the "universe shifting." This is the more interesting part. How would you react if at any moment, all your material positions (including identity) were stripped from you, leaving you to start totally over materially. How would you change how you live your life? How could the world be different based on small changes that happen at times? (All the worlds seem somewhat similar to our modern worlds, but they all have their differences.)

The second (and shorter) part deals primarily with the main character exploring the afterlife. This is played as a comedy, with heaven and hell being portrayed more as something like a fraternity. It starts to get old and pretty goofy. The devout religion of the narrator (whatever his name may be at the time) is somewhat muted by his experience, but still seems to maintain its theological and moral base. Alas, the book would have been better without this ending.

Enough Already

Peter Walsh writes books about reducing clutter. He likes clutter. Thus, he sees it as the core problem for everything. In "enough already", he wants to help everybody eliminate the clutter in their mind to help live a better life.

This reminds me of an essay I wrote in high school about tennis being the entire meaning of life. After all, anything you do can be related to tennis. Walsh chose clutter. I suppose you could chose broccoli and get the same story.

His primary target is the shop-aholic. These people that buy and hoard let the clutter take over their life. They also see that as an excuse to not make the hard decisions that need to be done.

Some of the early discussion are well done. He discusses making hard decisions, creating common visions for family and not letting stuff and minutia take precedence over what is important. Priorities need to be set to get done what needs to be done. If relationships are not fed, they wilter. If the body is not taken care of it gets fat.

However, he ends up carrying it on too long. He layers on the "self-help" aphorisms from all aisles of the bookshelf. You get basic finance, health, religion and ripping up credit cards. All of it is pretty much on the 101 level. It doesn't have much that is groundbreaking, but I would be worried if it did, since it is way out of his area of expertise. Taken with a grain of salt, these can be good reminders of what you need to do. Taken seriously? Well, you can go all out with his worksheets and his philosophy. But if you are a shopaholic, this book is probably still sitting unopened on your bookshelf.