Books, NonFiction

To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas

Read YESSS!!!
Length 352
Quick Review A snapshot into the hearts of America. Oh my goodness. I cried so much. Filled with real letters from real Americans with real joys, worries, sorrows, and more. It’s hard not to be affected by it.  

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Reading To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas.

Up until reading To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas, I had never even thought of writing to the president. I always was under the impression of “what’s the point?” Up until President Obama, there probably wasn’t much of a point. There was no system.

When Obama walked into the White House, he made sure the mail was a priority. It was a way for him to connect to his people. The mail room was a mess. He decided he wanted to read ten letters a day, which became known as 10LAD. Over time, everyone in the White House was reading the mail, and if they weren’t, they wanted to be. A system was quickly put in place to read and reply to the mail. Occasionally, Obama would reply to a letter writer himself. The letters people sent in would be read and would even affect policy.

The people in the mail room were important, and their job was not easy. They were on the receiving end of every feeling America was having. Their job was not only to process the mail but to process American emotions. They read, they filed, they reported, they responded, they bonded. The workers became close because their experience was a unique one. I wish I could describe it to you, but you should just read To Obama.

There are samples of letters throughout the book. They are so moving. They express feelings and opinions on all sides of the political spectrum. What you believed didn’t matter; what did matter was that Obama believed each and every person mattered. That was the driving force behind the mail room: you matter. It was evident. To Obama was a mantra for so many people. Small children wrote in asking for help on their homework. Partners wrote in expressing their gratitude for the ability to finally marry. Conservatives wrote with disgust. Democrats wrote out of disappointment. Families from 9/11 wrote out of exhaustion. People wrote for so many reasons. Why? Because they felt like they mattered. 

Laskas focused on several letter writers from various backgrounds who wrote for different reasons. This cemented the mission of the mail room in reality, in how it touched people’s lives, in the ways it helped people. Laskas also focused on the people who ran the mail room because they were the ones who kept it going.

It was so well written. I rarely cry over books. I pretty much cried the entirety of To Obama. There is so much pain and happiness and success and failure within the pages. It takes snapshots of American flowing with so much raw emotions. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed taking it all in. I ended up having to read for an hour at a time, so I could take in what I just read. I’m an empath, as so many bookworms are, and it’s an intense read. Considering the outcome of the election, this was an interesting book to take in.

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Memorable Quotes
“Little hard data exists about constituent mail from previous administrations.”
“little by little, voice by voice, the mail could drive actual policy decisions.”

Title: To Obama, With love, joy, anger, and hope
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525509387

Books, Fiction

How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs

Worth a Read Yes
Length 256
Quick Review In How to Love a Jamaican, Alexia Arthurs compiles a book full of resonating short stories. I can’t stop thinking about the various characters and stories she tells.

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Reading How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs.

Alexia Arthurs was born and raised in Jamaica before emigrating to New York with her family at 12. These experiences are highlighted in her collection of short stories How to Love a Jamaican, which was published earlier this year. I was drawn to her stories because she attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and I’m from Iowa. I always root for people who have a connection to Iowa. Although, I have no idea if she liked her time in Iowa or not.

She starts of her book with a bang. Immediately she captured my attention. Even though I’m not black or Jamaican, I can completely identify with the story about friendship and college. It is incredibly relatable. I was taken by the sentiment: “I don’t know why more love stories aren’t written about platonic intimacy.” Boom. Feels were hit. I had to finish the book in one sitting; I was so captivated by her words.

Jamaica, immigration, and family are almost characters in their own right as they wind their way through How to Love a Jamaican. Each story fleshes out their entities more and more fully. Jamaica is ever present in the story and the characters minds, which extends to the reader.

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Arthurs has a fabulous voice in these stories. It is personal and warm. Even when the topic is racism or immigration, there is always a warmth to her tone. This warmth, I can only assume, stems from a deep affection and desire to help effect change. There is a certain amount of nostalgia within the collection.

The stories are told from various perspectives. Depending on the story, the narrator is male or female. In some stories, there is a first person or third person point-of-view. It was done really well.

Two things I loved most about the stories are a constant search for belonging as well as a tension between the younger and older, or “country,” generations. They are very much part of the human experience. I believe everyone feels alone or out of place in the world. The feeling that the older generation just doesn’t get it is human. We all have grandparents or aunts or parents or friends’ parents who are out of touch with the norm of today.

There are so many things I loved reading in How to Love a Jamaican. It’s so exciting to read an author from a culture, which is probably known more for their bobsled team, than almost anything else. I just get excited when women of color win. This book is for sure a win. It was so good.

One story really hit home for me. The Ghost of Jia Yi is set in Iowa. (Yay Iowa.) It was eery. In the story, a college-aged woman is killed in Iowa. One of her classmates, the protagonist, ruminates on it. This was eery because two young women in college were murdered in Iowa over the past two months. One woman was murdered in my hometown. Very sad.

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Memorable Quotes
“I don’t know why more love stories aren’t written about platonic intimacy.”
“Iowa isn’t the kind of place Jamaicans talk about when they talk about America.”

Title: How to Love a Jamaican
Author: Alexia Arthurs
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781524799205

Books, NonFiction

You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham

Read Yes
Length 224
Quick Review The Founder of Mogul, Tiffany Pham, compiles her knowledge, experience, and desire to change the world in You Are A Mogul; it will leave you motivated and confident. The perfect book for every female entrepreneur finding her way!

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Reading You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham || My friend has the cutest dog!!!

At the age of 27 (what am I doing with my life), Tiffany Pham had already graduated from Yale AND Harvard Business School, been a producer on movies, been on Forbes 30 under 30 list, worked in finance, a whole bunch of other stuff, and then launched a website, which she coded herself, that would become one of the most successful and influential communities of women. Yikes. She sets the bar so high! In her book You Are A Mogul, she talks about her life and all the hard work, time, and determination it took to become the mogul she is today.

Pham writes a book which cannot be described as self-help or memoir; it’s a combination. She uses her life as a basis to inform and help lift up other women. Her life and tips for success intertwine to create a portrait of who she is. She comes across as a beautiful, kind, hardworking soul. Honestly, as I read her book, I really want to be friends with her. The biggest pieces of her advice in succeeding in business and in life are incredibly similar to what I tell people. You’ll believe her more because she’s, well, successful, and I’m … working on it! The three things you should take from You Are A Mogul: 1) Be authentically you, always. 2) Don’t just make connections, create relationships. 3) Work as hard as you can on everything you do.  

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Cover of You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham.

I want you to read this book. Not because it’s groundbreaking information. It’s not. All the tips and advice and statistics in the book are not new if you are aware of the world and women’s place in it. What is beautiful about You Are A Mogul is Pham’s ability to seem like she’s chatting with a friend. So many women mention their accomplishments with humility if at all. Other’s go overboard trying to prove they are competent. Pham has confidence in who she is and what she created. She shares her accomplishments with a sense of pride, while also giving credit to everyone who helped her achieve her goals. More women need to have confidence and take pride in their accomplishments. She is an amazing role model.

At the end of every chapter, another female mogul write a one to three page blurb giving her own advice and story. Even though women are vastly under represented as moguls, they do exist. It’s important to hear their stories and know their faces.

Pham writes You Are A Mogul for women. Her business is for women. It’s an important book to read as a female entrepreneur, if for no other reason than to support one another. Though, I think it is probably more important for men to read this book and ones like it. They need to see and understand the difficulties women face in the business world. More importantly, they need to see women killing it. When women win, men win.

Tiffany Pham, if you’re reading this, I would love to be friends! You’re amazing.     

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Memorable Quotes
“Be flexible but strategic.”
“True failing is not doing, not trying.”
“Always trust that you have the willingness to learn.”

Title: You Are A Mogul; How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, & Do It Now
Author: Tiffany Pham
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 978150119855

Books, NonFiction

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Read Yes
Length 400
Quick Review Harari looks into the future that could be with the evolution of technology.

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Reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari in the Heights. 

Yuval Noah Harari is the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Sapiens, he returns with his latest work 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The future is an unknown, but Harari uses his knowledge of history to look into the possibilities of tomorrow.

I am a person who is always on the brink of an existential crisis. This was a hard book to read because so much of it ran along the lines of humans may become irrelevant. Among all the other topics Harari discusses, there was a lot of pausing of the reading to collect my thoughts, have a cup of tea, and remind myself anarchy would be worse… probably.

 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a really interesting read. I can’t speak on the accuracy of everything because, well, I was battling my existential tendencies too much to research the things I don’t know. Technology, biotech, and the foundations of our society are the main concepts the book revolves around. Through these, Harari explores the meaning of how we as a civilization functions today, and how that will change as technology evolves and becomes ever more important in our daily lives, careers, medicine, government, and more.

Harari discusses everything from the job crisis to the algorithm taking over free will to the importance of AI and so much more. He uses historical references from many different cultures and times to support his opinion. Irrelevance and inequality kept cropping up throughout the text. The writing is very engaging and interesting. He writes clearly. Many books by scholars can get muddled with complicated text and references. Harari doesn’t fall into that trap. His writing appeals to the masses with a strong voice, clear message, and enough backstory to his references that they make sense.

There is a sense of humor to Harari’s writing. It usually has a dark twist, which I personally appreciate. The book is split into five parts with several chapters each. The chapters have several sections. I really enjoyed the names of these sections; they were quippy like “Germans and Gorillas” and “Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity.”

I have a feeling this is going to be another highly talked about book, when 21 Lessons for the 21st Century comes out on September 4, 2018. You should definitely check it out, unless you’re hyper prone to existential crisis, then limit yourself to a few pages a day.

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Memorable Quotes
“It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.”

Title: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (Random House)
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525512172

Books

The Caregiver by Samuel Park

Read Yes
Length 288
Quick Review A novel about the desire to understand people and situations. The desire is rarely satisfied, but you don’t have to understand to connect and care.

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The Caregiver by Samuel Park was published posthumously. He passed away from stomach cancer at the age of 41. It is hard to read this novel without seeing it as being written out of a place of hope and sadness.

Mara Alencar is a young woman living in the United States sans documents after a childhood watching atrocities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the caretaker to a woman dying from cancer. She reminisces about her childhood home and her mother, Ana. Mara is both caretaker and child to her mother. Like most children there is a duality to her. She understands more than the adults around her realize, but she also is only able to accept the world as it appears to her without perceiving the nuance, complexity, and difficulty that is being human.

The writing style is very beautiful. Park allows Mara to witness situations as a child she cannot understand, but the reader, with adult experiences, sees what she cannot. Lacing the present with the past, brings a fullness to Mara’s adulthood that would otherwise result in a flat character. Park uses lexical foreshadowing to create emotional space between characters without giving away any events to come. The use of Portuguese words brings the reader closer to Mara’s cultural heritage.  

Park captures the experience of trying to understand a situation from the outside. There is a yearning for understanding in Mara, which comes to fruition through her connecting with those around her.  

Title: The Caregiver
Author: Samuel Park
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781501182426