Posts filed under ‘Book reviews’
Memoir alert: Hats and Eyeglasses out in paperback
I had been playing poker with Martha Frankel and her crew up in the Woodstock area for well over a year before I learned she was semi-secretly writing a memoir about, among other things, poker. For a while after that, I didn’t hear anything more. Martha was an extremely experienced magazine journalist, but I knew how hard writing a book can be - especially your first book, and a memoir to boot (something I’ve never dared). And I knew too how long the odds can be against getting published.
But Martha landed an agent - and then a deal. And when Hats and Eyeglasses, as the memoir is called, came out in hardcover last year, it got loving reviews.
Now it’s out in paperback. I rarely read memoirs, but I’ve read this one and recommend it. Am I biased? Sure. Is it good anyway? Yes. Is it about poker? Yes - sort of. It’s more about family and about sticking together, even under the worst of circumstances. I won’t say too much more except to give you just a paragraph from one of my favorite scenes in the book. Martha has traveled to Ft. Lauderdale to visit her cousin Keith, who (a) is a cook, and (b) is going to teach her poker.
So now we’re in his kitchen in Florida, and he’s telling me about straights and flushes, but he refuses to divulge whether it’s capoccolo or prosciutto that gives his lasagna such a zing. “Why should I tell you?” he taunts me, hiding a jar of red pepper flakes. I ignore him and stare at “the list” I’d made up for myself.
It says:
ONE PAIR
TWO PAIRS
3-OF-A-KIND
STRAIGHT
FLUSH
FULL HOUSE
4-OF-A-KIND
STRAIGHT FLUSH
Keith hates the list and doesn’t understand why I need it. “Because I can’t remember what comes between three-of-a-kind and four-of-a-kind,” I whine.
“You better remember, because those are the hands that are going to win you money.” He lights a cigar and holds the match under the list. “You’re smart,” he says as it bursts into flames. “Just remember the fucking thing.”
P.S. If you’re the cautious type and want to know a bit more about Martha before investing your $14.95, you can check out this profile in The New York Times.
Looking outward, not inward, to change careers
Working Identity, by Herminia Ibarra (Harvard Business School Press, 2004, 199 pages, $16.95)
Countless self-help guides to switching jobs or careers assume you’ve got just one true identity in life, and therefore, just one true purpose. Your task is to look so deep inside yourself that you discover this purpose. It’s a little like the old notion of a soulmate - that out of all the billions of people on this planet, only one can be our true love. You plow through these sorts of books doing endless exercises, ranging from the conventional (Briggs-Meyers) to the unconventional (list your top 10 most enjoyable memories). Once you nail your personality type, or your “genius,” or whatever it is that supposedly makes you unique, you’re home free - or so the books assert.
“Working Identity” is refreshingly different; one might even say refreshingly adult. Ibarra, formerly on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and now a professor at INSEAD, a business school in France, notes that the real way most of us change careers isn’t through introspection, but experimentation: going back to school part-time, for example, or slowly building a freelance practice on the side, or hanging out with people in the line of work we’re interested in to see what it feels like. This sort of dabbling and detouring, says Ibarra, is a healthy reaction to our possessing not a single “true” self, but many selves, among which we’re constantly choosing:
