Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Review: Future Women – Untold Resilience

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Untold Resilience
Future Women

“A timely and uplifting book of true stories from 19 women whose resilience has seen them survive extraordinary global and personal tragedy. What does it take to find courage in the midst of deprivation and devastation? Why are some people able to continue living with purpose, even when faced with loss and despair? How does our community turn challenge into triumph? And what can we learn from the exceptional women in our midst who have done just that?”

I had trouble with connecting to many of these stories. I am fortunate enough to work in an industry where gender doesn’t matter, and the same is true of my closest girlfriends. In Australia I think we are already very lucky that women tend to be well-protected and well-equipped to look after themselves. There are of course rapes and murders, but that could happen to anyone, not just women (although I admit women tend to be targeted more).

I read this in small hunks because it’s non-fiction and otherwise the resilience stories might have been overwhelming, or equally I could have gotten bored. I did finish the book, but I’m not sure I really gained anything useful from it. I know that times used to be tough for women (and in some places it still is) but I also know and have experienced the better times. COVID-19 really didn’t have an impact on me – but maybe this book will help others who suffered more.

Penguin Random House | 20th October 2020 | AU$32.99 | paperback

Review: Adam Ferrier – Stop Listening to the Customer (S)

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Stop Listening to the Customer: Try Hearing your Brand Instead
Adam Ferrier

“The customer is not always right. Far from it. What the customer wants is often at odds with what is best for the business or brand. Adam draws on his years of creative agency experience, the wisdom of other voices, as well as marketing science to outline the dangers of listening to the customer too much and reveals what you can do about it. This book will show you how to build a strong brand or business.”

Overall the concept of the book is that the customer is not always correct. The customer doesn’t always know what they want, and even if they do, it might not be the correct thing for your company. The premise of the book is to put your brand and what your company stands for above everything else, including the customer.

I do agree with this premise. However, the book didn’t execute this the best it could have been. The author seemed to jump around a lot and it didn’t have a focus of what each chapter was about. The author also jumped around with short stories, some of which were good but some which could have been removed.

A good half of the book was convincing the reader that the customer is not always right. As the reader I was convinced of this rather early on! I wanted to know more about the author’s point of why the business should be hearing the brand instead. There was hardly any of this section of the book.

The author didn’t seem to explain their point and their side enough. It kind of felt like it ended abruptly and I wanted to hear more of how to actually listen to your brand. At what stages of the business life cycle should you be listening to brand and how much? The author doesn’t actually answer this question.

Overall there was not enough actionable material to take away from the book.  Unless you are particularly interested in short stories or the author, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book. 2 stars from Suzanne.

Review: Miller, Davis & Roos-Olsson – Everyone Deserves a Great Manager (S)

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Everyone Deserves a Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team
Scott Jeffrey Miller, Todd Davis, Victoria Roos-Olsson

“A practical must-read, FranklinCovey’s Everyone Deserves a Great Manager is the essential guide for the millions of people all over the world making the challenging and rewarding leap to manager. Organized under four main roles every manager is expected to fill, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager focuses on how to lead yourself, people, teams, and change. Readers can start anywhere and go everywhere with this guide—depending on their current problem or time constraint. They can pick up a helpful tip in ten minutes or glean an entire skillset with deeper reading. With skill-based chapters that cover managerial skills like one-on-ones, giving feedback, delegating, hiring, building team culture, and leading remote teams, the book also includes more than thirty unique tools, such as a prep worksheets and a list of behavioral questions for your next interview.”

I picked up this book as I was after some actual practical ways to improve myself as a leader and manager. That was exactly what I got! I loved that it had practices to do including a chart of “common mindset” and “effective mindset” for you as a leader to compare yourself in the areas and see where you can improve.

The book was written by three authors and the writing flowed really well. Each of the authors added little bits here and there throughout, including short stories or examples which helped explain that given chapter. The book had practical exercises to do in each chapter, as well as an end of chapter notes section where you can write your personal action items.

These were not like other books where they provide general advice and no solid goal. This book included in the practical sections the exact wording of coaching questions and practices to use. That gave it a full 5 stars in my eyes.

This is the kind of book you can’t read all at once. Like I did, you need to read a single section or chapter. Then, go away and do the exercises and put your new learning in place. It’s a lot of doing and you definitely need to refer to the book again as reference or to re-read it. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has direct reports under them. I think it’s a must-read for the leadership team of any business, small or large.

Review: Cass R. Sunstein & Reid Hastie – Wiser

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Wiser
Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter
Cass R. Sunstein & Reid Hastie

“Since the beginning of human history, people have made decisions in groups—first in families and villages, and now as part of companies, governments, school boards, religious organizations, or any one of countless other groups. And having more than one person to help decide is good because the group benefits from the collective knowledge of all of its members, and this results in better decisions. Right?”

This book was not for me. Although it’s in the “management” section of the library’s non-fiction, it’s all about theory and there is nothing practical or examples of what to do next. Not only is it theory, but it also doesn’t show “the right answer” at the conclusion of the theories. It basically says this can happen, and this can happen and this can also happen. It has no point or message that the book is conveying.

The message of the book is that group decisions are hard due to a number of reasons. These include: an individual’s bias, and how humans tend to agree with others – this causes a cascade of errors. Although the book is structured in chapters of “how groups fail” and then “how groups succeed”, the chapters didn’t really mean anything. The authorities continued to use examples of how groups fail in the succeeding section. Honestly I still don’t know the “solution” to this problem, and how to succeed.

The authors mentioned the same examples more than once, including writing that they would refer to it again in a later chapter. I don’t know why it couldn’t just be fully explained then and there? By the end of the Introduction I had already been convinced that groups fail in their logical thinking all the time, and I was ready for the solutions. I then fell asleep, lost interest and put the book down several times. The only semi-redeeming factors were the few story examples in the tournaments section and the fact that the authors used references for their work.

I did finish this book, but it’s only getting 2 stars. Don’t bother – there are better things out there. Anything is better than this.

Review: Harvard Business Review – Leading Virtual Teams (S)

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Leading Virtual Teams
HBR 20-Minute Manager Series
Harvard Business Review

“Leading any team involves managing people, technical oversight, and project administration, but leaders of virtual teams perform these functions from afar. Don’t have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR’s 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic.”

This book is a small, short quick read. It’s a nice little pocket size read. Unfortunately, I don’t think I really got anything out of it. It has some nice tips, including exact questions for team surveys or improving in general. However I felt I have already implemented most, if not all, of the things mentioned in it. I guess it’s a nice little reminder that I’m on the right track.

This book was published a few years ago, but would be even more applicable today given COVID-19 and teams being forced to work from home. I think overall it’s a good little read and has a few helpful pointers if you are new to leading virtual teams. Borrow it from the library, don’t bother buying it. You probably won’t want to read it more than once.

Review: Sarah Liu – The World We See (S)

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The World We See
Leadership Lessons From Australia’s Iconic Change Makers
Sarah Liu

“The World We See is not just a compilation of leadership insights from 30 iconic Australian leaders, but a collective declaration that we will create a world where gender parity is not a dream, but a reality. In this book, female and male leaders share their life lessons and vision for a better tomorrow where every single one of us, regardless of gender, can rise up to get us one step closer to the world we envision.”

Suzi picked this book up from the library, so the following review is hers. I was after a book that wasn’t theory based for a change, and had more real life examples and stories to learn from. he title misled me, sadly. “Leadership lessons from Australia’s iconic change makers” – from this, I really expected actual lessons, stories and examples. However, what I received was 2-3 pages from each leader of wishy washy, meant to be inspiring and motivating, crap. This was the type of motivating crap that says “lighten up” or “the measure of success must be yours” or “failure isn’t falling down, it’s remaining where you’ve fallen”. This was paired with a quote on a coloured background page in between each leader’s lesson. If I wanted motivational sentences, I’d read ‘The Secret’!

To top it off, the whole book is also about gender inequality, and is aimed to be motivating to women in the workforce. I don’t have a problem with this being mentioned, but it felt like every leader had to say something empowering to women in their 3 page lesson, which was a waste and not necessary. This also included males saying they are open to women in the workforce – I bloody well hope so! I personally don’t feel that women need anymore empowering or motivating than men, and if they do they aren’t going to get it from this book. Everyone is equal, end of discussion. Gender diversity doesn’t need to be made into a big deal. Maybe it’s just my industry, but I work with more women than men, including women in high level roles, so I don’t see it as an issue.

Overall, what I got out of this book was nothing. It was a waste of my time. I felt that the leaders included could have used their few pages better to tell an actual story with a leadership lesson in it. Not fluff with coloured backgrounded quoted pages that can be found on the internet. I didn’t finish reading it. It might be non-fiction and I don’t have to rate it, but it’s hardly worth a single star.

Review: Timothy C Winegard – The Mosquito

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The Mosquito
Timothy C Winegard

“Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington’s secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito.”

It’s that time of year where I try to purge the books that haven’t been read in a year from my shelf. Several have somehow missed by rader – perhaps I couldn’t face this one with another epidemic going on. I can think back to the end of 2019 and remember that I was very grateful that COVID-19 wasn’t vector-borne, because that would make it almost impossible to eradicate. Unfortunately, life a year on suggests that there is still more disease to deal with (as I write this review, the first vaccines are being administered in the USA).

Nevertheless, this is an interesting, if somewhat dense, book about vector-borne diseases – specifically those transmitted by mosquitoes. I somehow didn’t get past the introduction and first chapter, probably because my background as a mosquito scientist. There is a focus on malaria, which is of course the most ‘popular’ disease. My own mosquito-borne disease choice is dengue, so I wasn’t as wrapped in it. Dengue is an emerging epidemic, so it’s not really mentioned in here.

The chapter titles of this book are quite inspired! Unfortunately, for me it eventually turned out that I didn’t finish reading it. It truly was a history rather than a science-filled narrative of the mosquito. I’m just not that keen on history (coming from someone who thought that the ‘cold war’ was cold because it snows in Russian…).

A really cool fact I learn from this book was that malaria was used in the 1920s to treat syphilis! The guy that thought of the idea got a Nobel prize, and so people would line up to be given malaria in order to treat their STI. Then a couple of years later we discovered antibiotics, thank goodness!

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was a hardback at this price point, but sadly it isn’t. It’s solid book that is going to be the perfect gift for someone who loves history.

Text Publishing | 20 October 2019 | AU$32.99 | paperback

Review: Laura Greaves – Extraordinary Old Dogs

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Extraordinary Old Dogs
Laura Greaves

“Puppies are wonderful, but there is something truly special about an old dog. It’s the grey muzzle and salt-and-pepper eyebrows; the face that says ‘been there, sniffed that’. More than anything, it’s the lifetime of love, laughter and licks.”

This non-fiction book about senior dogs was quite an interesting read, but also a disappointing one. I had previously enjoyed Greaves’ Miracle Mutts and was keen to give this one a read. However, this book didn’t live up to the promise of its title. Yes, it certainly discussed old dogs, but I don’t think they were actually ‘extraordinary’.

To give some context, I grew up in a household where dogs were working dogs on a farm. We never kept a dog that was unsuitable for the (hard) farm life, but we weren’t cruel either. Dogs lived out their time on the farm – they weren’t surrendered or slaughtered for being old. Other dogs I’ve met all have lived out their lives at home – even those in the care of complete strangers! So to me, it was a bit of a surprise that there was even a bias against old dogs.

These dogs were all old, but I don’t think their stories were particularly unique for being old. It was more that the majority of these dogs were rescued – adopted in their old age after someone had surrendered them to the Pound. Thus I felt cheated that these dogs were old, but they were more interesting for the fact that they had entertaining personality types, or fascinating back stories prior to adoption. To be fair, some dogs were with their humans for their whole lives, and those dogs were themselves interesting on how long a dog can live under the most optimum conditions.

I did learn some interesting facts, such as that the old adage that “one human year = seven dog years” is really incorrect (different breeds age differently), and that it is possible to train a dog to find koalas. At times, the author seemed to rely on old news articles for details rather than information presumably straight from the owners’ mouths. Perhaps these stories are less about the dogs, and more about the social media accounts that their owners set up for them!

I’m honestly not sure this book is worth the price tag. It’s not something I would have a compulsion to read more than once, and I’m not sure who I would buy it for. Perhaps if you have someone who had truly cared for their old dog, or are thinking about getting a new pet, this would be an appropriate gift.

Penguin Random House | 1st December 2020 | AU$34.99 | paperback

Review: Andrew Faulk – My Epidemic

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MY EPIDEMIC
An AIDS Memoir of One Man’s Struggle as Doctor, Patient and Survivor
Andrew M. Faulk

“When young Dr. Andrew Faulk first learned he was HIV-positive, he was devastated for it certainly meant imminent death… Due to the rigors and stress of training, he considered abandoning his medical career. But, instead, he dedicated the remainder of his life to the fight against AIDS, ultimately participating in the care of approximately 50 patients who died, many his own peers, including his partner.”

What is there I can say about this book? It is both heartbreaking and uplifting, sad and joyful at the same time. The memoirs that I have read recently didn’t pass muster. My Epidemic does. Andrew shows sensitivity and self-awareness, and his story does bring something new to the bookshelf. To me, Andrew showed the early tenants of ‘active listening’ to his patients, even as he faced most of them going too-early to the grave. This naturally took a toll on this compassionate doctor, leading to him leaving the profession.

This is a book by a man who knows how to actively listen, who knows how to empathise and grieve, and is willing to share what story has taken place in his life so far. Personally, I felt cheated to an extent. This memoir is filled with two page summaries of patients and friends Andrew has known and nursed. I wanted more information – but perhaps to include more would have crossed the confidential patient-doctor boundary.

I particularly appreciated the epilogue on COVID-19. Thankfully, Australia has not been as hard pressed by COVID-19 as the overburdened USA healthcare system. It didn’t occur to me to parallel the two epidemics. HIV/AIDs seems to be so far in the past – I always thought of AIDs as belonging to third world countries (reinforced by other books I had read). I’ve read novels on the 1980s epidemic or current life with HIV, but they didn’t resonate with me in the same way as this memoir.

When I corresponded with Andrew and his publicist, I felt listened to and appreciated (he even addressed my beloved birdie in my signed copy of the book!). Treating your reviewer with respect for their time will always lead to a tick in my book, and lead to this book being read almost as soon as it arrived.

The gay men in my life are HIV-negative as far as I know, and I know that many are taking PReP to minimize their chances of contracting HIV. Advances in medicine such as these have changed the face of disease burdens and perhaps minimized their significance, in Western countries at least.  Thank you Andrew for bringing the AIDs epidemic back into context and not letting those brothers who were victims of this disease be forgotten.

Review: Patrick Lencioni – The Motive (S)

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The Motive
Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities
Patrick M. Lencioni

“New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni has written a dozen books that focus on how leaders can build teams and lead organizations. In The Motive, he shifts his attention toward helping them understand the importance of why they’re leading in the first place.”

I absolutely love Lencioni’s books and this one is no exception! Like most of his other books (except this notable exception), this is written as a leadership fable. The fable is used to explain his business concepts so that you can see them in action. He then also goes through the theories in the more traditional business book sense at the end.

The main character in the fable is the typical CEO leader who currently delegates out his leader responsibilities and is more involved in the areas he is comfortable in. I loved the plot twists and turns and couldn’t wait to keep reading it. I would have read it in one sitting if I didn’t have to go to work. I loved the ending and thought it suited well and was needed! The main point that the author makes is that leaders tend to fall into the trap of doing the things they enjoy or are good at. This means that they are too involved in the day to day operating tasks of the business and not focusing on the harder leadership tasks that can only be done by the leader, and are required for the business to grow.

It’s shorter than the average book, however it doesn’t necessarily need to be any longer. Nevertheless, similarly to Lencioni’s other books (eg. DEATH by Meeting), I would have liked a little more in the fast forward following the fable further into examples of how to actually do the correct things. If you can fit in and explain your point in a short book, then there is nothing wrong with it. I listened to this book as an audiobook. Although it’s not read by the author, it was still read with feeling.

If you lead other people or aspire to lead other people, this is a must-read. It’s not just for CEOs but also for small business directors, smaller team leaders and middle management. It reminds you of your ‘WHY’ you are a leader and reinforces that leaders must focus on big picture tasks rather than operations.

I want to say 5 stars as I love all of Lenconis books. In saying that for it to be a 5 stars it should be a re-read and I find it hard to re-read the fables after I’ve heard the story. I’d likely read the key take away points though. 4.5 stars?