Book Review Time!

It's time again for long unsolicited opinions of my latest reads, starting with Ishmael. I picked this one because of those surveys about high school kids' reading preferences that I typed up. One kid said her favorite book was Ishmael, and because I'm reading Moby Dick ("Call me Ishmael...") I thought they would dovetail nicely, even though I didn't have any idea what it was about. Ishmael turns out to be a philosophy book about a man who finds his guru, a gorilla named Ishmael who can communicate telepathically. This is surprisingly not a major plot point; I think this is really just a way to present his as an outside observer of humanity, whereas of course any human wouldn't be an outsider. Anyway, the whole book is a conversation between the two of them trying to discover why humanity is destroying the environment whereas animals don't. The gorilla breaks people down into Takers (people who've adopted what we would call civilization) and Leavers (those who didn't).

Although I think finding a way to live here more harmoniously is very important, I found this book rather frustrating to read because I thought it had some major logical inconsistencies. For example, at one point it stressed that there are some Leavers who practice agriculture, they're not all hunters and gathers. But at a different point, the major breakthrough moment of the book, the man comes to the realization that the primary difference between Leavers and Takers is that only Takers try to control their environment by practicing agriculture. Also, there was a lot of "historical reconstruction" of things that happened thousands of years ago using myths, which is never something I tend to be convinced by. It SOUNDS like a nice theory, but there's no way to prove it, or even disprove it. Bottom line: a disappointing book, more so because I agree with the author that it's important for us to find ways to leave smaller footprints.

Moby Dick, by the way, is getting interesting, but Beth has read a little farther ahead of me and she claims that there's not much more in the book that makes sense. Sigh!

I sort of skimmed through the parachute book. Generally it was about the whole process of applying for jobs, from networking to your resume to interviewing, and I'm more interested in just getting ideas for what careers to look into next year, sort of something to point me in the right direction, or any direction. It finally got sort of to this towards the end, but it had a lot of what I'm sure are good tips on self reflection and prioritizing, but it just made me want to watch cooking shows instead of find a career path. Plus, I never found out what the heck the title of the book meant. There was no mention of parachutes or colors or anything.

Anyway, I mentioned all this to my officemate Jane. Jane is the sort who, well.... Jane is really friendly, and she used to own a used bookstore so she did a lot of reading of lots of random stuff, and she's a mom who is very involved in her children's lives, and this involvement sort of spills over into all her relationships. If you have any problem or question or curiosity, she either knows the answer or will attack it like Ian's Shih-tzu Zeus goes after his little toy badger (this isn't Zeus, but it gives you a good idea. Turn your sound on). She brought me a book called Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for you Through the Secrets of Personality Type.

Chris scoffs at personality typing, but I think it's an interesting way to look at things. This book uses the Meyers-Briggs, which is the one with the four letters (ISTP or ENFJ, for example). First it walks you through figuring out your personality preferences, making sure you understand that it's really just a preference not an always. If you're J, it means you like making decisions rather than keeping things open-ended, but that's not ALWAYS and not in every situation. Anyway, then it tells you what sort of positions are generally appealing to people of that personality type. For example, INFP types (Introvert, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving) generally tend towards jobs where they have a lot of creative control where they can express themselves and help people, so they tend to be more comfortable as, say, a professional artist or a therapist rather than a job that requires more getting out and meeting people and convincing, like a salesman or politician. It didn't really tell me anything I didn't know about my preferences in a career. but it was more helpful to make it clear that my preferences aren't EVERYONE'S preferences. The book lists the characteristics of a job that personality types tend to like, such as working with a team vs. not, having a structured ladder to work up vs. organic unstructured companies, etc., and I was reading the ones for my personality type thinking, well of course everyone would want this in a job. And then I turned to some of the other types and they were making me cringe thinking about having to work in those environments, but some people prefer that. Some people LIKE making cold calls, which is not something I can ever begin to imagine liking. Anyway, it all makes sense, and I'm sure I already knew that on some level, but it was nice to have it presented like that. It's a neat book, if you're interesting in personality typing I'd recommend it, even if you're not looking to change jobs.

Finally, here's a picture that I found on the internet of what Harper might have looked like as a puppy (one of our great regrets is not seeing what she looked like as a puppy, although that's more than offset by her coming to us already excellently housebroken, which we don't think we would have been so good at teaching her).