The Elegance of the Hedgehog

In the course of a reader’s life, there are so few books one can afford to read more than once. The Elegance of the Hedgehog earns its way into a rare class of stories that makes you want to turn the book over and start again as soon as you’re finished. What makes it so? Well, for anyone who’s ever felt the sting of being underestimated, ignored, or misunderstood, there’s a quiet victory just waiting inside the head of the book’s main protagonist, 54-year-old Renee Michel.

Madame Michel’s role as a concierge allows her a solitary intellectual life that unfolds from beginning to end in a heady journey through film, philosophy, and art. But her ability to appraise the thoughts of the haughty patrons she serves is a bitter cup. What could be more brutal than to know the exact measure of your negligible worth as estimated by others? It would be great to imagine that all readers might see themselves as the arrogant perpetrators in Muriel Burbery’s novel. But, as we all know, it’s difficult to see the ways in which we judge.

Is it worse to live behind a self-constructed façade or to build one for someone else? Madame Michel’s remarkable substance permits her to retain her dignity and her humanity, despite her lowly assignment and the shackles of a distorted past. It also wins her the royal gift of friendship with people who recognize her for what she is. Isn’t this what we all hope for? This novel is a feast for the mind and the spirit, best consumed with a cup of tea. Read it and you’ll see why.





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Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

A prissy reader might be tempted to rename this memoir within the first 50 pages. Something like Food, Drugs and Cusswords would do. Or, buoyed by a highly-developed moral code, one might set it aside in favor of something sweeter on the palette. But that would be like foregoing a spectacular feast of honest food prepared by a famous chef like…well, like Gabrielle Hamilton herself.

Hamilton’s memoir is a delicious account of her arduous journey from adolescence to adulthood, hurdling obstacles and carrying baggage that might have put a lot of us on the sidelines of life. Instead, the author matures into talented writer and chef/restaurant owner, who starts her own unconventional family and begins the balancing act known to legions of hard-working women.

Thinking of glamour? Well, forget that.  Her journey to chefdom didn’t include a lofty chef’s school. It was made on an itinerant apprenticeship of inauspicious greasy spoons, summer camps, catering gigs, and a hungry, sometimes harrowing traipse through Europe as a young adult. None of it paid well, but it did form an unpretentious chef who can simultaneously write and cook the glory and complexity of unfussy, unadulterated food and of life itself.

Keep your dictionary handy. All but the very most sophisticated of foodies will need it to figure out what’s in the oven or on the stovetop and table. Read to the end and take turns shuddering, gasping, salivating and aching your way through a gritty memoir filled with tenderness, honesty, self-reliance and hope.



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A Must Read for Readers

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If, as Mark Twain once said, a person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t, then surely a person who remains unchanged by what they read is just as disadvantaged. In her memoir, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, author Nina Sankovitch proves how much a thoughtful reader can milk out of a good book, sharing her experience of reading one book a day for a whole year.

After the devastating loss of her oldest sister, Sankovitch reads her way out of grief, fear and depression back to hope and promise. I know it sounds like a heavy theme, but her shared experience is must reading that will delight all bibliophiles. For reluctant readers who say they don’t have time to read, Sankovitch’s memoir is like a well-baited hook, demonstrating that a well-read life is a well-lived life, especially when we think about what we read.

This isn’t a work of literary snobbery; Sankovitch finds wisdom in popular mysteries and contemporary authors as well as classics. As you follow her year of reading, you’ll experience her steady recovery, not in psychobabble, but in earnest and profound descriptions of how stories and characters connect with real life.

If you’ve ever felt the loss of a loved one, don’t be surprised to find the pangs of your own heartbreak mingled with the author’s as you read. Her words are a sweet balm for one of life’s most universal experiences. By the end of the book, Sankovitch feels like an intimate friend, having shared in glittering detail what all readers love about books—their ability to transport, comfort, elevate, encourage, befriend, and finally, to chasten us into better people who can deal with all that life has to throw at us.

This one is worth reading again and again, especially as a motivating kick-start for anyone who isn’t setting aside enough time to read. In our achievement-driven world, no one is going to reward us for making time to read and think. But we’ll pay a price for not having done so.


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The Socrates Dilemma: another thoughtful discourse about wise use of technology

Like lots of people who work in and around the business of books, publishing and information, I’m frequently asked about my predictions for the future of the printed word, specifically the book. In this all-connected-all-the-time world, apparently there are plenty of people (not just librarians) who worry that books may go the way of newspapers.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age is the latest book to salve the worries of bibliophiles everywhere. The author is a Washington Post newspaper reporter whose family declares all weekends “digital sabbaths” –two-day breaks from smart phones, e-mail, and computer screens. Powers and his wife instituted this practice after realizing that the more connected they were with the world, the less present and connected they felt with each other, family, and friends.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry makes a case for balancing our use information technology without overwhelming our minds – a problem that has plagued mankind since the time of Socrates and Shakespeare, according to Powers. As it turns out, Socrates was the ancient equivalent of a Twitter addict who would overindulge in live orations that dragged on forever. His friends often dragged him away for long walks to encourage reflection. His pals evidently knew what every well-balanced person comes to understand—that downtime is actually very productive.

The modern version of Socrates’ dilemma is what Powers calls digital maximalism—the notion that being more connected is better. He predicts that our overstimulated, underfocused minds eventually crave downtime, reflection and the private pleasure of reading a book. This can only be good news for the future and the value of books.

Hamlet’s BlackBerry challenges myths without completely bashing the good things we get from today’s information technology. Here were a few myths I enjoyed hearing him bust:

Younger people are somehow more native lovers of information technology. Powers says the people who most comment on his book are under the age of 35. They totally get the idea that no form of technology trumps human interaction. Many are willing to admit that total immersion in IT has cost their generation something in the way of interpersonal skills. And they are anxious to reclaim those skills. I’ve got a few young friends in the communications profession (and elsewhere) who will vouch for that.

Information technology results in greater productivity. However useful Google is, knowing things because you Googled them does not always generate retained knowledge. When people are constantly inundated with information, they find it more difficult to do work that requires sustained attention and make thoughtful, analytical choices. There’s a cost to employers when attention is excessively fragmented. People are prone to mistakenly identify time in front of a screen as work. Often it is not.

What a great addition to the ever expanding discourse about the intersection between human connections and information technology! This is a great self-help guide for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the role of technology in their daily life.

P.S. Don't forget to enter the drawing for this month's free book, Straight Down the Middle, by Josh Karp. Visit www.leadingreads.com to learn about the book and enter.

Warning: this is your brain on the internet.

My year-long experiment with social media is officially over. I spent all of April and May rethinking the online habits that had just about hijacked my real life. After some honest reflection, I have decided there are only two social networking efforts that matter to me: 1) checking in with friends and 2) writing about personal development and books for anyone who likes that sort of thing. If you want to help me share content/gain readers, that’s great. If not, I’m writing just for you (when you’re interested) and the sheer joy of it. And that’s fine with me.

Oddly, I seemed to have less and less time for these pursuits when my online crusade was at its peak. A disturbing lack of focus was creeping into my work habits, whether I was cleaning the house, writing an article or planning a program. I chalked it up to an excess of divided interests, aided by my online behaviors. As if to underscore the reasons I decided to reclaim my own attention, I have discovered a slug of new books about how our brains can be morphed by internet behaviors.

Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains explores the link between our online behaviors and the decline of deep concentration, introspection, contemplative thinking and creativity. Thankfully, the brain is a very plastic organ and Carr argues that it can be adapted away from our online tendency to jump from shiny thing to shiny thing. Carr says this sort of interrupted thinking is actually a more natural state for the human brain and one that has only been circumvented by mankind’s access to (get this) the printed page, which allowed people to become more educated, civilized and capable of sustained concentration. In other words, progress has come at the price of regression. Now there’s food for thought for anyone who has noticed a decline in ability to do sustained reading and thinking.

Decades after Albert Einstein’s death, his genius is still informing us. As a result of some of the research done on his brain over the past 20 years, the field of neuroscience has exploded with new information about brain function. Doug Fields, a researcher at the National Institute of Health, has written The Other Brain, a new book about some of the most recent discoveries in neuroscience. One of the biggest findings concerns the role of the glia, a part of the brain that was previously considered to be nothing more than glue that held the brain together. Einstein’s brain had an abnormally high number of these astrocytes, which are involved in complex thinking and imagery. The glia in our brains transmit conversations between neurons and rebroadcast them to distant areas of the brain. I haven’t read the book yet, but I look forward to seeing how this neuroscientist/author can make this research accessible to the reading public. (For fun background on this research, check out NPR’s story.)

Here is a title that seems destined for my reading list as I approach my 50th birthday: The Secret Life of the Grown Up Brain, by Barbara Strauch. In the strange brew that is now my brain, I alternate between thinking I’ve lost my mind and that I’m beginning to possess wisdom. (Believe me, the former is more obvious to other people than the latter!) Whether it’s noticeable to anyone else or not, decisions and tasks that were once difficult are much easier. I don’t repeat the same mistakes as often as I once did. Strauch’s book suggests the middle-aged brain is NOT on a steady decline. It actually improves in a number of areas with age. Hurray for experience, life’s greatest teacher! Strauch is a neuroscientist who has done extensive brain research and published a book on the teenage brain, in part because of her fascination with her son’s development. With her own aging, she became increasingly interested in the brain function of grown ups, people she defines as between the ages of 40 and 65.

While no one should dismiss the positive influence information technology has on us, there is a downside and people are beginning to notice, study, and write about it. We may be reaching a saturation point for handling stimuli, according to Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Researchers at the University of California-San Diego say the average American hears, sees, or reads 34 gigabytes worth of information a day, a figure that’s risen 5 percent each year since 1980.

As we exercise the part of the brain that multi-tasks, rushes and partially listens, the part that manages our ability to focus is languishing, says Edward Hallowell, M.D., author of CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap. Another indication of shrinking memory is a tendency to move from one task to another without finishing anything, says Torkel Klingberg, M.D., author of The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory.

Challenging the brain requires more active participation than watching TV or surfing the internet. When we are tired, we naturally choose the most passive forms of stimulation we can find, even though we may feel unfulfilled by how we spend our time. Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, says we need to push ourselves toward more challenging mental work in order to improve brain function.

Here are a few tips from the experts to help manage online behaviors:

1) Notice your habits and whether you are focusing on the right things.
2) Don’t search for inane things on the internet JUST because you can.
3) Practice your sustained attention skills by reading a book, meditating and praying.
4) Make notes about things you’d like to read later to keep yourself on task.
5) Take breaks to recharge and unplug.

For my part, I’ll be taming my inner social media maven and trusting that a few faithful readers is good enough for this endeavor. If you are one of them, I thank you again for reading.