* The Triple Package by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld

Wouldn’t it be interesting to be a social scientist? To be able to pick and choose a pool of examples at will and derive some rules from the set? In The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, Amy Chua of Tiger Mom fame and her husband argue that success within certain groups in the US, including, not surprisingly, Chinese Americans and Jews, display a set of characteristics that makes them successful. Namely, they have a superiority complex (the authors certainly do!), a sense of insecurity, and superior impulse control.  They run into many difficulties in explaining their theory, the first one being how to define success. Is it high salaries? Lots of CEO slots? An unusually high percentage of prestigious academic prizes? Well, yes, some of that, but the examples pick and choose which ones apply to various groups so I was not entirely convinced.

The second problem is that almost all the groups they depict are immigrant groups, and not your average immigrants either. Whether it’s Cuban-Americans, Iranian-Americans, or Chinese-Americans, they arrived in the country (as the authors note) with advantages of education and certainly determination to succeed, assets that are sure to assist their progeny in being successful even if the parents are employed in menial jobs upon arrival. But this little problem waved away.

The most interesting contortions occur when the authors discuss African-Americans, who by many measures are not very successful in the US, and since the authors assert that triple package implies success, then no success must mean failure on the triple package — but of course there is a strong pressure to avoid saying such an un-PC thing so much back-paddling is accomplished, not very successfully in my mind.

In the end, it seems that the real aim is not so much to expose the weaknesses of any particular group, but rather to argue that the US, once (supposedly) a triple-package country, has gotten soft on self-esteem classes and instant gratification. Buck up, America, they say. Alas, it seems that it’s more a matter of looking down upon the unsuccessful as not having tried enough rather than encouraging hard work. I will take my bucking up with a dash of compassion, please.

 

*** Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos

Quesadillas is the funny, alternatively absurd and harsh story of a poor Mexican family with seven children and too little food (and only one type of food: quesadillas!). The narrator, the second son called Orestes, Oreo for short, lives under the dictatorship of his father, struggles to get enough food, has awkward encounters with the son of their rich neighbors, becomes the helper of a cow inseminator, and eventually leaves to search for his missing younger brothers, Castor and Pollux (but of course: the names are chosen by their teacher-father) who may have been abducted by aliens. Here is a fantastic voice piercing through the (wonderful) translation. Highly recommended despite the lack of a proper ending.

** Focus by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is the author of the famous Emotional Intelligence book franchise, and in Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, he attempts to demonstrate how concentration and attention constitute the main ingredient of success. Alas, I found this book to be poorly organized, even meandering, and I dare say not very well focused, ironically. There are plenty of good stories about both the power of intense concentration and its nefarious side effects, such as the often experienced burst of insight that occurs precisely when we stop thinking about a problem, all the way to the “systems geniuses” who can’t seem to get along with other people. But there are too many anecdotes about his grandchildren and over-long ramblings that could have benefited from a strong editor.

** In Meat We Trust by Maureen Ogle

In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America tells the history of the meat industry and demonstrates how it evolves to suit consumer demand and profit-seeking both. The author does a great job of showing how each change in the business model, whether it’s shipping carcasses to the city rather than live cattle or leasing chicks to farmers rather than buying them, comes with great benefits for the new players and pain for the ones that are displaced. She also shows how consumers’ demands for cheap food above and beyond taste led to some questionable changes — and alas the modern demands for more healthy meats may not improve taste either!

That said, the topic does not make for a page turner…

* Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen

Bread and Butter follows three brothers who own two restaurants in a small town, competing and yet intertwined in not so healthy ways. The story weakly mixes little spats between the brothers (including inane dialog) with lots of food porn about making and eating trendy dishes, and employee drama, including or not the brothers.

I did not like. Might be better suited for a food nerd…

*** Chance by Kem Nunn

The eponymous hero of Chance is a psychiatrist in a heap of trouble: divorcing, with a  wayward teenage daughter, in hock to the IRS, selling furniture he pretends is genuine, and, more troubling, pursuing a relationship with a patient. From the mess emerges a battle with a crooked cop, an improbable alliance with an unlikely furniture restorer, scenic scenes all around the San Francisco Bay area, all in a haze of heavy drinking and little sleep (could it be that Bay Area heroes are fueled by alcohol and no sleep?)

I thoroughly enjoyed the dark story, dark characters, and dark non-ending. Try it!

 

** Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

In Still Life with Bread Crumbs, a once-famous photographer exiles herself to the country to live off the rent of her New York apartment and encounters critters and weather that she had not foreseen. Like a damsel in distress she is saved by a rugged man who can take care of her. The damsel-in-distress part I did not enjoy — but the rest I did, a lot, from the back story of her doomed marriage to a philanderer to her struggles to care for her aging parents, and her late-in-life artistic success.

** Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker

Mercy Snow is a poor young woman who finds herself embroiled in a harsh battle with the town’s once-wealthy family, the owners of the local paper mill that provide employment for almost all the families of the small town where she lives with her brother and young sister. The conflict is between Mercy and June, the mill owner’s wife, who is intent of  getting Mercy’s brother blamed for a deadly accident.

The best part of the story, for me, were a couple of  minor characters:  Mercy’s employer, a female sheep farmer who has a secret of her own and is not afraid to stand up to June, and Mercy’s little sister whose meandering ways were very endearing and true to life.

For the rest, the plot is discernible from the first pages, and unfortunately the thickly rendered contrast between rich (or used-to-be-rich) June vs. poor Mercy weighs upon every detail, so it’s slow going, Since the main characters of Mercy and June are drawn as caricatures of the poor and cunning versus the rich and entitled, there’s not much else to savior.

Unfortunately, the

* Balance by Nik Wallenda

Balance: A Story of Faith, Family, and Life on the Line is the story of  a most unusual family business: the business of aerial performing. This is a business in which your childhood memories may include watching your grandfather fall to his death and watching your parents struggle financially even if they are the best at what they do, just because entertainment choices have changed with the advent of TV and other options. And it’s a business in which the author has thrived because of his willingness and ability to create big challenges (such as walking across the Niagara Falls) and to arrange complex financing and PR for them. That part of the story I found very interesting.

The rest, not so much. The organization of the materials and the writing is rather awkward. And the faith part of the story grated on me: every good thing is God’s gift, but somehow every misadventure, and there are many of them, has nothing to do with God. What a convenient arrangement.

** I Forgot to Remember by Su Meck

A ceiling fan fell on the head of the author of I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia decades ago and literally erased all her memories until then. She forgot everything, from how to walk to the fact that she was married with two little children. It sounds like a movie (and indeed, she reminds us that her form of amnesia, which is very rare, is often coined “Hollywood amnesia”) but her memories never came back and it turns out that it is very difficult to exist without a past, at least without a distant past.

What I liked about the book was the author’s complete openness about her struggles (sometimes too much openness, as when she awkwardly tackles the topic of her marital problems) and the un-selfconscious manner in which she describes her ordeal, even as she admits hiding it very carefully until now. It’s surreal to think that she was sent home after just a few weeks to care for two babies when she could barely take care of herself, for instance! Along the way, because she has to rely on other people’s memories, she also exposes how very unreliably we (non-amnesiac) remember the past. Her husband seems not to remember the most basic facts about the timing of her accident and many other details, for instance.

The memoir seems to meander to less interesting and more squirm-inducing topics as it moves along, so may have been better with 50 fewer pages, but hers is certainly an interesting life that poses interesting questions about rehab for traumatic brain injuries.