Multimillionaire author Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn, shares his views on how to be successful in the 21st Century. Hoffman says in the 20th Century, your career resembled an escalator: you went to college, got a job, moved up the food chain until you could retire and enjoy the rest of your life. Today, educated young workers can’t find jobs, Baby Boomers who would like to retire stay in their jobs because the economic uncertainty, and workers in the middle fear for the next wave of lay-offs or “restructurings.” The big take-away I learned from this book is the importance of networking in the job market. More than ever, it’s who you know. Of course, Hoffman just happens to operate a web site that facilitates job networking. So, yes, you could consider The Start-Up of You as a long commercial, but Hoffman provides plenty of other information about transforming yourself into a start-up company of one to make the book worthwhile. There’s plenty of job strategies to ponder here no matter what you do for a living. GRADE: B+
THE START-UP OF YOU: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career By Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha
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Patti Abbott mentioned John Cheever’s wicked novel, Falconer, a few weeks ago. It had been decades since I read it so I dug it out of basement bins and reread it. John Cheever made his reputation by writing some of the best short stories ever written. But, occasionally, Cheever turned to writing sophisticated novels. Falconer draws on Cheever’s own experience at teaching in a prison. There are some obvious Crime & Punishment parallels yet Cheever manages to engage the reader in a life that remains tethered to evens in childhood. Cheever remains the best sociologist of dysfunctional middle-class families in America. Yet his story in Falconer swims in Black Humor and cerebral writing. If you find you enjoyed Falconer, I’d further recommend Cheever’s underrated novel, Bullet Park which is even edgier. 
Yes, I’m a huge Rachel Maddow fan so it should not surprise you to learn that I dropped everything and furiously read Drift. Rachel Maddow is concerned that over the decades American military power has become a political tool shrouded in secrecy. Rachel worries about the “privatization” of many former functions of the military (started by Defense Secretary and later Vice-President Dick Cheney). She finds the massive growth of military contractors disturbing. The volunteer armed forces further distances war from the average American. The state of perpetual war (aka, “the war on terrorism”) has become a permanent feature of our culture. You might not agree with all of Rachel’s arguments, but no matter what your politics you’ll find the current state of American military power troubling. I found Rachel’s analysis compelling. GRADE: A
Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt might be Greene’s drollest novels. This movie version, starring Maggie Smith, captures the cleverness of the book but adds some spice of its own. Maggie Smith, after her 1970 Oscar win for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, takes on a completely different role in the outlandish Aunt Augusta. Directed with panache by George Cukor, with the adroit Alec McCowen as Maggie Smith’s bewildered nephew Henry, the screwball Travels with My Aunt will delight you with its madcap machinations. GRADE: A
I was a big fan of Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply so I had great expectations for Chaon’s latest short story collection, Stay Awake. And, mostly, those expectations were fulfilled. Chaon writes about guys whose girl friends get drunk and fall out of trees. Then, at the hospital, the girl friend (perhaps under the influence of Happy Drugs) admits she’s married. But, there’s more to the story. In fact, after you finish a Dan Chaon story, you’ll be thinking about it for awhile because there’s always more to his stories. My only quibble is a story titled “Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow” which is written in the second person. I dislike stories written in the second person because the technique distances me from the story. There are plenty of strong stories in this collection that will stay with you for a long time. Dan Chaon is one of finest practitioners of the art of the short story. Stay Awake proves it. GRADE: A-
After much delay, Mad Men returns to AMC with a new 2-hour episode tonight at 9 P.M. EDT. Check your local listings for the time in your area. I’ve been a fan of Mad Men from the beginning. I’ve even persuaded some of my students in my ADVERTISING classes to watch Mad Men and see how advertising was done in the 1960s. Mad Men surprises its viewers with deft plot-twists and startling behaviors by the remarkable cast of characters. Although Jon Hamm as Don Draper gets most of the attention, I love the women in this program: Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Betty Francis (née Hofstadt, formerly Draper) (January Jones), and Joan Harris (née Holloway) (Christina Hendricks). They could be the best cast of women on TV. If you haven’t been watching Mad Men you’re missing one of the best series ever.
The wait is finally over and The Hunger Games delivered on all the hype. The movie version follows Suzanne Collins’ Young Adult dystopian novel very closely. Jennifer Lawrence is brilliant as Katniss Everdeen, a teenager who volunteers to participate in the future society’s version of gladiatorial games broadcast as reality TV. After a vaguely referred to catastrophe, the United States has been replaced by a Capitol District and 12 Districts. Katniss is from District 12, a mining district. Each year, all the districts must send two teenagers to complete in the Games. Of the 24 contestants, only one will survive the battle of the fittest. Yes, it’s grim. But, the movie version tones down the violence of the novel (probably to get that coveted PG-13 rating) while not compromising on story elements. Although the movie is over 2 hours long, character development is sketchy. I found that reading the book first gave me more insight into the characters. The Hunger Games should be one of the box office champs of 2012. GRADE: A-
Todd Mason mentioned R. A. Lafferty and his first novel, Past Master, in a comment months ago, but I didn’t forget it. I just moved Past Master higher in the Read Real Soon stack. I read Past Master back in 1968. Rereading Past Master brought back the zaniness of Lafferty’s writing and the impatience I sometimes experience reading Lafferty’s work. A thousand years in the future, an Earth colony called Astrobe, is in severe crisis. Their perfect society is disintegrating. The elite spirit Thomas More (the author of Utopia) from 1535 Old Earth time. More’s time on Astrobe resembles a dream-like series of encounters with witches, hydras, mechanical killers, and bizarre aliens. And that’s always been my problem with Lafferty’s work. In small doses, Lafferty’s wackiness can amuse. But in excess, the extreme surrealism can prove tiresome. The Past Master was nominated for a Nebula and a Hugo, but won neither. If you’re in the mood for something very “different,” check out Past Master.
Art Scott and Steve Stilwell have reread the Nero Wolfe series over 50 times! I am not a rereader. There are just too many books I haven’t read. But Patricia Meyer Spacks makes a strong case for rereading in this enlightening book. Spacks starts out writing about the books of her youth: Alice in Wonderland and the Narnia series. She moves on to books that do not fare well with rereading: Lucky Jim and Catcher in the Rye. Spacks favorite books to reread are Jane Austen’s novels of manners. Emma and Pride and Prejudice are her favorites. As Spacks points out, the book doesn’t change, but the reader does. After reading Spacks’ eloquent defense of rereading, I’m more open to the possibility of rereading some of my favorite books. After all, I reread Slayground by “Richard Stark” for the recent Forgotten Books celebration of Donald E. Westlake. GRADE: B+