Catching up on my book reviews, part 3 of 5 (?)
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
This book was recommended by a work colleague. In it, Meyer attempts to explain the cultural differences between people from several different countries who work together or have to collaborate for some reason. She has come up with several scales (such as direct feedback, doing things on time etc) and places each culture somewhere on the scale. She proposes that people from different backgrounds who work together need to understand these relative differences and work around them. What I liked about this book is that Meyer isn’t implying that things are black or white, one culture is this way and another is that way. She doesn’t oversimplify. What she says is that the placement of the scale is meant to be interpreted in relation to the other countries one works with. So Scandinavians and Germans would probably work really well together despite not being on the exact same spot on the scale, while they might need to find some strategies to work around their differences if they worked with the French. I thought Meyer’s explanation for individual differences within a culture was satisfactory: a certain culture is not a dot on this scale but rather a span of behaviours. So some people in Denmark (where the general tendency is towards a more relaxed style of management and a flatter hierarchy) will be very laid back whereas others will tend to require a more rigid style of management – but still within the span that’s considered “normal” in Denmark. All in all an informative and quick read that might help you understand your foreign colleagues. ***
My Midsummer morning by Alastair Humphreys
Alastair Humphreys is/was an adventurer who did things like row across the Atlantic and cycle around the world. Then he went and got himself a family. He doesn’t seem too happy about that. Unwilling to give up his adventuring ways completely, he decides that what he needs is an adventure albeit on a smaller scale. Inspired by Laurie Lee‘s book As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning Humphreys picks up a violin, gives himself 6 months to learn how to play and then he sets out to busk his way across Spain with it. This wasn’t a groundbreaking book by any means. In fact, there are other, much better written adventure books out there. Yet, this book stayed with me. It was a very easy read, and despite the author’s selfish motives, I found myself sympathetic to his adventurous ways. Granted, it takes a lot of privilege for a well-off man to leave everything behind for a month and live on just what he makes by playing the violin badly. Like, pretending to be poor isn’t cool. But I enjoyed the descriptions of Spain and the people he met. He also challenged my preconceptions about what adventure is: it doesn’t need to be something grand and crazy. A cozy read that was much appreciated in the middle of this pandemic. ***
Adventures in the anthropocene by Gaia Vince
Boy oh boy. This took me about a year to finish. Recommended by a very good friend who’s environmentally minded, I stubbornly picked it up time and again, reading a page, starting on something else and getting back to it, not wanting to give up on something my friend recommended…But it’s hard to explain exactly why I struggled so much with it. The book is about solutions to environmental problems that humans in societies around the world have invented. A lot of those problems were also invented by said humans. Vince seems to have a lot of faith in humankind’s ability to solve its problems with even more technology instead of removing the cause of the problem. That could be one reason why I struggled. Another might be that the author traveled around the world to find the material for her book, which made for a somewhat disjointed result with no red thread running through it. Don’t get me wrong: the solutions themselves were good, brilliant even. I’m just not sure what purpose a book like this serves when we’re on the brink of an environmental disaster. **
Harness your speaking anxiety by Nathan Gold
This book was given to me as a gift. My work requires me to make public presentations sometimes. I am not crazy about the prospect, but, as it is necessary, I have no choice but to try and become better at it. This book contained a lot of good tips about how to give great presentations in front of audiences. Some are about how to mentally prepare for the presentation (eg, play some exciting music, like the theme to Rocky). Others about how to connect with the audience. The language itself is easy to follow and the tips are given in a list format, each tip as a chapter with explanations of what it is about. That said, a lot of these tips are obvious. Others a bit more esoteric. Some were eye-openers (for example, that the audience might be nervous as well). I certainly learned a lot from it but I feel that the book was written mostly for professional speakers, and not someone like me who only occasionally has to make a presentation (and thus has fewer opportunities to practise those tips). It will definitely help me up my game but I can’t help but wonder if I couldn’t have found these same tips by googling the subject. **
