Category Archives: Books

May13

“Cilka’s Journey” by Heather Morris

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This is a novel about “amazing lives of ordinary people under the most unimaginable of circumstances.” It brings us a beautiful reminder not to judge: “Everyone affected by war, captivity, or oppression reacts differently – and away from it, people might try to guess how they would act, or react, in the circumstances. But they do not really know.”

In such circumstances there is always a Cilka. Cecilia Klein was “the bravest person” known to Lale, the tattooist of Auschwitz, whom we know from Heather Morris’ novel by the same name. “She was beautiful, a tiny little thing, and she saved my life” – Lalo’s testimony to Cilka, the 16 year old raped for three years by SS officers when and as they pleased, who found herself to be punished for this by another ideology which came to power. The novel made me think that it does not matter how you call a certain ideology, they bring suffering, regardless of their aim. To be released from rape in one camp, to suffer the same treatment in another, although under a different flag, it makes no difference to the victim. Still, the novel is not about ideologies, it is about stamina and resilience in beyond believable circumstances first in a concentration camp then in a gulag.

I will never understand how is it possible to make people suffer so much. Solzhenitsyn offers an answer: ‘To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good. Or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.’ What natural law is that, I wonder. Cilka and many others lived and battled not just to live but to retain their humanity. In most adverse circumstances, she put the needs of others above hers, and she expected nothing in return. This is a natural law, by me.

A warmly recommended reading. Thank you, Heather Morris!

May6

“Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan

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“So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close.” is to me the light-motive of this novel. An estimated 30000 women were concealed, incarcerated and forced to labour in so-called Magdalene laundries run by the Catholic church with the tacit agreement of the Irish state. The last Magdalene house was closed down in 1996. The unanswered questions, the unseen lives of thousands of women and their children inspired the novel.

A work of historical fiction, it nevertheless seemed very realistic to me. The Irish way of speaking definitely helped me get into the atmosphere of the pre-Christmas period of 1985 in an Irish town. I looked at those laundries through the eyes of a father of five daughters, a coal and timber merchant, the main character of this book by the name of Bill Furlong. There is a very clear turning point in the otherwise steady life of this man when he asked himself the eternal question: “As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?” His rescue of a young woman from the Magdalene laundry triggered an insight into his own birth story. His mother and him could have had the same faith as these thousands of women if there would not have been for the big heart of their patron, who took care of them. And these are not small things at all when you think about it.

Apr29

“The Science of Storytelling” by Will Storr

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I enjoyed how the author paired the writting with neuroscience and psychology. If we want our stories to be reach minds and hearts these sciences are of great help. “Story is what brain does. It is a ‘story processor’, “ writes the psychologist Professor Jonathan Haidt, ‘not a logic processor’. “The storytellers and the scientists had started off in completely different places and had ended up discovering the same things.” The author’s hope is that his research “is of interest to anyone curious about the science of the human condition, even if they have little practical interest in storytelling. But it’s also for the storytellers. The challenge any of us faces is that of grabbing and keeping the attention of other people’s brains.”

If you recognise this as your need, then the book is a fantastic resource or even guide to working on your story. Creating a World (chapter 1) to The Flawed Self (chapter 2), The Dramatic Question (chapter 3), Plots, Endings and Meaning (chapter 4), and the technique of the Sacred Flaw Approach are inestimable for crafting stories.

And it is useful to humbly remember that “We’re all fictional characters. We’re the partial, biased, stubborn creations of our own minds. To help us feel in control of the outside world, our brains lull us into believing things that aren’t true. Among the most powerful of these beliefs are the ones that serve to bolster our sense of our moral superiority. Our brains are hero-makers that emit seductive lies. They want to make us feel like the plucky, brave protagonist in the story of our own lives.”

One more aspect which made me appreciate the book was that I found many intriguing recommendations for books to read. I also rejoiced when I found referrenced books I already read. Pat on the shoulder.

Apr15

“Songbirds” by Christy Lefteri

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The themes of motherhood, female migration, racism, love and poaching intertwine as in a plea for us to see. The thorough research done for this beautiful novel paid off: I could follow the events and see the characters as if I was there.

Some readers are more sensitive than others and might find the description of birds poaching in Cyprus disturbing. I found the description of the faith of migrant women more disturbing. And sometimes, we need a bit of shaking up in our comfy world we interact with as if we wear white gloves on, while others do the work for us.

Apr8

“All the names” by Jose Saramago

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I had a beatific smile on my face when I started reading it. It must have been the effect of Saramago’s beautiful writing style all the way.

If you think your job is boring, read this novel which takes you into the life of a clerk at the Central Registry. Senhor Jose, a lonely civil servant, dutiful during the day and bored at night, challenges his own boredom with the task of finding out what he can about an unknown woman, whose card got attached to the cards of famous people he collected clippings on to fill his evenings. He goes through a great deal of pain in the process, exhausts himself mentally and physically, to just realize how equally unimportant are the lives and deaths.

Saramago serves the readers some of his philosophical takes on life, as his characters see it: “Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions, decisions make us. The proof can be found in the fact that, though life leads us to carry out the most diverse actions one after the other, we do not prelude each one with a period of reflection, evaluation and calculation, and only then declare ourselves able to decide if we will go out to lunch or buy a newspaper or look for the unknown woman.” Or here: “a cemetery like this is a kind of library which contains not books but buried people, it really doesn’t matter, you can learn as much from people as from books.”

Apr1

“Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qur’an” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

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If you are looking for a 40 minute read on a train ride, this might do. I read it in one go.

It’s a play combined with some narrative in between. I did not arrive to appreciate it and it might be a question of personal preference. The story line brings two main characters together on a street in Paris: a young Jewish and an elderly Sufi. Their relationship evolves into a camaraderie of some sorts, filling respective voids in their lives. I did not fully get it if the author tried to make a point about religion and intergenerational relationships. The characters seemed infantile and perhaps they were supposed to mature during the actual play. I found the finale a bit cliché, again perhaps there was no other point to make.

Mar25

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

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I started reading it couple of years ago. I abandoned it 20%in. It seemed discouraging to learn that humans react rather than they actually think. This year, I decided to give it another go. And I appreciated all the wealth of perspectives about how we can improve our decision-making once we are aware about our biases and the shortcuts our brains take. Kahneman puts it this way: “So this is my aim for watercooler conversations: improve the ability to identify and understand errors of judgement and choice, in others and eventually ourselves, by providing a richer and more precise language to discuss them. In at least some cases, an accurate diagnosis may suggest an intervention to limit the damage that bad judgements and choices often cause”.

At times the book is theory heavy, yet I found many useful things for my project management work. I learned more about how the human brain works, so that I improve my interactions with others. It can serve us in preparations for the project’s board or in negotiations with the project’s sponsor. Especially, if we remember that “We can be blind to the obvious. And we are also blind to our blindness.”

For teams management, I found it useful to note that “Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts. … self-control requires attention and effort”. Or that for some of us, “cognition is embodied; you think with your body, not only with your brain”. And the concept of affect heuristics – the tendency to base our decisions on our emotions; “the emotional tail wags the emotional dog”.

When we do risk management in projects, it is useful to remember that “risk” does not exist “out there”, independent of our minds and culture, waiting to be measured. Human beings have invented the concept of “risk” to help them understand and cope with the dangers and uncertainties of life. Although these dangers are real, there is no such thing as “real risk” or “objective risk” (see Slovic’s theory for more).

For a drop of intellectual humility it is useful to be aware that “Expertise is not a single skill; it is a collection of skills, and the same professional may be highly expert in some tasks in her domain while remaining a novice in others”.

These are just a few of my takeaways. You are welcome to share yours if you read the book.

Jan29

“One of us” by Asne Seierstad

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It was not a light reading, so be prepared to face it. I am in awe about Seierstad’s ability to tell us the story of a massacre in the heart of Norway committed by one of them. It takes maturity to take responsibility. It takes true compassion to pay all due respects to the victims and their families.

The story of this massacre is furthermost the story of young people who shared views of a better society, regardless of the background they came from. Until 22 July there was no sign they or their parents could see of an iminent danger of the being sacrificed to the “cause” a man created for himself. Unlike those he killed, “for Anders, dreams were not achieved through community. He wanted to shine out above the grey mass.”

How does one arrive at that? The testimony of the psychiatric doctor sheds some light: “‘The first time I saw Breivik enter this courtroom – and as psychiatrists first two or three milliseconds – it is important to note. I did not see a monster, I saw a deeply lonely man… Deeply lonely… Then quick as a flash he was inside his shell, making himself hard… But… At his core there is just a deeply lonely man. We have with us here not only a right-wing extremist bastard, but also a fellow human being who, regardless of what he has done to the rest of us, is suffering. We must try to put ourselves inside his brain, make his world comprehensible. His personality and extreme right-wing ideology are combined in an effort to get out of his own prison. He ends up ruining not only his own life but that of many others. We have with us here a fellow human being who will be left not only in his own prison but also in an actual prison. It is important for us to appreciate that this is something much more than a pure right-wing extremist. This is a tragedy for Norway and for us. I think it is also a tragedy for Breivik.”

Seierstad is equidistant to the tragedy of parents of the perpetrator and of the victims. And that is very noble in a society based on blaming the other. She let parents on both sides decide how much they wanted to be written about their children in the book. Because above all, this is a story of Simon, Anders and Viljar, Bano and Lara.

Jan14

“The Angel of Grozny” by Asne Seierstad

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‘That’s where I wrote the song “Russian Mothers”. I was washing clothes and weeping, and suddenly I thought: our tears are the same, the Chechen mothers’ and the Russian mothers’. (Singer Liza Umarova)

I was speechless when I finished the book. It made me remember that we know nothing. And to never judge anyone, under no circumstances. I admire how Seierstad treats all people with utmost respect for their dignity. Talking to and presenting the story of abused children requires such a compassion and ethics that very few are capable of in her line of work. Same goes for victims of torture, and so many more victims of a merciless system. This should be in a manual of journalism schools, I think.

Much is written about this book. I will not describe it here. I would only mention what I found insightful.

When you talk with people who share different views, try to grasp how much propaganda they have absorbed. “Rizvan would not discuss whether the struggle was worth the countless innocent victims. ‘Svoboda ili Smert,’ he replied again. ‘We’ll fight to the last man and the last drop of blood. But don’t look on us as fanatics; we want a secular state, like Norway, for example.’”

Before we embark on a judgement journey, we should ask ourselves what did we do, what is our responsibility and how it is seen by others. “The West, with its so-called humanitarianism, could have helped us, but you don’t say a word!’” “No one trusts anyone else any more, because Putin had a stroke of genius: he let Ramzan Kadyrov do the dirty work. Now it’s Chechen against Chechen.’ It’s called ‘chechenising’ the conflict. Whereas before, Russian forces committed the worst abuses, now the Chechen militia maintains control in a society maimed by fear.” “Religion is the only real way to get rid of crime, to teach people, improve them, purify them.” Only then perhaps we will start to understand. “Something about Chechen men gives the impression that they are always prepared. Ready to attack or to defend themselves. It’s as if they are filled with a perpetual, unreleased tension.”

Always remember the ones who are behind, in the shadow or totally invisible: “Vladimir Putin is only the latest in the line of conquerors. The latest to try to tame the wolves. Myself, I am more interested in the wolf cubs. Zaira knew where I could find them, and had promised to take me to a woman they called the Angel of Grozny.” Seierstad made us see the orpahns we pretend do not exist.

Jan1

“With their backs to the world. Portraits from Serbia” by Asne Seierstad

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One of the things I noticed in common in all her books is how Seierstad talks about sisterhood. Her fellow reporter Bojana in Serbia, or in Iraq…

Back to “With their backs to the world”, the book came to life after three visits to Serbia between 1999 and 2004. She wanted to understand: “I couldn’t stop wondering about the Serbs, these outcasts of Europe. This people that started one war after the other, and lost them all.” And so she does and helps us understand.

I have to say that whenever I met Serbs, my brain was full of stereotypes from both western and eastern media. The book broadened my perception and I will look with a lot more compassion and empathy at anyone coming from a Serbia governed by Tito, Milošević and other subsequent governments. Seierstad talks to people and listens to them. She does not judge and offers no personal views. So that we take it unaltered from Serbs of different background, genders, age, social status, regions and income. By sharing their daily bread, she teleports us into their lives, dreams and regrets.

The lines I found insightful about the way Serbs think:

‘The bombing was the worst thing the West could do to us – it only validated Milosevic’s rhetoric about the West hating the Serbs. The West has committed a series of blunders in its dealings with Milosevic,’ Bojana explains.

‘I can’t let them down. I’m their voice, and I have to go after those in power, the new and the old.’ – a Serb journalist.

‘The media is another problem – journalists here have been taught to repeat what they’ve been told and have grown up in a culture of self-censorship. Most of them do what they’ve always done – they just have different bosses. And the new power base is happy to exploit the situation.”

‘The only way for a reconciliation to occur is by knowing the truth about what has happened here. So many atrocities have taken place, but in order to forgive I need to know who I am to forgive, and why. It will be a difficult and painful process, but we have to go through it in order to proceed. We need a truth commission, like in South Africa. If we don’t determine who is guilty of what, the entire nation will be guilty – just of being Serbs.’

“Because no one was ever held accountable for anything, people allow themselves to forget – or, rather, remember only the parts they want to remember.”

“And this is how so many wars have started in the Balkans – through stretching historical facts to fit an emotional state, through lying about everything from statistics to myths. Great wars start out as folk songs and camp-fire stories, and end in genocide and bloodbaths.”

‘The West should be ashamed. The bombing presented the opposition with enormous difficulties. At the last election I urged people to vote for a democracy styled on Western Europe, and then these very same democracies attack us. How am I supposed to justify this? I asked people to put their faith in the EU flag – and the next thing we know, we’re bombed by the EU!’

“The best way to shake people out of their inertia is to put them in debt. Then you give them the power to realise their dreams overnight, while ensuring that they’ll spend years paying for their dreams. This is the principle upon which the stability of the Western world rests.’