The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) was recommended to me by a friend. I must say I bought the book without reading the description. I had no idea how deep and reflective the book would be. I probably wouldn't have purchased it if it wasn't recommended to me. Stephen Chbosky makes you laugh, feel sad, feel happy. I felt some things were awkward/uncomfortable to read. The more I read, the more I thought this book was simply going to turn out to be a tragedy. But the last few pages were able to put it all in perspective and leaves us with some good lessons. When you are reading this book, you become a wallflower.

The story is narrated by Charlie through letters. He is a freshmen in high school. Charlie is a wallflower. He sees things, he keeps quiet about things, and he understands. He is introverted and overly shy. Through the letters we learn of Charlie's friend who committed suicide, Charlie's experiments with drugs and alcohol, his first experience with a girl, his homosexual friend, and lastly (spoiler) molestation.

Clearly this a deep book with a lot of sensitive issues. Given this was written 12 years ago, I give props to the author for addressing these issues directly. Society still struggles with these today. Still, I don't think this book would satisfy everyone's reading standards. To close this post, I wanted to add that I googled The Perks of Being a Wallflower earlier today, and I saw they are making this book into a movie next year (starring Emma Watson).

My rating for The Perks of Being a Wallflower: 3 stars out of 5. Get it here!

In the Plex by Steven Levy

In the Plex (2011) is an inside view of what Google is all about. It took me just over two weeks to read this book, and I literally read it every day. I cannot remember the last time it took me this long to a read a book that I could not put down. The reason it took a while is there is an incredible amount of information. Everything Google has done up until the beginning of this year is documented. The author has been reporting on the company since they first began and was granted permission to all kinds of inside access at Google.

The book starts with how Google was started by two kids in graduate school at Stanford. He tells stories of them in their offices: from dorm rooms to a lady’s house to above a pizza shop to a real office building. The two founders, Brin and Page, tried to sell Google numerous times, but nobody really wanted it. Eventually they figured out how to make money – advertising. They cracked the code everyone was trying to decipher on the internet. Last year alone they earned $30 BILLION dollars in revenue.

People probably know the basic stuff Google does…the search engine, g-mail, YouTube, Android phones, Chrome browser, blogger, Google Maps and street view. But some other things really stand out: attempting to scan every book in existence (33 million of them); building data centers all over the world; impacting the 2008 presidential election; building a car that can drive itself. It’s amazing how many different things Google does. While their motto has always been “Don’t be evil”, they’ve run into many enemies as they’ve grown into different sectors. In one instance, 133 companies and organizations combined in a lawsuit again Google (their law department has hundreds of employees). The book details every project Google took on, so you really get to understand how things came about.

Brin and Page are very interesting people. Countless times they are described as Montessori kids, which is a unique type of schooling that really spurred their creativity and installed their principles. They are absolutely geniuses, but not typical business leaders. They don’t dress up and are not formal in any way. They have exercise balls in their offices. Brin blesses or rejects each new hire (he did this for all 30,000 employees). They ask ridicules questions in interviews. After reading In the Plex, their actions are justified and it all makes sense.

I will say that if you are not technologically inept, this book would be incredibly confusing. I can see an elderly crew struggling with some of the concepts. Most shocking to me was that Google keeps logs of every search. And they pin-point it to each individuals internet IP address. With their ads, they now install "cookies" that track every website you visit. The book is much more than privacy issues though. If you take the time to learn of Google’s history, you will understand why this intrusiveness is appropriate and in their eyes, completely okay.

I enjoyed the story 100%. I cannot say enough good things about this book. It’s fitting this was a long post. My rating for In the Plex: 5 stars out of 5! Get it here!

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Linchpin (2010) is written by Seth Godin, who has a great blog. He writes short posts, usually a paragraph at most. Sometimes it’s simply a few sentences. I really like his blog. He points out things that are unique and enlightening. He has written a dozen books and is a renowned speaker. He’s the person who coined the term “purple cow”. Linchpin is written similarly to his blog. There are chapters, but in each chapter are short essays. In my opinion, Linchpin is a compilation of musings that could have, maybe should have, been on his blog.

The point of the book is to be a linchpin, someone who is indispensable. Being creative, going beyond what is asked, and overcoming fears of whatever is holding you back. The best part of the book to me was how he describes people as cogs in a machine. In school, we are told what to do, when to do it, and are evaluated on how well we followed the instructions. The same goes in the workplace. People are interchangeable parts in a factory. But that is only a short part of the book. The rest focuses on creating “art”, which he defines as emotional labor and tons of examples of people are who linchpins in their field.

While the book is short and an easy read, I found it to be fluffy and repetitive. I started the book a few months ago, but never got around to finishing it. It’s an easy book to pick up and keep reading because of the writing style of short essays. But it was difficult to get myself to finish it. This wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down. 

My rating for Linchpin: 2 stars out of 5. Read Linchpin here!