Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

A couple housekeeping items to start off this post. I am going to start screening the books recommended to me because the stack next to my bed is growing. I simply don’t have enough time in my life to read all of them right now. With that being said, I hope people still suggest books for me. I will eventually read them, I promise. Also, I am changing the “Upcoming Reviews” tab to list all of the books in my queue to be in no particular order. I'm going to read a few at a time and whichever is finished first will be reviewed on the blog. Lastly, I am going to start lending books to people. If you want to read something I review, shoot me an e-mail, text, tweet, or facebook message and I will mail the book to you (if you live close then I’ll drop it off). All I ask is that you return the book when you’re done. Now onto the review for Delivering Happiness…

Delivering Happiness is the story of Tony Hsieh, who is currently the CEO of Zappos. They sell shoes and are known for great customer service. (All employees start by answering phones in the call center; then they are offered $2,000 to quit.) Tony attended Harvard and was one of those computer geeks, but in a good way. After quitting the corporate world a few months after college, he started a company which eventually sold to Microsoft for $265 million. Tony started investing as a venture capitalist and nearly went broke. Then he invested in the company Zappos and took a more involved role with the company, eventually becomming CEO and selling to Amazon for $1.2 billion.

I liked the book because I thought it was very personal. In the first few pages, Tony says he didn’t use a ghostwriter and he wanted to write it as if he was talking normally. You definitely get that feel when reading. While you do hear some of the business stories, you also get the personal stories. [Side tangent: I got the idea of training for a half-marathon from the book – I’ll be running in October.] The reader also gets an inside glimpse of the company as Tony shares e-mails he sent out company wide. By the end of the book, I was left wanting to order from Zappos…which I did a few months ago.

Lastly I’d like to say that I heard Tony speak at an event I attended last September in Providence. He gave all attendees a free copy of the book, and I stuck around to get it signed by him:

“To Nick, Live in the WOW. Tony Hsieh”

Didn’t get to chat much because he was being rushed out of the building as part of his “Happiness Bus Tour” across the country. Still this is the first review I’ve done where I met the author. Good stuff.

My rating for Delievering Happiness: 3 stars out of 5. Get it here!

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

This is going to be a personal post and I am not one to usually get personal. The reason for reading Unbroken was simple. At my college graduation, Louis Zamperini received an honorary degree from my school. They briefly told his story but frankly there was more to it. Zamperini received 3 standing ovations during the ceremony, all of which were deserved. My dad asked for his book for father’s day. When he finished it, I decided to read it.

Louis Zamperini was a trouble-maker as a child, one time running away but soon returning home. He took up running in high school and quickly became one of the fastest runners in the country – so fast that he qualified for the 1936 Olympics. He shook Hilter’s hand after running one of his races in Germany. Many believe Louis would be the first person to ever break the 4-minute mile (he was seconds away). Then WWII began.

Zamperini enlisted in the Air Force as a bombardier. Soon his plane was shot down and he was stranded over the ocean in a raft with no food or water. He and the pilot survived the long journey at sea, fending off sharks and machine-gun attack from the Japanese. They were found after 47 days by the Japanese and became Prisoners of War. Back in America, Louis was declared dead.

He was tortured and dehumanized for over 2 years at various POW camps throughout Japan. It is shocking to hear how poorly the POWs were treated and how demoralizing the camps were. When the war ended, Zaperini returned home a hero but was haunted by the punishment he endured. He turned to alcohol but was saved by a preacher and God. Later in life, he returned to Japan to forgive the guards who had abused him.

The writing is just as good as the story. The author went to extremes to research and confirm all of the stories, details, and quotes. You become hooked to Zamperini’s grave situations, wanting to know how he survives. (Side note: Laura Hillenbrand finds the most incredible stories to tell. She wrote the novel Seabiscut, which was eventually made into an Oscar winning moving. After her second book, I think Hillenbrand is one of the best historical storytellers out there.)

My grandfather was a POW during WWII in a German camp. I have no idea what he went through. He never talked about it. But this story made me think about him. There’s an even higher level of respect for all veterans when you read a story like this.

If you need any more incentive to read this book, it was named the book of the year by Time magazine for 2010. 

My rating for Unbroken: 5 stars out of 5. Get it here!

The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyes

The Murderer’s Daughters was the first book recommended to me at the beginning of summer. Surely strange for a guy to read a novel about a story consisting of mainly two female characters, but the idea behind the story was intriguing. An alcoholic man comes home in a rage, kills his wife, and nearly kills his youngest daughter, Merry. The book chronicles the lives of the two daughters as they live with these scars for the rest of their lives.

Lulu and Merry come from a broken family and struggle to find relatives to care for them. When their grandma passes away, they are left to the orphanage system. They pass through school together. Eventually Lulu goes off to college and becomes a doctor with a family. Merry becomes a parole officer, but never finds a suitable man.

Lulu absolutely despises her father, never having any contact with him. Merry stays in contact with her father through visits and letters. It’s interesting to see how the different views and actions of the daughters reflect on their lives. (Chapters are written with points of view from each character.) The culmination of the past 30 years really comes to life when the father is finally released and we see how the daughters cope.

The beginning and ending of the story are very climatic. The middle can become a bit slow even though years pass within a page. I can’t deny that the story is a bit sad, but I think that’s what makes the book a good read.

My rating for The Murderer’s Daughters: 3 stars out of 5. Get it here!

*P.S. What do you think of the reviews so far? More reviewing? Less spoilers? More about the story? Leave comments.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help was recommended to me last year by a friend. I bought the book, but I never read it. It was just too big, there were other books I wanted to read, the story didn’t seem that interesting to me. Well, I was wrong. I finally got to reading it at the beginning of this summer and I couldn’t put it down. I finished it in a week (I was full-time reading).

The story is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s. It tracks a group of upper-class white women and a group of maid-serving black women. The interaction between the groups is limited. Miss Skeeter changes all of that.

She desires to be a writer. She writes for a newspaper about housekeeping solutions, but she uses the knowledge of one of the black servants to turn her column into a meaningful contribution to the newspaper. Her relationship with the servants grows from there. Miss Skeeter wants to write a book. Attempting to get recognized by New York publishers, she decides to tell the story of maids throughout Jackson. Over a year, she secretly meets with different black women to hear their candid stories, stories that need to be heard. She documents everything they say, good and bad. It makes for a very compelling story, one that the big New York publishers eventually agree to print. As in all stories, the novel becomes a hit to make for a happy ending.

But not everything was happy throughout the story. Miss Skeeter becomes excluded from her circle of white friends because of her suspicious behavior. Even inside the black community things become tense. There are racial issues at play, but there are also women rising up against the norm. The author writes with dialects which really personifies each character. All of this is done in a non-conflicting manner and the author does an awesome job of creating a behind-the-scenes portrait of the cultures.

The Help received tons of critical acclaim. I certainly support that. It’s a very well written novel. The story is one that will make you want to keep reading. It is coming out to the movies this Friday (see preview here) starring Emma Stone. I always think books are better than movies, so read this book before you go see it in theaters. It’s a must.

My rating for The Help: 5 stars out of 5. Get it here!