Birth of a Unicorn, by Heather Wilde

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Heather Wilde

I received this book thanks to Virtual Author Book Tours
in exchange for a honest review.

I will start on this occasion by pointing out what the synopsis of this book promises because, having finished it, I think I have read a totally different book:

In this book, you’ll find the true story behind one of Silicon Valley’s famous companies on its rise to the top. Peek behind the curtain as you see the highs and lows from an insider perspective, on the roller coaster that is the startup life. What emerges is a lasting friendship, a billion-dollar company, and an understandable framework of success for you to replicate.

How to find the balance between your career and personal life.

Why emotional awareness and critical thinking are as important as specialized knowledge.

How to identify the real skills you need to build a “Unicorn” team.

What is supposed to be a tale about the origins of Evernote, is actually an autobiography about a woman who worked for this app from the start, but managed to do so in an unconventional way: her own.

The Wildes were an ordinary couple living an ordinary life, usually miles away from each other because of the husband’s job as a pilot, when the attack on the Twin Towers occurred. I suppose that there are times when an external or internal event makes you pause and reflect about the mindless routines that shape our lives; it could be a terrorist attack, an illness, a killer pandemic… And, thus, the Wildes decided they wanted to live together, and to do so on a boat in Mexico. When Heather was asked to join Evernote, she put two conditions: one, to work remotely; two, to be paid (!!)

You need to read between the lines to know that Heather had already been in contact with the intricacies of Silicon Valley’s startups and that she knew that there were times and enterprises where you just had to show up and work not for money, but for a promise of a better, more profitable future, if it finally comes. She also had already made a name for herself, thanks to previous jobs, that led the founder of Evernote to want her in the team, and the road to gain that position in which her own conditions for the job are accepted is one of the points that are not really explained in the book and I would like to know more about.

In any case, both Wildes joined Evernote and they went to live on a boat in Mexico. The rest of the story goes back and forth in time with anecdotes of their time there: the problems when travelling with pets across borders; the good relationship with their neighbours; cultural shocks with the Mexicans, of course; and the intricacies of working endless hours for a startup that keeps growing.

The line that promises to teach you “how to find the balance between your career and personal life” is what I found most utterly misleading, even purposely deceiving, since the author explains in detail how they worked for more than 12 hours a day, worked every day also on holidays, and went to marathon sessions of in-person meetings, to finally collapse crying in an elevator in Evernote headquarters and decide to quit her job. Work-life balance? Sure.

In addition, the book ends with a Heather’s many-times-postponed visit to the doctor only to discover she had a tumor, having had an emergency operation while her husband was in another country for work (obviously).

There are parts of the story that soothe you into the graciousness of these businesses which were once managed by a few kind persons like you and me, like when she talks about the policy of providing premium access to homeless people and to people in areas affected by natural disasters. There are also truly interesting insights from a psychological point of view, such as the discovery that female tech supporters needed more interactions with the users to solve a problem and, therefore, they were less productive because they spent more time in solving one ticket, only to catch up with their male counterparts when they began to use men or gender-neutral names.

However, I cannot say this book really penetrates into the foundations and the development of Evernote. As I said before, this is a memoir of the time she worked for the company, with anecdotes of their time and routines in Mexico, as well as their trips to the headquarters in California; and the feeling that lingers after finishing the book is that, yes, they managed to work from what they consider paradise but, no, if you have two people working twelve hours per day, you really need three employees to do that job, and you are burning people out.

I have no doubt that the author loved working for the startup and seeing it grow, since she and her husband were an important part of it, and I have no doubt either that it was very remunerative for them after the increased popularity of Evernote; but I am positive that they should have had the chance to do so in another way—in a way in which she does not quit due to an anxiety breakdown, or neglects her health due to lack of time. After all, the only people to be remembered in a company like this, if any, are just the CEOs.

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You can follow the tour and enter the giveaway to get a copy of the book here.

Book on Amazon.

Book on Goodreads.

The wisdom of listening, by Marilyn R. Wilson

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Marilyn R. Wilson

I received a copy of the book thanks to iRead book tours.

The wisdom of listening is one of those books you can pick up and open at any given chapter, read it, get inspired, and go ahead with your day, letting the ideas or the message penetrate slowly. Or you can pick it up, get hooked, and read it from cover to cover in a couple of evenings. You will love it anyway!

I decided to participate in the tour because I felt the title was calling my name. We are so absorbed in our own narratives that we hardly ever listen to what others have to say and, on the other hand, I also find it difficult to be heard sometimes… I guess this is the major problem of the modern era, isn’t it? So that’s why I thought that the book came to me in the right moment, and it has been a very pleasant read.

Marilyn R. Wilson uses her career as a journalist to talk about the people she has interviewed and from whom she has learned precious lessons, but she also talks about valuable messages from films, colleagues and family members; you can learn anywhere, anytime, if only you are aware of what is being offered to you.

In truth, I think the book is meant to be an autobiography in which Marilyn comes to show how and why people have shaped her view of life. She explains she had a difficult time growing up due to the expectations of others regarding what a darling daughter, wife and mother she had to be, trying to behave in a way she wasn’t comfortable with just to please her family, and feeling deep inside that something was wrong with her. With time, she understood that one can only be happy by being herself, and the beginning of a career in journalism, interviewing artists who had to ignore criticism from even their own families to thrive in life, tought her how to find a way of pursuing her true calling.

What I liked the most is that, apart from the topics that the author wants to address in every chapter, you also take the message of receptivity and openness with which one should face everyday events as well as the remarkable ones. And I also enjoyed the cozy tone of the narration, as if you are just *listening* to a friend sharing significant passages of her life.

Follow the tour and enter the giveaway here.
Book on GoodReads
Book on Amazon
Marilyn R. Wilson’s website

 

Memoirs, tales and short stories: mini-reviews from October’16 Readathon

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Anna Gavalda, Marga Minco, Sjón

As I told you, I chose short books for the Readathon, and that was the best idea I ever had: I read five books during the event! And, this is remarkable, all of them were interesting and enjoyable reads. This was a surprise because I just browsed the library and borrowed books based entirely on their number of pages, without any further information about them but the synopsis on the back cover.

I read almost all of them in Spanish, but I have seen they have also been translated into English, so I am free to recommend them here on my blog  🙂

Bitter Herbs: The Vivid Memories of a Fugitive Jewish Girl in Nazi Occupied Holland (Marga Minco)

This is a memoir of the author, and I think it is considered a classic in some Northern European countries, like The diary of Anne Frank.

The story starts when the German soldiers enter Marga’s town and, when she asks her father if they are going to deport the Jews, like they were doing in Germany, he says that ‘Something like that could never happen here‘. Her family didn’t want to leave the country and none of them survived except Marga.

It is a terrible story, of course, but the author doesn’t put any sentimentalism on the text; she just gives us her memories as facts for us to cover the passages with the fear and pain Marga must have felt in her youth.

Book on Goodreads.

The blue fox (Sjón)

This is a short tale set in the middle of the Nineteenth Century in Iceland. I thought I was going to read a story of men against nature, but I was very wrong.

The story starts with a priest chasing a fox for its fur but, as they move towards the mountains through the snow, the narration is interrupted to tell us what has happened those days in the village. There has been a death, and thanks to the preparations for her funeral, we are going to know the story of a girl who was “different”.

This is that kind of book you don’t want to talk about so much, for the prospective readers to discover the story by themselves. It is thought-provoking, sad and beautiful.

Book on Goodreads.

I wish someone were waiting for me somewhere (Anna Gavalda)

This is a collection of short stories and, even though it is not a genre of my liking, I have to recommend it, because most of the stories are shocking, affecting the reader in one way or another.

What they have in common is the impact of one single event that, in less than a minute, changes everything. Apart from this, there are different genres, characters, situations, etc.

I specially liked three of them: a humorous story about two rich boys who take their father’s car without permission; one about a female veterinarian who has trouble making herself a place in a small village; and one about a salesman whose life has been destroyed by himself alone.

Book on Goodreads.

A stolen life, by Jaycee Dugard

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Jaycee Dugard

I heard about this book when the three girls of Cleveland were freed a couple of years ago. I didn’t know the story of Jaycee Dugard – she wrote this book as part of her treatment when she was liberated and I thought it would be interesting to hear her thoughts and feelings about what happened to her.

This book is tough to read. From the very beginning, when she describes the relationship she had with her stepfather, a man who obviously didn’t love her and criticized every move she made, to every chapter regarding her captivity.

She was eleven when she was kidnapped by a married couple, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, on her way to the school bus, and she was held captive for 18 years, being told that she was going to “help” him with his sexual problem and it was better that he raped her instead of other girls. She lived first in a small room in the backyard of the Garridos, then between the room and the house, and later in a tent in the backyard. In the meantime, she got two daughters who were raised to call Jaycee their sister instead of their mother, she never received further education, and she developed Stockholm syndrome.

Jaycee talks about all the things that happened at the Garridos’ house. Not only did the man (?) rape her, but he took drugs in order to do it for hours (even days). In the first months only Phillip took care (? again) of her but later she was introduced to Nancy, being told that the woman was jealous and making Jaycee try hard for Nancy to like her – so was the need for love she had at that time. The book also includes some diaries the girl wrote about her and some cats that Phillip let her keep in the house, and it is heartbreaking to see the bonds of love she established with the animals. Jaycee had a big heart and she tried to fill it in that environment with anything she had at hand.

Another interesting issue is about how Phillip and Nancy changed the real world to her. She was told that there were people like Phillip everywhere, and if she escaped she would be taken by another bad guy. She also believed that she would be alone in the outside world; that her daughters would remain with the Garridos forever if she ran out.

The memoir ends with her life now: the reunion with her mother and sister and the difficulties she finds regarding the press, trying to remain anonymous and have a normal “rest of her life”.

As I told before, reading this book is hard and I couldn’t help but talking about it with everybody: the fact that Nancy actually helped Phillip to kidnap a child; the way they lied to her and made her believe that was the best and only life for her; how Jaycee’s brain has protected her from further damage by somehow making her find good things and love in everyday life. This is a book to read.

I would like to finish this review encouraging you, as Jaycee does at the beginning of the book, to speak up if you see something strange or unusual around you. Don’t always think that it’s none of your business; you can save a life.

A stolen life
Jaycee Dugard
Simon & Schuster
273 pages

Non-fiction reading challenge: 4/10

Crazy is normal, by Lloyd Lofthouse

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Lloyd Lofthouse

This is a memoir of a secondary school English teacher about one of his school years, two decades ago. I’m reviewing it for Virtual Authors Book Tour.

I studied a Masters in Education to be a secondary school Science teacher but I have never had the chance to work (well, I’m tutoring a girl at the moment, but it’s hardly the same), so I enjoy reading anything about teaching, including some of the FB posts some of my friends write about their good and bad days at their schools! That’s why I said yes to this book.

Crazy is normal is a detailed journal of an academic course, week by week. Lloyd Lofthouse taught English and Journalism and was known for being one of the tough teachers. He worked in a public school and in this book he explains what he did in every class, the assignments the students had to do, the books they were supposed to read in class, the daily work of the school newspaper at Journalism classes, the way he evaluated the students’ work and the problems he had with certain students on a regular basis.

That is exactly the pro and the con of this book: it tells you EVERYTHING regarding school, and it becomes monotonous when he was to remind the rules to the students almost every day; frustrating when he has to send the same students out of the class for bad behavior and doesn’t get anything by phoning their parents, and also exhausting when he arrives at home after more than 10 hours of work only to correct and mark assignments until bedtime. So it’s absolutely different from other memoirs you can read because I think it hasn’t been written to entertain the reader (in fact, I can say most will find it boring), but this routine is the hard truth for a number of teachers day after day, isn’t it? That’s why I liked it. I think Crazy is normal can help me to face the class and the job if the time comes.

I couldn’t help but compare every detail throughout the book to the Spanish education system, or at least to the part that I know. I wasn’t surprised that most of the issues teachers must face remain constant everywhere: bureaucrats who have never been in a classroom are the people who tell you how to do your job, or those parents who are utterly worried about their children’s self steem and ask you to give them better grades instead of making sure the kids work harder the next time.

Nevertheless, I have found interesting differences between the educational system in America and Spain. First thing that caught my attention was that in Lofthouse’s school the teacher is assigned one classroom and the students change rooms in every period, which is absolutely fantastic because, as a teacher, you can have your class distributed as you want with all the tools you might need at hand, instead of running from one classroom to another taking with you your laptop, briefcase, etc. like Spanish teachers do. They also have “after school detentions”, which, in my opinion, would solve most of the teaching problems, but actually doesn’t work as well as I expected.

The book addresses other interesting issues, some of which shocked me, like almost everything related to Journalism classes – the responsibility students have for all the paper process and how they solve all the incidentals by their own. Or the teacher feeling attracted to a brilliant student, which leads to an embarrasing situation (only for him, though) when they are alone in the classroom he solves in a forthright way. There is also the girl who is transferred to another group because she is being bullied for being the only white in the class, or the shootings happening in the neighbourhood where the school is located.

As you can see, I could be talking about this book forever because I have found it fascinating. I have learned a lot and I have borrowed several ideas from Mr. Lofthouse’s classes which can’t be learned at university. However, this is not a book for everybody: you have to be truly interested in the matter because he only talks about teaching and, therefore, the lack of information about the author’s personal life might bore the reader to death.

Finally, I would like to tell you that I happened to watch the film Precious, which I think matches perfectly well with this book, and it also gives you hope, perhaps not in the system, but in teachers and students.

Crazy is normal

Lloyd Lofthouse

Publisher: Three Clover Press (June 14, 2014)

ISBN: 978-0986032851

386 Pages

 

Crazy is normal has won an honorable mention at the ‘Southern California Book Festival.

The book will be on sale for $0,99 until November 15 on Amazon.

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