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Come See About Me by CK Kelly Martin

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It’s a freak accident that kills 19-now-20-year-old Leah’s boyfriend Bastien and she is saddled with grief that is much heavier than what she thinks she can handle. She and Bastien had their lives ahead of them: they were living together in an apartment in Toronto, they’d made plans to get a dog in the future, and they’d settle into great jobs and living the life both of them had dreamed of. But now with the accident and Bastien ripped from her life, Leah’s left to pick up the pieces of this future and put them together in a new way. For herself.

The thing is, it is not easy. Leah’s family lives on the other side of the country, and she does not want to move back. She wants to stay where she is because it is where she was happy. But she cannot be happy in her apartment any longer knowing that Bastien isn’t there. She can’t make it through school any longer and drops out. Her job at the museum is also just a little too much to take, so she quits showing up and now, she lacks an income to even pay for her apartment. Time is ticking for her to figure something out.

As luck would have it, Bastien’s aunt has a place in suburban Oakville, and she offers Leah the chance to live there without having to pay rent — she only spends a few weeks a year there to check up on her business anyway, so Leah would have the place to herself. Leah takes the place. It’s not easier, though, as she continues working through the loss and the rattling of what looked like the perfect future. Then she meets Liam. Runs into him quite literally and on more than one occasion. So when Leah finally gets the nerve to talk to Liam and ends up spilling her guts, she starts to realize how different it feels to open up. As she begins opening up to him physically and emotionally, Leah grapples with how she can move forward without Bastien without forgetting who he was to her and without moving on.

CK Kelly Martin’s Come See About Me is an adult novel, and because of a marketing issue, it was hard for this book to find a traditional publisher. So Martin published it herself. While I tend to avoid books that are self-published, Martin’s track record for writing strong contemporary stories appealed to me, and knowing how raw and powerful her YA titles are, I was incredibly curious how she could infuse a book for the adult audience with that power. This book was not disappointing in the least, and if anything, it proved Martin has the ability to write across audiences. And let me say this much, too: she can write a sexy story. Come See About Me is a title that’s going to stick with me for a long time, and it’s one I can see myself revisiting.

Leah is a complex and pained character who is struggling not only with overwhelming grief and loss, but she’s at a time in her life that is already so confusing. She’s on the path she’s been led to believe is the right one — she’s living in the big cosmopolitan city of Toronto, and she’s going to school full-time while balancing a part-time job. But when Bastien dies, Leah finds herself wondering whether or not this is truly what she wants to be doing. It’s not that she was unhappy with her future plans when Bastien was a part of them, but rather, losing him forces Leah to reassess her own life. She comes to the realization that doing so many of these things simply didn’t fulfill her. While she’s letting school and her job go, of course she falls into a deeper stage of grief, but through this, she also begins to learn a lot about who she is and what matters to her. It’s not grades or a full-time career. It’s finding peace in a way that’s not achieved through racking up “adult points.” That is, her happiness and fulfillment aren’t going to be found through finishing college or finding a full-time career. At least not at this point. What she needs to be happy are meaningful relationships. This is part of why her move from the city into the suburbs is huge. It’s the first step in Leah reclaiming control of her own life.

Enter Liam. From the start, he cares about Leah, but the problem is that she’s not entirely ready to let herself become involved in another relationship. Especially one that could become romantic. But without thinking too much one night, Leah has the overwhelming urge to be sexual with Liam. She lets go of the tight control she’s held, particularly over that physical piece of her relationship with Bastien, and allows herself to give into the moment. And it is sexy. In the moment, at least — when Leah pulls herself from the situation later and realizes what she allowed herself to do, regret and remorse consume her. It’s not just emotional either; it’s manifested physically. What scares her about this is that for the first time since Bastien’s death, Leah allowed herself to give into sheer desire. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t grieving or analyzing her world. It’s in those moments after, though, where things become painful. Leah’s scared to death of what she’s allowed herself to do because she feels like she’s let down Bastien. As readers, we feel the regret she experiences, but at the same time, we want Leah to allow herself the chance to give into her desires, especially with a guy like Liam who is so caring and concerned about her.

Let me not get ahead here, though: Liam is far from perfect. He’s here in Oakville because he, too, is trying to rebuild a life that was left in tatters. He’s from overseas and working on a local theatrical production. After a very public infidelity scandal, he knew he needed to get away and it’s here he has found a safe place. It’s here he hopes to rebuild his image. I wouldn’t say he hides this all from Leah, but he’s not entirely open about it, and part of the reason is this: Leah isn’t necessarily interested in hearing about it. At least at first. Liam can sense that from her and he allows her to take what she needs from him emotionally and physically. He offers himself to her in a way she needs. In doing such, well, what his past is really doesn’t matter.

The more time Leah and Liam spend together, the more intimate they become. And it’s intimacy this time, not simply raw desire. Martin has a knack for writing great sensual scenes in her YA novels, and given her platform with an adult novel, she’s able to amplify this. No doubt, this book is sexy; it treads a very fine line of incredibly tender and slightly dirty. What makes it work so well, though, is that these intimate scenes are powerful for Leah — they open her up in the way she needs to be opened up. She allows herself incredible vulnerability. We feel it with her, and these moments are powerfully mature in a way that goes well beyond how they’re played out physically. Over the course of her time with Liam, Leah begins to understand it’s okay to give into her feelings, into her own desires, and she’s allowed to let herself feel good. That that would be what Bastien would want for her. Leah, though, continues to set up strict boundaries in her relationship with Liam: she wants this to be nothing but physical. She wants no emotional investment in what they’re doing. To her, that would be hurting — almost shaming — what she had with Bastien.

Of course, that cannot happen. We know this. As much as Leah pushes away from the emotional side of her relationship with Liam, she simply can’t. It’s when Leah confronts Liam’s past head on where she discovers that her emotions are much more tied up in this relationship than she expected. She realizes how vulnerable she really is. It’s painful to watch her fall apart, particularly because as readers, we are watching Leah get stronger and find herself, even if she herself isn’t acknowledging it. When Leah approaches Liam about his past, she finally comes to realize that what she’s experiencing isn’t loss or hurt. It’s acceptance: of herself, of Liam. Of Bastien’s death. And just when it looks like everything will be gone, well, Leah will really get a surprise she wasn’t expecting.

One of my favorite threads throughout the story is a small one, but it’s one I think summarizes the entire journey Leah experiences. Bastien was passionate about creating a comic book called “Johnny Yang” — he was a bit of a superhero. Unfortunately, when Bastien died, he hadn’t completed the story. Leah found it important, though, to reconnect with this comic. She wants to finish it, if for no other reason than for Bastien’s dream to become a reality. It’s about a third of the way through the book when Leah finds a real turning point in this goal, where she realizes that “Maybe what [Johnny Yang] needs is another world to tempt him.” More importantly — and sure, this is minor spoiler territory — Leah doesn’t finish the story over the course of the book. It’s a continuing process, rather than something that’s opened and closed. But as readers we know that the process of creation and the process of exploring new worlds with Johnny Yang will help Leah move forward in the future.

Come See About Me is about how life is about stepping forward, even when there are a million things that can hold you back. It’s as much about grief and loss as it is about love and acceptance. Martin strips her characters down to their barest pieces and allows readers to watch as these characters struggle to find themselves. Her writing is strong and engaging. While at times I found myself becoming a little wearisome of the focus on the mundane, these bits of routine were important to the story — they were ultimately what helped ground Leah into her world. It was important when she went to the store to get food for her pet and when she went for a walk. These were aspects of Leah learning how to go through with being Leah. There’s a very fragile balance of being on your own for the first time and learning that you aren’t immune to awful things happening in your life. That you’re not as shielded from pain as you think you are.

It’s that last part that will make this book appealing to both older teens who are mature enough to handle the intimacy aspect, and it’s this very last part that will make this book appealing to adults, as well. Come See About Me avoids so much of what I find challenging about adult fiction in that it doesn’t aim to incorporate every item on the checklist of adulthood. Leah is imperfect, as is Liam, and neither of them are interested in chasing those items that make adults “adults” in our society. Rather than forcing these characters to conform to an ideal, they’re allowed to bend and mold to what they want their own ideals to be. And for me, that’s the truth of what adulthood is. It’s not about settling into a career, into a mortgage, into children and marriage, into saving for retirement and making sure your resume is pristine. It’s about figuring out what matters to you as an individual and making that enrich your life. In my mind, this isn’t a “new adult” novel (a label I really dislike). It’s an adult novel. I think the more we try to segment books, the more we allow ourselves to think of books as one sort of thing or another — just like I did in suggesting why I don’t like adult books. Martin’s book is hugely refreshing, and I think more books like this on the market is a good thing. It’s not entirely new, either: Tom Wolfe did it with I Am Charlotte Simmons, Curtis Sittenfeld did it with Prep, and Megan McCafferty did it with her Jessica Darling series, among others.

Although I could not relate to Leah much myself, I found her reminiscent of so many people I know, and I can see readers easily relating to her.  I appreciate, too, how Martin also made this book incredible diverse without every writing a “diverse” novel. Rather, we know Bastien wasn’t a white character because from the start, Leah says he was not white. But she doesn’t dwell on this. It’s a fact we learn and she moves forward. Likewise, Leah’s friends are not white, and we get that via their names and their cultural experiences that are simply incorporated into the narrative without fuss. Oakville is a suburb of a major metropolitan area, and it’s through this diversity that it comes alive. 

I’m not one to usually write down memorable quotes from books, but there’s one that stuck with me as I was reading this one that summarizes not only the whole of the story but of the power of Liam’s relationship with Leah and Leah’s relationship with Bastien (and, of course, Liam): “Bending instead of breaking. That’s probably always a better option if you can take it.”

Come See About Me is available now in all formats, and it can be purchased digitally at Amazon or Smashwords. It is also available in print via Amazon. This book suffers none of the trappings of many self-published books, so do not worry about any editing issues. Martin’s book is the real deal and will appeal to those who like contemporary fiction, strong characters, emotionally powerful stories, and who enjoy their sex steamy. If you want more or want to check out a sizable sample from the book, Martin’s developed a website exclusively for this book right here.

Finished copy received from the author for review.

A Couple of Disappointments

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As an adult, I’ve come to enjoy realistic survival stories. As a teen, I needed some sort of fantastical element to make it compelling, but I don’t require that anymore – the promise of real-life danger is excitement enough. So when I saw the blurb for Michael Cadnum’s latest, Seize the Storm, I figured it would be my kind of book. The premise is pretty simple: a family is taking a vacation on their fancy yacht and come across an abandoned boat full of cash. They decide to take the cash, not realizing that the drug dealers – including the drug lord’s teenage son – who own the boat (and the cash) are after it too.
It’s a great setup, but I found myself pretty disappointed in the execution. There’s a long list of characters: the teenage son of the drug lord, a teenage assassin, and another man in the employ of the drug lord all on the plane sent to retrieve the cash; plus a teenage girl, her male cousin, her parents, and a teenage sailor all on the boat that took the cash. Cadnum tells at least some of the story through each character’s eyes, which means there’s no true protagonist and we’re encouraged to root for the “bad guys” just as much as the family on the boat. Unfortunately, while Cadnum gives us a little insight – via telling rather than showing – into each of the characters, it’s not really enough to make any of them truly compelling. 
The story itself is surprisingly thin, too. The family finds the boat and takes the cash; the drug runners hunt down the boat and a stand-off ensues. I expected there to be more of a sense of danger, a bit more action, more excitement overall. Perhaps I would have been more invested in the story had I cared about the characters, but what little development we get makes them all pretty unsympathetic. I know it’s not necessary for characters to be likeable to also be well-drawn, but everyone was just so unpleasant, I honestly didn’t care what happened to them. If they all drowned, I wouldn’t have felt much of a pang. 
I went in expecting a survival story, but what I got was more a story about some unpleasant people who make a series of bad decisions. I think kids who go into this book expecting a thrilling read will be disappointed, although I’m sure it will have its fans among those who like books told from the “bad guy’s” point of view.
Justin Halpern’s Shit My Dad Says was a surprisingly fun read for me. I appreciated that it didn’t eliminate sentimentality entirely in favor of the profane humor, and I looked forward to more of the same mix in his follow-up, I Suck at Girls. In this volume, Halpern chronicles his romantic interactions with the opposite sex, beginning as a young child. He strives for ribald humor peppered with deep thoughts, but he’s not terribly successful on the humor front.
There are certainly funny bits – unfortunately, they’re mostly relegated to Halpern’s conversations with his father, which is what made the first book such a stand-out. When it’s just Halpern dishing about his girlfriends, the book is mostly forgettable; when it’s Halpern discussing girls and women with his father, it’s frequently hilarious. What this makes for is an uneven book that doesn’t linger very long in the reader’s mind.
Perhaps part of the problem is that Halpern’s dating disasters aren’t really disastrous – they’re fairly run of the mill and not terribly exciting stories in themselves. He’s got a nice way of writing, but it’s not enough to elevate his pretty pedestrian stories into comedy gold. His father is still the star, and he doesn’t make enough appearances to salvage the book. Still, if you’re a fan of the first book, this is certainly worth a read.
Review copies received from the publisher. Both books are available now.

Same Difference by Derek Kirk Kim

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I’ve resisted picking up Derek Kirk Kim’s Same Difference
for a while for what might be a silly reason: the illustrations are in
black and white. Ever since I started reading graphic novels, I’ve been
more than a little prejudiced against black and white art, no matter how
good that art may be. But I’ve pretty much read through my entire
library’s small collection of full color graphic novels whose stories
seemed remotely interesting to me, so it was time to buckle down and
move on.
There’s no better place to start than Same Difference,
a much-lauded book featuring characters in their twenties, which First
Second re-released in a “deluxe edition” in 2011. By much-lauded, I mean
that it garnered Kim three major comics awards when it was first
published in 2003: the Eisner, the Harvey, and the Ignatz award for new
talent. Pretty impressive, yes? Plus, I really dug Kim’s illustrations
in The Eternal Smile, so I hoped I would like them equally in black and white.
I needn’t have worried – Same Difference
deserves the accolades. By saying that, I realize this review won’t add
much of anything new, since the world has had almost ten years to
figure this out on its own, but for the two of you who hadn’t heard of
this book until now, this is for you. 
Simon
and Nancy are two friends going through a quarter-life crisis. They’re
in their mid-twenties, a bit directionless, past high school but not
quite settled into adulthood yet. They’re eating lunch together when
Simon gets a blast from his past: he sees Irene, a former high school
friend of his, waiting at a bus stop. Rather than go and talk to her, he
instead recounts to Nancy the story of their friendship, a story that
still makes Simon feel deeply ashamed of his actions.
Later, the two are at Nancy’s
apartment and Nancy admits to Simon that she’s been receiving letters in
the mail addressed to a former tenant from a lovesick man named Ben –
and she’s been writing back, pretending to be Ben’s object of affection.
Ben lives in Pacifica, which just happens to be Simon’s hometown, and
the two decide to go to Pacifica, hoping to get a glimpse of the man
Nancy’s been stringing along. Not only is Ben not what they expected,
Simon also runs into Irene – and he can’t avoid speaking to her this
time.
The best thing about Same Difference
is the way it manages to be both funny and poignant at the same time. I
laughed out loud at so many moments. At one point, after high school
Simon realizes what a giant…jerk…he’s been, he’s depicted as just
that in the panel. There might not be anything funnier than a picture of
a giant sad-faced…jerk. (Three guesses: What do you think my favorite
part of Superbad was?) And Simon and Nancy are great wise-crackers, constantly ribbing each other like good friends do.
Often, the humor is a lead-in for something a bit deeper: reflections on
life, past experiences that haunt us, and mistakes we continue to make
into adulthood. It’s never heavy-handed, though, and it’s done in only
80 pages with black and white artwork that perfectly captures both the
humor and the poignancy.

The
only thing I wish First Second had done differently with the re-release
is to include the “Other Stories” that were published alongside the
original story.

MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend by Rachel Bertsche

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My husband and I will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary in June. We’re both in our mid-twenties. Before we got married, we talked about everything you’d expect a couple who is about to get married to talk about: what we want in a career, where we want to live, do we want kids, what sort of life do we want for ourselves in one year, five years, thirty years. But maybe the most important thing we decided as a couple before we married was that no matter what, we would not become one another’s only friends. It was crucial we’d maintain our own private friendships separate and different from our relationship.

And despite the fact the things we talked about before — the plans we envisioned — have gone completely astray on nearly every level, the last part about maintaining separate and meaningful friendships outside ourselves is something we have done. To varying levels. I like to think that decision has made weathering the things that weren’t in the plan a lot easier to grapple with.

Because of the bumps in the road, because of the changes in place and space, I think he’s had a much easier time of this than I have. My friends? I made them in college (in Iowa) and I made them in graduate school (in Texas). I live near neither. My best friend lives half a country away, and we haven’t seen each other in years. Sure I’ve got friends near me — one who lives literally a hop down the road (um, or will until Friday when she moves a car ride away) — but getting together requires planning and work. Our lives our busy and getting together requires an hour or more in the car. It’s hard to call them up and say you’ve had a day and need them there to finish up a bottle of wine right now to make it better. My husband, on the other hand, went to school here, and he has a wealth of friends who live close. It’s easy for him to drop by their place after work, for him to go out with them after work. He’s met his tribe here, so to speak, while I haven’t.

Rachel Bertsche’s memoir, MWF Seeking BFF, caught my eye when I read about it last year because I felt like I would be able to relate to Bertsche. She’s in her late-20s, newly married, and she left everything she had behind her in New York City when she moved with her husband to Chicago. She lost her support system in the move, and now she was on her own to make a new BFF in her new city so she’d have someone to turn to when she needed it. Bertsche chose to do this through serial “girl dating” — meeting up with people she’d been connected with through people she knew or through various friend-dating services or through putting herself into activities she liked and chumming up someone she felt could be a good match for her. The book is a chronicle of her dates, as well as a musing upon the ideas of friendship and how friendship changes as you get older. It’s not like you can knock on your neighbor’s door and ask them to come out to play anymore when you’ve got a career and a family.

I brought my preconceived notions to the book: Bertsche starts by telling readers what her idea of a BFF is. It’s someone you can go to at any time and it’s someone you can call up at a moment’s notice to grab dinner with. It’s someone who sees you through the good and the bad. Someone who (her words) she can grab a mani/pedi with at the last second to gossip. She talks about her two best friends in New York City and how she’s looking for that sort of companionship in her new city. This is what she wants out of her serial girl dating. Immediately, I just … didn’t connect with Bertsche the way I hoped I would. Her ideas of friendship were so wildly different than mine. It was so singular, so narrow. I knew from the start she’d never be the kind of person I’d get along with and couldn’t see myself befriending.

As she goes on her dates, though, she offers up some interesting research and insight into friendship and what it really is. Bertsche meets a wide variety of women, ranging from her own age to much older and even much younger, and she gets to know women who are in various stages of life (some who are single and still looking for romance, some who are happily married with children, some who will never quite grow up, etc). After each interaction, Bertsche talks about what did and didn’t work and why she did or didn’t see the girl as someone who had that BFF potential. At the beginning of the book, it’s almost a check list to her. Would x-named girl be the kind of girl she could call up on Sunday morning and have brunch with in an hour? No? Well, time to drop her. Would this girl be the kind of girl she could spend an afternoon discussing Harry Potter with on end and then spend the evening devouring the latest television drama? No? Well, she won’t work either.

I found myself so irritated with her definitions and her boxes and I kept wondering how I’d make it through the book. It’s a longer read, since Bertsche does chronicle (to some level) all 52 of her dates. See, I’m a big believe in the fact friends all serve different purposes. At least, that’s how I view friendship. I have friends I turn to for different things and friends who offer me differing levels of support on different things, and I like to think I offer that back. I’d be hard-pressed to believe any of my friends has a whole picture of me or knows everything about me, and it’s a fact I’m okay with. Maybe one I’m comfortable with. And that’s not to say I don’t value friendship because I certainly do, but I prefer a wide network of friends who are one-or-a-few things to me and a much tighter network of intimate friends who know a lot more and will always know a lot more. I keep it this way because it helps me evaluate what I can offer them in return. I can’t be a good friend to everyone, and I never can pretend to be. But I can be a good friend to a few people, and I can be friendly and thoughtful and kind to many, many more. If I evaluated everyone in terms of their BFF potential, I’d never actually get to offer or experience friendship. Maybe it makes me sort of a hippie in thinking there is a bit of the organic in how it happens and how it develops and how those circles I maintain can always shift. I believe give and take happens when and where it should and when you’re in sync with someone else, you just know.

About half way through MWF Seeking BFF, Bertsche has a total light bulb moment. She, too, realizes that trying out everyone as a potential BFF — her idea of what a BFF is anyway — wasn’t going to help her really make friends. In fact, she says that her idea of a BFF was in and of itself out of sync with her life now. Nothing could ever be what it was like when she was younger and unmarried and in New York City. That realization was a huge one for her, and it shaped how she approached the remaining friend dates she made. It also made me step back and think about my own preconceived notions of Bertsche, too: I’d judged her immediately, hadn’t I? I considered my friendship compatibility with her, too. Who she offered herself at the beginning of the book rubbed me wrong but who she offered herself at the end of the book was someone I admired a bit.

Her biggest realization in the entire experiment? Friendship comes about when you learn to be independent. That’s really what her book is about — independence and figuring out how to be.

What stood out to me most in the book and what made it a worthwhile read, especially in the beginning where I did a lot more sighing than engaging, were the lengthy musings on what friendship is and what it really means. Bertsche made me do a lot of thinking about what friendship is and not just what it is to have a friend, but what it means to be a friend. The truth of it, and I think what makes it a hard topic to think about or talk about, is that sometimes you can never know what makes you a friend to someone else. What you believe you offer isn’t always what the other person is receiving. They may be getting something entirely different. Bertsche also broaches the idea of need fulfillment and about social networks and how or why some friendships endure while others never quite hit it off. She backs it with research and her own experiences, and because I’d been along with her on her dates, I felt like I got a good understanding of the hows and whys of her assertions. She mentioned more than once feeling a bit weird when she’d find common ground with someone over a sick or dead dad (hers had died when she was in her early 20s). But she offered it, and her returns either came back ten fold or never came back at all. As much as it was awkward to put herself out there like that, her reflections upon it were great, and I quite admired her at all for putting herself out there like that. Personally, the tough topics don’t make it out of my mouth until I truly know and trust someone wholly. Risk and reward are tricky.

More than once, I put the book aside and thought through my own feelings about friendship and what matters to me, and my husband and I even had a lengthy chat about what we believe our closest and most meaningful friendships are now and why they are that way. We talked about what we feel holds us back and what we do and don’t have in friendships and why we do or don’t care to have that. I couldn’t help think this would make an interesting book club title because the topics worth discussing here are many. Even if the chronicling of every friendship gets tiring — and it does — the moments of reflection at the end are worth it.

One of the points I disagreed with, though, had to do with maintenance of friendship. Bertsche (and many of those she pulls from) is a big believer in the value of the in-person interaction; she’s regularly discussing the phone call over the text message, over the email, over the Facebook or Twitter interaction. This sort of showed her privilege a bit in being an upper-middle class urbanite — something that also grated at me a bit as a reader. She had the opportunities to get out and do things, had the money and resources to go on all of these dates (she does admit to the cost of the endeavor).  The truth is, sometimes our good friends, those we want to give and share with, are never going to be there in the flesh with us when we need it. And while it’s certainly one thing to have that person next door, in today’s modern world, I think it’s becoming a lot more of a luxury than a regular experience. I don’t think maintaining a good friendship means you have to be there in person. It just means you have to be there, period.

My other big criticism of MWF Seeking BFF is that Bertsche periodically dives into female stereotyping. She becomes one and she pushes it in her own observations. There are moments where she discusses food and weight and bodies in a way that made me wonder why it was there in the first place. Then it hit me: target demographic. These bits weren’t authentic to the story nor did I think they were even authentic to Bertsche nor the experience she was trying to share. It felt simply like a way to make her story relatable to a certain 20-something female audience. Take a second to think about all of the magazines aimed at the demographic. It’s not entirely shocking, but I found it incredibly frustrating and simply noise to the greater stuff in this book. Is it possible for a memoir by a woman to not go down this road? Not everyone worries about whether they ate too much sushi, whether or not they’ve gained the average 2 pounds a year, whether they look like crap when they go to the grocery store when they’re feeling less than amazing. I can overlook it, but it doesn’t make it less irritating as a reader.

The book reads like a Malcolm Gladwell title in how it approaches weaving research and anecdote and in some ways, it reminded me a bit of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project (which I loved). I think the audience on this one is adult women, but because Bertsche’s relationship only plays into the story so long, it’ll easily appeal to those who are married or single. The premise is friendship, and she doesn’t stray too much from that. While walking away from the book didn’t necessarily change my ideas about friendship nor relationships, it did further cement them a bit. I noted a few pages with passages and ideas I believed, including this one: “It can be freeing to have relationships built on exactly who you are at the moment […] If it’s a good match, you’ll find that it wasn’t actually necessary for you to have all those shared experiences.” This is spot on.

Back to my original story: am I bummed to not have friends right here at my call in my new world outside college and grad school? Sure. But the truth is, what I get out of my friendships is worth more than the simple act of being able to walk to their house and share a drink. The real value is in something much deeper and something that transcends space and place, but you can never, ever go wrong simply being kind and thoughtful toward everyone, regardless of whether or not you are seeking a friend. You always get it back some how. I like to think every day I’m lucky for what I have when it comes to friends because they are worth more than their weight in gold. No matter what anyone says or tells you, they will always be as (and sometimes more) important than other relationships in your life.

I purchased a copy of this book.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

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I’ve heard a lot of great things about Malcolm Gladwell’s writing. Friends and co-workers tell me that his subjects are interesting and his writing style is easy to follow without talking down to the reader. I wasn’t disappointed with Outliers. In it, Gladwell tackles the subject of success – how people obtain it and what contributes to extraordinary success as opposed to everyday success.
The thesis – that our success depends much more on circumstances out of our control than any effort we put forth – isn’t exactly revolutionary. Most of us know it to be true. However, I don’t think I’m lying when I say that most of us also believe that we if we just try that much harder and develop our talent that much further, it will be enough to become wildly successful, despite bad or just mediocre beginnings. Not so, says Gladwell.
Most of the evidence Gladwell gives us is anecdotal, which is my favorite kind to read. I can’t really speak to how scientifically valid it is, but it sure makes for engrossing listening. For example, did you know that successful hockey players are almost all born in January, February, or March? Kids born during these months are older than the others kids when they start playing in the youth leagues, which means they’re already better at the game (because they’re bigger). Thus, they get more play time, which means their skill increases at a faster rate, and it compounds as time goes by. Within a few years, they’re much, much better than the kids born just a few months later in the year. Basically, these kids’ birthdates are a huge factor in their success as adults – and it’s nothing they can do anything about. If anyone could make hockey interesting to a Texan who only grudgingly admits the sport even exists, it’s Gladwell.
Gladwell also talks at length about Bill Joy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems. Joy is brilliant, yes, but he also had a wealth of opportunity presented to him when he attended the University of Michigan in the 1970s. One of Gladwell’s main arguments is it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at any one thing. At Michigan, Joy had access to a computing center where he could program continuously for hours. It was one of the few places in the country where this was possible. Joy didn’t go to Michigan intending to become a computer programmer, but once he got there, the circumstances provided a way for him to get in his 10,000 hours. Pretty darn lucky.
I could go on and on with the examples. With so much emphasis on circumstances rather than effort determining our success, it can get a little discouraging at times, but Gladwell stops short of saying circumstances are all that matters. All of the people he profiles had both luck and talent. It actually made me think of the ways my own circumstances contributed to my current success, and I realized that I’m a pretty lucky woman (but I work hard too).
I really enjoy nonfiction in audio format, and Outliers was no exception. Gladwell narrates the book himself, and his voice is great for the conversational tone of the book. Like his writing, he’s friendly and easy to follow. I’d pick up another audio by him any day.