Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

I have been a fan of Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) since her TED Talk on women in business.  In it, she talked about the importance of women "taking a seat at the table" (quite literally, don't sit in the back of the room) and advised women "don't leave before you leave" (i.e., don't turn down a business opportunity because you envision a life situation in the future where you couldn't have that opportunity)

In this book, she expands her ideas around women in business, through a mixture of personal anecdotes, research studies, and ideas about how to improve.  The book is pretty genre-less, not quite self-help, memoir, or business.  It's a quick read, alternating among funny, eye-opening and at times repetitive.

At first glance what is most striking is the name-dropping Sandberg does: Larry Summers, Arianna Huffington, Meg Whitman, Tip O'Neill - she is definitely part of an academic and social elite, which has been a large criticism of the book.  Another criticism of the book is that it is just part of the Facebook media engine.  Well, ok.  If it is, that's fine with me.  My objection to the book were the parts where she encouraged women to change how they negotiate to fit into the system, rather than change the system.

Quarrels aside, I am on the eve of returning to work after maternity leave, and there were several specific pieces of advice I will hold on to from the book.  Sandberg shared the advice she got from Eric Schmidt at Google - take a job for its growth potential, not its current state.  She also suggests that while mentors and sponsors are important, the best way to find them is to excel at your work and they will find you.  Finally, she shares the idea that if there is a work-life-balance accommodation you are looking for, ask: you never know, you might get it.  I am fortunate to work in an organization that has (so far) been very comfortable as a woman.  Now that I'm a mom, I hope that continues.

I don't think this was a perfect (or even that well-edited) book, but Sandberg is a great role model for me.  To have her book come out while I've been on leave (and Marissa Mayer announce her pregnancy two weeks before I announced mine) has made the past year much less stressful than it could have been.  With luck, the Lean In organization will effect change in my career, not just for future generations.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I thought Meredith had recommended this book to me but she says she hasn't read it yet so I'm not sure how it ended up on my book list.  It was good, though - a creepy mystery story.

The story is about Nick and Amy, an unhappily-married couple who live in Manhattan.  Shortly after moving to Missouri to care for Nick's ill mother, Amy disappears and Nick is accused of murdering her.  Through Nick's narration and Amy's journal, the first half of the book tells the story of their relationship leading up to the current state of affairs.  The second half the book, Nick and Amy alternate chapters, with Amy's part being in the present.

Neither Nick nor Amy is entirely honest with the reader, which is part of what makes this book so good.  I love unreliable narrators.  Whether he killed Amy is the least of what becomes interesting in the story.

Definitely enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down at times.  I didn't love the ending but I did like the book in its entirety.

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

I saw this reviewed in the New York Times a few months ago so when it was on the shelf in the library, I grabbed it.  I hadn't loved her previous book, The Dissident, but this was well-reviewed.

The story is about a man who meets a Bangladeshi woman on a dating website and brings her to his home in Rochester NY to marry her.  The couple genuinely likes each other and seem to treat each other with respect.  Over time, however, secrets emerge from both sides that threaten their marriage.  The man's family life is more complicated than he lets on, and the woman has elderly parents in Bangladesh who are relying on her to help them immigrate as well as a former love interest.

While this book didn't have the drama of A Reliable Wife (it read more like something by Thrity Umrigar), it kept my attention, both as the story of an immigrant arriving in the U.S., as well as with the plot twists across the characters.  I also enjoyed reading this because of its being set in Rochester, where Webster is from.

What was she Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

I took Sasha to the library for the first time and picked out a few books to get back in the swing of reading.  This title looked familiar to me, and indeed it had been shortlisted for the Man Booker a few years ago.

The story is about a teacher named Sheba at a small school in England who has an affair with a student.  It is told by her friend Barbara, who is secretly writing an account of the affair.  Sheba is married with two kids, while Barbara is single.  By the end of the story (told in flashback, so this is revealed at the beginning), Sheba's secret is out and she is vilified in the press and separated from her family.

Barbara's telling of the story is eerie - her unemotional character reminded me of Kath in Never Let Me Go, and early in the book it is hard to tell if it's because she is acting like a reporter, jealous, or for some other reason.  It's also one of those books where the story is about Sheba but the protagonist is someone else - in this case Barbara. By the end of the book, Barb's actions are far more interesting than Sheba's.

I liked this book and read it quickly.  My only disappointment was not connecting more with one of the characters, although I believe that to be an intentional choice on Heller's part.

The Panther by Nelson DeMille

Jo was reading this when she visited after the baby was born and I figured its airport-read style would be good for my sleep-deprived ever-shortening attention span.  Little did I know that she left her copy with my parents for me, and they would schlep it from Florida up to Boston.  I bought my own copy - which was a hefty 800 or so pages.

This is the next book in the John Corey series that follows the irreverent retired NYPD detective and his FBI wife Kate through their work on an anti-terrorism task force.  While it is not necessary to have read The Lion, or any of the other previous books in the series, to appreciate this one, it does make it more fun.

In this book, John and Kate (yes, John and Kate, sans Eight) go to Yemen to hunt down "The Panther" - the operative believed to be behind the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 Americans.  Teamed up with some other Americans from the CIA, they embark on a dangerous plot to draw out The Panther in Yemen, a country where they find you can't trust anyone.

I had fun reading this book.  Corey's persona can be a little annoyingly flip at times, but that's part of his charm.  The story itself was great - with lots of intrigue, great new characters, and the element of surprise.  I will look forward to the next DeMille book, the plot of which was teased in the last scene of this book.

Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon

This is the fourth book in the Outlander series by Gabaldon.  The series follows the story of a woman named Claire who time travels from post-war Europe to 18th-century Europe and falls in love with Jamie, a man in the past.

SPOILERS BELOW IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE PREVIOUS BOOKS.

I liked this book progressively more as I read it. Weighing in at 800+ pages, it was not a quick read, and the first few hundred pages follow Claire and Jamie as they settle in to life in rural North Carolina.  I started to feel like the story was really contrived - they had gone from Scotland to France to the Carribean to the U.S. over the past few books, and I was starting to feel like it "jumped the shark."

However, Gabaldon had some great ideas in mind and the book got a lot better.  Introduced in a previous book, Brianna (Claire and Jamie's daughter) takes a more central role in the story, as she continues to research her parents' story in the past.  Her love interest, Roger, is also prominent in the story.  It was nice to have a new set of characters to root for along with my old favorites.

I had bought this book with plans to read it around the baby's birth - I ended up starting it before she was born and the picking it up when she was about two months old.  The next one in the series will probably be a summer vacation read for me.