Monday, April 18, 2022

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie

Victoria Jones was a girl like most others. Unfortunately, her gift for mimicry gets her sacked in the second chapter of this book. She is also an inveterate liar which gets her into trouble down the line. But in the beginning, she is having lunch in the park and meets Edward. He seems like a thoroughly charming
fellow and she decides to follow him to Baghdad. Why? Really, she has nothing better to do. And the first night there, she finally has some adventure when a man stumbles into her room and dies from a stab wound to the heart.
Now, the death doesn't occur until almost halfway through the book so there is a great deal of setup, but it is totally worth the read. If you've read Dame Christie before, it's not hard to figure out the murderer, but it is fun to see how the other characters come to the same conclusion.

Four stars
This book came out March 5, 1951
Borrowed as ebook from Libby
Opinions are my own

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Lead from the Outside by Stacey Abrams

I made it through three chapters of this book and was doing okay. Stacey Abrams has led an interesting
life and has worked really hard to get to where she is in life. I had picked up this book as a leadership book and was beginning to think about whether I wanted to keep listening when Chapter 4 came up. LOVE IT. You should read this book for this chapter alone. And, if you pick up the book, know that you will be getting more about Abrams' life than a straight leadership book usually offers. 
There may be other books that talk about mentorship out there but I haven't read one that lay out such a great way to look at the process of finding and keeping mentors. And I've read a ridiculous number of leadership books.
She talks about the types of mentorship: sponsor (who speaks up for you and opens doors), Advocate (someone who looks out for your success), peer (people who understand your problems.)
She mentions that you should build your network and to be intentional about how you do it. Find time to have informational meetings and make them be with a variety of people. At least one of the people in your network should not look like you. Make sure to include someone whose skills you admire. Also, you should be the one to plan the questions both in the informational meetings and with your mentor. That means that you will be finding out the things you need to know.
One great way to find mentors is to become a mentor yourself as people who help others are more likely to receive help in return.
Abrams talks about knowing things - finances (your own and corporate), understand what it is that you want, and that winning is not the goal.

Four stars
This book came out March 26, 2019
Borrowed as audiobook from Libby
Opinions are my own

Saturday, April 16, 2022

A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson

Hugo Hawkworth very much feels the effects of his leg wound. Now he can't serve in the army and his official story has to be that it was a bicycle accident. He's been picked up by another department but still chafes at riding a desk. At least he gets to spend time with his young sister, thirteen-year-old Georgia, the only family he has left in the world. 
They've come to Selchester Castle, the site of the mysterious disappearance of the last earl almost seven years ago. The earl seems to be a man that few people have missed, including his daughter who is counting down the days until he can be declared dead and she can be wealthy. Her cousin, the earl's niece Freya, is the only family who still lives at the castle. 
When a skeleton is discovered under some pavers, everyone is shocked. But are they really? Because many of the same people who were at the party where the earl disappeared are still in the picture.
This was a good start to a series and I enjoyed it.

Four stars
This book came out July 1, 2015
Borrowed from Kindle; listened as audiobook
Opinions are my own

Friday, April 15, 2022

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself -Anthology

This is a group of articles which all came from the Harvard Business Review.

The first talks about how you allocate your resources. Author Christensen advocates for looking at delayed gratification and not always looking for the shortcut. 

"... humility was not defined by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others." "... if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited."... abusive, arrogant or demeaning... their behavior is almost always a symptom of their lack of self-esteem."

Drucker tells us about feedback analysis, that it can lead to the actions of concentrating and developing our strengths, then look for where our arrogance is hindering us and overcome it. "...but with opportunity comes responsibility." "Organizations are no longer built on force but on trust. The existencs of trust between people does not necessarily mean that they like one another. It means they understand one another."  "...it is vitally important for the individual... to have an area in which [they] can contribute, make a difference, and be somebody."

Oncken and Wass lead a spirited article on the discussion of monkeys and whether the monkeys (problems) should be on the backs of the managers (rarely) or their trusted subordinates.

Coutu talks about resilience, the study of which has been more closely looked at lately and will come into focus again soon with all that faces the world at the moment. Her key points include facing down reality, searching for meaning, and continually improvising. 

Schwartz and McCarthy look at four types of energy (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) and how those can be drained but also rebuilt. 

Hallowell's article explores ADT, attention deficit trait and how so many people have so many drains on their time that they can't accomplish anything. He talks about the goals or protecting your brain (sleep, food, exercise), organize around the ADT (break down tasks, keep an area on your desk and in your calendar clear, practice OHIO (only handle it once), and work in a way that helps you perform the best (adjust hours, use headphones, work standing up)), and slow down and take your time.

Friedman focuses on the domains of work, self, home, and community. He suggests that you sit down and really figure out who/what is important in your life and then see what small changes that you make might make you happier in all of the domains. He walks you through Total Leadership  (the principles of which are be real, be whole, be innovative) which is designed to help you figure out how to not only plan but how to experiment and measure progress in all four domains.

Ghoshal and Bruch talk about prioritization and what you want to achieve as a manager.

Quinn argues that great leadership comes from within. We can learn and emulate all we like but we need to find the fundamental state of leadership. He introduces the four questions that can shift you into that state: Am I results centered, internally directed, other focused, and externally open?

Key questions to ask yourself are the focus of Kaplan's article. They help you identify visions and priorities, how you manage your time, feedback, succession planning, evaluation and alignment, leading under pressure, and how to stay true to yourself. 

Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee write about emotional intelligence and not only that leaders should know that they impact employees but HOW they impcat employees (and therefore adjust their style.)


Thursday, April 14, 2022

Crooked Herring, by L.C. Tyler

Ethelred is approached by another writer asking him to figure out whether he killed someone. Henry Holiday woke up after a bender with the thought that he had committed murder. But he's not sure who. And it seems that the person that he thought he killed is still around. At least, Ethelred is still getting text message from Crispin Vyall so they think is still alive.
Ethelred pulls Elsie in to help (or she barges in, who can tell) but she doesn't exactly make the case go more smoothly. In fact, her interference could mean that our intrepid (okay, maybe not exactly but...) hero ends up in jail.
This was an okay addition to the series but not as good as some of the others.

Three stars
This book came out September 18th, 2014
Followed by Cat among the Herrings
Borrowed as ebook from Hoopla
Opinions are my own

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

A Perilous Perspective by Anna Lee Huber

Kiera and Sebastian are traveling to the home of a family friend. He is known to have a full gallery of paintings by famous artists. But Kiera notices something is amiss. More than one of the celebrated paintings looks... wrong. Her host is really not excited to learn that they might be forgeries but he knows who is probably at fault; it's the neighbors. He had been engaged to one of them decades before and both sides are still bitter. 
I think regular readers will enjoy this book as much as others in this series. 

Four stars
Follows A Wicked Conceit
This book comes out April 19, 2022
ARC kindly provided by Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

A modern-day fairy tale which wraps together a number of Sleeping Beauty tales with one first-person narrator (Zinnia Gray) who is destined to die some time near her twenty-first birthday. She goes to a birthday party thrown by her best friend Charm which is, of course, Sleeping Beauty themed. At midnight, Zin purposely pricks her finger on the spinning wheel and is immediately transported to another version of the story, one that is more traditional.
A quick read, Harrow packed a lot of story and emotion into it. There was also a bunch of history in the versions. This is going to be weird because it was only 124 pages in my ebook but I thought it could have been even tighter but this was a good story and I liked that it wasn't a perfect HEA.

Three stars
This book came out October 5, 2021
Borrowed as ebook from Libby
Opinions are my own