Businesses that rely on sharing goods are part of a new business culture, The Mesh, which author Lisa Gansky explores in her book The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. I can’t remember how I ended up with this book for review, but I pulled it off the shelf a couple weeks ago because I was feeling like reading something different.
Mesh businesses rely on a principle of sharing, that it makes sense to share items that are high-cost but that are used infrequently (cars, power tools, expensive jewelry, that sort of thing). The book profiles a number of businesses that are taking advantage of this phenomenon.
Book Review
One Sentence Summary: Cover Me is one woman’s story of navigating the American medical system without the benefit of health insurance.
One Sentence Review: Huber’s memoir is heavy on story but light on facts, making it a less informative book than I was hoping for.
Why I Read It: As someone just starting to take control of my health insurance, I was curious what lessons Cover Me might offer.
I think when I read too many review copies of books in a row, I start to get a little stir crazy. February was the month I planned to focus on review books, and I read five of them, with a couple library books in the middle for good mix. I read review copies with a little more focus than books I’m just reading because I want to, which I think gets tiring.
This week I decided to take a little break — TBR Dare, be damned! Forget you, overflowing bookshelf! Get away, review copies! I want to read freely and at random.
One Sentence Summary: Can the great books of feminism help one working mother reconcile her idealized outlook on life from college to the experiences she has today?
One Sentence Review: Although I felt like just barely the wrong age group for Reading Women, I loved the analysis of feminists texts and want to go read even more of them.
I am happy to report that I finally got over the reading slump I wrote about last Sunday, and actually finished three books this week.
Despite finally getting over my slump, I probably won’t get a lot of reading done today. My book club is meeting to discuss The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, and then right after that boyfriend and I are heading to our wine tasting group. It should be a fun day, even without a lot of reading.
Today my first “professional” book review was posted online — The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. In addition to getting to review the book, I also got to interview Sarah while she was in Denver on her book tour, so some of her thoughts on writing the book are part of that story.
I have to admit, I was a little bit intimidated working on this story because doing a mainstream review is a different style than what I write on the blog. I didn’t get to use the word “awesome” as much, and I felt like I had to pull back my personal opinions on the book a bit to talk about it in more general terms.
One Sentence Summary: “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and we shared that, too.”
One Sentence Review: Caldwell’s memoir of her friendship with author Caroline Knapp is a lovely story about the power of friendship, but doesn’t tread much new ground in the memoir genre.
Why I Read It: This book was shortlisted for the Indie Lit Awards in nonfiction, and I was a judge for that panel. Opinions expressed in this review are my own, and don’t reflect the thoughts of the panel or reflect our ratings of the book.
One Sentence Summary: Demick uses extensive interviews with North Korean defectors to write about what life is like in the most closed-off country in the world.
One Sentence Review: Nothing to Envy is a book that’s hard to read and hard to put down because of how well Demick is able to construct what life is like in North Korea.
Why I Read It: Nothing to Envy got on my radar because it was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in nonfiction, but I chose to read it because Demick is a journalist and I’m fascinated by nonfiction stories that are almost impossible to tell.
I have been on the library hold list for Gretchen Rubin’s memoir, The Happiness Project, for months. So when the book came into the library a day after Madison was smashed with a giant blizzard, I didn’t think twice about trekking through the cold and snow to go pick it up the first chance I got.
I also walked through the bitter cold to a local indie bookstore to pick up the copy of War and Peace they special ordered for me so I could join a War and Peace Read-Along, but that’s just because I’m crazy.
One Sentence Summary: The Cleopatra of pop culture is very different from the Cleopatra of history, who we don’t actually know that much about.
One Sentence Review: After a dense first few chapters, Cleopatra becomes an absorbing look at a woman remembered more often for the things that she wasn’t than for the things that she was.
Why I Read It: This book was shortlisted for the Indie Lit Awards in nonfiction, and I am a judge for that panel. Opinions expressed in this review are my own, and don’t reflect the thoughts of the panel or reflect our ratings of the book.
