Review: The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ok, I read a lot of books in this genre - peak performance and optimized learning - but this one? It really is a standout. Why? Because through much of this book, Waitzkin literally takes the reader through his moment by moment thought processes, whether he is at the board with a dirty, cheating chess player or in the ring with a monster of a man ready to eat him alive. You, the reader, are directly experiencing a win (or a loss) as it is happening, inch by inch, move by move. Every bit of hard won wisdom, every time this masterful learner accepts and accommodates for a weakness in himself or in his opponent - his next move, his next decision - is shared with you and you learn with him. This is priceless stuff, it really is.

Waitzkin was a child chess prodigy who won several national team championships, becoming an international master at age 16. He was the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher, which was based on the book of the same title authored by his dad.

Oh, but that’s not all. Josh had cultivated a life of the mind, which led to an interest in meditation and Eastern philosophy. As a young adult, he transferred his laser focus from chess to the study of Aikido. He holds several US national medals and a 2004 world champion title in the competitive sport of TaiChi Push Hands. Oh, and he also became a championship coach. Oh, and he is a BJJ Black Belt studying under 9-time World Champion Marcelo Garcia.

This guy knows exactly what it takes to become proficient, really good, or the very best and you will learn the difference between these three states if you read the book.

As most books on performance are quick to point out, and which Waitzkin echoes:

The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.

And he says this on pain (this actually blows my mind): Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. When injured, which happens frequently in the life of a martial artist, I try to avoid painkillers and to change the sensation of pain into a feeling that is not necessarily negative. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.

I can fill in 40 more pages with Waitzkin quotes from this book, because he pours out page after page of power-thoughts, in between the real examples of being pushed to his limits.

He is not a dabbler; once he is interested in something, he digs deep. This guy is the Duke of Depth.
It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set. Depth beats breadth any day of the week because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

You don’t need to know chess or martial arts or even have an interest in these things to get great benefit from his experiences and his techniques on digging into yourself for the deep presence that begets superb performance.

Such a worthy read.


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Review: Bellman & Black

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This fabulous story has all of the outfittings of A Christmas Carol with that long, dark Dickensian shadow of comeuppance. In Bellman & Black, Setterfield develops her protagonist, William Bellman, with eerie skill. You will want to forgive his shortcomings and you will admire his diligence in all things.

Bellman’s father is rich, but he dumps the newborn baby and his mother. Sadly, William and his mother are not accepted by his father’s family, so they struggle. Never a victim, William is a successful kid and a very capable one, too. At the beginning of the story, William kills a rook (a crow) from a great distance, with a sling shot which he had fashioned himself. It was a miraculous feat; his friends were stunned. It was a cringey moment but impressive nevertheless.

As the story unfolds, we watch William grow in his business ventures. His hard work produces great wealth; he is the Elon Musk of the mid-19th century! With feverish pitch, he studies and experiments and takes time to learn every single task of every single job – one cannot help but admire his pluck and his drive. But something begins to feel wrong about his stunning progress, when tragedy after personal tragedy do not seem to slow him down. And around every single corner, there is a darkness, a presence - usually a rook. And there is a man who appears at every funeral William attends. William attends MANY funerals; he loses everyone who is close to him except one child.

The reader has the singular belief that because William killed a rook when he was 10, William is being haunted. The reader also has the singular belief that the one daughter who does not die is spared because of this mysterious man who haunts the graves and because of a shady deal that Bellman made with this man, the details of which are very vague.

William has worked himself nigh unto death. He is possessed by work and thus ignores a great deal of what humanity and the world have to offer. He is very wealthy but doesn’t seem to enjoy his money much. It is hard not to have your mind travel to Ebinezer (although William is not stingy). And there is a Scrooge-like reckoning at the end, which I won’t detail except to say … it confused me and was the only weak part of the book.

This final disappointment can be likened to a long trip. The scenery and conversation along the way are truly beautiful and enjoyable, but you don’t end up in the place you thought you were going. Not such a big deal when the trip there was so solid.

Great story!

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Review: Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found

Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found by Rebecca Alexander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

She is beautiful, intelligent, young and active. She is also gradually losing her visual and auditory connections to the world. What must this be like? Rebecca Alexander tells her story in Not Fade Away, an inspirational walk through her challenging days, months and years of diminishing sight and hearing.

Her childhood and adolescence, while not exactly typical, will still ring familiar to many. There is her parent’s divorce, her inability to perform as well as her twin brother, and other details of petty blunders common to teens. But the stage is set differently for Ms. Alexander. The leitmotif of Usher Syndrome Type III, rare and without a cure, is like an intensity filter on the whole scene.

My heart went out to her most when she finally internalized the truth of her diagnosis, which wasn’t until she was at University of Michigan as an undergraduate student. She knew but she did not really know.. So many can connect to this slow-awakening to a very difficult truth, which, when acknowledged and accepted, does not feel gradual at all. It falls upon one like a thunderclap in that one moment of crystalline understanding. When you finally know. She impressed me throughout this book but so, so much in this section.

I love her mantra: Breath in peace, breath out fear. I have used it every day since I read the words in her book, and I’ve shared it with my own four kids.

This book is not just about Rebecca; it is also about the many lives which crossed hers and the ways that people have helped and cared along the way. It makes the reader feel hopeful for humanity.

Rebecca became a woman of depth, character and destiny because she had to silence the sound of her own ego in order to solve the practical problems of her rare genetic disorder. She has done some hard, hard work to defeat her own weaknesses and these weaknesses are not her loss of sight and hearing. She has to daily struggle against her own nature in order to maximize her effectiveness in life and her sense of agency. These things are the qualities which enable and ennoble her and others like her – people who have some glacier-like difference (disability) which cannot be minimized, erased or ignored.

You will fall in love with her page by page, as you witness her battle against frailty. She wins. She totally wins.

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Review: The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Shaz! This was a wicked hot story. It has flawless pace - you will be instantly imprisoned in the stormy narrative. The Woman in the Window is readable in a day, but watch your neck…mine is killing me from prolonged hours in crazed consumption of A. J. Finn’s clever fictives.

It has something for everyone – tragedy, love, betrayal, violence – and many marvelous twists and turns. It is an utterly diverting psychological thriller spun around a familiar event ….she sees something from her window she should not have seen.

A. J. Finn's dialogue draws the reader into a casual, crisp style, so that the reader feels very much “in the conversation” … which just makes the fearful twists and turns that much more heart-flipping.

I feel like I’ve been somewhere else; this book is that gripping. Loved it, loved it!


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Review: The Marriage Plot

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I could not put this down. Mr. Eugenides does not disappoint.

To me, this is simply a book about modern relationships struggling under the standard burdens (Does she love me? Is he using me?) but perhaps made more puzzling by the fact that the men and women of the late 70’s and early 80’s were still fitting themselves into all of the components of women’s liberation and equal footing.

The best way to describe the lives and stories in The Marriage Plot is this: It is like a big, big salad with two basic ingredients – searching for love and searching for true faith – and it is arranged on a bed of mental illness, sprinkled with class struggles and served with a small side of painful self-discovery (aka growing up).

Most of the story takes place among the intelligentsia of Ivy League campuses and around the gentility of old money. Most of the characters (except Leonard) are the kinds of people who have the luxury of choices. Should I stay in school or get an apartment in NY? Should I travel for a year or two, or take that internship? This slice of the uppercrust life might not appeal to some readers – it might not be relatable enough to “let in”. For example, when one especially self-important, insufferable student, aptly named Thurston, was asked to introduce himself, he replied: Um…I’m finding it hard to introduce myself, actually, because the whole idea of social introductions is so problematized.” Now, I definitely would have smacked that kid if I had been his professor.

My favorite surprise in reading this was that from it I was able to put together a small list of books I want to consume – books which the author so artfully interwove with the events in and out of the classrooms on campus.

The book thundered with the old bard’s words, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Two thumbs up!


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Review: Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M.E. Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was on my gotta read list for years. Finally, it is done!

Confessions of a Sociopath is a very strange book. I kept wondering what the author’s purpose was in writing it. She says many times that she wanted to elevate the standing of sociopaths in society – to legitimize them - to get non-sociopaths to vote for them in a way. But, then she describes in many different ways the joy she gets when she purposefully sets out to ruin another person just for the sport of it. Hmmm. Every time she had me thinking…yeah, I guess sociopaths aren’t so bad, I need to understand these people better, she’d share another boastful story of her own laziness or destruction or manipulation, and I’d quickly withdraw my vote.

Here’s my takeaway on sociopaths, after reading this book. They are boring. She describes thinking like a machine, engaging with others only so she can use them to her ends, having no remorse, having no empathy, and lying, stealing and cheating her way through life. I thought I was curious about sociopaths. This book taught me that I am not. Not really. The absence of humanity made the stories somewhat monotonous.


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Review: Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am delighted that Stephanie Land, author of Maid, has fought her way out of the poverty which plagued her life. She represents a common cultural class in America - those who are born disadvantaged; those who never seem to get a break and who cannot find a clear path away from impoverishment. Bereft of resources, raised with poor or no parental support, with no access and no tools for success …. yeah, this is a recipe for long-term misery. Ms. Land is one of the lucky ones; she worked her way out.

I often felt I was being lectured to. I was put off by what seemed like a juvenile attitude toward the drudgery of hard work and toward the rather common issue of “the haves and the have nots”. I grew up poor, so I related to her frustration and her envy – up to a point. I am familiar with the worry and fear that, “I’ll never get ahead, I’ll always be serving those who have more”. She often sounded childish in her expectations. I think she could have accomplished more in expressing her unhappiness by using a less plaintive voice.

As for filthy toilets (speaking for myself), overflowing/blowout diapers inoculated me against all things gross, making foul toilets powerless to elicit much of a reaction. I did not understand her dirty toilet “breakdown”. Surely, all moms have dealt with much worse?

This book is described as “vivid and engaging”. I did not find it to be so. However, it did hold a valuable message - we must remember to be steadfast in our respect toward and consideration of others, regardless of their station in life.


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