The Quarter-Life Reviews

Samantha Sweeting is a high powered lawyer, or at least she was until she seemingly made an error which cost her law firm millions of dollars.  In shock Samantha takes off-and finds herself in a far off village where she is a total stranger.  She decides to use the opportunity to reinvent herself and start over fresh.

The Undomestic Goddess is a lot of fun to read.  In the past I have found Sophie Kinsella’s books to be a bit irritating but this book seemed a little more balanced and it’s characters were just a tad more believable.  I think it would be nice to see some sequels to this book, rather than Kinsella focus her attention so much on the Shopaholic series…which, while entertaining, seems to have run it’s course.

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Last year on Father’s Day my parents and I treated ourselves to a viewing of the Will Smith movie, “Pursuit of Happyness“.  It was quite enjoyable-as most Smith movies are and I was interested in reading more about Smith’s true life character Chris Gardner and his rags to riches story.

Although Gardner’s autobiography was interesting and engaging-especially during his childhood and teen years, I found myself disagreeing with quite a few of his morals…and his version of “Pursuit of Happiness”…while the movie version showed Chris Gardner as a dedicated father trying to get himself and his son off the street…the real life Chris Gardner seemed a little too focused on the green stuff.  While I’m not denying that his heart was indeed in the right place in regards to his children that seemed a little secondary at times.

Despite my personal objection however, both the book and movie version of “The Pursuit of Happyness” were good and worthy of their praises.

Emily Haxby is going through changes.  First she splits from her long term boyfriend, then she up and quits her job…and is abruptly faced with the looming reality of quickly losing her beloved grandfather.  It’s a lot for one girl to handle.

Julie Buxbaum does an excellent job at conveying the “quarter life crisis” that many 20-30 somethings experience, and she does an even better job at allowing both Emily and the reader come to an understanding as to at least some of the reasons for Emily’s current crisis.  Buxbaum also does a good job at creating mostly believable characters, though, at the same time she seems to falter at describing certain characters so that they become vague ghosts in the mind of the reader, rather than actual physical people that you could picture walking down the streets of New York City.

Another downfall is the prologue, it gives too much away-at least if you pay close enough attention.  It’s written as though Buxbaum wants to be vague and not give too much away but unfortunately that did not seem to be the case for me.

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If you have walked into a Starbucks within the last six weeks or so, you have most likely seen this book prominently  on display.  The book explores the phenomenon of “black swans”, or, events that occur that are unpredictable and how they impact our society.

Some of the events that are explored in this book-the terrorists attacks of 9/11, the explosion of the Google phenomenon amongst other such events.

From the book jacket, it would seem as though the book would be interesting, even for the layperson with even the most minor interest in economics, mathematical theories or philosophy. The book is a tad dull, but mostly readable-especially with the handy glossary at the back of the book.  However, the last section of the book dealing with statistics is especially difficult to read (I finally gave up).  I also found Taleb to be pretentious and unfortunately at many times throughout the book his personality shown through-which made the book to be unenjoyable.

Unless you are very interested in this theory and don’t mind having the feeling of being talked down upon I would recommend it.  If not, perhaps pass this one.