Four Stars

Best for: Anyone looking for an entertaining read that also might help you embrace your unconventional life choices.

In a nutshell: Author Sarah Knight (who has written two other sort-of-self-help books) offers some updates to the social contract to help people get more out of life with a little less worry.

Worth quoting:
“The friends who don’t judge you for choosing what’s best for you are the ones you’ll want to keep closer than anyone.”
“You’re not ‘unsuccessful’ if you never dialed up a particular destination in the first place, regardless of how popular it may be with others.”
“Prioritize your needs, but don’t be an asshole about it.”

Why I chose it: My partner drew it to my attention. I mostly enjoyed one of her previous books, so I figured, why not.

Review:
I enjoyed this more that the previous book of hers that I reviewed during my last Cannonball Read. It has the same snark and sass, but it felt a bit more relateable this time around for some reason. She’s got the humor down, but she also offers some solid life advice.

I appreciate the premise – you should be allowed to live your life as you see fit, provided that you aren’t as asshole about it and aren’t actively hurting others. I think that there are a lot of us who make some choices (to keep renting instead of buying, to live together but not get married, to not date at all, to not have children) but find ourselves feeling judged and possibly adjusting how we act around other because of that.

Ms. Knight is offering another way – a way to reframe our thinking and end up happier because we are making choices that are authentic to who we are. And as is key, this doesn’t mean you get to yell at people because you want, or litter, or do other things just because, as those things are asshole things. But not giving your parents grandkids? That’s not an asshole thing; that’s you making the choice that fits the life you want to live.

If you struggle with choices that don’t fit the mold, you might find this helpful. Even if you and everyone you love is cool with your full-face tattoo, you’ll still probably enjoy the humor here.

Five Stars

Best for: Anyone interested in a basic understanding of how the earth has influenced politics across the world.

In a nutshell: Author Tim Marshall breaks the world into ten regions and gives an overview of how different geographic and cultural components (rivers, deserts, mountains, harbors, tribes) have affected different political decisions.

Worth quoting:
“The better your relationship with Russia, the less you pay for energy; for example, Finland get a better deal than the Baltic States.”
“China has locked itself into the global economy. If we don’t buy, they don’t make. And if they don’t make there will be mass unemployment.”
“Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall.”
“The notion that a man from a certain area could not travel across a region to see a relative from the same tribe unless he had a document, granted to him by a third man he didn’t know in a faraway town, made little sense.”

Why I chose it: I don’t know near enough about the world and the motivation behind some actions, and this looked like a great 101-level introduction. And it is.

Review:
This book could have gone one of two ways in my mind: impossible to slog through or difficult to put down. I find that often with non-fiction surveys: in an attempt to fit loads of information into one small book, the density can lead to dry writing and a list of dates and names that rivals the Numbers book in the Bible.

Mr. Marshall does, in my opinion, a great job of parsing some of the most critical bits and connecting them to other critical bits. Obviously the 40 pages on the Middle East won’t be able to get into the nuance of everything, but it’s a starting point.

The Ten Maps include: Russia; China; USA; Western Europe; Africa; The Middle East; India and Pakistan; Korea and Japan; Latin America; and the Arctic. Obviously that doesn’t cover all of the world; Mr. Marshall points out right up front that it leaves out Australia, for example, and much of the south pacific. But it’s a start, and was eye-opening for me.

I think starting with Russia is a smart move, especially since (from my perspective as someone from the US) Russia has been a bit, shall we say, active in the business of other nations as of late. The edition I had included information as late as summer 2017, so its quite a current book. Each chapter looks at the geography of the region and uses it as a jumping off point to get at how that might influence the decisions each nation makes. It doesn’t make moral judgment; it just explains. So, for example, if your country relies on water from a river that flows through a neighboring nation, you’re going to be VERY interested in how things are going in that nation.

As I said, this is a survey, not a deep analysis of any one nation, but still, I feel much better informed about the world than I did a week ago.