Review: Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite To Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Aventure In The World Of Underground Poker by Molly Bloom

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY
Molly's Game is a memoir of a woman behind one of the underground high-stakes poker game in Hollywood, detailing how she came to the game and the tactics she used to become almost indispensable in that world.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Contrarians of all shades.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
The contents of this book were more outrageous that you would read in gossip magazines. If you already think a Hollywood is a crazy place and runs on different rules than most places in the world, this book would confirm your suspicion. The author did not hold back (she dropped some pretty heavy names too) on some of the excess going on in some celebrity circles. More importantly, she tries to explain the rationale behind some of these weird behaviours and how she dealt with them.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

"Eventually Reardon started bringing me to the meetings instead of making me wait outside. I observed him closely. Reardon was a master negotiator. He was able to convince really smart people to make really stupid decisions. He would walk into a meeting, and by the time he walked out, he was carrying signed agreements that met all of his insane demands: he would assume none of the risk and had the final say in all decisions. It didn’t matter who his opponent was, he outplayed them every time. I came to recognize the checkmate moment in which the Ivy League guy with his custom suit and air of arrogance would suddenly realize the guy wearing army fatigues and a skull T-shirt, who had partied his way through a state university, had just crushed him. I had to hide my smile as Mr. Pedigree’s elitist expression deflated into withering defeat.

"There was no university on the planet that could have prepared me for the education I got from Reardon. It was baptism by fire. It was frustrating, and it was challenging, but I loved every class. I loved the show. I loved watching him succeed. In order to survive in his world, I had to learn how to operate well under pressure, and so he tightened the screws in order to teach me. Reardon was like a more extreme version of my father, always pushing me, never allowing me to take it easy, wanting to make me tough. He gave me a Wall Street–style education, the kind that guys give guys down on the floor or at the trading desk, the kind that women rarely get. I started to see the world for what it was, or at least his world. I also saw that there were more than just the traditional, safe routes to success.

"Reardon became my grad school and I studied how he operated. Law school wasn’t even on my radar anymore. Reardon was a master strategist. He knew how to analyze a deal, and if he recognized opportunity, he would capitalize on it. It didn’t matter if it was something he had no experience in, he would learn. Study it day and night, until he figured it out. The lessons I got from Reardon on how to actually conduct business were, however, ludicrously short on detail."

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Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club by Molly Bloom is available to buy from on all major online bookstores.

Many thanks to HarperCollins UK for review copy.

Review: Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss

Tribe of Mentors is a collection of answers to some specific life questions that are designed to help people find clarity as well as make better decisions in their personal lives or in business.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
People who love the self-help genre are bound to take to this as a duck to water. Those who are not into the genre might be put-off (or quite pleased) with the diversity or contradictory nature of opinions in this book.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT

I love this book because of the differences of view and opinions in it. The things that some will tell you not to do is what works for others and vice versa. Quite illuminating when you think about it - the fact that nothing is guaranteed and that there is no one road to self-actualisation.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

"As a competitive chess player, failure is part and parcel of growth. My most important failure came at a tournament in Bermuda where I needed to win a crucial game in order to finally get the title of International Grandmaster, the highest and most prestigious title a player can attain. I was playing Grandmaster Michael Bezold from Germany, and in a crucial position, I had a choice between taking one of his important pieces or taking a mere pawn. It turned out that taking his pawn would have kept all my advantages intact while greedily taking his rook caused my attack to dry up in an instant. After I lost the game, Alexander Shabalov, a Grandmaster who won the U.S. title four times, reassuringly pointed out my mistake and then said words I will never forget: 'In order to become a Grandmaster, you must already be one.' I understood right there that I had to get back to work on perfecting myself before I could actually go about winning games. That idea kept my eyes focused on the process over the result ever since." - Maurice Ashley (first African-American International Grandmaster in the annals of the game of chess)

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Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss is available to buy from on all major online bookstores.

Review: Photographic: The Life Of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Pena

Photographic is a layout of Graciela Iturbide's childhood background, her past works, and the philosophy behind how and why she takes pictures.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Photographers, writers, painters, and other creatives can benefit from a master photographer's insights about her motivations, how she sees, and her work preparation.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT

Learning about what drives us is a lifelong occupation. However, elderly artists have more experience and more valuable things to say about this since they've come way up the road. It is a privilege to catch a glimpse how Graciela perceives herself in relation to she photographs. For me, it is clear see why she's had a long career and still keeps going despite her age.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

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Photographic: The Life Of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Pena is available to buy from on all major online bookstores.

Many thanks to Getty Publications for review copy.

Review: Etiquette Rules!: A Field Guide To Modern Manners by Nancy R. Mitchell

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY
Etiquette Rules! is a book that seeks to educate on the importance of proper manners in different settings as well as showing ways to acquire such manners.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
CEOs, diplomats, people working in hotel and service industries, Customer Service Advisors... anyone with interest in studying and influencing human behaviour through appearance.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
This is one of the most practical books I've read this year. There are loads of hints on deciding how to appear and conduct yourself when you do not know the situation you are walking into, how to interact properly with a disabled person, the principles of a good handshake, the art of proper listening, and more. If you are in a job or career that deals with people day-to-day, learning the good habits in this book might change people's perception of you as well as take you far careerwise.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

"You might be surprised to learn that there is a gauge in your brain with one purpose and two settings. The settings on the gauge are formal and informal, and its sole purpose is to serve as a firm hand to steer you in one direction or the other when you have choices in attire, forms of address, greetings, introductions, communication, and social and business decorum. The default setting on the gauge is formal, because we always begin with formality. Why? Because it is difficult to offend someone by being too formal and very easy to give offense when being too informal too soon. By beginning with the needle set on formal, we demonstrate respect. Then, as we pick up signals from the people, occasion, and environment around us, we may decide to move the needle toward informal. Knowing if and when to move the needle will be a critical component of your success."

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Etiquette Rules!: A Field Guide To Modern Manners by Nancy R. Mitchell is available to buy on all major online bookstores.

Many thanks to Wellflett Press for review copy.

Review: Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy by Trebor Scholz

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY
Uberworked and Underpaid is an indepth look at the state of digital work place and practices, how it has enriched the few and impoverished many despite its promise of freedom and entrepreneurship for all.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Anyone with a stake or potential stake (work-wise) in today's gig economy. University or college students concerned about getting a job after school would also benefit from having a read.
People who get depressed easily should stay clear, there is plenty of sorrow and pessimism to drive a human insane here. There is also a lot of hope and proferred solutions, but the author is quite realistic about the state of jobs in the world at this time.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
The author was thorough in researching various methods that "internet-age" companies like Uber, 99Deisgns, Upwork, Amazon, etc use in avoiding the payment of minimum wage to staff. More importantly, this book encourages the formation of staff-owned platforms, citing the examples of Loconomics and Stocksy, as one of the ways to circumvent the tyranny of low-pay or non-paying work in the name of "exposure" or freedom from traditional jobs.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

"We are told that millennials want to take their clock back; they prefer to work at night, following their inner clock. Workers, stationed in a cafe, their living room, or a co-working space, can freely follow their interests and they even get to travel. There are, of course, significant advantages to not working in an office as nobody controls what you’re doing as long as the project gets done on time. In reality, however, this contingent work setup often leads to loneliness, fake flexibility, a lack of consistent opportunities to work, and longer work hours. What is marketed as flexibility and autonomy, at least for the most vulnerable workers, is in fact much closer to what Mike Davis calls 'forced entrepreneurialism.' On a Mechanical Turk coffee mug it reads: 'Why work if you can turk?' suggesting that crowdwork for Amazon does not even feel like work. And who would do it if it’d feel like exploitation? Net critic and consultant Clay Shirky suggested that much and the CEO of Amazon Mechanical Turk posed that workers can vote with their feet if they don’t approve of their pay; they have a choice.

"But for some workers toiling in the platform economy is about 'Zugzwang.' 'Zugzwang' in chess, means that no matter what the players ’ next move will be – and a move she has to make – there are not any good options."

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Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy by Trebor Scholz is available to buy on all major online book stores.

Many thanks to Polity for review copy.

Review: Being A Writer: Advice, Musings, Essays, and Experiences From The World's Greatest Authors by Trace Elborough and Helen Gordon

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY
Being A Writer is a collection of information and diverse opinions by essayists, fiction writers, and non-fiction writers of different kinds on the subject of writing.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Writers of all kinds and different stages of development.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
The diversity of the collections is impressive. Short story writers rarely feature in a collection like this, but this book has many. Also, this book goes beyond the normal old, dead, white European writers to contemporary African and Asian writers perspectives on the craft - there are many voices to hear from here.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily,  in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.  I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss." Joan Didion

"One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read ‘The Metamorphosis’. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, ‘As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect . . .’ When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories." Gabriel García Márquez

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Being A Writer: Advice, Musings, Essays, and Experiences From The World's Greatest Authors by Trace Elborough and Helen Gordon is available to buy from on all major online bookstores.

Many thanks to Quarto Publishing Group for review copy.

Review: The Ghost Fleet: The Whole Goddamned Thing by Donny Cates and Daniel Warren Johnson

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY
The Ghost Fleet: The Whole Goddamn Thing is a graphic novel about the adventures of an underworld clique that transports unknown items for underworld organisations and individuals.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Fans of gritty, fast-paced action and fantasy stories will be thrilled with this novel.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
Memorable characters, believable story, exquisite art, nail-biting cliffhangers...this volume has it all. The action never lets up and the dialogue feels natural. I was disappointed when it ended - I wanted more.

MEMORABLE PASSAGE

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The Ghost Fleet: The Whole Goddamn Thing by Donny Cates is available to buy from the first week of December 2018 on all major online bookstores.

Many thanks to Image Comics for review copy.

The Trials Of Japanese-American Children During World-War 2

"... explores the love of reading and the life of the librarian who cared enough to keep looking out for children who shared her love of books and have been unjustly segregated."

WORLD WAR 2
World War 2 is a popular subject in books, games, and movies. A large proportion of its aspects have been examined and explored - the effects of food, propaganda, weather, weapons, etc have been scrutinised and theorised. Even the exploits and vices of countries involved have been looked at and dissected over and over. However, there still remains few details of that war, especially the consequences, that is not well-known and popular for various reasons.

ABOUT THE BOOK
In any case, Write To Me by Cynthia Grady and Amiko Hirao is a book (albeit for 4 to 8 year olds) that looks at the treatment of Japanese-Americans at the hands of Franklin Roosevelt-led American government during World War 2.

The bombing of Pearl harbour prompted the American government into sending all Japanese-Aameircanfamilies into prison camps for the duration of the war. The rationale was the fear that the Japanese-American communities might have spies reporting to the Japanese government. As a result of this thinking, Japanese-American properties were seized and everyone, including children, where sent to prison camps to live with minimum food and comfort.

Write To Me by Cynthia Grady and Amiko Hirao is a story told from the perspective of children writing to their librarian, telling her of daily inconveniences and thanking her for the books she keeps sending to them.

Write To Me is based on real life and the story of Clara Breed, a librarian in San Diego who advocated for Japanese-American children during the war and kept exchanging visits and letters with them, including sending them books.

CONCLUSION
The book explores the love of reading and the life of the librarian who cared enough to keep looking out for children who shared her love of books and have been unjustly segregated.

Write To Me by Cynthia Grady and Amiko Hirao is an insightful book, exploring a marginalised aspect of history. It is an eye-opener for children and adults and shows how the love of literature transcends races and backgrounds.

Write To Me is published by Charlesbridge Publishing. Many thanks to them for the review copy.