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Book Review – Of Mice and Men (By: John Steinbeck)

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I must say before getting too far into this review, that Of Mice and Men is my favorite book, and has been for quite some time. It probably has the award for the book I’ve read the most times, but for me “more than once” is a rarity. I’ve been using the book as a benchmark for what makes a good book since I first read it, but is had been some time since my last (subsequent) reading, and I felt I needed to refresh my memory. I must say I was not disappointed.

At the risk of potentially sounding more biased than I already sound, I believe I can safely say that my barometer for what is a good book has been reset so high with this one that I almost feel myself going “why do I even read other books? Couldn’t I just read this one again and again forever?” Even from the very beginning, which in and of itself is a master’s course in how to do exposition, I was wrapped up and engrossed again. Of Mice and Men does not wait to hook you, or need to spend pages of setup to allow you to understand it. At only a little more than a hundred pages it doesn’t have time for that. You are there, and it has you, and it will not let go.

The story is one of Steinbeck’s California workers’ collection, about two men: George and Lennie, who are working bucking barley in the hope of saving up enough money to buy a farm of their own. Lennie is big, strong, and “not bright”, while George is slim, quick-witted, and… harsh I guess. They were “kicked out” of the last place they worked at because of a misunderstanding with Lennie and now they’ve just come to a new place where they only have to keep a low profile for a little while in order to get their money and get out. Of course as the title alludes, these plans “often go awry”.

The rest of the cast of characters is pretty small (indeed, the book was meant to be half-novel, half-play, so it stands to reason): there’s Candy, the one-handed “swamper”; Curly, the boss’s son who’s “just mean”; Slim, the cool-headed team leader; Crooks, the “negro” stable-buck; Curley’s unsatisfied wife, and Carlson; a man who has a Luger (and a couple of other people there for convenience). Most are simply stereotypes, but instead of that being a “narrow-minded” or “easy-way-out” writing trick, here it is used as a way to introduce characters and themes without having to go into too much depth in the setup, allowing for more depth subsequently without bloating the size. For instance, Crooks isn’t just “cursed” to be black, but crippled, and his separation from the others gives him both a certain amount of freedom and a certain amount of dependence. And Curly’s wife (only identified as such) is a “flirtatious” “tart” but she had to settle for the life of a farm as opposed to the social life of an entertainer she yearned for.

With very few words, the stereotypes turn into people, understandable and empathetic people. One could suppose that there is an antagonist, and most would call our main characters protagonists, but in the end it’s just a story that happens to have them as the center. The book really gives the impression that things are happening because things happen, bad and good, to people, bad and good. There isn’t anyone malicious planning everything or being a villain “because”. It feels real, like you know these people and this actually happened.

And in my mind, my words don’t do it justice. I keep mulling over time and time again what exactly it is I have to say about this book, or how much there even is to say. really, and I come up with so many things that just never go down on paper quite right. It’s hard to express how much I enjoy it. Even with its flaws (both typographical and narrative) it just stands head and shoulders above any of the competition for me. It works, and it works as a story that is relatable on so many different levels for so many different people: for farmers, for workers, for friends and family, for planners and dreamers. It’s a cautionary and sad tale, but realistic. It doesn’t wallow about in its misery, it moves forward, as people tied to time are forced to do. Sometimes it’s a bit fast, and the transitions don’t always feel like they’ve adequately explained the amount of time that has passed (if any), but if picks it back up so fast after that little fumble that one barely notices it.

With my opinion already fairly obvious, I’ll say I’d recommend this book to most people. There are a selection of people who prefer very specific genres, books about non-serious topics, and who really don’t like less-than ecstatically happy endings. Those types of people I would not recommend this book to, but it’s not often I find one of them around. And even if one doesn’t enjoy the book it can be finished in a few hours and you’ll likely take away something major from it.

Book Review – Getting Things Done (By: David Allen)

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Getting Things Done is one of the most popular books By David Allen (not that he’s written that many) and from what I can tell one of the most popular books in the “self-help”/organization genre. I’m reviewing here the older copy (pre-2015) and I don’t know what, if anything, has been revised in the new edition.

Getting things done cover

The book is mainly a set of structures and guidelines to the “art of stress-free productivity”. Allen details how to get things out of your mind and into a medium (be it paper or electronic) and then to organize it all to be processed. The idea behind this is to allow for decisions to be made easier, and thus actions taken faster to get in control of the work you are doing, while eliminating your mind as a container for remembering, (to-do lists, shopping lists, dates, reference material, etc.) so more, if not all, of your brain power can be devoted to creative thinking and problem solving, instead of simpler tasks.

The guidelines in the book are fairly robust, and seem like they would work quite well, though I feel like a complete implementation of his system would be far too cumbersome to allow you to go about your regular life or have some relaxation time. He does continue to tell you throughout the book, though, that only full implementation will yield the best results. I feel though that this is more of a tactic to get you doing any of the things at all, and it probably works on a lot of people but I personally found it redundant and slightly annoying. I’m not sure anyone could possibly fully implement this system and have a way to capture ideas close at hand and usable at all times (unless there is someone else with you in the car, nothing will be {or should be} written down).

David does balance that point out, though, with his own experiences of using his systems. He doesn’t claim to be a robot and do it all. He relates times when he was slipping in his work and keeping track of his system, or how in many cases he was doing work less to get it done and out of his mind, but more to mess around with his new digital gadget. But he does use his own system, and its core is so simple and so versatile that it can easily be rebuilt after slipping. (As one of my {Teachers, Friends, Collaborators} once said {Roughly paraphrased} “Life is just creating one system that works and then watching it slowly fall apart and burn down, then moving on to the next system”)

The central philosophy is essentially:

  • Have a way to capture ideas, projects, and actions to take with you whenever possible
  • Transfer these notes and all of the other “paper” (digital files, office supplies, etc.) and put it in to an “inbox”.
  • Process this inbox every day and sort things into things you need to do, things someone else needs to do (either through delegation or they need to get back to you with info), things that will need reviewing the future, and things that can be easily done right now.
  • Do the simple things right now (or ASAP) and then add the other items to various checklists to review at appropriate intervals.

While it is not the simplest thing ever, it is quite easy to understand and do. It just takes the startup investment time and then one could be off and running. Even if it breaks with only a few of the core elements around, the others can easily be added. Some of the ideas might even be so simple you’ve figured them out yourself and have been using them for some time. For those that this applies to, the book aims at coordinating and making these systems you’ve created more effective by integrating it with the “getting things done” method. With stress being on the point that it will take time now, but it will save you way more in the future.

That idea is hard enough to get into people’s heads already, and I’m guessing if more people figured that out we’d all be more productive. But to combat this inherent laziness and constant “mind numbing” from thinking about all the things we have to do, the “getting things done” method emphasizes breaking big tasks into little ones that can be done right away, and riding the ‘I got something done’ wave on to being more productive in the next project. With “what is the next action?” being a core part of the process. Deciding on what the next action is is getting quite a bit of the way to getting it done, and makes one feel more confident and accomplished.

For all the time the book spends hammering in the rules above and how to get things ordered on the lower, every-day level, there isn’t much talk about the larger picture. I will say this book does better than some, which focus only on the immediate or the big picture. But it has much less of a plan for how to shape your big picture plans and where to go with them. Perhaps this is a good thing, as you don’t want some random book guy telling you how to run your life, but I found the last few chapters which were dedicated to this to be a redundant slog.

And to that end the book falls into the traps that many “self-help” books do, it becomes a slog to get through. Too much information is covered in every chapter, meaning that it needs to be constantly re-gone over. Even then there are numerous callbacks to earlier parts of the book. Information is repeated again and again to ingrain it in the heads of readers who retain less information than ones like me and quite frankly I get bored of it. Fortunately for this book multiple times when I was beginning to think Mr. Allen hand run out of things to say I was proven wrong, I just wish he could have been a little more concise about it.

I don’t want to give the impression that I disliked the book. Quite the contrary, I very much liked it and have used many of the ideas presented to improve my own personal productivity. They really have helped me, and while I think a “full” implementation of the process might be impractical for me, I will be adding more of the ideas as I can until I feel the diminishing returns aren’t worth it. It’s still a lot to tackle personal productivity in your mind, though, as I proved when, even though I liked the book, it took me the better part of a year to get all of the way through it (I got ¾ of the way through and then didn’t read a page for probably half a year) (My total read time was probably only in hours, though). It has the aforementioned problem of falsely inflating itself to be worthy as a “book”, where I think it could have easily been done in far fewer pages, but people might have dismissed it then as we tend to think of bigger as better. Still, I could consider this book essential reading, along with “People Skills” on this list of “self-help books that actually have good points”.