My rating: 5 of 5 stars As a 2008 Man Booker prize winner, I assumed this would be worth reading. It was. Adiga is clever in his set up, his method and his message. I found the book to be funny and serious.
This is a book, that our children will be reading in a college course someday.
I think this book shows us how business works, how culture works and how it is not pretty and neat, progress has a price, sometimes a large one. I would argue while this story - and bear in mind it is a good story - claims to be a story about one man and his climb to success, I think it is more than that, I think the symbolism of this book is cleverly hidden and so obvious all at the same time.
Adiga tackles some difficult subjects with humor and wit.
Well worth the reading.
I borrowed this book from a friend. It is officially on my to buy list. I plan to read it again.
Susan, calling St. Michael's and getting hung up on. (bonus points if you know the book title I am playing with here.)
For my new readers, my mother in law passed away November 2006 after nearly a year long battle with congestive heart failure and renal failure. She was a parishioner of St. Michael's and until she was too ill, she sang faithfully in the choir.
That said she has been gone almost 4 years. H and I had her mass at his home church in his home town and then as she had requested, we made a donation to St. Michael's and asked that a mass be said in honor of her death.
It should be noted that H and I currently do not practice any particular faith for a variety of reasons.
Yesterday in our mail, was a letter from St. Michael's, on St. Michael's letterhead, addressed to my mother in law, requesting her pledge to the Bishop's annual fund.
Are you kidding me? She is dead, if her faith is to be believed, she is hanging out with angels and singing a heavenly tune. Furthermore, for us mere mortals, I distinctly remember both H and I calling St. Michael, in 2006/2007 - informing them of her death. I might have actually written a letter. I did alot of letter writing on her behalf that winter.
I found yesterday's letter to be in extremely poor taste and insensitive. This is not the first time in four years St. Michael's has solicited a dead person for money. With reincarnation, this might actually make sense, but given that she is dead and I am not counting on her coming back, the polite and sensitive thing to do is remove her name and our address from their mailing list(s.) One would think there would be a procedure for that.
In my mind it would work something like this -
1. Get notice of parishioner's death
2. Delete name from master mailing list
3. Once a month, update all committee lists.
In the world of email and word processing, it is really that simple. Four years hence, there is simply no excuse.
So I called.
I spoke to who ever answered the phone. I explained that I found it to be insensitive and rude for them to soliciting money from my mother in law who is deceased. I explained that we have contacted them a few times in the past.
She began to make excuses and I cut her off. I explained that their administrative inefficiencies were not my problem, but that I wanted us removed from the any and all mailing lists. Before I could finish my sentence, she hung up on me.
Yes, let's type that in BOLD.
THE WOMAN AT ST. MICHAEL'S WHO ANSWERED MY CALL AT ABOUT 2PM on APRIL 28, 2010 HUNG UP ON ME.
Where is her grace and humility is what I would like to know.
So I called back (but then you all knew I would.)
I called back and asked for the priest and instead got his voice mail, so I left a very clear message as to how I felt about being hung up on and how I felt about getting a letter on their letterhead, four years after my mother in law passed away asking for money. I shared with him we are not members of his church, nor do we intend to be and could he do the right thing already and get us off the mailing list(s). I also suggested that whoever was answering his phone needed to look deep and find her humility and grace.
It is bad business to solicit money from dead people and it is rude to hang up on people. If you want to run a campaign asking for money, then you need to scrub your lists and make sure it is accurate. You wanna play in the big leagues. Act like a big league player.
I have no patience for excuses or people who are rude. She should be fired and St. Michael's should have to pay a fine, that is what happened when I worked at Merrill Lynch. If we solicited someone who had asked to be removed from a calling list or a mailing list - we got fined.
And no, I am not in a charitable mood, thank you for asking.
against SOME of their clients. That is the name of the game people. This is the dirty little secret I have been telling you about for years now on this very BLOG. All brokerage firms, mutual fund companies and Investment advisers serve a variety of masters. If you think for one second that they are altruistic and looking out for your best interests - well you are SADLY mistaken.
I am not saying stock brokers, financial consultants and investment professionals are not honestly concerned about their clients and their clients' future, I am merely saying that there are lots of competing interests and human nature applies.
I am saying that it is a complicated knot and to think otherwise is foolhardy.
Goldman absolutely bet against some its clients - it always has and it always will. That they are saying publicly that that is not the case, that is not the nature of the beast, is criminal in my opinion.
Wall Street has its own agenda and that is to make money and to make money at all costs - despite the collateral damage. Look at Lehman Bros., for the gains of a few, they sunk the ship and then laugh all the way to their off shore bank as investors and lifetime loyal employees were left holding the bag.
As long as the system is set up and run based on commissions and two sided transactions, someone is going to lose and the person in the middle - he always, always in these situations stands to gain. I worked at Merrill Lynch for almost 10 years, trust me I sat in on enough meetings to know - the first few slides were on the product and how to sell it - the rest were about why this product was designed to pay you the most, even in a down economy. Trust me the sales force, they got but a tiny slice of what the overall pay out was, and the company, well they sang all the way to the bank.
Look at the banking model. The bank charges you a fee to hold your money and charges someone a fee to borrow your money, and they may offer you some nominal interest - or in today's economy not even enough to cover your fees. They just profited twice and when the chips are down - they are going to side with the customer who offers them the most lucrative profit. They would be stupid not to do that stupid and out of business fast.
Now understand, I am not passing judgment. I am merely pointing out that the executives at Goldman, who are professing to not betting against their clients are full of shit and we all know it...
The profit is always the guiding light - if you think otherwise, well mores the pity.
Stiletto Woman is a magazine for women by women and this month - pinch me - I am a featured contributor. I wrote an essay about my journey to complete my MBA! It was a long ten year journey complete with stops and starts, but in the end, I stuck to it and I did it. I graduated in February with an MBA from the University of Phoenix.
The program was writing intensive (evil grin) and I wrote on average a paper a week, about 1000-1500 and had to do weekly posts on specific topics.
In the end I am so proud of my accomplishment and I am doubly proud and honored to be featured in this great publication.
My message to women out there is - You can DO IT. You can, there is a way.
Alittle bit about this issue:
Stiletto Woman Magazine (Education Issue) is now released! Susan Porter is our cover feature. She has a great story of perseverance. Dr. Mary Gatta, a Rutgers University faculty member, shares her expertise on women and education; Alyssa Trimble, once a teen mom is now a doctoral candidate, tackles the myths of motherho...od. We interviewed Kellie Greene, a rape survivor who's changing the lives of others!
For more information on Stiletto Woman and this special education issue, visit their Facebook page or the Stiletto Woman web page.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is a conundrum to me. It is beautifully written. It is more prose poem than novel. Calling this a novel did it a great disservice in my mind.
Passages and passages of powerful, beautiful imagery. In terms of exploration of the nature of love, relationships, self and time, this book earns 5 stars.
In terms of actually pulling all of those things into a cohesive and assessable story or book, it falls short. I often had the feeling this book grew out of an series of writing exercises. In some parts of the work, it is very tight, frames well and there are a number of "tricks" which seem to work well, only to be abandoned.
I also think that the addition of the last quarter of this book, does it a great disservice. I could have been happy without the "Sometime Later" section. Ending the book on page 124, I think does actually tie together a number of the loose ends, not neatly, but then there is nothing neat and tidy about this book, not in style, execution, exploration or point of view.
But the final passages on pages 123, 124 really, I think answer alot of the linger questions - for both narrators. For me - it brought me to place of peace and place to think and acceptance.
I think the "Sometime Later" section works. It does not work at the end of this book, even though some of the ladies in my book club felt it did work. It feels contrived and it feels like it is self consciously connected dots which refused to be connected in other sections of the book.
I think the "Something Later" section, if it has to stay, would work better in the beginning. Start there and work backwards. I think it would help the reader form a story and I think it propels the plot alot better. It also I think, fits with the playing with time and exploring the realities of time and space.
All in all I am glad I stuck with this book and saw it through to the end. Had this not been the book club selection, I doubt I would have. I am glad I did and I am going to read some of her other works, if only to experience her beautiful use of language and poetic imagery.
A word to the wise, this book is not shy about sex, violence and her brand of feminism is radical, typical perhaps of the time period, but her point of view may not be widely shared.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
