Lucy Kellaway is the Financial Times's management columnist. For over ten years, her weekly column has poked fun at management fads and jargon with insight, wit and precision and celebrated the ups and downs of office life.
Her most recent book is The Real Office: All The Office Questions You Never Dared To Ask. Of this, the Sunday Times said; 'it dispenses water-cooler wisdom, not motivational gobbledygook. (It) gets to the heart of those tricky questions that employees, rather than employers, want answered'. In her distinctly tongue-in-cheek speech, Lucy touches on office life, the psychological deficiencies of all bosses, and the futility of change management.
Other books of hers include: In Office Hours, Depptop, and Sense and Nonsense in the Office.
Martin Lukes is a superstar at the office and at home -- just ask him. Blessed with an ego the size of Mount Everest and virtually no sense of self, he blusters through life with cheerful obliviousness. Who Moved My BlackBerry™? is the uproarious e-epistolary story of one spectacularly bad year in his life, during which Martin hires an executive coach to help him achieve "22.5 percent better than my bestest," only to inadvertently insult his new boss, watch his wife get a job that threatens to eclipse his own, and allow his BlackBerry™ -- complete with racy e-mails to his secretary/lover -- to fall into the hands of his juvenile delinquent son. This novel is set in an office so dysfunctional, it’s bound to strike a chord with any nine-to-fiver.
Description words: Striking, realistic, humble, humorous, long
Protagonist does the world a favor by giving us an insight into the office life of a British company.
Antagonist does a favor for Martin by helping him realize his large ego.
"Strive and Thrive!"
"Darling, thanks for the pearls of wisdom, but frankly you're getting a bit ahead of yourself."
"22.5 percent better than my best. -Martin"
"I'm smiling at you!"
The cover is hideous.
My Love, My Love: The Peasant Girl
Rosa Guy
Other books were The Friends and The Disappearance
A modern fable set on a Caribbean island that is inhabited by wealthy merchants and poor peasants and is subject to violent changes of nature at the whim of vain gods. Desiree Dieu Donne, a black peasant girl, saves the life of Daniel Beauxhomme, a wealthy mulatto whose family has renounced its black origins. Daniel is returned to his home, but Desiree, convinced that it is the will of the gods, sets out on an arduous quest to find the Palace Beauxhomme. The two fall in love. The peasant girl is not acceptable to the island aristocracy, however, and Daniel consents to wed a woman of his own class. This allegory abounds in vivid, sensual images and symbols, many of which parallel Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid , on which it is based.
Sad, heart wrenching, yet cheery, island-like, God-like, beautiful, bright, luxurious
The message is similar to Romeo and Juliet - a rich boy and a poor peasant can be in love.
Protagonist is such a heart-felt character.
Antagonists are Daniel's parents who don't believe in the conjoining of races.
"Men" he grumbled. "Their greed will be the destruction of us."
"Another week without rain, and it might well be the end of us poor peasants."
"Ti Moune, there are many worse off than we."
The text on the cover needs help.
Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
Emily Giffin was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 20, 1972. She attended high school in Naperville, Illinois, where she was a member of a creative writing club and served as editor-in-chief for the school's newspaper. Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she also served as manager of the basketball team, the Demon Deacons. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. But Giffin soon determined to seriously pursue her writing.
In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers. Giffin began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.
Her other novels include Something Blue, Baby Proof, Love the One You're With, and Heart of the Matter.
Something Borrowed is the story of Rachel White and Darcy Rhone, best friends since childhood. Rachel is used to being the good girl, the hard-worker who exists in the shadow of flashy—often selfish—Darcy. Until her thirtieth birthday that is, when a drink too many results in Rachel sleeping with Darcy's fiance, Dexter. The fling turns into an affair, and Rachel is forced to decide which is more important, friendship or true love.
"I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it."
"There is no better audience for someone in love than someone in love."
"This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren't as devastated."
"Peace and calm rush over me as I process the lack of any bad feelings: I'm not jealous, I'm not worried, I'm not scared, I'm not lonely."
I like the ring on the cover, but feel the typography could be improved.
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