winter reads

My quest to read all 7 Harry Potter's during this winter vacation is on-going, but I have had a chance to do some other leisurely reading while on break.

The first one of note is The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This book shows what it's like to grow up in Iran during the Revolution. The great thing about this book is that it's not trying to convince the reader that Iran's politics is right or wrong. It shows the confusion one is confronted with when living in a country that is trying to modernize. Persepolis doesn't live her whole life in Iran, but even when she has leaves the country for something like ten years, leaving her eventually homeless sleeping in parks in Austria, she returns to her parents in Iran and finds her friends are much different than she remembers and that her parents really do know what's right for her. I suppose one must know this is a comic and it's based on the authors life. It's an easy read and one of the few comics I have ever been able to get through. Persopolis' life was much different from what you or me would call normal, but this book shows that normal is all in the eyes of the beholder.

Another book I managed to get under my belt is The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman. This book discusses exactly what it took for the world to become flat and some things the world can do to adjust. It's hard to see so many jobs outsourced, but this trend is only going to get more popular. As it does Americans must learn to specialize and become better at what they do. No longer can people be mediocre at their job because if this is the case the job can be outsourced and much more will be done by someone more eager to do the job. One interesting point he brought up at the end is that people must be willing to use their imagination to do better. He used 11/9 (the date the Berlin Wall fell) and 9/11 as examples. The fall of the Berlin Wall took much imagination for the positive while 9/11 for the negative.

One way to help make imaginations positive is to help bring other countries into this flat world, but in a good way. Developing countries must be introduced to the new world gradually and they must be trained in the right way. Industrialized countries must be willing to be honest, fair, and not always about profit. This may be hard at first, but the more countries involved in the flat world, the more resources and skills are available. Developing countries must learn to trust industrialized countries so that they can integrate and start making profits for themselves. This will probably be hard because of the way most developing countries have been treated in the past, but one can only hope time will heal. And fast.