What Your Chamber Team is Reading This Spring
W
hether we’re motivated to embrace big ideas and new insights that challenge the status quo or champion a fulfilling future, or are craving entertainment and being whisked away to another place, the staff at the GMC is always on the lookout for a new read, audiobook, or podcast. We thought you might be too, so here are the printed words [or audio] we’ve managed to put in front of our faces [& in our ears] lately!
Lauren G’s Pick!
Title & Author:
Saving Time
By Jenny Odell
Summary:
Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it – the way we experience time itself, and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive.
This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility.
Why I chose it/what I learned/favorite part:
When asking someone… “How are you, how is it going?” the main response I seem to get is, “Eh, good. Things are sooooo busy.”
Busy is good for some, stressful for others. I even find myself following up that response with…”I just wish there was more time in the day!!” Lately, the conversation then tends to transition to what a time-warp the COVID-19 Pandemic is/was. The pandemic lockdown really was a perspective-shifting experience, and I have found myself re-examining my relationship to time.
This New York Times Review of the book, by Elizabeth A. Harris, notes that, ” Saving Time is an unusual book, a mix of history, philosophy, and personal narrative. And while it takes on a topic that is central to work-life balance and conversations about well-being, it is not self help. Odell isn’t trying to tell anyone what to do. She doesn’t see herself as “fixing anything,” she said, but as mapping out a societal problem.”
I like that this doesn’t feel like a self-help book. Instead, it challenges assumptions made about the relationships we have with the finite hours in any given day. In a moment that feels like so many individuals are struggling with burnout and anxiety about what is next, this book and buoyant and hopeful. It is advice that lingers and opens the door to possibility.
Kathleen’s Pick!
Title & Author:
Big Little Lies
By: Liane Moriarty
Summary:
From the author of Truly Madly Guilty and The Husband s Secret comes a novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
A murder…A tragic accident…Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.
Why I chose it/what I learned/favorite part:
I haven’t finished it yet, but I really enjoy trying to unravel the story and figure out how everyone is tied together. The mystery has its own appeal, but with so many unique characters, reading how they all intermingle in one story has been really fascinating.
Lauren C’s Pick!
Title & Author:
Daisy Jones and The Six
By Taylor Jenkins Reid
Summary:
This book takes you back in time to the ‘70’s music scene as it follows a rock band through their musical career and the reason behind why the band broke up. Throughout the book, you’re introduced to each member of the band, but the leading star is Daisy Jones.
Why I chose it/what I learned/favorite part:
I heard so many great things about this book from multiple friends, so I had to give it a read. The way Taylor Jenkins Reid can transport you back in time by the written word is remarkable. This book is also different as it’s written in a documentary style. The complexity of each character makes you want to keep reading as you figure out the highs and lows of being part of a rock band in that time era. The most compelling aspect of this book was Daisy Jones. Her multitude of layers draws you in and captures your attention from the very beginning. Her relationship with the music and the band is something like no other. As a bonus feature, this book was recently made into a series with an actual album which I have listened to on repeat for weeks now!
Heather’s Pick!
Title & Author:
Pandora’s Pride
By May Gruber
Summary:
The story of how May Gruber founded Pandora Industries, a company that manufactured sweaters right in Manchester’s 88 Commercial Street Mill. Pandora sold sweaters worldwide from 1940-1990, employed as many at 1000 people and turned out an astonishing 60,000 knitted sweaters per week.
Why I chose it/what I learned/favorite part:
An easy choice for me, as this book combines three things I love: 1) Manchester. 2) History. 3) Fearless Women. May Gruber’s passion and perseverance are inspiring, and her story highlights that limitations often exist only in one’s mind. She dared to be a strong businesswoman, which was bold in her day. She didn’t take no for an answer and had such vigor for life. The Chamber and Millyard Museum did an event a few years “Stories from the Millyard” at which Ralph Sidore told the story of Pandora. I couldn’t believe how many Pandora workers filed into the Millyard Museum to reminiscence. It really struck me just how much people like May Gruber are built into the fabric of our city. I always love reading about trailblazing leaders, but it is especially meaningful when those icons are so close to home!
