The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

Summer reading is supposed to be fun and The Woman in the Window is fun, for the most part. At the same time, though, its derivative, predictable and repetitive. It follows the tradition of recent summer romps like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train so closely that despite the pristine prose, I kept feeling cheated: it takes a lot of convincing to show a skeptic like me that this isn't just some calculated effort to run down a trend. Even Daniel Mallory's pseudonym, A. J. Finn, is so similar to Gillian Flynn (author of the much better Gone Girl) that you can't help feeling a little duped. And what's wrong with his own name in the first place? To me Daniel Mallory is a perfect novelist name, albeit a male one that might not look as convincing on the cover of a book about a woman aimed towards women in general.

Anna Fox is an agoraphobic - someone who fears open spaces - and spends most of her time indoors in her town house in Harlem, New York. From her window, she spies on her neighbors with a long lens camera. When she witnesses a murder across the street, she has to deal with her phobia and past trauma to work on finding the killer. The framing of the story is standard Hitchcock by way of Agatha Christie and overall I had a hard time seeing the forest from the referential trees.

Here's a list of references to give you an idea of how The Woman in the Window "pays homage" to other books and movies: almost all of Hitchcock's films (most notably The Rear Window, Vertigo and Strangers on a Train), The Girl on the Train (especially the alcoholism, the voyeurism and the titling),  and perhaps even The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (the interactions between an obstinate protagonist and a good-guy cop). These are just the ones that I recognized. The New York Times review is almost exclusively dedicated to describing how The Woman in the Window fits in with the wider tradition. It's more a gala of dignified references than an actual book review.

As a simple summer read, The Woman in the Window is perfectly adequate and I imagine that the obligatory, fast-tracked movie version will be as good or even better. Its above most detective fiction because it is so well built. Pacing and exposition are excellent, the reader is hooked with shocking revelations and a surprisingly humane touch. A mid-book aside about a skiing trip is haunting and a definite highlight. Mallory overdoes the alcohol and prescription drug aspect of Fox's persona, however, so much so that readers of The Girl on the Train are already plenty familiar with the drill. Was the murder just a product of an over-active imagination and unscrupulous use of medication? The answer won't surprise you.

All that being said, there seems to be nothing stopping The Woman in the Window from becoming a success both in print and on film. It makes for perfectly pleasant reading, especially if you haven't seen Vertigo. Its faults will be pointed out by critics, but as a product of today's pop culture, we could do worse. It's the Bruno Mars or Robin Thicke of detective fiction. You can't really complain about production values, but don't be surprised if copyright infringement lawsuits start popping up.

Rework by Jason Fried

Rework isn't really a book, it's a manifesto. Sure it's packaged like a paperback, has compelling blurbs to go along and seems like your average management-self-help effort. There's barely any structure, for one, which clearly differentiates it from most of the other management books out there. "Chapters" are more like op-eds, covering a few pages at most and only a few paragraphs at least. Where others try to convince businesses based on scientific (or pseudo-scientific) evidence, Rework relies on sound argumentation, passion and chutzpah.

Many of its core ideas are as valid as ever. Working late nights and weekends is useless and often ruinous. Budgets are guesses. Meetings are (mostly) a waste of time. Companies should sell their by-products. All are excellent guidelines for would-be entrepreneurs and business managers. Even when its arguments are backed up by barely more than an anecdote and a few wise words, Rework is convincing. There is a transparency to making bold statements with limited evidence. Most business books leave you with a sense of being duped; their evidence, often in the form of graphs or cherry picked data, is often too neat and too convincing. Rework shows you its weaknesses and is better for it.

I'm always surprised to find out how much the actual world of work differs from that of Rework. Its ideas are sometimes obvious to the point of banality, yet most companies are unable to implement them. For example, there is no evidence that meetings are suddenly becoming less prominent or their content more engaging. Why are we stuck in this imperfect world? I would like to understand what is actually standing between us and the world of Rework. Is it our inability to question tradition, handed down from previous generations of managers? Is it our overconfidence and hesitance to learn and read? Or is it the surplus of poorly formulated and contradicting management advice? Whatever it is, Rework makes a compelling case for a new era of work.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Not many are familiar with him, but most of us have bought the products he inspired. Phil Knight is the founder of Nike, the inescapable, all-around sportswear company. Introducing Nike as a sporstwear company feels like introducing coffee as a beverage; there is hardly anyone that has not heard of it. Most of us even have an opinion of its products. The name of Phil Knight, on the other hand, probably won't ring a bell for anyone except the most ardent Nike fans. His face isn't recognizable either. He once ran into Bill Gates and Warren Buffet outside a movie theather and realized that passers-by could only identify two out of the three, even though his personal wealth is on a similar level.

Phil Knight was brought up in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. At the University of Oregon, he trained under legendary track and field coach Bill Bowerman, who would later become the cofounder of Blue Ribbon, Nike's predecessor. Having graduated, Knight decided to travel around the world to visit spiritual places such as Mount Fuji and the Ganges river. At the same time he dreamed of putting an old business plan in action: importing running shoes from Japan.

The trips to post-war Japan are some of the more memorable parts of an otherwise adequate but not extremely titillating book. Knight took an amazing leap of faith by ordering untested foreign running shoes to import to the United States. He sent most of his money to the Onitsuka company as an advance for his first order. There was no explosive beginning, just a series of years, when Nike grew slowly and struggled to raise cash for growth. First the shoes were sold from Knight's parents' home, then from a small office, then from one store in California. At the time, ordering and producing the shoes was slow, so Knight was constantly on edge, as he waited for the next shipment to arrive.

Shoe Dog is mostly pop culture and meant for casual fans. There is a business book in there somewhere as well. Knight is not an ideal leader, he says so himself, and his gaffs are both heartbraking and hilarious. You can trace his development from a wide-eyed twenty-something into a pin-stripe suited corporate master. As he yells at his colleagues and tries to outsmart his suppliers, you can feel his idealistic past peel off. Whether or not this is intentional, I cannot say. It is this arch from idealism to capitalism that drives the reader's interest. Will he completely abandon his principles at the altar of the goddess of victory?