Option B by Sheryl Sandberg

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is about going through and surviving grief, so in some ways, it came at the perfect time for me. I agree with so much she says about how grief feels and how friends and family should help.

I think part of the issue with this book might be that her view of grief is still pretty limited. She tries to include stories of the immense grief that other people suffer and especially those with less financial advantages than her, but it feels like she still doesn't totally get it in places. For example, while she acknowledges that not everyone can afford to keep their home, pay for childcare in the face of grief, etc. she doesn't meaningfully address these problems. And she appears oblivious to some things that are not in the mourner's control. For example, my friends can't afford to drop everything in their own lives to come help me. Nor do I have other family to step in. She's lucky in so many ways she doesn't even realize. She also only briefly touches on the effect of multiple tragedies on a person. She only briefly touches on the loss of meaning in life. (Maybe Tolstoy for that issue.) She doesn't even seem aware about the possibility of clinical depression hijacking grieving.

Finally, I get that she has to be positive to sell books and also so she doesn't drive people to despair. I get that if she wants to keep her job she has to still appear enthusiastic about her corporation's performance, but who actually cares? Why is this even in a book about grief? No really, who will care a 100 years from now that she worked really hard and made a lot of money? Someone might care that she wrote a wonderful book about grief that helped people, but the focus on the former makes the latter miss the mark a bit.

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Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a lot of value in a woman with a top position in business pointing out the many barriers women face; and calling for changes in the work place, society, and in how both women and men approach business and feminism. For a lot of people these are already known facts, but the nature of this as a "business book" means a lot of people are exposed to these statistics and personal stories who might not otherwise be exposed.

That said, I was familiar with these problems already, and there are only a few suggestions that I thought I could use in the book. For example, she talks about quality time at work instead of quantity of time at work but this doesn't apply at all in the world of the hourly billable. She cites that men are more likely to bill any time spent thinking about work... but as far as I'm concerned that's called "overbilling the client." Also, I think there's a lack of long-term perspective in the book because Sandburg was relatively young in both age and spirit when she wrote the book. I think that if/when she writes a sequel there will be some change in her perspective.


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