How do you define success?

At first glance, neither book is about being successful.  But each of the books I read this week have reflections on how the authors became successful.  The first reached his definition of success after training customers to leave big tips for better service. Yet the other, a world famous Nobel Prize winner still doesn't feel he is as successful as he can be and wants nothing in return for his efforts.  Values and perspectives are everything.

1- Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (2012)

One day you wake up and realize your philosophy degree is not a moneymaker.  What to do, what to do?  You can get a job as a valet, parking cars.  Fortunately Jacob Tomsky was a savvy guy and the manager at the luxury hotel where he was employed plucked him out of the depths of the parking garage the way Lana Turner was supposedly discovered in the drugstore. 

Next thing he knows he’s at the front of the house and climbing the hospitality ladder.    While there he learns the ins and outs of the hotel business, the dirty truths of housekeeping and of the hotel’s guests.  Over time, he bounces from one city to another, but not before he makes attachments to the staff, his surrogate family.  Like in any other business, though, not all hotel management is created equal and his story attests to that.  

Some of his inside advice to readers is not quite kosher, other tips are, and much of it is about, well, tips.  Greasing the palms of the staff is the best way to get almost anything you want, he says, and he heartily endorses this.  But of course he does.  Fast paced read lets you know how the industry manages to get heads in all the beds, hence the title, the goal of every hotelier.  Whether Tomsky is likable is another story.

 

2- Open Heart by Elie Wiesel (2012)

This slim volume more resembles a long essay than a book.  Elie Wiesel learns his presumed stomach ailment is actually a potentially fatal heart problem and imminent surgery is necessary.  He reflects on his life, his work and his blessings.  The one stand-out point for me is that at 82, being one of the most accomplished men living today and arguably the most prolific survivor of the Shoah, he did not want to die because there was so much work left for him to do.  My goodness.  Then the rest of us are certainly falling behind.

                  While it did not have the depth of his other works, it was contemplative.  If not "by Elie Wiesel," no publisher would have entertained thoughts so brief.  It had to be read in the context of who he is, with knowledge of his other writings and as short as it is, it even quoted from those.  But you will never waste time reading his words.  It will take just a bit of your day and make you think far longer.  Value added.

            

                I read, therefore I am,

                the lowercase b