A reconsideration of the movie (and soon to be musical) 9 to 5.
An article in The Gazette — the Montreal paper — focuses on Ch. 7: “When It’s Just Not About You.” You can read the full text here.
I need to add a radio page! Just got off the phone with Dr. Alvin Jones of WCBQ/WHNC in North Carolina, and then the delightful Richard and Lori of Hits and Favorites. I’m gaining a whole new appreciation for DJs. The good ones are great, great fun to talk to.
UPDATE: Dave Madee, of 950 ESPN in Philadelphia, can also now count me as a fan.
“[T]urns the executive-heavy office-help book formula on its head . . . Like a pin-wielding kid in a balloon shop, Hustad uses her insightful little book to burst workplace-attitude myths.” —Las Vegas Business Press
P.S. If anyone’s wondering why I’m anal and put the [T] in brackets, it’s because in the actual review, the “t” is lower-case, and by the standards of Stephen McNabb (hello, Stephen!), just willy-nilly elevating a lower-case “t” to a capital “T” because that better served my purpose here would be wrong in every conceivable sense. Integrity, man. Or maybe it simply illustrates that what you learn on your first job stays. with. you.
I spent many an afternoon reading the City Pages back in the day. It went well with coffee and bitterness. Can anyone tell me what happened to the Twin Cities Reader?
(Here’s the last, perhaps best, line of the interview, if only for how it does that “ripped from the headlines” thing right: ”Ironic detachment is a carefree — or seemingly carefree — posture that only works in boom times.” i.e. My book = Timely!)
The most enjoyable aspect of book publicity is that each interviewer picks up a different thread of your argument. Sometimes your answer involves making explicit a point the book only implies. And sometimes you’re led to say something you were entirely too squeamish to state before. As in the interview below, in which I essentially admit that what prompted HTBU was the fact that some of my friends were on the dusty road to loserdom:
“Megan Hustad, a native Minnesotan and University of Minnesota alumna, first turned to ’success literature’ (self-help books on jobs and business leadership) when she noticed diverging career trajectories among her peers: Some had plateaued, some had switched industries and others were thriving. ‘It wasn’t a matter of intelligence or capability at all,’ Hustad said. ‘I really started trying to dissect where are things going wrong for people.’ So she launched her own investigation, eventually publishing . . . a sharp, witty book brimming with advice for young people on how to manage the demands of the modern workplace.”
Needless to say, I was gripped by the fear that I was the biggest loser of them all. Full feature by the lovely and talented Megan Doll, in Minneapolis’s Star Tribune, here.
Well, hell’s bells, it’s the Washington Post.
I’m packing, and running late! (See below.) Here’s another Q&A, meanwhile.
A Q&A ran in today’s Toronto Globe and Mail. “How to Be Useful: Think Conrad Hilton, not Paris.” Beware online formatting that makes for a slightly confusing read.
The best thing about awaiting the official publication date of HTBU — May 2nd! — is seeing responses trickle in from people I don’t know, and I’ve no idea how they found the book, but who got it, and found it…useful. Here’s the blog post that made my day:
I also finished How to Be Useful last night, and it really lit a fire under me. Or stoked the fire that was already lapping at my heels. It’s unprecedented, at least in my experience: a self-help book whose author I trust not to make suggestions that, when followed in the hardscrabble real world, won’t fall utterly flat. And a book that instills in you a real desire to do better, to work harder, to have a better attitude, without resorting to mind-numbing mantras that will inevitably be abandoned after a day or two of heavy repetition.
This just about makes up for all the nights I nearly threw the manuscript out the window. No, it does make up for all the nights I nearly threw the manuscript out the window. I’m grateful.