on reading

Mother likes to say that I was an easy child. They could keep me quiet by placing a reading material in my crib and I could keep myself occupied for hours. Shredding the material into bits. If I really liked it, I would eat it.

I have become more sophisticated as the years have passed. I have made certain improvements on my eating habits and I can now actually read. In fact I have developed a serious relationship with reading that a considerable part of my income goes to bookstores, that I consider bookshelves as essential furniture, that it is constant struggle for me to maintain a reading-exercise balance, that a usual cause of my tardiness for appointments is that I am unable to put a book down, and that I procrastinate doing errands pending conclusion of whatever it is I am reading at a particular time. Which is why I try not to say anything against drinkers, smokers, weed enthusiasts, World Cup die-hards, or raw vegans. To each his own passion.

I consider a book particularly good when I start exhibiting book-mania signs. For example, when I was reading The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella, I brought my car to the repair shop to have the tires checked. I stayed inside the car obliviously reading my book while the mechanic proceeded to look at the car. It was only when I got home that I remembered I have forgotten to check whether the mechanic returned the replaced tire (he did). I had it really bad with this book because I also remember leaving it in the car so I can read a few pages at every stop light.

Now I have noticed another peculiarity. A light bulb in my head starts to flash when there’s any mention of coffee, cafes, or caffeine in the book. Take for instance The-Know-It-All (One Man's Humble Questo to Become the Smartest Person in the World) by AJ Jacob which kept me entertained at Singapore’s transit hotel. On page 47, the narrator states that he needs to be drinking more coffee (there goes the bulb!) and adds a phrase on how coffee was discovered (more flashing!).

I realize that I need to be more discerning of what I am reading these days although I like giving new writers a fair chance. I calculated that I spend at least 12 hours in the office these days. If I spend 7 hours sleeping, that leaves me five hours every day to do as I please. Five hours. We have not even begun factoring in time spent in traffic.

I am somewhere midway between infancy and my dream-of-going-topless-in-the-Bahamas-when-I-retire-day but the strategy to keep me quiet remains the same. A good material to read.

Persistence Unlimited lists 26 advantages of reading, in addition to keeping the baby quiet:
1. Reading is an active mental process
2. It is a fundamental skill builder
3. Improves your vocabulary
4. Gives you a glimpse into other cultures and places
5. Improves concentration and focus
6. Builds self-esteem
7. Improves memory
8. Improves your discipline
9. Learn anywhere
10. Improves creativity
11. Gives you something to talk about
12. Books are inexpensive entertainment
13. You can learn at your own pace
14. New mental associations
15. Improves your reasoning skills
16. Builds your expertise
17. Saves money
18. Decreases mistakes
19. You’ll discover surprises
20. Decreased boredom
21. Can change your life
22. Can help break a slump
23. Reduces stress
24. Gets you away from digital distractions
25. You’ll make more money
26. The book is always better than the movie

(Photo from CSL Cartoonstock)

how starbucks saved my life (a son of privilege learns to live like everyone else) by michael gates gill (2007)

One could probably see my smirk a mile away when I chanced upon the title of Michael Gates Gill’s book, “How Starbucks Saved My Life (A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else)”. If it were “How Coca Cola Saved My Life” or how “Vegemite Saved My Life”, I would have made an audible disparaging remark in the bookstore to no one in particular. It did not help that the author, a man over sixty years old, by-lines his book with a reference to his forebears. But because it had some relation to coffee, I held my peace (and picked up the book).

The book is part memoir, part hard-sell ad campaign for Starbucks, and part motivational spiel.

Mike, as he would be referred to in his Starbucks circle, is a son of affluent parents who lived a charmed life from birth until his employment was terminated with one of the largest advertising agencies in the US and around the world.

I have to tell you first the redeeming parts of this book before I tear it apart. The good points have nothing to do with the strength of the book and all because of the reason that I ingest a lot of this black beverage.

One, I like the idea of how each chapter starts with a quotation from a Starbucks cup. The first chapter, for example, starts with the following quotation:

“The humble improve”
- A quote from Wynton Marsalis, jazz musician, published on the side of a cup of a Starbucks Double Tall Skim Latte

Two, Mike, as a new hire, has to take on the entire range of job responsibilities in Starbucks. So we get an idea of how the cafe operates, its company ethos, and trivia like the reason why the person at the register shouts out the order of the customer (properly referred to as a Guest) and why the personnel in charge of making the coffee shouts back the same order to the cashier. We also get to know what makes for “legendary service” – do you (1) make eye contact? (2) greet the guests? (3) thank the guest? (4) initiate conversation? (5) recognize a guest by drink or name?

Now for the bad news.

It is difficult to find sympathy for this guy. He whines that at age 53, he was unceremoniously fired from his job after 25 years of loyal servitude and after putting this job always before his family. He emphasized that he has missed holidays with his family, had no second thoughts of uprooting them if his job required him moving to another place, and had no qualms about his unavailability to his four growing children.

He then goes on to complain some more that because he was in such a depressed state, he had gotten into a habit of regularly going to the gym where he met a “not-so-young woman in her forties” with whom he had a son. This led to him telling his wife that he has sired a fifth child, unfortunately not with her. His wife, who was “clear-headed” would not stand for it and so they got an “amicable” divorce.

Then this thing about a rare medical condition which he gets diagnosed. At a time when he just let go of his health insurance which he could no longer afford. Sniff. (The rare medical condition of course turns out to be not that urgent or that serious towards the end of the book.)

Finally, at 64 years old, he got hired at Starbucks which he now calls the best job he’s ever had. The comparisons, the epiphanies, and all the name-dropping start here. He cannot stop gushing at how different the life of the proletariat is; at how mundane yet how meaningful it can be (do you see me brushing a tear away?). In the same breath that he extols the admirable virtue of cleaning a loo with zeal, he reminisces at how he once had an exchange of pleasantries with Jacqueline Kennedy.

Nope, the former American First Lady is not the only person he namedrops. He namedrops his father, who used to write for the New Yorker, a string of colleagues, neighbors, former classmates, so-called friends, Muhammad Ali, Robert Frost, E.B. White, Ezra Pound… I was afraid at some point that he’d mention next that he’s actually met Michelangelo.

It does not stop there. He wrote an Afterword where he says that a 28-year old woman came to his store and told him that his book so inspired her that she quit a job that was boring her to death and is now doing something she really loves. The three Ls which have allegedly helped peopled live better lives (after reading his book)?
1. Leap with faith
2. Look with respect
3. Listen to your heart to find true happiness

My important lesson which I have drawn from the book? If you are instinctively repulsed by a book’s title, run! (and it does not matter even if it was written by that goatherd who discovered coffee on the hills of Ethiopia.)

starbucked by taylor chuck (2007)

“We changed the way people live their lives, what they do when they get up in the morning, how they reward themselves, and where they meet”
- Orin Smith, former Starbucks CEO

This is the book for (a) anyone who entertains thoughts of opening a coffee shop; (b) loves Starbucks; (c) hates Starbucks; (d) captivated with the romance of coffee; (e) inordinately spends more time in cafes than his/her actual place of residence; (f) fascinated with statistics concerning the coffee industry; (g) steeped in coffee history and trivia; and (h) all of the above.

Taylor Clark prefaces his book like it was a dissertation. He explains: Starbucked is divided into two sections - In part one, we investigate the mystery of why Starbucks and coffee culture gripped America so tightly and so suddenly, and we examine some related curiosities along the way. Why did Seattle become the planet’s coffee epicentre? Why did Starbucks pay a firm to hypnotize its customers? Why doesn’t Starbucks have any noteworthy competitors? Part two explores the ethical issues that swirl around the company as it pursues its goal of global domination. Does Starbucks prey on independent cafes, as critics claim? Should we feel complicit in the plight of impoverished coffee farmers each time we buy a vanilla latter?

On a related note, Time Magazine has reported (21 April 2008) that Howard Schultz, self-proclaimed coffee messiah, has taken the position of CEO again in Starbucks after he relinquished the post in 2000 for a seat on the board (but did he ever leave Starbucks? Schultz’s office was right next to CEO Jim Donald). This is amidst growing complaints from customers, decrease in 40% of its stock price the past 12 months, and comparable-store sales turning negative.

Uncle Howie is already shifting gears. For starters, he has scrapped the breakfast sandwiches (they overpower the scent of coffee), reporting of comp-store sales (too much focus on numbers means less focus on customers), the verismo (the old machines gives baristas less control over the steaming of milk and blocks their view of patrons), cluttered counters (the mishmash of stuff distracts from coffee), and stores every corner (unwieldy US growth will slow, the company will still push ahead overseas).

And what’s in? Grinding beans in stores (will restore the coffee aroma). MyStarbucksIdea.com (a site invites customers’ gripes and suggestions), the mastrena (the barista can be seen over this new espresso machine), Conservation International (the group will certify where beans come from), and loyalty card (free drip refills and latte extras for repeat customers).

Why did Schultz return to Starbucks? Uncle Howie, the savior of the coffee universe, proclaims, “I came back because it’s personal. I came back because I love this company and our people and I feel a deep sense of responsibility to 200,000 people and their families.” Ahem (the decrease in Starbucks’ stockprice has resulted in the corollary decrease of about US$400 million in Schultz’s worth).

As the Starbucks mantra goes, “Onward Howard!”

bitter grounds by sandra benitez (1997)

“Listen, for all your words
you cannot know.

In Salvador, coffee is
red-roofed estates,
high walls crowned with shards of glass.
uniformed servants hurrying over marble
toward a buzzing at the door.

In Salvador, coffee is
trips abroad,
languid Miami shopping;
dewy hands
plunged between
voile and cambric and silk.

You say, but for the golden hope of coffee
few men would get ahead.
I say, when the people harvest,
all they reap is bitter grounds.

In Salvador, coffee is
filled berry baskets
tied around waists;
bloodied fingertips
wrapped with strips of rag;
sisal arms
reaching up again to pick.

In Salvador, coffee left
in tins, pottery mugs, china cups,
never grows cold.

In Salvador, coffee steams while it sits.”

Izalco, El Salvador in 1932 is a place where no savior is in sight. Coffee farmers who have been working on their small farmlands, and whose fathers and grandfathers worked on that same farmland growing coffee, woke up one day being told that the land is not theirs. And so it was in 1932 that Mercedes Prieto left her homestead with her daughter Jacinta. The evening before, Ignacio Prieto, her husband, was brutally gunned down in the finca of Don Pedro to serve as lesson to other coffee pickers who harboured thoughts of overpowering the landowners.

Mercedes would thereafter join the household of Elena Contreras of the finca La Abundancia as a domestic. This would start three generations of women bound to each other as master and servant and ties of friendship but not quite. Mercedes and her progeny knew very well that much as they were valued and loved by their masters, they were still servants in that place - servants who could not go to the exclusive schools where the children of the finca went and who were expected to schedule their child-bearing so as not to skew the activities of their masters.

Interspersed through the lives of the women are the stories of their loves, of long-running radio soap opera episodes whose plots were not much different from their own joys and tragedies, and how coffee has all held them captive in its clutch.

Bitter Grounds end in a note not any less explosive as how it opened. It would take a third generation Prieto, Maria Mercedes, to undertake an action in 1977 which her grandafather Ignacio hesitated to do 45 years before. It would also take that many years to resolve the question which haunted her grandmother and namesake Mercedes throughout her life.

The book ends with the following epilogue: “The story continues, as all stories do until life itself is done. In a country named The Savior, 1980 brought full-scale civil war. By 1992, when peace was signed, 75,000 had died; 300,000 had fled, and 5 million remained, these filled with hope on bitter grounds.”

The book won the American Book Award in 1998.