The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

This is a coming of age story and involves a lot of identity seeking and realizations about the world. I really appreciated the way each chapter ended with a thought-provoking statement - I wanted to stop and consider what Cisneros was getting at, but I also wanted to keep reading and understand more of the story and life of the main character. There are some truly hilarious stories and some almost unbearably sad stories. 

If I remember correctly, this book was pretty clean. The girls find some hooker shoes one day and get into a spot of trouble while wearing them. One man takes advantage of the main character by stealing a kiss. She was affronted when her friend let boys kiss her.

This was a book-group pick, and one of the people in the book group was Latina and commented on how true-to-form it is for Latinos to insult each other by comparing them to bad food - cold frijoles and etc. I thought that was funny.

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate

This is a beautiful story told from Ivan's point of view - a gorilla stuck in a roadside arcade. The themes of love, loss, persistence, optimism, and survival are present throughout, as well as thought provoking scenes discussing the benefits and drawbacks of deceiving oneself.

I enjoyed this discussion of anger:

"The freeway billboard has a drawing of Mack in his clown clothes and Stella on her hind legs and an angry animal with fierce eyes and unkempt hair.

"That animal is supposed to be me, but the artist made a mistake. I am never angry.

"Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.

"Here in my domain, there is no one to protect."

While this book is short and written simply, I found it incredibly thought provoking.

The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell

I loved this book. It is incredibly well-written and has so many interesting stories and facts. The "Tipping Point" is that magic moment when there is just enough friction to light the match. Gladwell makes the case that everything has a tipping point, and his ideas are fascinating.

"When we are trying to make an idea or attitude or product tip, we’re trying to change our audience in some small yet critical respect: we’re trying to infect them, sweep them up in our epidemic, convert them from hostility to acceptance. That can be done through the influence of special kinds of people, people of extraordinary personal connection. That’s the Law of the Few. It can be done by changing the content of communication, by making a message so memorable that it sticks in someone’s mind and compels them to action. That is the Stickiness Factor. But we need to remember that small changes in context can be just as important in tipping epidemics…

                

"The Power of Context is saying that those Tipping Points may be as simple and trivial as everyday signs of disorder like graffiti and fare-beating. The implications of this idea are enormous."

I think that anyone who reads this book would find influential ideas that could make their work or personal life better.