The Invisible Mentor

Archive for July, 2011

This is what we talked about on The invisible Mentor Blog this week: Review of How to Read Literature by Thomas C. Foster, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Aviation Pioneer and Interview with Andrina Lever.

Mondays at the Salon

Since 2004, the Samsung Economic Research Institute has put together a reading list for CEOs based on a survey of CEOs.

This Year’s Samsung Economic Research Institute Reading List for CEOs is Out

Booked on Tuesdays

This week we reviewed How to Read Literature Like Professor by Thomas C. Foster. The book is a good guide on how to read intelligently to get the most understanding out of your reading. The trick is to ask many questions – authors of literary fiction have a reason for doing what they do in works.

Review: How to Read Literature Like Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Wisdom Wednesdays

Samuel Pierpont Langley was one of the pioneers in aviation. Even though the aviation industry followed the path of the Wright Brothers, the brothers studied Otto Lilienthal’s and Langley’s work among others. Because of what Langley and others in the industry did, the Wright Brothers had a starting point when they entered the industry.

Samuel Pierpont Langley, American Scientist and Aviation Pioneer

Perspective Thursdays and Workshop Fridays

This week we featured Andrina Lever who attended 17 schools in three countries while growing up. And, how does a family enterprise continue when the founder dies suddenly? Read this and more in Andrina Lever’s interview. Here are Part One and Part Two of her interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Interviewee Name: Andrina Lever

Company Name: Lever Enterprises, Balloon Express

Website: http://www.balloonexpress.it

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Andrina Lever:  I was born in England but grew up in Canada and in various other countries. I started traveling when I was nine months old. I went to 17 different schools growing up in three countries. I graduated from law school in England and started out in human rights law and sold my soul to the corporate world. I went into banking and was in advertising for awhile.  I got married and my husband and I lived in various places – England, New York, Australia – then we moved back to Canada. In 1988 I started my own business Lever Enterprises.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Andrina Lever: They are the same, they really are. There is no division for me. When I was running Lever Enterprises full-time I was lucky that I had my husband’s support, and I supported him as well. I would often travel and he would help me with things when I was away. I’m not sure if I ever balanced my life. With Balloon Express being a family company we are all involved, so much of my life, good or bad crosses over.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Andrina Lever:

1. Life is pretty good!
2. Most people are good. Take the high road when situations happen. I still believe inherently in the goodness of people.
3. You can never be too prepared, whether it’s in business or school.
4. Sometimes taking a risk is not a bad thing but mitigate damages by being prepared.
5. I am a big believer in education, getting as much education as you can and never stop learning.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Andrina Lever: I travel a lot and I still enjoy it. My mother came to live with us over a year ago with her little doggie. I love to play with the dog because he is very cute and makes me laugh. I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. As I’m talking to you, I’m looking at one of the most famous sites in the world, and that makes me feel good. I also enjoy taking long walks with my husband through one of the loveliest cities in the world, and I love to read.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Andrina Lever: I don’t know if this is a conscious thing but I have pattern. I start out trying to be organized and systematic. Maybe using an outline since that was the way I was educated – outlining things and being systematic. At some point I hit a wall so I have to leave it, but it seems to me that I get most of my best ideas somewhere between 3 and 5 in the morning, especially if I just leave it and go to sleep thinking about it. Suddenly things will start to come together for me, and it’s very nerve racking because sometimes I wish they would come faster. We do a lot of brainstorming in the office and bounce ideas off each other because it’s a very creative environment that we work in. It’s a pattern that I’ve developed.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Andrina Lever: There are a couple that I think are very funny. One is a scenario from Tom Stoppard‘s play The Real Thing where a wife was making a very stupid argument trying to convince her husband about something, and he said, “There is something frightening about stupidity made coherent,” and I love that because so often in business you will find someone is trying to bluff you out of something and you intuitively know what they say doesn’t make sense. We’ve all experienced that and I love that quotation.

There was another that I loved which was about people doing things the same way all the time, and it was “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” and I love that because it’s true. We don’t want to change, we just want to keep on doing the same thing over and over again, even though it’s not working anymore.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Andrina Lever: Being happy.

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Andrina Lever: I think it’s being happy within yourself. I think it’s knowing that you’ve done a good job, you treated other people well, you looked after what needed to be looked after. These are all things that contribute to a calm and satisfied state of mind that leads to happiness which is a part of success.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Andrina Lever: Hard work. Spending a lot of time learning the business. I worked a lot of long hours whether it was with Lever Enterprises or in Balloon Express. It’s long hours, hard work, and focusing on what needs to be done, having a vision to deliver it, and being open-minded enough to change what you have to change.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Andrina Lever: They have to do their homework. I think there is a lot of competition out there today no matter what you do, so it’s riskier than it was when I did it. You need to have your wits about you, understand what it is you want to do, and have a plan about how you’re going to do it, understand the market you’re going into – the competitor and what the real issues are with what you want to do. If you work hard , you can get some good rewards, don’t be afraid to ask for advice and to say I don’t know. That’s okay as long as you find the answer, talk to somebody. It’s not easy, it’s a lot of hard work, but it’s fun and if you really enjoy it you can make it fun.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Andrina Lever:

1. One is a writer, I heard her speak but I never met her, she is Oriana Fallaci. The reason I’d like to meet her is that she wrote a fabulous book a number of years ago called Interview With History and it was interviews with famous people. I would ask her, “Of all the people you interviewed, who was the most interesting?” She said in one of her books that world leaders are not smarter than other people they were just more ambitious and had bigger egos.
2. I suppose first and foremost though,  I would love to meet the Veuve Cliquot – Nicole-Barbe Ponsardin Cliquot who for all intents and purposes was the founder of the House of Cliquot Champagne.  This is a woman who witnessed the horrors of the French Revolution, was widowed at a young age, took over a fledgling family wine business, developed a new method or producing wine, ran a Russian blockade to sell her product at a premium and created a luxury brand, including a distinctive label which is still in demand wordwide almost 250 years later – what a woman!
3. Queen Victoria would have been very interesting to meet because she was a contradiction. She was a woman who was outwardly very severe but was very passionate and I would like to ask her what she believed was the biggest impact of her reign, and all these years later what an influence she would have had.
4. I would like to meet Gertrude Bell because I would ask her why she did what she did because she was so ahead of her time. She was very strong and broke out of a Victorian upbringing. She traveled and was so clever, and there were rumours that she was the mistress of the Prince of Mesopotamia. She committed suicide so I would like to know what disappointed her about her life. She actually founded the museum in Iraq (Baghdad), the one that was looted in the Iraq war. She was a remarkable woman.
5. Golda Meir who was one of the first elected women leaders of a country in the world.  She played a key role in the middle east, looked like a granny but was never afraid to make a tough decision.  I would love to have these women around a dinner table together, discussing the state of the world today, while drinking copious amounts of Madam Cliquot’s excellent product!  They were all well versed in international affairs.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Andrina Lever: I’m sitting in my library now which has a couple of thousand books, but I love biographies. I read a lot of biographies of people who are characters, people who have overcome adversity. I don’t know if any had a profound impact but I certainly enjoyed reading a lot of them. A couple of years ago I read a book called Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach about a woman who graduated from university in the late 1800s and went off to be an explorer and advisor to Lawrence of Arabia, and ended up founding the first school in Mesopotamia which became modern Iraq. Stories like that fascinate me, they don’t have a profound impact, but I’m fascinated by what makes people do things. She is a woman I would love to have met.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

Andrina Lever:

1. I would like to have Earth from Above Tenth Anniversary Edition by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s a beautiful book that came out with photographs taken from all over the world in 2000 to celebrate the millenium. So if I was on a deserted island I would love to look at the rest of the world to remind me what it is like.
2. There is a big book called The Book of Birthdays by Russell Grant and it’s all about astrology and astrological signs and I could study about everybody that I know who I could remember their birthdays, what they were like and that would keep me busy for quite some time.
3. I would want books that would teach me how to survive on a deserted island, books that would teach me how to do things the easy way instead of figuring it out for myself.
4. I would take Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide by Christmas Humphreys. He was a judge who lived in the first part of the twentieth century When he was young his brother was killed in the First World War so he studied all the religions in the world trying to find out about war and why his brother died, and he settled on Buddhism because he felt it was the only religion that gave him peace, and he wrote a book about it which is a very good book.  Christmas Humphreys later became a judge.
5. I would take a book by Ken Follett who has written mysteries and some historical books (Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy).

Avil Beckford: What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Andrina Lever: The movie would have to be an entertaining one like Wag the Dog (New Line Platinum Series) because it’s so cynical about politics and I loved it. Music would be Pachelbel Canon In D Major For Piano And Strings by Pachelbel.

WAG THE DOG – Trailer – (1997) – HQ

If you cannot view the YouTube video click here.

Johann Pachelbel Canon in D Major fantastic version, classical music

If you cannot view the YouTube video please click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Andrina Lever: Being alive, new things, new experiences, opportunities, family.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Andrina Lever: By continually questioning things and experiencing new things, not being afraid even when I am afraid, do something, go someplace.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Andrina Lever: For my family to be healthy, happy and safe.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Andrina Lever: I am playing with the dog, walking with my husband, having a glass of wine with friends, and knowing a job is well done.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Video Credit: Johann Pachelbel Canon in D Major fantastic version, classical music Uploaded by schmobot on Jun 26, 2007

Interviewee Name: Andrina Lever

Company Name: Lever Enterprises, Balloon Express

Website: http://www.balloonexpress.it

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Andrina Lever:  I was born in England but grew up in Canada and in various other countries. I started traveling when I was nine months old. I went to 17 different schools growing up in three countries. I graduated from law school in England and started out in human rights law and sold my soul to the corporate world. I went into banking and was in advertising for awhile.  I got married and my husband and I lived in various places – England, New York, Australia – then we moved back to Canada. In 1988 I started my own business Lever Enterprises.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Andrina Lever: Now I live overseas again in Firenze, Italy. I’m not working so much in my own consulting business anymore although it is still active and I take on special projects, my husband retired so we moved to Firenze. So a typical day for me now is I get up and go into the office and work with our son who has a company that’s in import, distribution, and  manufacturing of balloons and arty products. He is looking at expanding so a typical day is working in the office for 10 hours, having a nice long leisurely lunch, which is very Italian. It’s pretty intense, I do a lot of work with foreign suppliers and partners of the company. I come home, my mom is living with us, I read, sleep and start all over again.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Andrina Lever: I was just born motivated. I am an optimistic and positive person and I enjoy my life and I enjoy what I do so I look forward to getting up in the morning and going to work every day and that’s what motivates me.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Andrina Lever: I honestly do not know if I would do anything differently. Maybe I would have been more disciplined with certain things that I did. Sometimes I resisted because it seemed like it was something to do, but everything seemed to work out. I think that’s a difficult question to answer, it’s hard to undo what you already know or what you have already done.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Andrina Lever: I don’t know if it’s a discovery as much as a confirmation, which is that I’m pretty adaptable. Our family has faced a lot of challenges in the last 20 months and I guess that has confirmed for me that I’m pretty strong and I have the ability to do what needs to be done.

Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

Andrina Lever:

1. Our company Balloon Express has always been the leader in its field. It’s a vey unique company, and the way we do things here is unique. We are the leader and trendsetter and what’s beginning to happen is that we have more and more competition and more and more companies copying us. So we continually have to stay ahead at the leading edge.
2. Another challenge for us, and I can only speak for the Italian market, is that it’s very difficult to find the right employees that have the right skills that we need to work in the company. There is little unemployment in Florence but there is a lot of competition so finding the right people is a second big challenge for us.
3. The third challenge which again is unique or a mix. Moving from Canada and coming to work full-time here, with the openness of the European Union the challenge we have is competitors from other countries in the EU can come into our market, and it happens. That’s very tough and again we are constantly finding new competitors and challenges.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Andrina Lever: We provide an integrated approach. The company was started by my daughter-in-law 19 years ago. It started out as purely importing and distributing balloons and party goods in a way that had never been done like this in Italy. The company goes out, we have 45 of our own shops, we have 1500 clients, 30 agents and we train everybody and we spend a lot of money training people in our shops in balloon décor. There is a lot of creativity, we design our own products, take products from all different suppliers and integrate them together.

Every year we host the largest Balloon Arts Convention outside of the US called the Balloon Arts Convention International. We continually enter competitions to draw attention to the company, and we hold the world champion title for the largest balloon sculpture that was seven meters tall. The company has held the Guinness Book of World Records since December 2001 and we continually advertise in very high end publications like Italian Vogue and Weddings Today. We spend a lot of money on promotions, it’s impressive.

Avil Beckford: What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

Andrina Lever: Customer service. We spend a long time working with our customers and our customers’ customers and we train people.  Sadly  most of our suppliers, which are major multinational companies, do not put such a high premium on customer service despite what they say.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Andrina Lever: My daughter-in-law started this company 19 years ago, and she was the driving force. We helped her. I did a lot of research for her when she started the company. But two years ago very suddenly and tragically she died while on holidays, which is the biggest challenge that anyone can face in business. She was the driving force, the visionary. She had a gift in terms of choosing products, so we had to deal with a huge emotional loss and pull together to ensure that the company continued and that the predator competitors out there – and they were out there – did not try to take advantage of the situation. I’m proud to say that every single person in the company pulled together as a team through a very difficult time.

The asset that the company has is really the people, the team we created. Everybody in the company has worked for us for quite some time and they are very loyal so we pulled together. One of the big lessons is the better you treat people the better they treat you, and never underestimate the value of the staff because you can never be prepared for something like this. It’s a small company so when you lose a key person it puts a burden on everybody else.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Andrina Lever: I’m not sure if I ever had a big break. I had some lousy jobs before I started to work for myself but I always tried to make them fun and learned as much as I could from them. When I came back to Canada after living away for a long time, it was really very difficult to get a job. I met a head hunter and they sent me for a job that I really didn’t want, and it really wasn’t in my field, and I suppose that was considered a break because when I was being interviewed the guy told me there was a consulting side of the business which would be a better fit for me, and he offered to hire me on a contractual basis and after a year I was placed full-time. I think that was more of an opportunity than a break because someone read between the lines on my CV and saw something else there.

After about five years with this consulting firm, I was beginning to feel frustrated and some of our clients could see that.  One client, in particular, encouraged me to leave and start my own business and promised he would be my first client.  He did not like the man I worked for so I never felt like I ‘stole’ a client or business from my employer, but that client helped put my own company on a secure financial basis when I started out so I immediately had a positive cash flow which was great!  He also saw ability in me which I did not see in myself.

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Andrina Lever: I’m not sure that I’ve ever had a big failure. I think we all make mistakes and we learn from those mistakes. Some of them are the way you handle situations or relationships, but I can’t say that I’ve had a really big failure. Sometimes I think I’ve been very lucky, I think I’ve always had a good attitude and I’ve had a lot of positive people around me who support me and I support them.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Andrina Lever: I think it was a very tough decision to leave a well paying job and strike out on my own. I was no longer happy with the company that I was working for and several clients were encouraging me to leave. They told me that they would continue to use me as an advisor, and they did. I think the decision was tough because I really didn’t know what I was doing.  I never looked back and I set goals for myself including how much money I wanted to make, and I figured if I equalled my salary (If I stayed employed) the first year then I was doing okay. But that was a very tough decision to make to leave the security of a well-paying job to strike out on my own, that was a gutsy move to make.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Andrina Lever:

1. The way that I grew up. We traveled a lot and I went to a lot of different schools. If I used that as a collective experience, that had a huge impact on my life, how I view the world and my ability to be adaptable, outgoing and comfortable in many different circumstances and my treatment of all people as my equals.
2. My father left us when I was in my early thirties and he went to live on a tropical island on the Pacific and that had a huge impact on me and the way I looked at life because I never thought that would happen to me or our family, and it did. That had a dramatic effect on me and taught me that you never take anything for granted. Anything can happen to anybody at any time.
3. Facing the death of someone close to you has a dramatic effect on you in terms of facing your own mortality. You really need to appreciate what you have and the people around you. And the one thing about that, that I really have to say about my daughter-in-law’s death was the last time I saw her we were all leaving to go on holidays and I told her how incredibly proud I was of her and of everything she created. To this day, I’m glad that I said that to her because I never saw her again, she died after that. Sometimes you don’t tell people something that’s important and good because you just don’t get around to it, so I’m eternally grateful that I said what I did to her.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Andrina Lever: Staying in business for all those years – 25 years. Being successful and keeping my reputation. That was a big accomplishment.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Andrina Lever: I didn’t realize that they were mentors at the time. There were three men in addition to my father. When I was growing up my father always told me, “You’re going to be somebody. You’re not going to work for other people, you’re going to get your education and you’re going to do something.” My husband always supported anything that I wanted to do. During the frustrating times when I said, “I cannot do this anymore,” he’d say, “Of course you can, or if you don’t want to do it, give up,” and of course he knew that I wasn’t going to give up.

When I was working at my last job, three men approached me separately and told me that it was obvious that I wasn’t happy anymore, and told me if I decided to leave then he’d support me. At the time one was a banker. One of the men owned a consulting company in New York and one was a client The three men independently and without knowing each other saw something in me and encouraged me to start my own company and helped me and taught me things I didn’t know. They also helped my self-confidence when it would go down.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Andrina Lever: That I was better than I thought I was. I think a lot of women particularly from my generation suffered from self-confidence issues even though we knew we were smart and we had the paper to prove it. They told me I was smarter and I could do better and that was a big help to me.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Andrina Lever: I hate this quote from Nike, but sometimes you just have to do it. We look at other people and think they had it easy or they did it the easy way. I have had several young women say to me, “You always had great jobs and everything you did was fun,” and I’d say, “You know that’s not true. I had some crappy jobs and no it wasn’t always fun.” But something my father always said to me was, “Keep your sense of humour, you’re going to need it,” and I did. I think it’s important to keep your sense of humour and have a good outlook on life and sometimes don’t take things so seriously. Yes business is serious, but step back, be objective and don’t try to second guess yourself too much, just do it.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book link is affiliate link.

Image via Wikipedia

Samuel Pierpont Langley was one of the lesser known pioneers in aviation. Though his formal education ended after completing high school, Langley was well read, reading extensively in science, literature and history. He popularized scientific knowledge by writing magazine articles. Using his knowledge of aerodynamics, Langley built a number of elastic-powered models. In 1896 (the same year Otto Lilienthal died), Langley was successful in flying several small-scale unmanned, steam-powered aircrafts launched from the top of a houseboat on the Potomac River. In 1898, at the request of the US government Langley started to build a piloted machine. The aircraft did not fly because the launching apparatus failed.

Name: Samuel Pierpont Langley

Birth Date: August 1834 – February 1906

Job Functions: Scientist, Aviator Pioneer, Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Fields: Astrophysics, Aviation

Known For: Bolometer

Though Samuel Pierpont Langley’s formal education ended when he completed high school, he was a voracious reader and studied various branches of science. He worked as an engineer and architect and held positions such as head of an observatory at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

An inventor in his own right, Langley invented and sold a technique to provide standard time signals to railroads. Between 1879 and 1881, he also invented the bolometer, an instrument for measuring tiny quantities of heat. “The superior measurements by means of the bolometer, the newly discovered extent of the solar spectrum, and the new results for selective absorption of the earth’s atmosphere were significant contributions to the study of the sun and its effect on earth.”

In 1887, while Langley was at the Allegheny Observatory, he started a series of aerodynamics experiments. He continued his investigation into the possibility of piloted flight after his appointment as Secretary of the Smithsonian. “He studied the lift and drift of moving plane surfaces on a sophisticated scientific basis. Experimenting with small models propelled by elastic strips, he worked out the mathematics of the problem. His contributions to aviation rest not only on knowledge he acquired and shared with others upon his successful distance flight of power-driven models, but also upon the dignity he brought, as a man of sound scientific reputation.”

In 1896, Langley successfully flew a 14-foot steam-powered aircraft model for 3,000 feet over the Potomac River. He repeated his experiment, and this time, the model flew 4,200 feet. The novelty of the situation was that these were the first sustained free flights of powered heavier-than-air machines. Two years later, the US War Department awarded Langley a grant for $50,000 to continue his experiments to achieve piloted flights.

Langley built a full-sized aircraft with a 53-horsepower gasoline engine. He made two highly publicized events at flying and failed both times – the craft fell into the water shortly after takeoff. It’s believed that there were defects to the launching device. It’s worthy to note that in 1914, Glenn Curtiss successfully flew a modified version of Langley’s airplane.

What Did Langley Do Wrong?

Langley’s aircraft had excellent propulsion and adequate aerodynamics, but the structural design was poor. The Wright Brothers are credited for inventing the airplane, and what they did differently from Langley, was they first mastered the art of fly using unstable gliders before they added power, and that made the difference to their success. The development of flight followed the trajectory of the Wright Brothers and not Langley. The Wright Brothers also built a wind tunnel where they could test their flying devices in a more controlled environment.

Steps to Success

• Langley was a voracious reader and read several branches of science to elf-educate.
• He was a keen observer, and experimented a lot.
• Langley shared his research findings with others to move the field forward.
• He gave legitimacy to the to the early aviation field because he was a respected scientist.

Why Samuel Pierpont Langley Contribution Matters

Samuels Pierpont Langley may not have contributed that much to piloted flight but Max Planck’s interpolated radiation law were based in part on bolometer measurements. Langley invented the bolometer.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Works Cited/Referenced

Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Science and Its Times

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster is a great book for mentoring because after you have read it, you will never read the same way again. It teaches you how to question things. It was the most impactful book for me in 2011!

Cover via Amazon

“Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer’s alone…In this activity of reading and understanding literature, we’re chiefly concerned with how that story functions as material for literary creators, the way in which it can inform a story or poem, and how it is perceived by the reader.”

I thought that I would find How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster quite boring and academic but I quite enjoyed it. For people who haven’t studied literature in college – and that includes me – after you read How to Read Literature Like a Professor, you will never view literary fiction the same way.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a solid guide which increases your understanding of literary fiction. I found the ideas and numerous examples quite helpful. To truly understand literary fiction, especially the well-written ones, first you have to know something about the author and you have to ask a lot of questions. You have to constantly ask, “What does this mean, what’s its significance in the story?”

When you dig beneath the surface of the story, a whole new world opens up to you and you have a richer experience. Most of us in the western world are very familiar with the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill.

“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water

Jack fell down and broke his crown

And Jill came tumbling after.

Up got Jack, and home did trot

As fast as he could caper

He went to bed and bound his head

With vinegar and brown paper.”

I remember learning that poem in primary school, but I do not remember any deeper meaning to it. Here is some of Foster’s analysis:

“Hills and valleys have a logic of their own. Why did Jack and Jill go up the hill? Sure, sure, a pail of water, probably orders from a parent. But wasn’t the reason so that Jack could break his crown and Jill come tumbling after? That’s what it usually is in literature. Who’s up and who’s down? Just what do up and down mean?…First think what’s down low or up high. Low: swamps, crowd, fog darkness….High: snow ice, purity….”

Who would have thought that one nursery rhyme could be so loaded with hidden meaning?

How to Read Literature Like a Professor has chapters titles such as:

• Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)
• Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion
• Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Vampire
• Now, Where Have I Seen This Before?
• When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare
• ….Or the Bible
• Hanseldee and Greteldum
• It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow
• Does He Mean That?
• Is That a Symbol?
• If She Comes up, It’s Baptism,
• Geography Matters
• …So Does Season
• He’s Blind for a Reason
• Don’t Read With Your Eyes

The film Oh Brother Where Art Thou has parallels to the wandering of King Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. The three convicts in the film are trying to get home and so is Odysseus after fighting in the Trojan War. The recognition of that parallel suddenly changes the reader’s experience. I would not have seen it had Foster not pointed it out.

Flying means freedom, so that means that it could be freedom from the things that tie us down. Rain often has a cleansing effect. And, writers take great pains in naming characters in their work, so there is great meaning in the names. If the character’s name is Daisy, Daisy is a spring flower, so what does the season spring means in literature? You constantly have to drill down to get clues. If people are eating a meal together, what does that mean? Eating is a shared experience, so what are the characters sharing, what are they going through together?

7 Great Ideas Worth Exploring

1. The reason for a quest in a story is self knowledge.
2. There is no such thing as a wholly original story work of literature.
3. There is only one story – stories grow out of other stories, poems out of other poems, plays out of other plays, and they also cross genres.
4. Myth is a body of story that matters.
5. Flight is freedom.
6. When writers send characters south, it’s so they can run amok.
7. Don’t read with your eyes.

Questions to Ask While Reading Literary Fiction

• Where have I seen this situation before?
• Where did that effect come from?
• Whom does this character resemble?
• Is this a metaphor? Is it an analogy?

You have to question everything. How to Read Literature Like a Professor was very illuminating for me and I now see some of the books that I had already read in a new light. While reading the book, I reminded how I felt reading Og Mandino’s books, The Greatest Salesman in The World and The Greatest Salesman Part II. It was the classic case of where have I seen that before. In the first book, I recognized Mother Mary and Baby Jesus and in part two I recognized Paul on the road to Damascus. I recognized the stories because of my religious upbringing. So even though Mandino did not use names in the story, I recognized who the characters were because I had seen that type of story before.

If you read a lot of mythology, you will recognize the gods, goddesses and other mythical characters in stories that have parallels. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster is a book that I will constantly refer to as I read the classics this summer. I cannot really do justice to the book because you have to read it for yourself -, there is simply too much information packed inside.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Boo links are affiliate links.

Related articles

• Booked on Tuesdays: Musings of a Book Addict – and the Most Impactful Book for 2011 Is…. (theinvisiblementor.com)