Olet hyvä tyyppi by Karla Nieminen

"Olet hyvä tyyppi" is a Finnish way of saying someone is a decent person, good company and an overall good guy. It's something of a coveted title. When you discuss recent job openings with a friend, they might say that it's not enough to have the technical expertise, but you also need to be a "hyvä tyyppi". When you describe your new girlfriend to your parents (and she's not there), you say that she's pretty but she's also a "hyvä tyyppi": dependable and genial. The latter is far more likely to impress them.

"Olet hyvä tyyppi" is a guide for better social encounters and relationships. It's a book that I wish I had read five or ten years ago. I had the same kind of engineer attitude to social encounters as the author. Small talk for me was never natural, so I had to come up with a set of rules to follow, if someone caught me off-guard. Reading this, I'm reminded of those first years, when I had to learn it all for myself. This book is a good resource for someone wanting to become better around other people. But I was happy that it never veered towards making yourself better at the expense of others. A zero-sum game is not part of its vocabulary.

A few things stood out. Karla Nieminen's sense of humor is effortless and surprising. She's able to sneak a few great lines in the advice and it genuinely made me smile. An American style version of this book would present the author as an unfaltering relationship guru that has all the answers. Nieminen is much more earnest and human. She makes fun of herself and encourages you to not take yourself too seriously. It feels like she's saying: "I had to learn everything by myself and I'm still not perfect. But I'm happier now and you can be too."

This book seemed to echo what I learned from Bruce Springsteen's memoir. People are almost never faking or putting on an act. When someone complements you, don't question them! When you show genuine interest in them, they will open up and your conversation will be much more lively. I didn't appreciate how different people are until I stopped questioning their intents. Letting go of this idea alone made this book worth the time.

The question at the end of the day is how to make the advice stick. For Nieminen, the answer is simple. You need to practice your skills in the real world until they become second nature. I would like to add to that. Great advice often comes in the form of a story or an anecdote. I've learned some great lessons from novels like The Grapes of Wrath and Freedom, because they make a different kind of imprint in the brain than just saying "now you have to do X differently". So instead of only reading self help books, pick up some classic novels as well. The combination will probably put you on the track to becoming the "hyvä tyyppi" in your own life.

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is one of the few international rock superstars who has consistently toured in Finland. Many of my friends have seen several of his shows in Helsinki, while other performers of the same caliber are always missed. Springsteen, however, has some kind of special relationship with the fans here. A few years ago, he played an extra 30 minute acoustic show before the actual concert began - and then went on to perform for over four hours with The E Street Band. According to the sources that keep track of trivia such as this, it was the longest concert in his career.

As you can tell, I'm a relatively casual fan of "The Boss". I've never seen him live and I don't own any of his albums. Born to Run (the album) is an amazing piece of rock and roll, but his other albums have never really hit home. I picked up Born to Run (the book) purely based on some positive reviews I'd seen but it really blew me away.

The biggest reason I never completely bought into the whole Springsteen mythos was that I found his lyrics silly and overwrought. I always had trouble believing that the things he was singing about - the cars, the girls, back alleys, small towns - were actually important to him. For some reason, I had always assumed that it was his way of pandering to the American lower middle class. That he wasn't singing with a straight face. How could he be serious?

Turns out that he was serious all the way through. That realisation made me re-examine his music from a whole new perspective. Springsteen has apparently been sincere from the very beginning. He wrote from his heart about the things moved him and lived his life more or less as his songs' characters do. He wasn't trying to fool the gullible working class into buying his albums. He wasn't trying to establish himself as a specific kind of folk hero. It was always about the music, the energy, the freedom and the crowd's reaction to him putting everything he had into his shows.

Underneath all the showmanship and passion, Springsteen was a restless soul and worrywart. He suffered from depression, every time he was forced to retire home from long tours. His soul wanted to be on the road constantly. But he also wanted to have a family, something that his own parents had never been able to provide him with. His father's schizophrenia only became apparent once Bruce was an adult and then it was already too late to truly reconcile.

Sometimes it's difficult to separate the man from the myth. Some will be sceptical of even this work because it might only serve as an attempt to play up the mystery of The Boss. But looking at how he played the marathon set in Helsinki at the age of 65, I'm having a hard time believing that Born to Run doesn't represent who he really is. He even gives a reason for playing those long shows: he's afraid that he's not giving enough, that people will be disappointed. His insecurities can only be put away by playing until the sun goes down.