How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates GillMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a delightful quick read of a memoir that if not one of the elusive, second acts in American life was a second career of redemption and reevaluation. The author's privileged Yale education and Skull & Bones connections got him a lucrative and successful advertising career that had among its high points the phrase "The Marines are looking for a few good men" for DoD recruiting. After being terminated and stumbling into a role as barista, the triumphant transformation is as heart-warming as it is predictable, like a made-for-TV movie. (The book has been optioned by Tom Hanks for a film;[2] filmmaker Gus Van Sant has also been in talks to direct.) As a reader, what I really enjoyed was the flashback scenes giving context to the episodes where Gill recalled meetings with famous writers, made possible since Gill is the son of famed The New Yorker writer Brendan Gill. This included the truth behind a forehead scar from Ernest 'Papa' Hemingway himself, a curmudgeonly philandering James Thurber, and a vindictive office boy phase for Truman Capote. There is more interesting stuff about his daughter Elizabeth 'Bis' Gill who made Goldfish Memory (mistakenly called "Goldfish Memories" here) but what most impressed other Starbucks "Partners" was that she worked on a movie with rapper 50 Cent in Ireland (maybe Get Rich or Die Tryin').
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