Monday, August 16, 2010

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

This non-fiction book is along the same vein as Freakonomics. 

It looks at certain success stories, examines the circumstances behind each story, and highlights that factors that came into play.

For example:
- looking at professional sport leagues, a high proportion of players have birthdays at the start of the school year. This turns out to be, not that a certain star sign is better at that sport than others, but rather when these people were at a formative age, kids were selected for special programs based on intakes for a year level. But when kids are only 7-8, an eight year old can be a lot bigger and more coordinated than one who has only recently turned 7. And this compounds, with those selected for special programs getting more practice and encouragement etc, so that by the time they are in late high school and being checked out by talent scouts, those with birthdays earlier in the age bracket are more likely to be selected.
- talent versus hard work. Hard work and practise is far more important, no matter how talented you are. This is looked at in many ways... The Beatles and their seasons playing live in Hamburg prior to recording their first record; musicians at a music school and the hours they spend practising; cultural attitudes to hard work vs leisure time for kids. Examples also of successful school programs in disadvantaged areas.
- the actual opportunities to be leaders (and sometimes get rich) in your field are rare. One example is all the silicone valley success stories (Apple, Microsoft, Sun etc). The founders were all born around 1955. Had they been born earlier, computer science and programming would have been a boring and pedantic field of science to study. Had they been born later, they would have missed the boat. On top of that, they had a lot of opportunities to access computers, via a school or nearby university, to practice with PRIOR to the invention of the personal computer.

This book was interesting. My key thoughts:
- I wish I'd read this as a teenager, as it might have helped me to realise that I needed to work hard at things I wanted to be good at.
- Dismay, that my varied career is not helping me to become an expert in anything in particular.
- It has changed my attitude to kids being given homework right from the start of school, which is common now (as compared to "in my day" when you didn't get regular homework until late primary school).

A highly recommended book, even though the wrap-up chapter can be a bit corny.

The Road - Cormack McCarthy

Or... how to keep yourself sleepless.... Not just because it is a gripping read, but because it haunted me!

"The Road" is a tale about a man and his son surviving in a post apocolyptic world, when everything is dead or dying, and everyone is scavenging what remains of food, from cans and packets, or worse, eating other people. Everything else that is usable is running out - ammunition, shoes, clothing, wood for making fires. The boy's mother features in the man's memories, but has died by the time the story starts. They meet some characters along the way, and none are what you'd call friendly.

When given something deep and/or worrisome or disturbing to think about, I am prone to insomnia. "The Road" is the first book I've read in a long time that has stuck with me so vividly, and kept me awake far, far into the night. The plots of many other books (and movies) become fuzzy soon after reading them, but the events of this book return to my brain regularly, and I read this months ago.

Why? Several reasons:

- a key plot point is never explained. You never find out what exactly happened to the world. It is kind of implied that there has been a nuclear war, but you don't know why, or how this all unfolded. It is a few years in the past when the story starts, and you just get snippets of it from the man's memories. This is plenty to wonder about.
- people driven to the edge. Resources are so scarce that you kill or be killed. Some resort to cannibalism. Some try to retain their humanity. What is humanity? It's a fine line when protecting those you love at times. What would be the point of life under these circumstances?
- parenting. All the big questions, such as how to best instill the/your key values in children? can you pass on everything that is important before you die? would you really want to have children faced with such a bleak future? Can you always find things to hope for? How do children view the world you grew up in?

These are not just questions for the grim circumstances of the book. I understand that the author, who became a parent in his 50's or 60's, and is faced with reaching old age sooner than most parents, wrote this about his own fears of not being able to pass everything important on to his son before he dies. Another part of the story is the mother's story, told through the man's memories. She is pregnant at the time the nuclear war (presumably) starts, and the boy is born soon after. She finds she can't feel optimistic at all in a post-apocalyptic world. As a woman, naturally, she has different fears.

A highly recommended read.

Monday, August 09, 2010

Jeckyl and Hyde

We saw a review of "Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson on the First Tuesday Book Club, then saw it for sale cheaply at a book shop and thought "Why not?".

It is interestingly written, and the writer has given much thought to details - how the big secret will be gradually revealed, how to make it shocking.

However, it is all a bit ruined by its famousness, sadly. Everyone knows the plot twist. I'm sure Looney Tunes even did a cartoon where someone turned evil and needed a potion to turn back to normal.

I did enjoy it, though, and it's a quick read. The book contains other short stories by the same author, so hopefully I can review them too in the future.