Tag: books

Read: Faster – The Acceleration of Just About Everything

Faster
James Gleick; Random House Audio 1999

 

I have to recommend this book for the purpose of it’s current ability to cause reflection on the 15 years since it was written. The exact causes cited in the book are woefully outdated and don’t capture the revolutions that have happened since the year 2000.

What is relevant about the content is recognition about how correct the assumptions were as laid out in the book. Everything really is getting faster. My first favorite portion of this book is the enchanting description of Time in the very beginning. I have never felt such a deep understanding of Time before.

My second favorite portion of the book consists of the journey through what does 24 hours really look like and where does the time really go. Outdated as the book is, I found it very easy to examine the statistics the author uses to describe the hours of the day, and easily adjust for all the modern wonders and how much faster our lives are today.

I couldn’t imagine taking the time to read this book as the only thing I do, perhaps it was only appropriate that I listened to this while drinking my coffee on my way to work over the course of a few weeks.

Read: Blink

Blink
Malcolm Gladwell; Penguin Group UK 2009

 

This is the second book I have read from Malcolm Gladwell, and in reading both Outliers and now Blink; I enjoy the direct fashion the author presents his subject matter. It is refreshing to read books that take a matter of hours to read and yet still leave me with a more introspection and analysis about the authors assertions.

In Blink, Gladwell discusses the importance of our initial judgements in any given situation and how we can refine and cultivate our initial thoughts into a tool for assisting our daily lives.   He also describes how our initial reactions and insight to a particular event can fail us, occasionally with disastrous consequences.

The book does a good job of leading the reader to understand their intuition is worth paying attention to and not discarding immediately.  It does so with enough warnings that the reader should walk away knowing that a understanding our initial reactions is key whether we can trust instinct in a particular moment.

Read: Outliers

Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell; Little, Brown and Co. 2008

 

The author present several background stories on several successful and famous people to demonstrate the argument success largely depends on people and circumstances assisting the central character of each story.

It is a very fast read and a good story for investigating the under-represented reasons behind the success of individuals comprising the stories.