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Apart from lots of catching up with folks, I've also been doing quite a fair bit of reading too (not readings' reading, like during Term time). I'm quite satisfied considering that a fair amount is fiction, and in Mandarin too. muahaha. Also managed to finish The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen too. A pretty cool book too.
But here, I'll like to share two other (non-fiction) books:
Both books actually come under the Business / Human Resource Management section, and to put it briefly, talks about the issue of (innate) talent. I thought it might actually turn out to be two similar (if not identical) books, but they weren't. In fact, it felt like readings two parts of one book. I would recommend reading Colvin and then Gladwell (back-to-back). By the way, Colvin's articles appear in Fortune (he's the senior editor there) and Gladwell has two other books, The Tipping Point (which is a good read, similar in style to Outliers too) and Blink (which I haven't read, but I think it should be pretty good too).
Anyway, I'll leave all you out there to read them (if you're interested), but let me select parts of these books out that I found rather instructive.
You'll find this excerpt coming from the last paragraph of Talent is Overrated. Suffice to say, the main thrust of Colvin's book is on the concept of 'deliberate practice' and the myth of 'innate talent' (I know this is not doing justice to the breadth of the book, but it'll suffice for now):
"The evidence offers no easy assurances. It shows that the price of top-level achievement is extraordinarily high. Perhaps it's inevitable that not many people will choose to pay it. But the evidence shows also that by understanding how a few become great, anyone can become better. Above all, what the evidence shouts most loudly is striking, liberating news: that great performance is not reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone."
- Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (New York: Portfolio, 2008), p. 206.
The other excerpt comes from my second recommendation, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. A word of caution though. If you're someone who has an attention span of less than fifteen minutes, you're not going to enjoy his book, because every chapter begins with stuff that seems to be totally unrelated. In GP terms, his 'topic sentence' is simply not there. the 'point' comes out only later. But if you can plough through it, you'll find his prose rather amazing. Here's the excerpt:
"It is not easy to be so honest about where we're from. It would be simpler... to portray success as a straightforward triumph over victimhood... [or] individual achievement. ... Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first to blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of hsitory and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some plain lucky - but all critical to making who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.
- Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (London: Allen Lane, 2008), p. 284-285.
I think both books have been amazing. They don't sound at all 'preachy' - 'you should do this, change that, not do that' - they just lay out the facts, give you their analysis, and leave you thinking. If you have time this Christmas, think about picking these great reads up!
***
p.s. If you actually buy Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, here's a tip from me: get the hardcover version. Reason? Well, the hardcover version costs only $4.30 more after a 20% discount (think Kinokuniya) or even just $4 more after a 25% discount (think Harris). Hardcovers are simply far more classy. Period. Besides, the purplelish-maroon colour of the Paperback is kind of ugly (not the colour itself, but the shade) - in fact, it's downright awful.
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