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2018 in Books #1 : Outliers

My membership at the Evanston Public Library is my best-worst decision. Best, because I now have e-books delivered right into my Kindle without having me trudge in snow to borrow or return a book and the worst, because it is going to make me lazy and unfit.  Cut to the chase, Outliers has been a good start to 2018. At a modest 300 odd pages, Malcolm Gladwell writes a deeply researched and critically analysed account of success stories that we know of.  | The biggest takeaway you can get from Outliers  is the "other side" of stories, which are often ignored for the sake of glorification of the achievement. | It was enjoyable to see how tiny, seemingly inconsequential factors can help a person go a long way. A popular example the book talks about is Bill Gates' rise as a billionaire when he was a college dropout.  Treating his story superficially has led to popularizing the opinion, "hey, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg were college drop outs

Growing Up with AM

Fluorescent Adolescent by the Arctic Monkeys played on my iPod.

The 2 minutes and 57 seconds that followed were throwback. Favourite Worst Nightmare and Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not were albums that resonated strongly with my teenage years. Rebellious and jarring in a way my head thinks.

But, in 2013 the Arctic Monkeys released a masterpiece called AM and in that I could see how much they've grown. The music and lyrics had matured, so had they and so had I.

I feel the journeys paralleled each other, mine and theirs and for this they hold a special place in my mind. Mad sounds in your ears.

PS: And also because I now associate AM with someone I met recently! ;)

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