Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else is a book by Geoff Colvin.

I read it after I was recommended it by a friend. He is a member of my Toastmasters club and is a lovely and funny guy. But several of his talks have irked the sceptic in me. In one unlucky incident, for example, he gave a talk on neuro-linguistic programming, a field that has now been completed debunked. Unfortunately for him, I was his formal evaluator that way, and was quite outspoken in my evaluation speech!

In another speech he spoke about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, which again is probably nonsense. I challenged him on it and he recommended I read “Talent is Overrated”. So, after that extended backstory, here I am having read it with my usual attempt to keep an open, yet appropriately-sceptical mind.

The central theme of the book is that you do not need “talent” to be good at something, you just need lots of time. It challenges the idea that there is a correlation between IQ and success. Research does not support these suggestions.

However, it does make an important point about the quality of practice. It says it is very important, and it is. One of the biggest criticism’s about Gladwell’s 10,000 hours is that he largely ignores quality of practice whereas Colvin stresses it is the most important thing.

The second half of the book turns into a management handbook for motivating your staff. This makes a good point that staff are your most valuable asset. However, some of it felt a little confused. For example it claims you need to have a long-term plan and talks about Panasonic’s 500 year plan. Then it talks about having to reinvent your business model every 3-4 years. How do we reconcile long term plans with the increasingly uncertain future?

The book finishes off by going back to the original topic of why are highly successful people so successful. It discusses age-related degrading of talents and suggests that while we do degrade as we get older, if we continue to push our skills they tend not to degrade much at all (but the rest of our bodies will). I’m not sure on the research on this, though I might just choose to believe it because it sounds pleasing. Ah the bliss of ignorance.

It also puts forward the idea that if you want to be truly amazing at something you need to start really young. This is probably a controversial point, that is probably true. Thus entirely justifying living out your dreams through your kids…

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is a book about randomness and probability by Leonard Mlodinow.

It is well researched and written. He talks about a lot of the other research cited by similar books, and basically anything that references Daniel Kahneman is probably on the right track. Why Kahneman? Possibly because his research is the best. Or possibly because Kahneman’s work reached the critical mass to make it more popular than anyone else. I would seemed to have missed the point of the book if I didn’t accept that as a possibility.

Mlodinow talks a lot about luck, and how much that is a part of the most successful people. It is a massive part. I often describe it as “the one thing Malcolm Gladwell got right”. See my review of Outliers.

I was already familiar with most of the content of the book, but it was good to have a reminder. Take these points for example:

• We judge more specific scenarios more likely than general ones. The classic example is a character description of a feminist. We judge “she is a feminist and a bank teller” to be more likely than “she is a bank teller” even though B is contained in A so must be at least as likely.
• The two daughters problem. If a family has two children and one of them is a daughter, what is the probability that they will have two daughters. It might seem like a half, but the answer is actually a third. This is because there are four possibilities (boy boy, boy girl, girl boy, girl girl) and we only eliminate one (boy boy) by saying they have one daughter.
• The two daughters with a name problem. What are the probabilities of a family of two children having two girls if they have a girl named Florida? The answer is a half, not a third. This is because families with two daughters have two chances to have one named Florida.

The answers to these questions are often not obvious at first. It took me a bit of time to get my head round them. But that is the point. Humans do not have an innate understanding of probability, we’re actually pretty bad at it a lot of the time.

Then some of it is downright confusing. Take for example the gambler’s fallacy and regression towards the mean.

In the gambler’s fallacy, people think that if black has come up ten times in a row on a roulette wheel, red must be due. Of course it isn’t. The odds are still 50/50. At the same time, if you have just had a really good of ten bets, the odds are that your next run of ten bets will be less good because of regression towards the mean. Holding these two concepts in your head simultaneous and knowing which to apply in each situation becomes incredibly confusing.

There are some other great examples in the book too.

DNA testing is often described as almost perfect. The changes of DNA being confused are incredibly small. Whereas the chances of a witness being wrong are quite high. For more details read The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

They correctly point out that faced with witness testimony vs DNA evidence, the DNA evidence is far more likely to be accurate. However, the odds are not millions to one that it will be wrong. Sure, the test itself is that good. But the chance of human error in the lab might be 1%. Thus it will still only be accurate 99% of the time.

Alcohol was another interesting topic. I’ve written several times before about how humans cannot tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine. Mlodinow quotes even more studies. In one, they labelled two bottles as $90 and $10 and subjects judged the expensive wine to be better. They were the same wine in two bottles. In a second cited experiment, food colouring was added to white wine and subjects were then served the same wine in “white” and “red” forms, claiming they could identify the differences.

Something also struck close to home was similar tests on vodka. Mlodinow points out that vodka is naturally without character, so most of it is marketing. Indeed, in a blind taste test, critics could not tell the difference between expensive brands such as Grey Goose and Ketel One and cheap brands – ultimately rating Smirnoff as the best.

I have done a taste test between Smirnoff, Absolut and Grey Goose and there was a clear difference. However, it was not blind and this study suggests that if I did it blind, I could not tell the difference (which I suspect is the case). It’s a good reminder of the power of expectation.

Mlodinow concludes the book by talking more about luck and how successful people are mainly just lucky. That is not to say that they do not tip the balance in their favour by being talented as well, but if you look at someone like Bill Gates, he himself admits he has been lucky to get where he is.

There is an important message to take away from this though. Because it is not innate, and there is a luck element, that gives us control. If we can control how many coin flips we take – in the form of how many times we try, be it in business, learning a new skill, whatever it is – the more chance we have for it to come up heads.

Written by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre makes up and important part of the Bronte sisters work. With Emily Bronte having written Wuthering Heights, these two novels represent the best work of the two sisters. It is only a shame there wasn’t a third Bronte sister to write another great novel. But there wasn’t.

I decided to go for the abridged version. I just couldn’t face the 500-or-so pages of the unabridged version. Of course you lose a lot of the detail that way, but I found it made for a more pleasurable experience for a book that I was not sure how much I would enjoy.

It started off very promising. An attractive young lady being restrained in “the red room”. Though it is luckily it did not end up going this way given how young the character was at the time.

Charlotte’s style conforms more to that of a Jane Austin novel than it does to that of her sisters and I think I am grateful for that. Wuthering Heights was an unpleasant story. It had depth, realism and emotion, and I’m not looking for that in a novel. I’m looking for a Jane Eyre style happy-ish ending.

After reading a book about Holocaust deniers I needed something a little more upbeat. A fairy tale about animals on a farm seemed to be the exact remedy I needed.

It’s very Nineteen Eighty-Four. Of course, it is no surprise it is similar given there are both Orwellian novels, but many of the ideas and concepts are taken almost word for word from each other. The constant threat of the enemy, the re-writing of history, the propaganda.

How can you pretend that someone as massive as the Holocaust never happened? That is the topic of Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman’s book. They look at many of the most widely recognised Holocaust deniers and what exactly it is that they believe.

The book spends a good deal of the book refuting the claims of Holocaust deniers. This was a little disappointing for two reasons. Firstly, it was just horrible to read. Transcripts of former German soldiers explaining how it was done made for extremely unpleasant reading. Secondly, I wanted to read this book because I wanted to know more about the psychology of Holocaust deniers, and I felt there could have been more on this.

The conclusion of the book looks at how we can learn from such obviously nonsense claims as Holocaust denial in terms of determining whether other people, looking at other issues, are promoting genuine revision or simple denial.

I’ve been reading George R. R. Martin’s second book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series ever since I finished the first over a year ago. Clearly with not much focus. Actually, I have been putting it off because I was a bit worried about not remembering what was going on.

Having restarted, however, I found it fairly easy to piece together. This involved fitting some of it in with the TV series though, and there are differences.

It is what you would expect from Martin. The good guys having a really hard time, the bad guys having a slightly less hard time, and all your favourite characters constantly being killed. The ending is also rather abrupt. It is almost like he just writes the entire thing and picks arbitrary points to slice into books (maybe he does).

American Gods is a novel by Neil Gaiman. I’ve read Good Omens which was a collaboration between Gaiman and Pratchett, but this was the first entirely Gaiman novel I have read. It follows the tail of a man named Shadow as he travels around America meeting gods, old and new.

From Gaiman’s introduction, I was expecting a story about some kind of road trip exploring American culture. To an extent, it probably was that, but America is such a diverse place that you can only really do small parts of it justice.

Its clever story arc makes for a very satisfying ending.

According to the cover, Linda McCartney provides meals that are both “simple and inspiring”. My friend Alan lent me a number of cookbooks and this was my favourite one (which he then very kindly gifted to me!).

It should be noted that Linda does not seem to have been a fan of spicy food. I’m not either, I usually get my Nando’s medium, but I’m developing a taste for a little bit of kick. Even at that level, I found myself regularly scribbling “leave the chilli seeds in” or “use two chillies, not one” next to recipes.

Good points

It does keep things simple. Most do not take too long to make or involve complicated steps. So far, they have all been tasty.

The photos that there are are very large.

There is also an excellent section at the back breaking down how to make a selection of sauces and dressings.

Bad points

It feels a bit dated. Most of the recipes call for chilli powder or dried chillis. I could be entirely wrong about this, but my guess is that these days that would all call for fresh chillies (Hugh certainly would).

Just less than half the dishes have photos.

Finally a lot of the recipes rely on a meat substitute. Many of the recipes are existing meat dishes with vegetarian mince instead. This is unfortunate because vegetarian meat usually tastes terrible.

I wanted a good book on cooking with vegetables over Christmas and I eventually settled on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “Veg Every Day!” book. It has quickly become my favourite cookbook.

Good points

I got it in hardback format which helps keeps the book open and protects it. There is a photo of pretty much every single recipe – a recipe on one page and a full almost-A4 size colour photo on the other. That is probably the best feature of the book.

It is also really good food. All of the dishes are interesting and tasty. None of if uses meat substitutes; there is a real focus on cooking with interesting vegetables rather than making dishes with meat alternatives.

It was only £12 for the hardback.

Bad points

Just one really, though it is a big one. Everything takes ages to make. Ages! If you are a vaguely competent chef, you can probably work a lot quicker than me, and might be able to do most of the recipes within an hour. Me, not so much. I normally budget an hour and a half, maybe even longer, to make each one.

Utilitarianism is a book by John Stuart Mill defending the topic. I found it rather wandering with little structure. This made it somewhat difficult to follow. Indeed, I am not sure I came away from the book with any deeper understanding than I went in with.

I did not help that I had the audiobook which is narrated by Fleet Cooper. He speaks with an American accent and calls the author “John Stuart Mills”, which made it hard to imagine it being the impassioned arguments of Mill himself.