Outliers

by Malcolm Gladwell

Short synopsis from Wikipedia

Outliers: The Story of Success is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown and Company on November 18, 2008. In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines the causes of why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, and how two people with exceptional intelligence, Christopher Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer, end up with such vastly different fortunes. Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

This was a very inspiring or very dispiriting book depending on how you look at it. The main point I think is that success is not attributed to just your personal effort, where the modern story of success is someone who goes it himself without the help of anyone else and succeeds. This book says even for the cases where you think this is the case, it actually it is not. There are so many factors coming into play that their success is no matter of just hardwork and luck. Of course these two factors are extremely important, but there are other underlying factors that are so weird and trivial that one would just ponder in wonder at such strange correlations to success.

One may not totally agree with all the points made in this book (though I personally agree with most of them), but what is important here is to get you thinking of how these things may have an effect on your life and not be oblivious to the factors affecting you. Ignorance is bliss, and more knowledge may bring more worries and stress, because some things are just out of your control. But I believe there is a third stage after that where if you know enough and know your limitations, you will learn acceptance and work within those frameworks for personal betterment. So it is better to try and be defeated rather than to not try at all. Like the common addage, Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

The Alchemist

by Paulo Coelho

Short synopsis from Wikipedia.

The Alchemist details the journey of a young Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago. Santiago, believing a recurring dream to be prophetic, decides to travel to the pyramids of Egypt to find treasure. He then tells a lone gypsy about this treasure. As he leaves, the gypsy mentions one thing. If he does find the treasure, she wants 1/10 of it. On the way, he encounters love, danger, opportunity, disaster and learns a lot about himself around the impact he had on the people he met. One of the significant characters that he meets is an old king named Melchizedek^[5] who tells him about discovering his personal legend: what he always wanted to accomplish in his life. And that "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." This is the core philosophy and motto of the book. During his travels, he meets a beautiful Arabian woman named Fatima who explains to him that if he follows his heart, he shall find what it is he seeks. Santiago then encounters a lone alchemist who tells about personal legends. He says that people only want to find the treasure of their personal legends but not the personal legend itself. He feels unsure about himself as he listens to the alchemist's teachings. The alchemist states "Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings."

I actually read this book several years ago and decided to read it again because it is just so wonderful. Plus it is not that long, so it is a book you can finish in one or two sittings. The story is wonderfully inspirational, it motivates for one to be brave and chase their dreams because that is the only life worth living. One would rather be poorer and take a risk in doing something they love, rather earning more money doing something they don't like. So I read this book over and over just to remind myself of why I am here, and what I should do. This is one must buy book because it has infinite re-read value, a modern day classic.

Aesop's Fables

by Aesop

Short synopsis from Wikipedia.

Aesop's Fables or Aesopica refers to a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. His fables are some of the most well known in the world. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today. Many stories included in Aesop's Fables, such as The Fox and the Grapes (from which the idiom "sour grapes" derives), The Tortoise and the Hare, The North Wind and the Sun, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Ant and the Grasshopper are well-known throughout the world.

Who does not know some of Aesop's Fables. Though, I actually did not know there were so many fables by Aesop. By the end of it I was sort of sick foxes and asses and lions and birds.

An interesting thing about Aesop's Fables are their morals are as applicable today as they are then, barring a few. There were only about 5 stories which moral of the stories I did not agree with. In a few of those I also did not feel the moral was what was being represented in the story. But that maybe due to subjective opinion. Overall, it was a good read and good (or bad) to see human nature has not changed  much in the past few hundred years.