Quiet !

Just simply...Quiet.

This book review has been a long time in coming...for reasons I outline in the review. (From Goodreads):

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh crap...now I have actually finished this book, and I have to write a review...but I am not sure how exactly. Let's try this:

Wow
Double Wow...even Triple Wow occasionally

It took me an extraordinarily long time to read this book given my usual pace. But that is because of the work that it is. It is subtitled "The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking". I could have almost stopped there and savored that alone...but I am glad I didn't.

I was introduced to Susan Cain (as were many others) through her TED Talk. I bought this book immediately after seeing it and coincidentally at the end of a very bad experience for me of being a 'pseudo-extrovert', not so much to please others but because I do have a somewhat adventurous spirit when it comes to new challenges. Although I came out of it OK, this time it almost cost me.

So reading this book, there were many times where I simply had to set it aside for awhile (sometimes a few weeks) and let my subconscious mind work over what I had read.

It is that kind of book...full of what probably seems in hindsight like common sense...but it escaped us who were living the life of introverts in a world that for most of the last 30 years or so has valued noise, glamour, and extroversion.

The book gets a bit technical in the middle - Susan did her research, but even there I found a lot of very interesting and valuable nuggets to mull over. Her concluding chapters bring it all together into a combination message of "here is who you really are...and don't be ashamed of it" and "here is how you can learn to live".

The devilish part of me wants to add to that last "or if you are one of the inferior extrovert caste....read this to see who really rules the world". (Sorry Ms. Cain if you read this -- too many public school incidents welling up!).

This is NOT Susan's message at all. She points out repeatedly throughout the book that we need both types to make a living, functioning society, and that indeed there may not be very many pure "types" at all in reality. This is something I agree with very strongly, as I am certainly a hybrid of the two, though leaning heavily toward the "intro" side and much more comfortable with it particularly now that I have read this book.

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Thank you, Susan Cain!