Book of theYear 2008

If I were to choose a book that I would consider as the best book that I have read this year, two names spring immediately to mind.

Jared Diamond’s Collapse – an analysis of past great civilizations that are…well, not so ‘hebat’ now or have already been wiped out except for mysterious evidence testifying to their existence (think Maya ruins and Easter Island stone heads).


Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers – a book on why some people are so successful in their lives while others struggle to make ends meet. Are they born with something that the rest of us lack? Or is it due to sheer determination and hard work?

Both books are well written and held me captivated from beginning to end. However, Jared’s book is more academically oriented with the author needing to explain a lot on a civilization’s past, its culture, how they came up with methods of testing and data collection to support their hypothesis and that makes it slightly harder to read as compared to Outliers which was very straightforward in their examples.

For that reason, I choose Outliers as the best book that I have read this year. I’m not saying it is a better book than Collapse, don’t get me wrong, I highly recommend Collapse as well but I’ve had more fun reading Outliers.

Now, back to the question I asked earlier – are successful people born with an advantage or do they achieve their success by their own hands? The answer is both. The book is divided into two parts, Part 1 – Opportunity and Part 2 – Legacy. I’ll just leave you with an example from part 1 and who else to better measure success than one of the richest people in the world, Bill Gates. Part 2? Go buy the book ler...

This man was for most of my student life, the richest man in the world. His father was a wealthy lawyer and his mom a banker. Bill was easily bored by his studies as a child, so his parents enrolled him in a private school. As fate would have it, the school started a computer club and bought a computer terminal for $3000 funded by the school’s ‘Mother’s Club.’ What is extraordinary about this is that this is the 1960’s and computers weren’t easily affordable or plentiful.

Opportunity 1 - Bill Gates had the opportunity to do programming while still in high school!
Opportunity 2 – Computer fees were not cheap those days but the ‘Mother’s Club’ continued to raise money for the computer club.
Opportunity 3 – One of the parents from the school happened to work at a company (C-Cubed) which needed people to check on the program codes during the weekends in exchange for free programming time and Gates volunteered.
Opportunity 4 – After C-Cubed got bankrupt, another company ISI needed people to work on their payroll software and Gates jumped at the chance. In exchange for his work he got more programming time.
Opportunity 5 – Gates happened to live within walking distance of the University of Washington and they found out that the medical center and the physics department had free computer time between 3am and 6am. He would wake up at that time and either walk to the University or take the bus.

There were many more opportunities for Gates and when he dropped out of Harvard University to start up Microsoft, he already had tens of thousands of hours of programming under his belt. How many teenagers at that time can claim to have that kind of experience? He was not born a genius, but he had right opportunities presented to him at the right time and he reached for it sacrificing his sleep, comfort and also worked for free. (This is actually called the 10,000 hour rule and my friend Min Shen has written something about it on his blog... do not believe the evil part though)

This book may be a witty and smart book but it lacks something. Malcolm gives you many insightful jabs but lacks the killer punch at the end. He has challenged my thoughts and changed the way I look at life but I was hoping for something more from him at the end. Yes, I do agree there is something wrong with our system, the way we work, the way our schools are run...but I was hoping that Malcolm would be able to offer some more practical advice on overcoming these. Nevertheless, this is still a great book and I will highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.

Oh...and a very Happy New Year 2009 to all of you!!!