Category: Reading List Page 3 of 8

Currently about 1/3 of the way through Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers – The story of success”. For those who may be unfamiliar with this name, he is also the author of the highly successful “Tipping Point” and “Blink”, both dealing with insights into the causes for success.

Up to this point, the central thesis of the book seems to be that while some people are undoubtedly born with some innate talent

1. the “innate”-ness or being “gifted” is more often too over-hyped;
2. the home and social environments play a large role – in fact, his data seems to show that it can make or break a genius!

As it turns out, I started reading the book – bought at the airport bookshop – after listening on discussions between my sister and my parents regarding parenting. Surprisingly, this book is rapidly becoming a fairly good book for parenting, provided you are willing to unleash the true potential of your kids!

Spotted this list of 32 highly recommended sci-fi novels over at How to split an atom in my Google reader yesterday.

Surprisingly, I have read quite a few of those on the list:

• Foundation, by Isaac Asimov. (and the rest of the Foundation series)
• Time machine, by H. G. Wells.
• Animal farm, by George Orwell.
• War of the worlds, by H. G. Wells.
• I robot, by Isaac Asimov.
• Ring world, by Larry Niven.
• Dune, by Frank Herbert. (and all 3 books from the originally intended trilogy)
• The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, by Douglas Adams (all except for the final book in the expanded trilogy)
• 1984, by George Orwell.
• Ender’s game, by Orson Scott Card. (and the rest of the Ender, Shadow series)

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