A weekend spent in trance (reading Leadership by Doris Kearns Goodwin)
I just spent my weekend reading. I was in a trance. It was amazing!
It's been a while since I picked up a lengthy non-fiction book. I usually stick to graphic novels. It doesn't take too long to read them. I can easily chew through a 200 page graphic novel in 2-3 hours. On the other hand, I have been trying to read Chaos by James Gleick and I am still stuck at around page 70. The most recent non-graphic novel that I read was "Bad Astronomy", which wasn't too big and the recent lengthy non-fiction that I read was "Creativity Inc.", which was almost an year ago.
I was pretty intimidated when I came across Leadership. A work colleague of mine (Joris) lent me a few books from his personal library, which have been sitting in my room almost untouched for the last three months.
This weekend, I finally dared to read again.
Instead of trying to restart Chaos or start "The signal and the noise" by Nate Silver, I chose Leadership instead. And it was a good decision.
I started at around 2 PM yesterday after lunch and except for dinner and a coffee break, I read till 11 PM. And I started again today morning, immediately after waking up. I took a break around lunch time and just finished the book. About 360 pages of engrossing material.
The book itself was interesting, as you can probably imagine from the fact that I wasn't able to put it down. It uses case studies of four presidents of the USA to illuminate leadership qualities. It felt a little too formulaic at times - Hero is born Hero gets defeated, Hero disappears to build himself back up and finally, Hero achieves victory - but these are real people that we are talking about that actually made a difference in the course of history!
To simplify the growth of these leaders and condense their lives, I think this formulaic story helps. I'm sure there's more nuance in each of the leader's stories but the book does mention that a quality of a great leader is his/her ability to bounce back from a failure having learnt something from it.
Anyway, at the end of this weekend, I am more confident in my ability to concentrate for long enough to read lengthy books. It's not like I ever read lengthy books. I read "Emporer of All Maladies" which is an amazing 571-page long book (which I want to revisit sometime in the future). I just found the patience in myself again, having spent a lot (A LOT) of time watching (wasting) TV shows and movies (which weren't in any way intellectually stimulating me).
That's all for now. I am thinking of spending next weekend reading "Beautiful Code" by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, which has also been sitting in my room for over 6 months. Or I'll finish "Chaos" finally. I'll tell you how that goes. Until then ...
[1] My goodreads profile - https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/63873080-sai-rahul-poruri?shelf=read.
It's been a while since I picked up a lengthy non-fiction book. I usually stick to graphic novels. It doesn't take too long to read them. I can easily chew through a 200 page graphic novel in 2-3 hours. On the other hand, I have been trying to read Chaos by James Gleick and I am still stuck at around page 70. The most recent non-graphic novel that I read was "Bad Astronomy", which wasn't too big and the recent lengthy non-fiction that I read was "Creativity Inc.", which was almost an year ago.
I was pretty intimidated when I came across Leadership. A work colleague of mine (Joris) lent me a few books from his personal library, which have been sitting in my room almost untouched for the last three months.
This weekend, I finally dared to read again.
Instead of trying to restart Chaos or start "The signal and the noise" by Nate Silver, I chose Leadership instead. And it was a good decision.
I started at around 2 PM yesterday after lunch and except for dinner and a coffee break, I read till 11 PM. And I started again today morning, immediately after waking up. I took a break around lunch time and just finished the book. About 360 pages of engrossing material.
The book itself was interesting, as you can probably imagine from the fact that I wasn't able to put it down. It uses case studies of four presidents of the USA to illuminate leadership qualities. It felt a little too formulaic at times - Hero is born Hero gets defeated, Hero disappears to build himself back up and finally, Hero achieves victory - but these are real people that we are talking about that actually made a difference in the course of history!
To simplify the growth of these leaders and condense their lives, I think this formulaic story helps. I'm sure there's more nuance in each of the leader's stories but the book does mention that a quality of a great leader is his/her ability to bounce back from a failure having learnt something from it.
Anyway, at the end of this weekend, I am more confident in my ability to concentrate for long enough to read lengthy books. It's not like I ever read lengthy books. I read "Emporer of All Maladies" which is an amazing 571-page long book (which I want to revisit sometime in the future). I just found the patience in myself again, having spent a lot (A LOT) of time watching (wasting) TV shows and movies (which weren't in any way intellectually stimulating me).
That's all for now. I am thinking of spending next weekend reading "Beautiful Code" by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, which has also been sitting in my room for over 6 months. Or I'll finish "Chaos" finally. I'll tell you how that goes. Until then ...
[1] My goodreads profile - https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/63873080-sai-rahul-poruri?shelf=read.
