So have these books shaped me, or was it the other way round? Was I born this way and chose the books because this is who I truly was?  I think the book chooses you because you attract the book.

When I do enjoy a romantic novel it is usually because the heroine is a strong woman who is the hero of her own destiny.  But if you really want to know what kind of fiction books I like, I still like things like Harry Potter where you can enter magical worlds where reality does not have to dictate the storyline.  Mythical creatures, magic potions and spells.  Things that make life less mundane and interesting.  Things that you can not compare to your real life and wish you had them, just a good gripping book that makes you happy while you read it.  I also love novels which are set in totally different places and eras than mine.  I read My name is Red a while back by Orhan Pamuk and felt totally immersed in the different culture of a totally different era.  I want to read a book that takes me into a new world and let me walk around and take it all in at my own pace.

And like the author of the article mentioned, the authors of these books usually deal with their own issues thru the characters in their books.  Sometimes it is healthy to relate to protagonists and sometimes it is just healthier to look for it elsewhere.  After all these characters live only in the confines of the pages of a single book or series of books, but we don’t.

Now that I am older and have less free time to read all the books I want to read I am even pickier.  If the book won’t make me happy or help me learn something new I just won’t read it.  When I was younger even if I hated a book I would still force myself to read it, now I guiltlessly put a book down and start a new one if I don’t feel I am getting what I want or expect from it.

Growing up I never had many friends so I made friends with my books.  It is sometimes thought that the nerdy kids don’t have friends because they lack in social skills, I would like to disagree.  Sometimes they just find that the books are more interesting and more accommodating and fulfilling to their needs.  Moving a couple of times through childhood it was hard to keep friends, but a book fits into your bag.

I have come full circle  my favorite books are the same as when I was 10,  I read for my own personal pleasure and my own personal growth.  I read because it satisfies a hunger and fills a need.  I read because at the end of the day I still haven’t settled down in a single place long enough to make life long friends but I can fit a friend in my bag.

I am still selecting books, but now I am picking out books for my little girl and perhaps my own character will lead me to specific book.  Books where girls are strong and can do anything.  Books with magnificent creatures and stories.  Books with values and morals I would like her to learn for a lifetime.  But I still accept the fact that eventually she will make her own choices and perhaps totally different books will choose her, but that’s ok, because I know that the right books will want to be her friend.

The story or should I say the story line because it is not like a conventional story with a beginning and an end but more like looking into the lives of a group of  young Egyptian women on a timeline in their lives. It leaves you with the feeling that the girls are now your friends and that you will pick up the phone and check on them.

A book by a young woman for young women, well men can read it, but I think it touches women more. Six young women who are ambitious and live purposeful lives are always a great example for other women. The characters are so real and that is not a surprise since they are based on real people.

A lovely read, yet it might leave you inspired to find yourself, embrace it and move full speed ahead in your own life of purpose.  It should also make you reach for the phone and call your friends because the feeling of friendship and camaraderie in the book is quite high and heart warming.

Juka, I wish you all the best and hope that this debut book is just the beginning of a long list of bestsellers and I want a signed copy of this one too.

If you  are interested there’s also a book launch and signing event at the Sherouk Bookstore tonight at 7 pm.

We all have our fears and things that hold us back.  This book is not about fixing these fears or trying to find out why we have them, it is about overcoming them, accepting that we will always be afraid of things and how to use that fear as a stepping stone to get to where we want to go.

Some of my favorite concepts from the book:
Taking responsibility of our lives without blaming anyone else or beating ourselves up. I used to go back and forth to these two extremes and always felt stressed and unhappy. Now I can easily tell myself that other people’s happiness is not my responsibility without feeling guilty. My happiness is my responsibility and no one else’s. It is not fair or healthy to blame other people for what goes on in our lives if we have decided to give up control of our lives.

Saying “Yes” to the universe. Accept what the universe has given you and say yes to it and everything will change. This concept is very different that normal positive thinking. It stops at acceptance and then the rest is where you have to work for change. Just thinking positively does not change your situation, it is only the very first but very important step.

“Act as if you were important” There was one really interesting story about a woman who hated her job and thought it was only temporary until she found something better and was instructed by the author to act as if she were really important and mattered at her job even if she felt otherwise. A week later she returned and told the author how things had changed dramatically at her job. She took a plant and pictures to make her cubicle better, she went to work earlier and had more energy, even her co workers noticed the change and commented on it. She was told that whatever she was on, to keep taking it. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that we don’t matter, that our contribution is too small or irrelevant but that is so untrue. If you start to believe that your contribution is very important you will act accordingly.

The best thing about this book is that it is not preachy and is full of tools that can help you on your journey and little stories about people who either felt the fear and did it or those who buckled under the strain of their fear. It is like a friend talking you out of a mess, slowly but surely.

It also couldn’t have come at a better timing for me.  I got over my own fears and started my crochet business and failed at selling finished items, which turned out to be a huge blessing.  I realized I was more talented at creating and selling designs instead.  At first I was afraid no one would be interested or buy anything, but I felt the fear and did it anyway and found out that I had been wrong.  I felt that there were these amazing designers out there who much be so much more talented than I am so why would anyone buy from me, until I cam across something Doris Chan had written who is a prolific designer with hundreds of very successful designs and how she became a designer totally by chance, an opportunity presented itself and she took it.  I had to ask myself why was I afraid of taking the opportunity  that is sitting right in front of me.   I am still anxious whenever I publish a new pattern but it is not the crippling kind of anxiousness, it is a liberating kind.  The ability to step out of my comfort zone is amazing.

I was planning to give the book away to someone else to read but I have decided against it, I definitely want to keep this book and read it again later.

Excerpt from the book page 110 – 114

“Women believe that men are, in a sense, defective ver-
sions of women,” he began. “Men believe that women are
defective versions of men. Both genders are trapped in a
delusion that their personal viewpoints are universal. That
viewpoint—that each gender is a defective version of the
other—is the root of all misunderstandings.”
“How does that help me?” I asked.
“Women define themselves by their relationships and
men define themselves by whom they are helping. Women
believe value is created by sacrifice. If you are willing to give
up your favorite activities to be with her, she will trust you.
If being with her is too easy for you, she will not trust you.
You can accomplish your sacrifices symbolically at first, by
leaving work early to buy flowers, canceling your softball
game to make a date, that sort of thing.”
“Why does it seem like the rich and famous guys get all
the women?” I asked.

“Partly because the rich and famous are capable of mak-
ing larger sacrifices. The average man might be sacrificing a
night of television to be with a woman. The rich and famous
man could be sacrificing a week in Tahiti. There is much to
be said about the attraction of power and confidence exuded
by a rich and powerful man, but capacity for sacrifice is the
most important thing.”
“What do men value?” I asked.
“Men believe value is created by accomplishment, and
they have objectives for the women in their lives. If a
woman meets the objectives, he assumes she loves him. If
she fails to meet the objectives, he will assume she does not
love him. The man assumes that if the woman loved him she
would have tried harder and he always believes his objectives
for her are reasonable.”
“What objectives?”
“The objectives are different for each man. Men rarely
share these objectives because doing so is a recipe for disas-
ter. No woman would tolerate being given a set of goals.”
“So what should a guy do if the woman in his life
doesn’t meet these secret objectives? How can he get her to
change?”
“He can’t,” he replied. “People don’t change to meet
the objectives of other people. Men can be molded in small

ways—clothing and haircuts and manners—because those
things are not important to most men. Women can’t be
changed at all.”
“I’m not hearing anything helpful here.”
“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.”
“Let’s say I find the person whose flaws I don’t mind,”
I said. “The hard part is keeping her. I haven’t had much
luck in that department.”
“A woman needs to be told that you would sacrifice any-
thing for her. A man needs to be told he is being useful.
When the man or woman strays from that formula, the other
loses trust. When trust is lost, communication falls apart.”
“I don’t think you need to trust someone to communicate.
I can talk to someone I distrust as easily as someone I trust.”
“Without trust, you can communicate only trivial things.
If you try to communicate something important without a
foundation of trust, you will be suspected of having a secret
agenda. Your words will be analyzed for hidden meaning and
your simple message will be clouded by suspicions.”
“I guess I can see that. How can I be more trusted?”

“Lie.”
“Now you’re kidding, right?” I asked.
“You should lie about your talents and accomplish-
ments, describing your victories in dismissive terms as if they
were the result of luck. And you should exaggerate your
flaws.”
“Why in the world would I want to tell people I was a
failure and an idiot? Isn’t it better to be honest?”
“Honesty is like food. Both are necessary, but too much
of either creates discomfort. When you downplay your
accomplishments, you make people feel better about their
own accomplishments. It is dishonest, but it is kind.”
“This is good stuff. What other tips do you have?”
“You think casual conversation is a waste of time.”
“Sure, unless I have something to say. I don’t know how
people can blab about nothing.”
“Your problem is that you view conversation as a way to
exchange information,” he said.
“That’s what it is,” I said, thinking I was pointing out
the obvious.
“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is
also a way of signaling the importance of another person by
showing your willingness to give that person your rarest
resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation
reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in
some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce.
Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”

For the next few hours the old man revealed more of his
ingredients for successful social living. Express gratitude.
Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch
people. Remember names. Don’t confuse flexibility with
weakness. Don’t judge people by their mistakes; rather,
judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remem-
ber that your physical appearance is for the benefit of oth-
ers. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will
not be useful to anyone else.
I didn’t know if I could incorporate his ingredients into
my life, but it seemed possible.

Download the book.

Outlier is a scientific term used when something happens totally out of the ordinary and appears to have no obvious explanation.  It is when someone appears to have succeeded immensely without an obvious explanation where most people would have failed.  Instead of looking at the person’s personality, character and hard work, the author suggest looking deeper and farther into that person’s history, life and circumstances that might have helped created the spark to succeed.  Gladwell felt compelled to write the book to explain the phenomena of success

In the case of Outliers, the book grew out a frustration I found myself having with the way we explain the careers of really successful people. You know how you hear someone say of Bill Gates or some rock star or some other outlier—”they’re really smart,” or “they’re really ambitious?’ Well, I know lots of people who are really smart and really ambitious, and they aren’t worth 60 billion dollars. It struck me that our understanding of success was really crude—and there was an opportunity to dig down and come up with a better set of explanations.

The book is broken down into two parts; Part One: Opportunity and Part Two: Legacy.  Each describing different causes and routes to success.  The first part is about being in the right place at the right time and doing your part to succeed.  If you want to achieve greatness, the book claims, you don’t only have to work hard, but other factors help to give you a boost too.  Like for example because of cut off dates for hockey players in Canada, this gives players born in the earlier months of January a much better chance of playing because they will be larger and more physically mature than their counterparts born in December because in children, those months make a world of difference.  This does not mean that the player doesn’t still have to train really hard to make it into the major leagues, but his birth month has already given him an edge he did not really earn by himself.  As for hard work, Gladwell claims that 10,000 hours is  the magic number, it is the number of hours that differentiate between mediocre and excellence.  Musicians, athletes and even programmers who have trained, worked or performed more than 10,000 hours are usually amongst the greats because they have gone the extra mile in hard work.  All this is not really new, we already know that with lots of hard work and with a little bit of luck you can become a rock star in your field.  What was new to me was the fact that hard work could be measurable in hours and had a number attached to it too.  It also meant that luck was not 100% random.

I found Part Two even more interesting because it was more about human traits that are inherited from one generation to the next. You know how we always say that certain cultures have specific behavioral tendencies or traits.   Apparently this is something of a legacy that can be passed on from generation to generation.  It explains why Asians have always outperformed themselves in math while the rest of the world is slightly behind.  First, their number is system is different, the numbers are phonetically shorter, helping them have a longer number memory sequence.  In other words, their numbers are monosyllabic words, making it easier for them to remember longer number sequences than we do.  Fifty to them is five tens, which makes learning basic arithmetic much easier.  Beyond their numbering system, they have a culture of hard work because of a history of cultivating rice.  Rice?  What does rice have to do with math?  Unless you are counting rice it has nothing to do with rice.  But not according to Gladwell,  the way rice is cultivated is very work intensive and has taught the generations that hard work is the norm which is probably why to this day they work much harder than other cultures that were wheat growers for example.  A couple of days ago I read something somewhere about Chinese hairdressers going from door to door in Cairo to offer their services.  This is what I mean, they have a different work ethic than Egyptians for example, not necessarily because they are better people but because it has been ingrained in their very fiber of being to work really hard.

My favorite chapter was about high IQ in children and how it can be harnessed.  This is a personal issue for me as a parent because well just like every other parent out there we believe we can help our children become great.  What I did conclude from this chapter was that children who did succeed were the ones who came from families who’s parenting style was of concerted cultivation and helped children learn entitlement (positive not the negative type).  Children who are engaged and taught early on how to deal with life and have their own interests and pursuits and engage in lots of different activities are the ones who go one step further in life.

The book itself is the size of a small paperback which made it easy to hold in one hand and read in bed, which in my world is an awesome thing.

In conclusion, this is definitely a book I would recommend.  I would love to discuss this with anyone who has read it.