Review: Quiet by Susan Cain - The power of Introverts

"Quiet is the most important book published for a decade"
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Rating *****

Firstly, Highly Recommended !

A book review is never easy. It becomes even tougher if you love the book that you are about to review so much so that you read it at a snail's pace over months, and then don't have excerpts to recall.

Hence, No Spoilers Here, You.

Quiet is an extremely powerful book. The Author, Susan Cain has done extensive research on the topic of Introverts / Extroverts and how the world reacts to each of the personality types.

She has been able to deliver a great narrative on basic understanding of each of the personality types, and how can each one of us react when we encounter people to make all our lives easier, covering diverse perspectives from that of a parent, to a teacher or to simply a friend.

“There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

This line above, captures so much of the essence being spoken about in the book, which is in complete contrast with what we are taught right from kindergarten. With the emphasis on group activities and being a team player, and calling someone who prefers to do things differently by not speaking up that often, people often end up making deductions that there is something wrong.

Progressively then, we are continuously bombarded about the importance of action and team work, and we lose emphasis on solitude and deep thinking. And this facet is not only applicable at work, but in all our relationships and life: How we work, how we talk, how we party, how we love, how we mentor, how we think, everything. And what most of us fail to realize is, Introverts are the same to Extroverts and vice versa, the way Yin is to Yang. Both are essential pieces for our world and for the human race to survive

Little bit of research, and I realized there is a thought that most people who choose to read this book, are introverts, because it does come across as championing a case for introverts with some flair.

However, being an introvert herself, Cain was able to walk the thin line between over-glorifying and beating about that Introverts live in a world built against them, against being able to quantitatively bring about facts to argue the world's reaction towards the topic and reasons behind the same, and come across unbiased.

I am not really sure, how much of that unbiasedness can I accomplish with this blog. A true litmus test to the statement that I make above, would only happen when an extrovert first reads the book, form their own opinion and then agree with what I just said.

But surely, this is not a book for only introverts. In fact, it is the complete opposite. It is a book for the world. Go, grab a copy now, and read it.