After all of the nice feedback I got from my list of the 53 books I read in 2013 I thought I’d give something new a try. I’m going to review, no matter how brief, every book I read in 2014…

There’s one down already.

Book One 2014:

Quiet – The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

There are books you come across every few years if you’re lucky that completely change the way you view the world. They tilt your head slightly so that many things afterwards are viewed through the prism of what you’ve just read.

Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Naomi Klein’s No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, John Pilger’s Hidden Agendas, anything by Noam Chomsky, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time…

This is one of those books.

As a lifelong introvert masquerading as an extrovert for the purposes of work (a friend of mine calls us “ambiverts”) this book is like opening up something that makes complete sense of that part of my life for the very first time.

There’s nothing wrong with that side of who I am, it doesn’t need to be changed, there are an awful *awful* lot of us.

Finally I have something to explain the way I’ve always managed to be a deeply quiet person in a very loud business – read the section on Free Trait Theory.

It’s not a self-help book in any sense, more sociology and psychology so don’t go expecting to find that. If you’re interested in how we, the introverted half of the world, work, think and live our lives then this is essential stuff.