booknewb

TL;DR: You make snap decisions all the time. It can be biased so learn how to affect it. It begins with what Gladwell calls a "thin slice". It is a small sample size of a moment or moments. It is often indirect or emotional. ie. viewing a person's room or his bookshelf, a couple's 15 minute talk about mundane things, a doctor's interaction and not necessarily his diagnosis. 

TL;DR: Seriously though, it is 180 pages with the font, the size of a thumb. It's a short read. Take the time. Anyway, if you've seen the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie with Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, it is extremely close to the original by Roald Dahl. Around 97% close. I'm saying 97% because the part about Willy Wonka's back story in the Movie was not in the book. Roald Dahl may not have thought of giving Willy Wonka a back story, and it was pretty sad now remembering it. Daddy and Family issues may not have jived with the lively and warm tone Roald Dahl had in the book.  I wonder what Roald Dahl had in mind when he was writing the book. It reads like a sweet cautionary tale for kids about being too gluttonous, eating too much gum, being too spoiled and watching too much TV. Essentially, how to not be bratty hidden inside a Fantasy Chocolate world, like a caramel inside a chocolate kiss. Hey,  Charlotte's Web by EB White   is an...

TL;DR: To stay in Power as a Prince, you must be sly defensively, and offer fear offensively. You must play a certain way, have the right army and allies, and have the right character and behavior. It is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares, and a lion to terrify the wolves. This is terrible. Terrible in a stomach churning way. Hence, the term "Machiavellian".

TL;DR: Two sisters come of age. Elinor is serene. Marianne is more passionate. They meet two men who it appeared they will not marry, but eventually they end up marrying. One big story in the middle of what seemed like a suspense leads to the two sisters being happy with their marriages.

TL;DR:  The key to Mastery and Peak Performance is to build Mental Representations. The key to building Mental Representations is Proper Training, Effort and Time. The best format for proper training: Deliberate Practice. Okay now one by one.

It is surprising that this was originally published in 1990. I had to double check the dates in the opening pages because the concept of Flow is still discussed actively today; often quoted in other psychology books, one example is in Grit by Angela Duckworth . It also pops up in other mediums like podcasts, topics for life coaches/gurus, and in self-help and personal development book shelves. The TL;DR version is.. It is essentially about happiness. The argument being that if we want to maximize happiness, we should maximize Flow experiences.  Now what is Flow? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines it as:

This was a hard read. For a man only starting to dabble in philosophy, this was a struggle. There's a certain kind of blaaggh from philosophy. I don't know what it is. It's almost like listening to a scholarly talk way beyond your comprehension; like if a preschooler sat down in a college trigonometry class. The TL;DR version is: a bunch of philosophers gathered round and discussed details and debated about Justice, Reality and the ideal State, the Republic.