Pratik

Five stars may be a one star too many given the criticisms faced by this book. While understandably, this book is aimed at the upper-middle class of parents (and the author admits that!), it contains plenty of advice and truth-telling that is applicable to most parents, unexpected circumstances notwithstanding. In fact, if life takes an untoward turn toward the unexpected that results in a significant loss of net worth or a downgrade in life style, your kids may be better prepared to handle the turn of fortune.

Even if most of the advice is geared toward the rich families e.g. like the kids from the 2-million-dollar home halving their footprint to a million-dollar-home and donating the difference in value to charity, it sets a precedent among the rich that may address several social ills prevalent today.

For most, the whole ‘rich kids of Instagram' and the opulent lifestyle they project on social media has a more deleterious effect on the other 99% who then try to emulate their lifestyle by going into debt or resorting to resentment that can manifest physically health-wise. Most of us don't resent the ultra rich but we do detest the obnoxious and privileged offsprings who seem to flaunt wealth while lecturing us about merit. If the advice in this book is heeded even by that segment of the population, it would make the world a much better place.

I give 5-stars mostly because of handy and pointed advice with plenty of real-life examples that apply to my current status. We've been subconsciously following most of the advice by having frank conversations with our son about money matters and even answering questions about buying price of our home. We do inculcate the role of budget and trade-offs when choosing gifts and we are definitely not shielding him from the realities of life. At times, we thought we may be going overboard and causing him to think we are pinching pennies but the book puts my mind at ease in suggesting that we may be on the right track. It may be better to err on the side of more financial management-oriented thinking than not.

If you couldn't digest Roach's Gulp! (get it?), you should probably stay away from Bonk. This book is even better than the travails of your alimentary canal as it aims at a much lower level i.e. your genitals. No other physiological occurrences have been more important yet have been studied so less often.

Citing heavily from Masters and Johnson (BTW definitely watch ‘Masters of Sex' on Showtime), Kinsey, et al., Roach brings her inimitable humor to the science of sex. Some chapters will have you clenching the pages a little too tightly especially for men as she describes the bravery of some men to go the extra mile for science so that we would learn. Or maybe they just didn't have any option coz they screwed up (I'm full of puns today). If you've checked out the early part of ‘Orange is the New Black', you'll be not be surprised to know that women are equally unaware of their nether regions. In their defense, it's much more complex. Just like their minds.

So if you aren't a prude and can get thru lines such as ‘...if you thought defecation-induced orgasm was gross, think of the other way around' and didn't throw up your dinner, then you should definitely read Bonk. Perhaps you can impress the lady with science if not with your charms.

What can I say, it's the typical Dan Brown book; full of sentences crammed with tangentially related factoids just to justify countless hours that Brown must've spent unearthing them. Of course, it's no Dan Vinci code. The final reveal isn't even that “earth-shattering” after all that buildup. But it's compelling enough to keep reading and go through that familiar guilt for reading this instead of something else.

‘Quiet' attempts to dispel the notion that you've to be an outgoing & gregarious person that's the life of a party to be successful in life. As Cain backs up with several examples that many successful people have been avowed introverts, she leads you down the path of providing research-backed conclusions that dissuades you from trying to be whom you're not. Being an introvert is not the same as being anti-social. For the former, social interactions for a prolonged time can be mentally and emotionally exhausting and just as an extrovert thrives on more interactions, an introvert has an upper limit on the time he/she can spend with people before retiring into their own homes for peace and quiet.

The ideas on productivity including teamwork, brainstorming, and open-office collaboration are simply myths that research has proven to not yield results unless the collaboration is done online (creating Wikipedia, etc.) The best work is often done on your own before sharing it with others. I've often done my best work on my own even to the extent of doing my design dissertation in my architecture undergrad years when my peers took help of several of our juniors.

Cain offers plenty of strategies to introverts who may want to ‘act' as extroverts in a world where gregariousness is considered a must-have asset. Introverted people in professions that need you to be extroverts often tend to over-prepare which even makes them more reliable and better at their work instead of an extrovert who may decide to ‘wing' it.

That said, Cain doesn't consider being introvert a necessary attribute for success in life but she emphasizes that it need not be a debilitating one.