Mercer
Tempted to give this a two, but there were some interesting stories so I will rank it a 3. I was tasked with reading this for work, and had never read any of the authors previous works.
There is language used in this book that makes me take the author's points less seriously, as it feels like name calling: he frequently uses the word “sissies” and has made up his own: “fragilista.” It's tiresome.
The perspective is that the opposite of fragility isn't resilience, it is getting stronger through damage (like how you build muscle). The rest of the 400+ pages are just specific micro-examples of how that plays out in life.
Could have been shorter, but I imagine for some the tons of examples are helpful? Felt like Malcolm Gladwell but much more disjointed.
I think I will just need to read this another time. I've tried twice and I just can't get into it. The tone is so different from Sandersons other books. Maybe it's the narrator? I don't know. The magic is great. The premise is great, I just can't get into it.
DNF about halfway through this time. A quarter of a way through the first time.
This was an extremely dense book, but useful. The learnings in this book would take years to put into place, even at a company that is already prepared to do so. With that, I'd say this is probably a text to revisit over and over again, and perhaps only super valuable at the executive level or at a small, flat startup. You would need to have organization buy-in to put these things in place.
