The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

 

I heard about The Inner Game of Tennis a couple times, so I decided to give it a chance. As it was waiting in my queue, my work book club was looking for suggestions and I recommended this one.

The Inner Game of Tennis is about how to address the mental side of performance. It uses tennis as a metaphor, although frankly a lot of the examples are very much about tennis. The author's themes are things like fewer instructions = less overthinking, showing is better than telling, trusting oneself, no substitute for experience, and relaxed concentration. I liked the parts about competition bringing out the best in yourself and focusing on the next point, not the entire match.

The author's background is as a tennis player and coach, but he was written versions using other sports as the example. Tennis was the original book. It was actually written in 1974. It is impressive how much of what was written is still, and probably even more, true in today's world. 

The book is reader friendly in that it is only about 130 pages and an easy read. I loved all the tennis examples, but if you're not a big tennis fan then you might skim over some parts. But the ending tied it all together very well, connecting the dots to life, work, or really anything. I especially think this is useful for middle school & high school athletes as well as coaches.

My rating for The Inner Game of Tennis: 4 stars out of 5. Get it here!

Mr Nice is an autobiography by Howard Marks about his life. I don't usually copy & paste from the book's description, but it's hard to explain his background:

During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and owned 25 companies throughout the world. Whether bars, recording studios, of offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing. Marks began to deal small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford, but soon he was moving much larger quantities. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to 50 tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organizations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA, and the Mafia.

Clearly, an interesting story. However, the writing was atrocious. It was choppy, with significant scene shifts mid-paragraph. It was also overly detailed. I had to carefully re-read parts at times because I missed what was happening. It is hard to know what is true and what is not...the crazier the stories, the more attractive this is to readers. Eventually, his story was turned into a movie.

First time in a long time that I did not finish reading a book. It was too slow and painful. I probably made it 80% of the way, but frankly I lost interest.

My rating for Mr Nice: 1 star out of 5. Get it here!

Range by David Epstein

My team at work started a small book club. Range was our first book. We had a month to read the first half of the book, which we discussed, and then we had another month to finish the book and discuss. I tend to read fast, so I read the week of our meetings. But because of the gap, I took notes to remember the chapters.

The subtitle does a good job describing the book: why generalists triumph in a specialized world. The author's examples are really good. Things like letting kids play different sports vs focusing on one sport. Trying many different instruments. Trying and failing vs being led toward the answer. Using analogies and fresh perspectives to solve problems. The point is breadth's benefits outweigh deep specialization.

This was one of the better business books I have read. I liked that the examples were long and specific and thought they flowed together nicely. I had a hard time seeing how this would conclude, but that was decent with commentary on how to think about resumes and applicants. The author's piece of advice was "don't feel behind". Personally, I liked one other quote he concluded with, which is a common quote except that the last part is often forgotten: "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one."

While I classify this as a business book, it applies to all aspects of life. Some might find parts of it heavy, but I would definitely recommend the book.

My rating for Range: 4 stars out of 5. Get it here!