Non-Obvious & Einstein’s Dreams
Authors: Rohit Bhargava/ Alan Lightman
Genre: Things I Read Just Because J
Rating: Non-Obvious B/ Einstein’s Dreams A+
Sometimes one book leads to another leads to another and this was one of those times. I was actually reading a fashion class textbook when they recommended Non-Obvious and in that book Einstein’s Dreams came up. Now Non-Obvious was just a really overall interesting book but Einstein just appealed to me on a sometimes I get obsessed with time and meaning level.
Non-Obvious is basically about trend-spotting. It attempts to show you ways of seeing, gathering and putting together information that can help you predict what’s going to break and become a trend and be around longer. Obviously this book is very good for businesses. I liked it because I want to be a writer one day and I always have a lot of ideas (that mostly go in one ear and out there) also I’m very interested in what breaks in popular culture.
The book is an easy read and it never gets too dull. It’s broken down into sections like business and entertainment so I could see skipping the stuff that you don’t find interesting to stuff that you do. The author does this yearly and at the end of this he goes back and rates some of his previous predictions and says why they worked or why they didn’t which was an added bonus.
Obviously some of the older stuff you could probably have a good idea of why it didn’t work but some of the predictions for the future are quite interesting. This book really made me focus a little bit more on thinking of not just ideas but the appeal of them and long term implications to whatever field they are involved in.
Meanwhile Einstein’s Dreams is a series of short chapters based on ‘dreams’ of world with different ideas and realities of time. I’m probably not explaining it well which is a shame because the book is written so easily that it’s a superfast read for instance you have chapters where time runs backwards, where time is a visible thing, where a life happens in a day or one section where the ‘later’ people versus the ‘now’ people. No math involved. Yeah! I loved the book but like I said it does appeal to me on a personal level.
There’s a little bit about Einstein in very short intervals but if you’re looking for something deep on his life this isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Recommend: Yes for both. Non-Obvious especially if you’re into marketing and ideas but anyone could read Einstein’s Dreams and enjoy it.
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