Another book review before I’m going for a short vacation 🙂
Title: Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning
Author: Tom Vanderbilt
Pages: 261
Publisher/Publication Date: Knopf Publishing Group / January 5th 2021
Genre: Nonfiction/Self Help/Personal Development
Source: Times Read
REVIEW
Being a beginner can be hard at any age, but it gets harder as you get older.
Beginners is a story of the author who decides to learn new skills after getting inspired by his young daughter. He tries to learn new skills such as playing chess, singing, and surfing. The first two chapters started exciting, and I genuinely want to know more about it. But, sadly, the following content failed to keep my interest in this book.
He got very detailed about the skills and technical and it kind of boring. I feel like I was reading a book about each skill, less about the actual learning process.
Nevertheless, I understand the author’s real message: it’s never too late to be a beginner and learn a new skill. He encourages adults to start to learn new skills or get some new hobbies. It would increase our brain health and give benefits to our minds. We should never be ashamed of what we want to do. Just do it as life is a long journey. Life should full of lessons and joys in everything we do.
Some important points from this book are:
We have to learn how to teach. Sometimes we have to relearn what we are trying to teach.
Just because you’re not immediately good at something does not mean you won’t eventually get it.
No one is born a master. We are all, at one time or another, beginners.
Being a beginner is hard. It feels better to be good at something than to be bad.
You make mistakes, but even these are empowering because they are mistakes you have never made before.
In a nutshell, being a beginner can be a wonderful thing. We should always try to learn new things. It’s acceptable to make mistakes as long as you can see the excellent progression of it. Just enjoy the moment and take it all in.
I want to like this book more, but it certainly didn’t work well on me.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐️/5
Thank you Times Read for providing me with the review copy in return for an honest review.
