I walked past Quiet at the book store and just caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye. To be honest, I don’t really know what made it stand out, but I immediately backed up to see what it was about. Visually Quiet by Susan Cain isn’t very interesting. However, being an introvert made Quiet a book that I really wanted to read. With Quiet not being the typical genre of book that I read, I looked up some reviews to see if I should even bother to attempt to read this book. The reviews seemed pretty good, I’ve read the book, and now I’m here to tell you what I think.
Plot
There are more introverts in this world than we think. At least a third of the people you know prefer to listen, create, and work on their own. Susan Cain’s goal in Quiet is to show how society doesn’t value introverts as much as extroverts, and in doing so how we lose so much. Through research Cain delves into the Extrovert Ideal and how it has woven its way into our culture. However, Quiet showcases very successful introverts, from public speakers to salesmen. Changing how society views introverts is a powerful thing, and Quiet does just that.
Review
Alright, now for the review. To start, I really wanted to be over the moon for this book. I wanted to dive right in and just breeze right through. Like, the actual meat of the book was less than 300 pages. That’s nothing for me to read through. In the past, I’ve finished longer books in less than a day. Alas, I had a very difficult time getting through this book. Now don’t get me wrong though, Quiet was a very interesting book. What I believe to be the problem is that Quiet was not written in a style or voice that I am either used to or enjoy. I truly believe that I was the problem and my personality was only partially correct for this specific book.
Now the content of Quiet was super interesting to read. Granted, being an introvert myself and enjoying looking into personalities, I feel I already knew a lot of what was talked about or I display the behaviors myself so I wasn’t surprised. Not only that, but I am comfortable with being an introvert and don’t feel the need to act like an extrovert, so the book wasn’t “life changing”. There were a few topics though that I didn’t really know about and found interesting: how well introverts and extroverts communicate, how some people see being an introvert needs “fixing”, and how learning is sometimes set up to work against introverts.
Overall, I give Quiet by Susan Cain 3 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed the topic and information the book provided. The writing style and voice was not enjoyable for me to read, and caused me to not retain as much information that I normally do while reading. Ultimately Quiet is great if you enjoy the writing style, I unfortunately do not.
Favorite Quotes
“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
“Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to.”
“Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.”
“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting.”
Star Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Add it to Your List: Add to your Goodreads
Snag a Copy: I will always suggest getting the hard cover, but buy in any format on Amazon
Interested in other books that I’ve read? Check out my other book reviews here!
