Geologically speaking, the rock above is not an outlier, it is a Glacial erratic, but it is the closest I could get with one of my pictures. Still, Gladwell’s book, Outliers, The Story of Success, is not about geology, it is about very successful people and how big a part luck – both regular luck and deep luck – played in their success. It is pretty typical of the kind of book I like and that all fit into a, sort of, Matrix category. These are the kind of books that says here is what seems like reality and the reasons we are told for that reality, but there are other, deeper, reasons. I should also add that I very often buy into these deeper reasons and I have completely bought into Malcolm Gladwell’s arguments.

Two factoids that are especially interesting are that almost all professional hockey players were born in the first half of the year and that the Chinese way of writing numbers makes basic math much easier.

Professional hockey players are mostly born in the earlier part of the year because Canadian Youth Hockey Leagues segregate players by age, based on the calendar year. So, a five-year old, born on January 1st is about twenty percent older than a youngster born in December of the same year and they play in the same age bracket. At five years old, another year  makes a big difference. The older kids do better and are encouraged to work at hockey while the younger kids get discouraged, work less, and fall behind setting a pattern – in hockey at least – the results of which carry through to the Pros or notPros.

As for the numbers, add fifty-three and thirty-five in your head. It is hard to do without converting to Arabic numerals, 53 plus 35. In Chinese, those numbers are written as five-tens three and three-tens five. The logic of the numbers is written into the language making it much easier to work with them.

Gladwell weaves details like this into a new narrative about several successful people including Bill Gates and the Beatles. It’s fascinating and a very easy read.

To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster. Stirling Moss

I started reading Wolf Hall, a week or so ago, and I am both admiring the audacity of the book and loving the writing. A confession is due here, when I started reading the book, I thought it was a book about Oliver Cromwell and I couldn’t figure out why the dates didn’t line-up. The book is about  Thomas Cromwell, one of England’s, agreed upon, bad guys – I am told every English schoolchild knows that, like we know John Wilkes Booth is a bad guy – and is most remembered as the foil to the good guy, the Man of All Seasons, Thomas More.

First off, it is a book complimentary – at least so far – of Thomas Cromwell. But history is written by the victors, and Cromwell was not, eventually,  one of them, so who know if he was really a bad guy? Either way, the entire book is written from Cromwell’s point of view and it can be confusing. In a sentence like, The king walked into the room. He says Good Morning, it is Cromwell saying Good Morning. Often, I have to circle back to understand what was said, by whom.

The lyrical, almost poetic – no! really poetic – writing, however, is the book’s biggest joy. Sometimes it just stops me in my tracks, like when, at Christmas, Cromwell is thinking about the last year: No year has brought such devastation. His sister Kat, her husband, Morgan Williams, have been plucked from this life as fast as his daughters were taken, one day walking and talking and the next day cold as stones, tumbled into their Thames-side graves, dug in beyond reach of the tide, beyond sight and smell of the river; deaf now to the sound of Putney’s cracked church bell, to the smell of wet ink, of hops, of malted barley, and the scent, still animal, of woolen bales; dead to the autumn aroma of pine resin and apple candles, of soul cakes baking.

Often I don’t finish a book like this, my ADD and dyslexia kick in and I just get bogged down. I have tried Gravity’s Rainbow a half dozen times and Infinite Jest about as much. I marvel at the language  of the first twenty five pages and then the rowing gets too tough. I end up saying I will read it tomorrow, for two weeks, while I read New Yorker Book Reviews and an Economist article on riots in the Ukraine. But Wolf Hall is pulling me along with its story. I am concerned for Thomas and still thrilled at how well he is doing.