Quiet

3.5 stars

Started off well but descended into generalisations based on anecdotes, with some pretty broad conclusions, all with the usual caveat of ‘of course this isn't true of all introverts'. The chapter on group working makes some dreadful errors of logic and it worries me that people will start quoting this as an excuse not to collaborate with others.

It sheds a new light over two personalities, their spectrum, their pros and cons and each ones best adaptive strategies.

My take-home conclusion of the book: it's not the end of the world if you are an introvert! :)

Svært så interessant, og en vekker for meg som skal legge til rette for best mulig læringsmiljø i et klasserom. Boken bør spesielt leses av ekstroverte folkehøgskolefolk som tror at danning og læring bare er noe som kan foregå når man har det gøy og roper høyest mulig.
Jeg hadde gitt boken 5 stjerner hadde det ikke vært for de to siste kapitlene, som gjerne kunne vært kuttet ut. Det er analysen som er interessant, veien videre må jeg nesten finne ut av selv, og ikke overlate til ellers så dyktige Susan Cain.

Start with the author's TED talk. If you like her style and message, you'll enjoy more of the same in her book, plus some field research, like her entertaining observations participating in a Tony Robbins seminar.

This is as close to 5 stars I've come in a long while. I started this back in 2013 and decided to pick it up again a few months back; why I ever stopped...is beyond me.

This is a very interesting read. Caine carefully navigates her way along the commonly known ‘introversion' and ‘extroversion' spectrum - exploring all the wonderful and unique variances and intricacies along the way. She provides a rich backing of psychological research and real word examples to help her thesis (the latter bringing a very real and down to earth aesthetic and thus avoiding any shred of pseudo-intellectualism) which I personally loved.

I particularly found her research on the personality development of children to teen to be fascinating and illuminating for all sorts of reasons. Beyond this, her small chapter on ‘self-monitoring' helped me understand how the quiet can conjure confidence, and how the loud can empathise without becoming a completely different person at heart.

There's so much more to say but for now I'll just give you a nudge and recommend you check this book out. For the curious soul, I guarantee you'll find some answers.

‘Quiet' attempts to dispel the notion that you've to be an outgoing & gregarious person that's the life of a party to be successful in life. As Cain backs up with several examples that many successful people have been avowed introverts, she leads you down the path of providing research-backed conclusions that dissuades you from trying to be whom you're not. Being an introvert is not the same as being anti-social. For the former, social interactions for a prolonged time can be mentally and emotionally exhausting and just as an extrovert thrives on more interactions, an introvert has an upper limit on the time he/she can spend with people before retiring into their own homes for peace and quiet.

The ideas on productivity including teamwork, brainstorming, and open-office collaboration are simply myths that research has proven to not yield results unless the collaboration is done online (creating Wikipedia, etc.) The best work is often done on your own before sharing it with others. I've often done my best work on my own even to the extent of doing my design dissertation in my architecture undergrad years when my peers took help of several of our juniors.

Cain offers plenty of strategies to introverts who may want to ‘act' as extroverts in a world where gregariousness is considered a must-have asset. Introverted people in professions that need you to be extroverts often tend to over-prepare which even makes them more reliable and better at their work instead of an extrovert who may decide to ‘wing' it.

That said, Cain doesn't consider being introvert a necessary attribute for success in life but she emphasizes that it need not be a debilitating one.

This book gave me a brand new perspective on introverts and i feel like I can understand them better now.

Lots and lots of aha moments and interesting science. The bits about high sensitivity especially resonated with me. Also thought it was very interesting to think about the ways in which our culture's values overlap with extraversion. I would recommend everyone read this, whether you identify as an introvert or no.

“Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.”

I didn't realize that the world had it out for introverts but maybe it's just my problem for missing it?

Based on this book's gross generalization I'm neither an introvert nor an extrovert. While I am an introvert at my core, my personality is also sprinkled with characteristics that are attributed solely to extroversion. Apparently I'm the Divergent in Cain's world which is divided in these two factions: introverts and extroverts.

I found little use to the book. Barely any insightful information is provided. Like I said, it was overall just a gross generalization. Cain's view of the matter is seriously biased.

I am all for protecting and cherishing introversion, after all, I am mostly introverted. And I have had that held against me on occasions. I felt wronged, of course. Nonetheless, I was quite taken aback by the villainization of extroverts. Cain portrays introverts as these perpetually misunderstood geniuses, who need to be handled like delicate flowers, who would fix all the world's problems if only they would be allowed to take over. Because introverts are such good folks. And extroverts are these loud, stupid, intimidating assholes who never listen to the voice of reason, who only care about themselves and always try to manipulate everyone for their own gain, therefore they are those who will bring on the Apocalypse. Even when she makes some feeble attempts to give extroversion some credit it always comes out as a insult that's masked a compliment.

The truth is, throughout my lifetime, I've faced a lot of assholes, and they were from both camps. The extroverted ones used loud, aggressive methods of intimidation while the introverted ones used insidious passive-aggressive tactics. None was better than the other. So it's really not about where you are on the introversion-extroversion scale is what you end up doing with it and this point seems to completely escape Cain's view.

This book was meant to stroke my introverted ego, but it failed miserably. To me, it felt like a big pity party while I was expecting a fairly objective opinion based on scientific findings about introversion and extroversion.

I'm not saying that her criticism of today's western society is invalid. And that she doesn't have a point when she talks about how awful corporations and the educational system are. Or about how they brake spirits and suppress valid ideas just based on the delivery. Loud, arrogant, impulsive, stupid people are usually the ones who end up in charge everywhere nowadays and this is causing so many issue for everyone. But it's not a simple matter of introverts vs. extroverts.

The only few sections that were not completely tainted by her personal convictions, did provide some useful information and helped me confirm the knowledge of my own personality. But nothing was revolutionary, I had an intuitive understanding of most of those ideas.

Needless to say I was very disappointed by this book. It's of little value from a scientific point of view. For me it was mostly Cain's way of dealing with her own challenges of being an introvert and frankly she comes out as a somewhat bitter, passive-aggressive individual.

Otherwise, the narration was quite pleasant and there are quite a few good quotes and ideas, too bad they were tainted with the author's defensive attitude.

ဘလောဂ်ထဲကပြန်ကူးထားတာ။

အမြင်

တော်တော်ကို မမြင်နိုင်တဲ့ အြမင်တွေကိုပေးပြီးတော့ အစပိုင်းမှာ introvert/extrovert extreme နှစ်ခုကိုခွဲပြသွားတာ၊ ခေတ်ရွေ့လျားမှုအရ ဖြစ်လာတဲ့ urbanization, globalization တွေကြောင့် extrovert တွေရဲ့ အခန်းကဏ္ဍကြီးမားလာတာကို သူရှင်းပြတဲ့ ပြောပြသွားတဲ့ rationale လေးက၊ ဪ... အေးအဲ့လိုဆိုတော့လဲ အဟုတ်သား ဆိုပြီး မှတ်ယူရတယ်။ အဲ့လိုအရေးပေးလာရာကနေ၊ extrovert မှမဟုတ်ရင် တချို့ကိစ္စတွေမှာ introvert ဖြစ်ခဲ့ရင် လူဝင်မဆံ့ပဲ မျက်နှာငယ်ရတဲ့ သဘောလေးတွေလည်းပါတယ်။

psychology ပိုင်းအရ ကြည့်ပြန်တော့၊ ကလေးတွေအရွယ်ကတည်းက အဲ့ဒီ့ စိတ်နေစိတ်ထားပေါ်မူတည်ပြီး ကြီးြပင်းပုံကွာတဲ့ပုံ၊ အဲ့ဒီ့စိတ်နေစိတ်ထားကို အခြေခံလို့ ဘယ်လောက်ထိ introvert/extrovert စကေးပေါ်မှာ ကွဲပြားသွားတဲ့ပုံကို ပြောပြသေးတယ်။ Biology ပိုင်း၊ ဆေးပညာပိုင်း၊ evolution ပိုင်း၊ psychology ပိုင်း၊ politics ပိုင်း၊ business ပိုင်းစတဲ့ ရှုထောင့်မျိုးစုံကနေ introvert/extrovert တွေရဲ့ ကွာခြားမှု၊ စိတ်နေစိတ်ထား၊ အမြင်မျိုးစုံ၊ အလေ့အကျင့်မျိုးတွေဖတ်လို့ကောင်းအောင် ဇာတ်လမ်းလေးတွေမျိုးစုံနဲ့ ပြောသွားတဲ့အထဲမှာ 2008 မှာဖြစ်သွားတဲ့ Wall Street ကစလာတဲ့ economic crisis အကြောင်းတောင်ပါလိုက်သေးသဗျာ။

ဖတ်နေရင်း အောင်မယ် ငါတို့ အာရှနိုင်ငံတွေမှာ အဲ့ဒီ့လိုစံမျိုးတွေမရှိဘူးကွလို့ စဉ်းစားလို့မဆုံးသေးဘူး ယဉ်ကျေးမှုမတူတဲ့ လူ့ဘောင်အဖွဲ့အစည်းတွေမှာ မတူတဲ့ စံနှုန်းတွေ၊ အထူးသဖြင့် အနောက်နိုင်ငံများနဲ့ အာရှနိုင်ငံများရဲ့ မတူတဲ့ စံနှုန်း၊ ယဉ်ကျေးမှုနဲ့ သက်ဆိုင်လို့ဖြစ်လာတဲ့ introvert/extrovert တွေအကြောင်းကို ပြောသွားသေးတယ်။

မတူတာတွေကို ဘေးချိတ် အလုပ်တွဲလုပ်ရလာပြီ၊ အိမ်ထောင် အတူကြပြီးပြီ၊ အဲ့ဒါမျိုးတွေဘယ်လို dynamics တွေရှိကြတယ်ဆိုတာကို နောက်ဆုံးပိုင်းမှာပြောသွားတယ်။ introvert တွေ extrovert တွေဟာ တစ်ဦးနဲ့တစ်ဦး မတွေ့မနေတွေ့ရ၊ ထိတွေ့ဆက်ဆံရတဲ့အခါမှာ၊ ဘယ်လိုနေရမလဲ၊ ဘယ်လိုအချိန်မှာ ကိုယ့်ရဲ့ ြငိမ်ငြိမ်အေးဆေးနေချင်တဲ့စိတ်ကိုဖယ်ပြီး ဘယ်လို တက်တက်ကြွကြွ ပြောဆိုဆက်ဆံကြသလဲဆိုတဲ့ ဇာတ်လမ်းတွေ၊ ကိုယ့်ရဲ့ အိမ်ထောင်ဖက်တွေက ကိုယ်နဲ့ introvert/extrovert ချင်းတူကြရင်၊ မတူကြရင် ဖြစ်တတ်တဲ့ ပြဿနာတွေ၊ ကောင်းနိုင်တဲ့နည်းလမ်းတွေ၊ ကိုယ့်ကလေးက introvert လေးတစ်ယောက်ဖြစ်လာရင် ကိုယ့်အနေနဲ့ extrovert တွေအများစုအတွက် အထူးပြုထားတဲ့ ကျောင်းတွေ၊ extrovert တွေကိုသာ အကောင်းမြင်တဲ့လူတွေရဲ့ကြားမှာ ဘယ်လိုကာကွယ်ပြီး ပြုစုပျိုးထောင်ကြမယ်ရယ် အဲ့လိုစုံလို့ပဲ။

Structure အရဆိုရင် Extreme နှစ်ခုကို ခွဲြပပြီးတော့ ကြားထဲက grey area ကိုအရောင်ဖြည့်၊ အဲ့ဒီ့ စကေးပေါ်က လူတွေအချင်းချင်း ပေါင်းကူးပေးတဲ့ ပုံစံမျိုးပြောသွားတာကို သိပ်ကြိုက်တယ်။ ဒေါင်မကျ၊ ပြားမကျ grey area ပေါ်က ကျွန်တော့်အတွက်ကတော့ နှစ်ဘက်စွန်းရဲ့ strength တွေယူ၊ weakness တွေဖယ်ပြီး နေတတ်သလိုနေပါတော့မယ်လေ။

Content ပိုင်းမှာလည်း အင်မတန်ပျင်းဖို့ကောင်းလောက်တဲ့ research တွေ၊ သာမန်လူတွေရဲ့ ဇာတ်လမ်းလေးတွေကို စာမျက်နှာသုံးရာကျော်လောက်မှာ မပျင်းမရိစေပဲ ဆွဲဆောင်နိုင်အောင်ရေးထားတာ သိပ်အားကျဖို့ကောင်းတယ်။ (ဒီ review ကိုတောင်မှ စဖတ်တဲ့လူတွေအားလုံးရဲ့ တဝက်လောက်ပဲ အဆုံးထိပြီးအောင်ဖတ်ခဲ့ရင် ကံကောင်း)

အချုပ်

တစ်ခုပဲပြောစရာရှိတာက စာရေးသူကိုယ်တိုင်က introvert ဖြစ်နေတာကြောင့်ပဲလားမသိ၊ စာဖတ်ပြီဆိုမှ introvert ပဲဖြစ်မယ်ဟေ့ဆိုပြီး တစ်ထစ်ချယုံကြည်နေလို့လားတော့မသိ၊ ဒါမှမဟုတ် ကျွန်တော်ကိုက အင်မတန် အထအနကောက်မိနေလို့လားတော့ မသိဘူး၊ extrovert တွေကို ပေးတဲ့ message က၊ မင်းတို့ကောင်တွေ တစ်ထစ်ရှိ limelight ထဲဝင်ကြ၊ လူပေါ်လူစော်တွေ လုပ်နေကြတယ်၊ မင်းတို့ကြောင့် 2008 crisis ဖြစ်တာ၊ ငါတို့ကို ကောင်းကောင်းမွန်မွန်ဆက်ဆံ၊ ဒါပဲ... ဂွက် ဆိုသလိုနည်းနည်း မြင်ရသလိုပဲ။

သို့ပေမယ့်ငြား introvert တွေကို self-assurance တွေ အများကြီးပေးတဲ့အပြင်၊ နောက်ဆုံးပိုင်းဆိုရင် self-help ပိုင်းလိုမျိုး အကြံအဉာဏ်တွေ အများကြီး ပေးထားပါတယ်။ မဖတ်မနေဖတ်သင့်တဲ့ စာအုပ်ပဲ။ Goodreads မှာ Quiet ကို အယောက်နှစ်ဆယ်လောက် ပတ်ပြီး recommend လုပ်ပလိုက်တယ်။

ဒါပဲ... ဂွက်။

This book said a lot of things that really needed to be said about the way our culture is geared toward extroverts and how being introverted is seen as a problem. It was great to read about all of the research done about introversion and extroversion and to see how we really can't help being introverted and that it really isn't a bad thing at all. I loved reading about the psychology behind all of this personality stuff and it was really a fascinating read.

I was worried by how “general interest” the beginning was, but was relieved that the book delved much deeper than expected. Full of interviews and studies.

Even though we are all composites of many personalities, studies say about a third (even 30-50%) of us are introverts. And this subgroup has continuously been losing their foothold in this (western) world that about 100 years ago started to move from a culture appreciating character to a culture appreciating personality. Cain's book chronicles this cultural change and its repercussions, dissects what defines introversion and extroversion (most important: introvert does not equal shy), presents us with introverts struggling and with introverts succeeding in this world favoring the loud, the chatty, the spontaneous.

The book is clearly written pro-introverts and therefore has a very soothing characters for those of us falling into this category. I would define it as a pop-science comfort read, trying to heal some wounds and telling you it's okay to be quiet and to not want to be the life of the party.

I highlighted this book heavily. It's filled with interesting ideas about how to traverse life as an introvert living in a world that values extroversion as the social ideal (in business, school, etc). I enjoyed the mix of anecdotal and research-based evidence for each new idea that Cain presents.

This is the book I wish I had read in grade school. Growing up, I always thought of the largest difference between introverts and extroverts to be quiet vs outgoing. The difference though is much more complex. The premise of this book is the idea that extroverts get energy from crowds, while it costs introverts energy to interact. The idea that some introverts even enjoy speaking because they value getting their message across more than their distake for public speaking hit close to home for me.

This is the book I wish I had read in grade school. Growing up, I always thought of the largest difference between introverts and extroverts to be quiet vs outgoing. The difference though is much more complex. The premise of this book is the idea that extroverts get energy from crowds, while it costs introverts energy to interact. The idea that some introverts even enjoy speaking because they value getting their message across more than their distake for public speaking hit close to home for me.

I lemmed it.
I'd heard great things about this book, but think it was targeting an audience who look up to Harvard Business School as being something special / those to whom the NY Times best sellers appeal... I've learnt that I don't see the world in they way those people do; so this type of book isn't for me.

As you can probably guess from the title: this book deals with the subject of introversion and extroversion within humans. It's written from the point of view of an introvert, and focuses more on them than extroverts. Extroverts are usually brought up more as a comparison than anything. Ergo this book would probably appeal more to fellow introverts than any extroverts reading this. There is still a fair bit of information on extroversion in here however so don't let that discourage you too much!


The author is a self-described introvert and a former Wall Street lawyer named Susan Cain. Susan Cain is an American and so almost all of the book is set in, and directed towards, America and Americans. While some of it might not be relevant to you if you're not American (A/N: I'm not!), such as if you're from a mostly introverted country (an example she uses is China I believe) most of the book is still useful to you. Just keep in mind that she is using a mostly extroverted country as a background.

The book covers a lot of varying topics such as how introversion affects both your personal life, your career, and your relationships. There is a veritable wealth of knowledge in this book, Cain sure has done her research into this topic. It is well presented, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of your life and how introversion can affect it.

She also gives examples of introverts and extroverts she has met throughout her life to help illustrate how certain obstacles in our life can be overcome or used to our advantage. I say obstacles here in reference to her common statement in the book that we are living in a world where extroversion is the ideal. In a world of extroverts it can be difficult to fit in, or to fake your way into being a pseudo-extrovert (more on that inside the book).

She describes introverts as a necessary part of society, indeed that society could not function without both introverts and extroverts. That the existence of the two in perfect harmony is the natural state of human society.

The book is useful to pretty much anyone, whether you're a parent trying to understand your introverted child, or an introvert trying to better understand yourself and how to achieve success in whatever you want and/or happiness.

The book is great in that it doesn't describe either introversion or extroversion in negative terms, but rather explains that they're both highly useful in their own ways. Neither one is better over the other. Cain was very non-judgemental when writing Quiet.

As an introvert I found the book to be very relatable at times. The title was especially appealing to me. The book wasn't perfect, but it was close enough. The book sometimes seems to read as fiction, to me anyway. Possibly it is the author's style of writing which gives that impression. I was also a bit turned off because of all the Americanism, but the author is American so I can't be too disappointed by that. I almost rated it a 5/5, it was a close call but ultimately decided on 4/5 mostly for the reasons I just listed.

Whether introvert or extrovert, you need to read this book! For introverts, it will help you value and accept yourself. For extroverts, you will finally see and understand what the world of an introvert looks like. I highly recommend this book!

Offers an interesting viewpoint from the “other” side of the Introverts v/s Extroverts camp. Cain, herself a true-blue introvert, puts forth a number of arguments on the nature of being introverted and what it entails for us as individuals, parents, collegues, and contributors to the world.

By taking stock of various scientific studies, she also points out why underestimating introverts can be overwhelmingly off the mark. An interesting read with some fresh viewpoints and scientific studies, it offers a breather in a world of loud, aggressive, obnoxious self-help “Be More Extroverted!” sort of books.

This is an amazing book about introversion. She talks about the biological factors. She talks about the effect on the business environment. She talks about children who are introverted. I don't think she missed a group in the discussion of introversion. And yet she still presents a balanced view. She does not make introversion out to be the end all be all of personalities. In fact, most times she presents both personality types together to make a rather unstoppable team. After reading this book, I feel more confident in my introverted instincts and I also understand better where to push myself and not use my introversion as an excuse. Amazing book!

Good read, though has its ups and downs. Helped me understand a lot about other people and myself too.

A wonderfully written book that looks at the intricate lives of those of us who call ourselves introverts. Reading this has certainly helped open my eyes to some of my own behaviors and also made me realize that being an introvert is nothing to be ashamed of. To acknowledge one's personality traits and give yourself the space you need to recharge is essential. At the same time you don't have to become an extrovert just because modern life seems to demand it.

A great read and one that I highly recommend to both the introverts and extroverts out there.

There were times I wish I could give a half star more. But such is life. Regrettably, I went into this book with a bias. And you might think that I, as an introvert–not fully textbook, but 3/4 textbook–would have gone in favourably. Not so. Actually, I went in fully dubious, although I wanted to like this book more than I did. A better review is on here already, one with which I mostly agree regarding issues of the book. But this book also does what mainstream gender science books do all too often. The woman brain/man brain dichotomy (that doesn't really exist). This is the extro/intro dichotomy. She makes a couple throw away statements about how most people are a mix, but that's not really covered. All in all, I came away feeling like extroverts were the ‘man' brain–the action-oriented dopes who don't think about things enough and look before they leap. And introverts, why! we are brilliants artists and angels and scientists and geniuses.

Also, any adherence to the general physicality of an introvert is b.s. Dr Blahdyblah Kagan hypothesized that male introverts are skinny, blue-eyed, moony dreamers. Well, that describes exactly none of the men I know who are primarily introverts. Yawn. Oh, right, and those introverts could only be white men. Double yawn.

Don't get me started on the race chapter. Which only covered one other ethnic groups besides white. Oh, and rich. Since she's a Harvard Law grad and does important work, she has absolutely no conception that people could be NOT rich. At least, that's what it seems like. A poor introvert won't take much away from her advice regarding self and children.

Seriously, this book reads mostly like it's for the rich, primarily white set. It doesn't discuss introverts in other socio-economic walks of life, other races, anything really. There's no subtlety. So whilst I deep down wanted to like this book, it was only meh.