Book Review: 13 steps to bloody good luck
I had read Ashwin Sanghi's mytho-thrillers before and had been very impressed. While Amish Tripati wove a mythological story at that past time, Ashwins stories blended the present to the past and linked them in a beautiful beautiful way. And I was quite surprised to see him promoting a non-fiction book on twitter the other day.
Anything to do with debunking luck is a high scorer on my buy-the-book-meter. So when I found that the book was indeed released on the kindle and the ebook price was lower than the paperback (yes, I just revealed my kindle ebook buying algorithm), I went ahead and bought it right away.
My review comments below (once an engineer, always an engineer):
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The book is a very easy read. You can breeze through the book in no time. The one disadvantage of a kindle book (there are very few disadvantages and this is one) is that you really dont know how thick or thin the book really is. Anyways, for me it is a good thing, since sometimes, it can influence your reading speed (oh crap, there is still so much more that I need to get through!).
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The book is chock full of very interesting short stories and anecdotes related to success and luck
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The whole premise of this book is that, the quantity of, what is perceived as luck, could very well be controlled, and in this case increased. Can you do stuff to increase your chances of being lucky.
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The book is written in a very fine nuanced way. If you are one of those who do not believe there is anything called luck, then this book will satisfy you by debunking luck and showing you how to increases success by increasing opportunity and related factors. If you are one of those who believe in luck, the book shows you how to increase luck.
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The presence of so many stories in the book makes it riveting. As human beings, we are always looking for stories to inspire us. And this book delivers.
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Ashwin obviously does not believe in superstition or bad luck - since he says he will list down the '13' different ways to increase good luck. But then towards the end, he adds one more to it - so it is theoretically 14. So does he believe in superstition?
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I read it in 2 sittings. Fast read. Good motivator. Excellent points.
