The Rudest Book Review Ever
The Rudest Introduction Ever
The Rudest Book Ever was not actually rude and neither is this review. Before we discuss why you should read this book I’d like to ask a very existential question. Why should you read any nonfiction book? (Unless your parents and teachers are forcing you to).
Some smart person will say that you should read the books that you can ‘apply’ in your life. While that sounds great it’s not the complete truth. I mean can you apply things that you read in a book about World War II or evolutionary theory for instance. For me, there are three criteria that help decide whether a book is worth reading or not. A good book should do at least any 2 of these three things:
- Teach you things that you can apply in your life.
- Deepen or widen your understanding of the world.
- Deepen or widen your understanding of your “self”.
The Rudest Book Ever fulfills all of these criteria, but mainly #2 since the book emphasizes self-introspection and critical thinking.
What this book is about
Some people might have the impression that this book is rude or that it is a self-help book. It is neither of those things. This book is a collection of perceptions(I’ll explain what this means in a minute). It is written by Shwetabh Gangwar, a professional problem solver and YouTube influencer.
This book deals with a variety of topics including success, failure, rejection, people, happiness, satisfaction, celebrity culture, and much more. It’s hard to summarise this book but I’ll tell you the essence of it.
If you read enough psychology books you’ll realize most of us go through very similar problems when it comes to our inner lives. But since we don’t talk about it openly with other people we end up thinking we are the odd ones.
In the book, Shwetabh brings those unspoken problems and thought processes into light and gives us ‘perceptions' or what I’d like to call “mindset-hacks” to deal with those problems.
A lot of the time in this book he even predicts the ways you could have thought about a particular topic or situation. There will be moments while reading the book where you’ll go ‘Oh that's exactly the way I thought about it’ or ‘Oh that’s exactly what happened to me’.
And this may spook you out but it also shows how similar and predictable people can be when it comes to our inner thought processes. But Shwetabh teaches us that if go a little deeper in our introspection and are willing to question our assumptions, we can form better opinions and take better decisions.
Shwetabh argues that since our childhood we are only taught 'what to think' and not 'how to think’. That’s the reason we are encouraged to read more and consume information but we are never encouraged to ‘think' and question what we read.
Of course, he can’t give you mindset hacks on every topic ever, so he also teaches us his process of introspection in the penultimate chapter of this book so that we become capable of formulating our own little mindset hacks.
Favorite quote from the book:
The world doesn’t revolve around you, so there’s a huge possibility that your interpretations may be wrong; that maybe you don’t know everything about it; or maybe you don’t know anything about it at all. It’s not a bad place to be—to not know about something. You can find out more about anything only when you admit to yourself that you don’t know.
