Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) was a very interesting albeit somewhat repetitive book. This book deals with the concept of cognitive dissonance  which you experience when you hold two conflicting beliefs in your head, or when your actions aren’t in harmony with your beliefs. 

I encountered this myself while reading the book, and it was quite a fascinating thing to observe it in myself, and see the things that the book talks about.

This is what happened with me: I think of myself as someone who cares about the environment, and does his part to conserve water, energy, avoid plastics etc. I am also a new dad, and as any new parent can tell you the cries of your baby are the most unsettling thing in the world. I accidentally discovered that water running in the bathtub soothes my four month old, and taking her to the bathroom and letting her listen to and watch the water run in the bathtub works like magic to soothe her. The problem of course is how much water gets wasted.

My mind kept coming up with justifications, and rationalizations to reduce this dissonance, and this was all automatic. No one was telling me I was doing something bad, and it is significantly more effort to make the rationalizations stop than it is to just convince yourself that wasting water is not so bad if it makes your baby stop crying!

This is what the book is about, but it deals with a lot more important topics such as criminal justice, political beliefs, cult following etc.

I enjoyed the book, and the stories; for people who are familiar with cognitive dissonance there is probably nothing new here except for the anecdotes and stories. I found the chapters on dealing with the problem a little light, and maybe that is a topic for another book.

All in all, I am glad I read it, and I think this topic is especially relevant in today’s polarized climate, and gives you a moment to step back, and think about not only your own cognitive dissonances, but allow others to have theirs too.

I read this book sometime late last year, and absolutely loved it. The book is about chess opening names, and the history behind them.  Chess has a lot of interesting opening names, and I have never come across anyone who knows the history behind these names, so it can be a very interesting conversation among chess fans if you are the one who knows about these names.

That being said, you have to have an interest in chess opening names specifically in order to enjoy this book, so that definitely narrows down its audience. If you are however someone who plays chess, and knows a few openings yourselves then you’ll definitely find yourself enjoying this book.

This was a very eventful year for me with a lot of things going on in my personal and professional life. Throughout the year I felt bouts of anxiety on what’s to come next, and felt uneasy about the future. Eventually, the year turned out very well for me, and I was fortunate enough to receive the best outcome of all the paths that every aspect of life was taking. What’s interesting though is that my anxiety didn’t subside, it reduced from what it was, but it seemed like I had acquired this terrible habit of living in the future, and trying to predict what was to come, and quite often found myself down a rabbit-hole of worst case outcomes.

That was pretty much my trigger to buy a book on mindfulness, to try and learn to be present in the moment, and I think this is a good book to do just that. Give an introduction to mindfulness in a very simple accessible way, get you started on some form of meditation, and help you understand some of the concepts behind it. This book helped me in all of these things, and for the first time ever I started meditation as well. That alone is worth the time and energy spent in this book.

I feel like this book will be useful for someone who’s curious about mindfulness, and is not looking for something very comprehensive or in a guide like format. This book is about basics, and fundamentals, and if that is what you are looking for then I would recommend it.