Reading Material

I have always been fascinated by biography. I have read quite a few. But they were the obvious ones. Even Gary Neville's. A couple of months back, Robert Kuok's biography came into the market. But getting my hands on a copy was almost impossible.

Luckily one of my patients got one with him and after some coaxing agreed to loan it out for me to read. Looks like I would be getting my teeth into it in the coming weeks.

Truth be told, I am more of a digital guy. I listen to books rather than read them from paper. If I have a Kindle copy, I would rather have that as well. Easier to carry around and I always had a copy of them in the cloud somewhere. But once in a while, I wouldn't mind having a paper version. Let's see ...

Steve Jobs Done

After a weekend where I only managed a couple of chapters, I decided to cheat. I bought the audio version of the book from Audible and listen to it commuting to work. I then managed to finish the book within a couple of weeks. The whole audiobook was about 24 hours long from start to finish, over three chapters.

How did I find the book? To say that it was a real biography would be premature as Jobs is a private man and his life story were only told in tidbits. There was nothing to compare this book to and that made it difficult to just take all been written as fact. It was difficult to ascertain if the stories were narratives or told in the author's perspective. maybe in the next five or so years, we would learn a bit more. And this book would be a great reference to a more definitive read.

This was more a collection of anecdotes of the great man's life. There were many interesting stories in there, giving an interesting perspective to the enigma that was Steve Jobs. He was clearly not an easy man to cope with. A very difficult father and husband, but no doubt he is a legend. He transformed Apple into a tech leader. Twice.

There were also accusation in the online community about why Isaacson was picked as the writer in the first place? Was it because he is from the outside? Was it so that he would be able to see past the technical aspects of Apple creations and understood the flaws? Was he just merely a conduit to more Jobs propaganda? This just all add up to an interesting chemistry.

I would definitely recommend the book not just to all Apple fanboys or girls, but to anybody interested in tech. There were many to be learned about the tech industry here. How everybody were interconnected. And how much Jobs was an inspiration to the current crop of tech greats, as well as the old familiar faces like Bill Gates. They had a mutual respect to each other and it was great to read about how close they become towards the end.

Next read, Gary Neville autobiography. Unfortunately, there was no audiobook for that particular story.

The Big Read

As I mentioned, I picked up Steve Jobs biography yesterday and managed a couple of chapters before bed last night. It was rather absorbing, and tomorrow being a holiday, I might be able to burn through a few more chapters tonight. I was initially hoping to listen to the mp3 version of the book, but it won't be the same thing.

The first chapter revolve around issues he had with his parents - both biological and adopted. How he came close to his only real sibling - writer Mona Simpson. The impression I had was, Steve was a young arrogant man. He demanded high standards and looked down upon those who did not meet his expectations.

Looking forward to the rest of the book then …..