Cav's Place

Unusually for me, read it in Romanian, so things may have gotten lost in translation and I may have failed to make some connections or even pay enough attention at times. Still, sure seems well written and properly researched, though the notes that weren’t just references should have been footnotes, as I had to keep looking at the notes section every few pages to see whether there were any of that kind connected to what I had just read. It does a great job of presenting how introverts function and why, including details that may be somewhat surprising, stresses their strengths and advantages, and definitely properly presents the problems with the Extrovert Ideal and shaping society according to it. If it’d have stopped at that, it’d have been a truly outstanding work.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. I may even mention how the author rather discards what may perhaps be at the outer edge of introversion and gears the book toward a need for balance, but I’m mainly referring to all those parts focusing on how to go against who you really are if you’re an introvert, even more so if it’s for a career or organized education, focusing on those as a person being a huge problem in itself in my view. There was also the comparison between the Western Extrovert Ideal and typical Asian behavior, which to me was a comparison between two deeply flawed views and behavior patterns. Or the compromise between “Greg” and “Emily”, which seems in no way fair or even tolerable for “Emily” to me. But most infuriating of all were all the parts of the chapter about children telling parents how to make their children behave less like what comes natural for them, stressing the need for methods that are much more considerate than the norm in no way excusing supporting the view that people must change themselves to fit society’s ideals at least to a significant degree instead of the other way around. Yet somehow, despite gritting my teeth because of that, I can’t quite take away that fourth star.

Rating: 4/5