Rating: Summary: A useful beginning book on change Review: This short book starts with a story to help people understand that change is natural in the Information Age and how to best deal with it.Rather than being a victim, one learns to anticipate change and to even embrace it. This book is best suited for those just learning about change in their lives. For more sophisticated discussions about change, one will want to look for meatier sources. Another good point is that since this is told through a story, people are less likely to feel attacked by the story and what it teaches compared to someone telling them that they're wrong and need to change their lives.
Rating: Summary: An insult to business professionals Review: Yes, I got the positive message: look for ways to improve your situation and embrace change. I agree!! What I hate are the other messages found in this story: Every man for himself; when you find something good hoard it and don't tell anyone; don't think just run; follow your base animal instincts; give up on your friends; find cheese and forget finding water or anything else. We live in a world that demands simple well marketed answers to complex questions. This book fills that need.
Rating: Summary: A book for managers Review: This is a book written for company managers to make them feel good about themselves when they are making unthought-out changes that drastically affect employees. Now they can say "Here, read this book. It will help." The book says that if you have low intellegence, no loyalty, don't think, and have no ethics, you will be happy and aimlessly move from job to job. If you have any of these qualities, you will be miserable. The only way I can see this book being so successful, is that managers buy them by the hundreds. It is not worth the paper it was written on.
Rating: Summary: American Cheese Review: Think of that solid, old lunch cheese that many of us ate for lunch in those long-gone kindergarten years. Yes, American cheese. The stuff perfectly molded into a 3-inch square that comes wrapped in nice clear plastic, yellow, rubbary, and tastes like plastic itself. It's so simple; why, it even has a little flap at the front in case you couldn't figure out how to rip plastic off. Bland...and so...insipid. Well, that's what this book is like. I came across it by my father who brought this home, saying it was from a colleague who was promoting it, and of course, since it had the words "#1 Bestseller" emblazoned on it, I was immediately intrigued. After reading it in a disappointing ten minutes, I was wondering if I missed something that had made the book so "profound" and read it again. I could glean nothing more from it. That's because there's frankly nothing to find from the book. Sure, it makes a point through a little tale of "littlepeople" (named Hem and Haw) and "mice" (which is, in some aspects, QUITE belittling and condescending), and I do concede that it was purposefully terse. However, there has never been a book as extraneous and an outright insult to literature as this piece of writing. There are encapsulated morals in the book, each of which take one whole page, and big 1-cm letters that tell the moral as if it was an Aesop's fable, drawn over a huge picture of cheese. Quite befitting, for it is a generally cheesy and not even worth being termed a "moral". In case you missed those big blank paper-wasting "moral" spots, there's even a whole list of them, restated for you at the end. And at the end there is a little repetitive "discussion" of the issues within the book, all of which are simple restatements of the topics, not even in-depth arguments but the sort that start out "oh, I know a person who had that problem" and "that person fixed it by dealing with change". A perfect way to restate the title of the book. If anything, the point that this book makes is that corporate society is so dense, banal, and mindlessly absorbed in their work and time that all they can stand to read is this sort of book. And they nod their heads, saying that this applies to real life. But if they stopped to acutally _think_ instead of mindlessly going about their work for more than a few minutes, they would find they need no MD and PhD people sitting out there writing kindergarten picture books to confirm their thoughts.
Rating: Summary: This helped me out of a bind - can it help you? Review: This book helped get me out of a bind, and it may help you, also. In case you haven't read all the other reviews, the simple premise of the book is that "cheese" is a placeholder for a goal that you have in mind (like getting rich, or having good friends) and that to keep that goal in reach you need to adapt. The "cheese" moves around in your life and you need to move around, also. Seems pretty straightforward...easy enough to put into practice, right? Well, not really. If we could just understand the concept and follow through on our own, then nobody would need to read the book - they could just read the premise. But people don't learn things without going through some practice or some 'exercise'. And this book serves as that 'exercise'. Humans learn things by practicing them repeatedly. Think of some difficult sports maneuver - like throwing a great curve ball, or hitting a golf ball 250 yards down the fairway. An expert could explain the premise to you, and you could fully understand this premise, but without an 'exercise' and repeated practice, you wouldn't be able to perform the task. How many books are there describing the golf swing? Lots. How many friends of yours can consistently hit a golf ball 250 yards down the fairway? Probably not many. So if we agree that we need practice to learn a concept, then this book serves the task of letting you exercise your mind. In a clever way, the story's details are written in a generalized manner so that you can easily apply the specifics of your own life to the story. For example, the characters in the book will remind you of characters in your own life, and the actions they perform will remind you of your own actions or the actions of those around you. In my case, there was some trouble at work, and I was dissatisfied with my job. I considered quitting on a daily basis. I found myself in a tough bind. While reading this book, I began to see how my attitudes were causing me to neglect my duties, and how I had become blind to some obvious opportunities. The book placed a framework in my mind of what was going on and made suggestions for how I could change things. It helped me out of my bind. And as I find myself in another bind, this time in my personal life, I am reaching for the book to help me understand what's going on this time around. Hopefully with enough practice, I'll be able to do this on my own, but until then, I'm going to go back to this clever book for it's helpful parable.
Rating: Summary: My Bible!! Review: This is the most important piece of literature since the Quaran!!! It opened my eyes, and showed me the possibilities I never suspected cheese to have! Frie it, bake, stire, gourmet.... It is amazing.... Simply amazing1!
Rating: Summary: Stop whining, and start moving! Review: As a software developer, I am exposed to changes frequently. The technology moves quick and management always wants to incorporate the latest methods and languages. This book points out what should be obvious. When changes impact your job, or any other part of your life, you need to spend less time whining and more time figuring out the new direction. If you do this, you will arrive faster than others giving YOU the advantage! A short yet informative book that is a good slap in the face.
Rating: Summary: Short but sweet Review: In life, the only thing that we can count on to stay the same, is change. It disrupts our lives, hopefully eventually for the better. Meanwhile, how do we manage change? Spenser Johnson gives us his suggestions in the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" I have read self-help and managerial books consisting of hundreds of pages. After each chapter, I can sum up that chapter in a sentence. Spenser Johnson makes his points succinctly and humorously, in only 94 pages. This is appreciated after some other books I have waded through, containing less insight. This book was definitely worth reading.
Rating: Summary: Good Book Review: The only thing we must remember at any given point of time is that that everything in life that happens has a definite reason and purpose, it's just that for some reasons known only to Him, we get to know about it only much later. I guess all we can do is do our best in the circumstances and never loose faith in ourselves, in our own abilities to face the daunting tasks and in the invincibility of the human spirit to take on the impossible without giving up. This is a book that I read recently, which I felt had a lot of interesting lessons put forth in an extremely simple manner. I gained a lot from this book, as I am sure you will too.
Rating: Summary: A magificent book Review: This book is magnificent. People write long analyses criticizing it, but they forget that in a few sparse pages the author can't provide the cure to all of humanity's ills. Those whose lives and careers have been affected by procrastination stemming from the ubuquitous fear of change will appreciate the insight and enormous help it can provide. If fear of change is your enemy, read it: you'll love it and you'll benefit from it!
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