When my book club chose Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance as our monthly read I was less than thrilled about diving into it. I do love non-fiction, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, kind of books, but I’m not a big car fan and I don’t really car about space travel, although the solar energy component I thought might be interesting.
WOW, was I pleasantly surprised. It was written so well and in such a way that you wanted to know what was going to happen next, almost like a bit of mystery novel….will he make it or not?? Obviously there are Tesla’s on the road and Space X has launched rockets, but the journey to this end and the incredible man behind it, is what this book is about. The tenacity with which he goes after his goals is admirable and inspiring. Here are two of my highlights from the book…
- “As (Larry) Page puts it, “Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”
- “He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strength and will. “They might have a little adversity at school, but these days schools re so protective,” he said. “If you call someone a name, you get sent home. When I was going to school, if they punched you and there was no blood, it was like, ‘Whatever. Shake it off.'”
I’m sure everyone thought the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were crazy….until they weren’t! Elon Musk is a force to be reckoned with and I loved reading about his journey to the success he’s had. Yes, it was a bit of a “pull yourself up from the bootstraps” kind of book. He came from humble beginnings, leveraged himself heavily financially, but he believed in what he was doing and persevered.
In a nutshell, I’d really recommend this book!
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
Oh! I love finding new genres of books to read! Awesome!