Book Review - The Dip

As regular readers are aware, I've been immersing myself in the *pro blogger* world and cataloging much of my education in the Better Blogging Chronicles.

This endeavor has taken me into a new world, that of Silicon Valley and entrepreneur-types. And many of these dabblers, peddlers, and dreamers have mentioned The Dip by Seth Godin.

So I reserved it at my local library and picked it up before heading out to the Hamptons for the 4th of July.

Godin disappointed me right off the bat. The book was tiny AND only 80 pages. That wasn't going to provide this voracious reader much of a diversion over the long weekend.

Furthermore, the content was fluffy and definitely on the weak-side. While it's pretty darn hard to be *verbose* in so few pages....Godin actually pulled it off.

The subtitle of the book almost says it all - The Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (And When To Stick) - and could have been given justice in a mere essay.

Essentially he says there's an art a science to quitting. He posits a theory, illustrated by the book cover, that most human endeavors start off fine and then stagnate. At that dip point, the super-majority will quit but a few people will people step-up, climb their way out of the *dip*, and achieve great success.

While he bandied about his theory in detail, I tried to apply his thinking to a personal, coincident question of mine - "Should I, or shouldn't I, after amassing 15 years of experience, quit trading the financial markets altogether?"

It suffices to say that his book didn't help me, at all with that dilemma - or anything else for that matter.

He's certainly a bright dude and has done a lot of impressive things - see his Wikipedia entry - but writing this book isn't among them!

And I will henceforth look askance at anyone who highly recommends this one. I think many fans are unfairly transmuting their admiration for the guy into praise for his little dip-$hitty book.