More of my summary of the story than a review.. So spoiler alert if you haven't read the book!!
This was one of the small books I've read in the recent past. Took me about 2 hours in total to finish the book. The book has a small and simple motivational story involving 4 characters. There are 2 mice, named Sniff and Scurry and 2 human characters, named Hem and Haw. The plot of the story is that these 4 characters stay close to a maze and every day they go into the maze in search of cheese hidden in the maze. Names of the characters is a pun, indicative of their behaviour. The mice are simple minded, with Sniff being good at sniffing and Scurry being good at scurrying. The humans on the other hand are a little complicated because of their enhanced thinking capabilities.
The mice go to the maze without thinking much, just searching for the cheese at random. Sniff uses his sniffing skills to smell the cheese and let that guide the path he chooses to pursue. Scurry just hastily goes in any path that he finds and if he doesn't find cheese in that direction he comes back and pursues another path. Their search algorithm is simple and they cover much ground since they don't spend time pre-planning. But at the same time, the method they employ is inefficient.
The humans on the other hand make complicated plans. Their search algorithm is little more efficient, wherein they ensure that the don’t wind up in the same dead-ends by making marks on the wall and keeping track of how they are covering the maze every time they go on the lookout.
All the 4 characters eventually come across a huge cheese station. While the mice think they just got lucky, the humans think they found “the” treasure. Days pass and they all come to the same Cheese station and take as much cheese as they can. While the stock of cheese keeps getting depleted in due course, the mice take notice, but don’t really do anything about it. Humans are still in the delusion of them having found the unlimited stock and not make any contingency plan. Finally on the D-day, they all come to the Cheese Station to find that the station is empty. The reaction of each individual is the central point of the whole story. Sniff and Scurry saw it coming and they don't hesitate to venture back into the maze in search of new cheese. Hem and Haw were shocked to see their treasure is gone! They believe that “someone” moved their cheese. They get depressed, agitated, but they were so sure in their mind that they had solved the maze and had found the treasure that they were not willing to move on. They keep coming back to the same station again and again hoping to find the cheese. But the cheese is gone. Hem initially feels that they should get back into the maze and look for new cheese, but he gets shot down by Haw.
I can’t and shouldn't be writing the whole story in my summary, I’ll have to eventually learn to optimize my writing, but I’ll carry on for now. There are many thoughts coming in bits and pieces, prompting me to jump the gun and get to the point of writing about the takeaways from the story. So, essentially, the moral of the story as per my understanding is that though human have high intellectual capacity, we need to be humble, stay grounded, and not get too much in our own head that we lose the plot.
