Interesting Books

As with all things in life, I start with much enthusiasm. Let me run with this blog as far as I can before tireing and dropping this new habbit.

Summer is great. I really enjoy the random nature of my studies. I am of the opinion that everything one learns is useful and applicable but reading and learning by themselves are of no value. The value lies in the application. That said, I enjoy the seemingly sparadic readings of the summer.

My books of the summer so far are: "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell, and "Emotions Revealed" by Paul Ekman. I highly recomend all three books. My two line book reviews won't do any of these titles justice, so read the reviews online elsewhere. I will say that as interesting as the content, I loved the style of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and hope to emulate its well constructed arguments in my future writings. "Blink" was a fast read (I read it in one day on the planes back to TX), and seemed to loose focus by the end, or perhaps I did after several flights. I just couldn't tell if it was trying to argue something, or just be observations or really what the purpose turned out to be other than some insight into how the mind works and thinks. From "Blink" I found the author Paul Ekman. His book is "Emotions Revealed" is an intersting book. I felt bogged down by excessive discussion of emotions, their sources and all sorts of other speculations and research findings as I was most interested in what I see as the most important contet of the book, learning to read the universal expressions of emotions that people display on their faces. I greatly improved my abilties after completing the book. I think he sells some software to train yourself, but the book is free from a library.