The Black Swan

From the beginning, I could tell this book was going to be tough going.  I’ve read several similar books attacking conventional wisdom, including Freakonomics (right before starting this project) and Wrong (reviewed here).  Of the three, this book was by far the least conversational and most intellectual (ie most difficult to read!).    The book took a lot of time to make a few simple points.  There were also many chapters that started with anecdotes not clearly related to the subject of the book.  This gives the disorienting sensation of having walked into a room and realizing you don’t remember why you decided to head to that room in the first place!

The Books Are Winning

Yesterday I was in the library for twenty minutes and left with 9 books.  I even know how it happened.  First, I was just going to pick up a book in the 003’s (Systems) and the 004’s (Data Processing and Computer Science), so I did – easily grabbing just the one book which stood out to me in each section.  Then I thought, surely my blog readers would like to hear a little about why I picked the books I did and it should be easy enough to write about the very few other books available.

It’s Got Character

I really enjoyed the way The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was written.  The author’s style was very conversational and she did a nice job of blending descriptions of her own experience with those of her two “main characters” the book dealer/detective and the thief.  I really enjoyed her attempts to understand why so many people love and collect rare books, including dabbling in collecting herself.  As she concludes, a lot of people build an identity out of the books they collect.  For that reason, I very much enjoyed her descriptions of the collectors she met, the sort of books they collected and the the reasons for their collections.    The book was definitely less of a thriller or a mystery than I though it might be, but there were a few moments of tense anticipation and certainly lots of curiosity about what might happen next.  As Erik Larson said in his own review, it really was “the author’s cozy, quiet style” which kept me turning the pages on this one.  I felt like a friend was relating a story to me.

Of UFO’s and Trivia

My first thought looking at this section was to wonder if I’d wandered into the fiction section by mistake!  Who knew that tales of chasing Sasquatch and interviews with politicians about government contact with aliens were categorized under 001 in the Dewey Decimal system?  This category also included some collections of interesting facts and other books pertaining to the categories official label, “Knowledge”.  Strangest of all was a book about “the allies of humanity”, which you can view here.  It looks incredibly bizarre, but I might have to add it to my reading list since I don’t want to judge it too harshly until I’ve given it a chance.

For now, I’ve decided on an interesting looking book entitled “Wrong” and subtitled “Why Experts* Keep Failing Us – And How to Know When Not to Trust Them”.  As a hopeful scientist-to-be, I think this could be  really worthwhile read.  I don’t know if I will agree with the criticisms in the book, but either way I’ll learn something! If not mistakes to be avoided than certainly something about public misconceptions about science.  Starting out, I anticipate a little of both.

For those of you wondering what happened to 000:  Having just finished my undergrad degree in computer science, I couldn’t bring myself to read more computer books for fun!  So at least for the moment, I’m planning on skipping zero, but perhaps I’ll come back to it later.