Thursday, September 15, 2005, posted by Q6 at 10:13 PM
My reading habits of late--when I get to exercise them--go beyond "outside the box" thinking. Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner), recommended by someone whose opinion I trust implicitly, takes a mathematical look at things not often analyzed that way. It left me trying to look at things in a manner I am very unpracticed in. Everything Bad Is Good For You (Steven Johnson) is what I'm reading now, and the "Devil's Advocate" approach to things like Dungeons & Dragons and the Internet is, in a way, refreshing. It's an education for me in a few ways: I not only get to see a completely different perspective on things, but I am also surprised to find how closed off I've been to the opposite point of view. And I thought I was such an open-minded guy.

When that's done, I'm moving on to Blink (Malcolm Gladwell). It's supposed to be about how the mind works on an intuitive level, and I'm planning to read it for two reasons. The first reason is that the premise reminds me of a book I absolutely love and recommend to everybody: The Gift of Fear (Gavin DeBecker). The second reason is that I don't think it's healthy to read an entire string of books by people named "Steven."