It’s been a while since I actually finished a book. I think it depends a lot on my reading habbit; and just how much time I give myself to catch the train in the morning.
Stuart Marconi’s Pies and Prejudice is a book about the north, as in the north of the country – north of Crewe as it turns out. It’s meant to be a look the north has character too, and isn’t just flat caps and the Hovis music; I’m not convinced it achieves it aim.
Really this book is a Stuart Marconi nostalgia trip: He moved dow south for the glittering radio one thing. Now don’t get me wrong people are entitled to be proud of there roots, and he does a very good job of getting all the bits of the north and explaining the subtle differences that make us all unique – I’m from Liverpool which Marconi rightly puts as not really a northern town, more of an enclave of its own.
It’s just later in the book, he gets all sentimental and starts rambling about random music facts and bits of history that really don’t bring much to it. It has the sense of a book that the author could have finished after about 150 pages; but you can’t sell books that short so his editor made him add bits onto the end.
There is a whole bit at the bigging which tries (and I suspect fails) to persuade southerners that this book isn’t just a northern thing; again I think the publishers made him do it. The reality is why would you want to read this if you are from the south, it’s like me wanting to read about the history of Sussex – first I’d have to find it on a map.
Just finished Blink by Malcom Gladwell. This is his next book after The Tipping point which I read about three weeks ago. Unsurprisingly it’s very similar in style, and has the same type of quite interesting insights with Rambly bits in it. On the whole Malcom Gladwell books don’t give you amazing insight into how we think or what makes us tick, but they do lift the lid a little bit on the whole mysterious world of just how it all works.
The most interesting part of this book, was the references to the Harvard Implicit Association tests, that you can take on line. They show you just how scarily your brain is wired up in so for example how you associate careerer with male and how you probably have a preference for white faces over black no matter how much you think you don’t.
oh and apparently, when they changed the green on the 7-up can so it was a bit more yellow, people started to say it tasted nicer.
Next: I am re-reading Simplicity by Edward De Bono
I’m rocketing through the books at the minute, maybe it’s because the telly is so poor. We’ve not had it on in the evening all week. yesterday I finished The Tipping Point which is a book that looks at how cultural epidemics or trends spread though out life.? It’s very interesting, and quite insightful. there was a lot of stuff I already knew, but it’s hard to tell with a book that made such a big impact when it was first release whether the book is repeating or if things are done that way because of the book, I suspect a bit of both.
The book does actually ramble a bit in the middle and definitely at the end. but that’s?not to bad, because the bit in the middle is about sesame street and blues clues, and how they went about making the shows sticky (stickiness is making people stick with something and not fade of and loose interest, something which is quite hard with 4-5 year olds). I’ve said to Ruth that even if she doesn’t read the book (she won’t it’s not her type of book) that she should at least read that bit, it makes you see it all in a new light.
So now I’m starting the Complaint Free Book lets see how long?I last!
