So right after finishing that book, what’s next?

Well I am actually reading two more books at the moment, my commuter book is Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. which is a book that looks at how small seemingly insignificant changes can cause huge change in all sorts of things, from disease to fashion trends. I’m about 60 pages in (10 minute train journeys make for slow reads), and so far it’s very interesting.

The book is talking about the types of people that are responsible for large scale changes, and it’s challenging the preconceived ideas of how word of mouth works, and just how marketing actually works. that’s probably why it’s a best seller. once I’m done i will probably move onto blink, which is the next Gladwell book that talks about how we make instant decisions.

The other book I got today, and am about to start is “A complaint Free World – The 21 day challenge that will change your life” It’s a book that encourages you to stop complaining, gossiping? or criticizing. the idea is you wear a purple bracelet (free with $.75 shipping from here) on your arm and every time you catch yourself complaining swap it to the other arm, the idea is to not change arms for 21 days straight. apparently this takes 4-5 months.

Quick scan of the contents and the book looks interesting. to start with I may aim for 21 minutes between complaints

Just finished my first book of the year the QI Book of general Ignorance. It’s so my type of Christmas book that I got it twice. full of completely random things, that hopefully my photographic brain will be able to reproduce at the most random times of the day. “there is no word in welsh for brown apparently”.

There is a plethora of these types of books now, mainly i suspect do to the Schott’s Orginal Miscellany from a few years back, and i have to say that while with my random fact gathering mind i could probably polish of most of them, the quality can be quite poor. Fortuantly the QI book isn’t one of the poor ones it’s written in nice friendly tone and doesn’t get lost (to much) in it’s delivery, this is helped by the fact that never more than two pages is devoted to anyone thing.

The only real problem with this book is it’s popularity. I was talking to someone today and at least two other people in ear shot? piped up and said they had read the book, this makes my random factness less impact-full* what i need to do is go get another much less popular book and get some facts. like did you know lead has a nice taste? before they knew it was lethal they put it in food.

*management speak alert impact is not a verb 100 times Mr Jump

OK so we’ve both read Harry Potter now. So we can emerge from the undergrowth safe in the knowlage that we know what happens and no one can spoil it for us. Although there is still at least one thing the book doesn’t tell you*

* it turns out theres a huge list of things people wanted it to tell them, you will have to read it to see which ones it doesn’t

[update] if you have finished the book – here are some loose ends tied up

Ruth seems to think I’ve read the book (which I have) and know the story, but really It doesn’t seem that familiar. With the film of two books previous coming out a week before the book – it’s all getting confusing. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phenoix