Reading Now

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace a very insightful, witty, and enjoyable book given me by my good buddy Josh. This one's a bit high brow for most readers given one essay is criticising John Updike (Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetrology: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest) and anothe points out the humor of Kafka (Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories.) (Yes, I said that right.) 

Good stuff. The analysis of Bloomington/Normal as typical Mid-Western culture was pretty much right on (I'm from Peoria, Il. myself.)

Also reading Age of American Unreason which is about what you'd expect and just finished reading Decline of Men, again, about what you'd respect.

So all in all, I'm pretty much doing what David Brooks expects, by reading books that simply confirm what I already believe.

Except I never really thought of Kafka as funny till now. So there's something new I've learned.

Recently Read

I've been on a Social/Emotional Intelligence kick lately. Actually, ever since my boss dinged me in a review for just not having enough of it. No sense in arguing.

The Social Animal by David Brooks is well worth reading. Brooks is what even Rush Limbaugh called called an "Intellectual" who has studied human nature via his politcal contacts and written about them for places like the New York Times for most of his career.

This is an insightful study told in the form of a family story of just how we all really are just "animals in an environment" if you will, mostly responding to where we are and our "throwness" as the existentialist would say.

I enjoyed it well enough, but the insights of how the brain and human biology works wrapped in a total easily read package is well worth the time to read.

Another book which had high claims for itself as well as from others is a piece of crap that could've been put together as a high school project with the right editor. This one is Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and for all it's swagger and psuedo-science, it can be skimmed in the bookstore in 10 minutes and you'll develop all the more "Emotional Intelligence" you'll ever get from this little piece of marketed self-help snafu.

The online "Test"  by the way... the big incentive to purchase... is like 20 questions of your own obvious assessments of how sensitive you are. Save yourself time and just give yourself an intuitive number from 1 to 10.

Another book I read which I really did sort of enjoy was My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. This is an amazing little story that tells of a nuero brain doctor that has a stroke. She watches and later chronicles her collapse of one whole side of her brain.

This one a bit comes down to the old left versus right side of brain study, but the amazing decriptions of what living with just he "right-side" (the artistic, intuitive, (w)holistic side) is like makes you do a real double-take on what really is all going on inside one whole side of my head.

The author had a hard time for year recovering but eventually did. This is a pretty amazing story you can pretty much skim speed read in the bookstore but is worth checking out at the library and taking home.