Paper insulation against the cold
Comments: 10
We received a very light dusting of snow last night which is now being washed away by a thin sleety rain. I can hear the ice in it plinking down on the tin outside my window.
Luckily a big box of books arrived yesterday so I can stay inside and insulate myself against the cold with paper. Here’s a look at what was in the box.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown & Co. (ISBN: 0-316-17232-4)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond
Viking (ISBN: 0-670-03337-5)
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Georges Perec
Penguin (ISBN: 0-14-018986-6)
de Kooning: An American Master
Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan
Knopf (ISBN: 1-4000-4175-9)
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
Thomas Frank
Metropolitan Books (ISBN: 0-8050-7339-6)
Defensive Design for the Web: How to Improve Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Crisis Points
37 Signals
New Riders (ISBN: 0-7357-1410-X)
Designing with Web Standards
Jeffrey Zeldman
New Riders (ISBN” 0-7357-1201-8)
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Posted to Books • 2005.02.19 (Sat) • 11:26
Comments
Posted by astroboy2520 2005.02.19, 16:34
I saw Malcalm Gladwell on Charlie Rose some nights ago and thought he had very interesting things to say. So much so that I visited Amazon and ordered a copy. It is sitting in a stack waiting to be read. He will be reading at the UCLA Hammer Museum in the beginning of March. Should be quite interesting.
Posted by Michael Glaesemann 2005.02.19, 18:57
Long time fan, though perhaps first post. i’m surprised you haven’t picked up the Zeldman before now. Others I’ve thought of getting buy haven’t yet, and yet others I haven’t heard about and am curiously interested. Thanks!
Posted by jh 2005.02.19, 19:23
Don’t miss a chance to hear Gladwell in person. Should be quite interesting. Take a look at his first book, too, “The Tipping Point”.
Michael —- I’m surprised I hadn’t bought both Zeldman’s book and the one from 37 Signals, being such big fans of their work. I had both of them queued up for sale for a long time, but only just got around to hitting that “buy” button.
Posted by John 2005.02.19, 20:31
Be sure and read Zeldman’s book first! ;)
Posted by Kristen 2005.02.20, 00:15
Zeldman’s book is fine but nothing you don’t already know, I suspect. Read the Gladwell first then loan it to me, please . :-)
Posted by Jeff 2005.02.20, 04:43
Reading What’s a Matter with Kansas will explain most of what’s happening over here. A great read.
Posted by Jacques 2005.02.22, 08:26
Drop them all and just read Species of Spaces!
Posted by UltraBob 2005.02.24, 00:30
http://www.peterme.com/archives/000457.html
Posted by jh 2005.03.08, 21:24
Bob — Thanks for that link: turns out it’s pretty much right on the money. Blink was something of a disappointment, not least because we’re told early in the book that “The third and most important task of this book is to convince you that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled … Just as we can teach ourselves to think logically and deliberately, we can also teach ourselves to make better snap judgements.”
Now I wasn’t expecting a self-help manual with exercises (Gladwell’s 12 steps to better blinking), but I was hoping for something that backed this up. There wasn’t much.
On page 8 Gladwell writes:
In the first two seconds of looking — in a single glance — they [the art experts who spotted the fake kouros] were able to understand more about the essence of the statue than the team at the Getty was able to understand after fourteen months.
Blink is a book about those first two seconds.
Actually, Blink is not a book about those first two seconds: it’s a book about the 20 or 30 or 40 years of close attention and devotion to a subject that eventually allow us to come to make what we can call ‘informed snap judgements’.
Now snap judgements they may be, but make no mistake: they’re very informed.
Saying that everything happens in those 2 seconds is just a nice hook to hang a book on.
Now Gladwell is a superb magazine writer, and The Tipping Point was an excellent book. But this one just doesn’t come together in anything like the same way. In fact, it reads like a magazine piece that’s just way too long (indeed, some of this material will be familiar to his regular readers).
Posted by brigham 2005.12.27, 20:06
Reading What’s a Matter with Kansas will explain most of what’s happening over here. -completely him(its) support.A great read.
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