Reading Challenge 1 Follow-Up (The Believing Brain, Rethink, I Am, Therefore I Think, The Position)

I succeeded with the initial reading challenge, but a lot happened towards the end of it and afterwards that caused me to be a little out of it, and not "review" these books in the usual format that I do, unfortunately. So, rather than post a full-blown review, since the books aren't clear in my mind anyway, I'll just post brief thoughts I had on them.

Rethink is the 'story' of how Edward de Bono's teachings and exercises influenced Australia. It was really interesting to hear all about the practical work of de Bono from a third perspective, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is also nice to have a book purely on Australian case studies. (I had to add this to Goodreads, which is a first for me!)

The New York Public Library was extremely captivating, and will interest any bibliophile. It tells of how the libraries came into existence, and is littered with pictures of the buildings themselves and the collections. Sigh.

The Believing Brain is probably this weeks favourite, and definitely the most informative. I particularly liked how it ran through all the types of biases that can taint a person's judgement (such as hindsight bias). While the anecdotes do get tiresome, this is only a brief part of the book, and worth pushing past to get to the good stuff.

I Am, Therefore I Think is a philosophy book presented in a back and forth question and answer style. If you have read philosophy texts before, give this a miss. However, Pete picked it up off our bedside table curiously, and ended up devouring it over the week. It is a great introduction book for anyone new to the subject.

The Position, by Meg Wolitzer, did not disappoint. Wolitzer is now my fast fiction favourite. Once again I was caught up in the plights of her well textured characters, delightfully oblivious to the fact they were fictional as long as I could keep turning to the next page.