monkey nonsense

tim and talida got me freakonomics for christmas this year. it had already started reading the book on some of my visits to barnes and nobles but had been too cheap to buy it myself.

i liked it. i liked the weird relationships that the author of freakonomics investigated. it almost made me want to be an economist. some of the stuff seem so far fetched at first i felt like he might have just been manipulating data to make up such relationships. but i also liked the way he was able to explain why it would seem likely. the explanations really make the book that much more interesting.

much more so than the tipping point (a book i got on sale at borders and am almost done with… but just can’t seem to make it past the last few pages). it’s interesting that both the tipping point and freakonomics bring up rudy giuliani and his policy for reducing crime in NYC (fixing up broken windows, going after the little stuff). but tipping point seemed more boring to me. perhaps i just don’t care about how “epidemics” and trends start.

one thing i didn’t really like about freakonomics was the “extras” it put in the latest edition. it included the original article written by stephen dubner about steven leavitt. that was pretty interesting. and then it included posts from the freakonomics blog. that part, i didn’t find as interesting and i felt like it was just eh… tacked onto the original book but not giving any more value. but then julie just sent me this link… and i found this freakonomics post at least interesting: http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/05/07/incentivized-potter-ing-amazon-runs-harry-potter-pre-order-contest/

overall, i thought freakonomics was really interesting. the tipping point, still a good point, but not as interesting as freakonomics. oo oo, maybe read the tipping point first, and then freakonomics. perhaps that was my problem.

i think it was my cousin jenny who xanga-ed about the devil in the white city, by erik larson… but it was a few months later when borders was having its buy 2, get the 3rd free sale that i bought the book. the book is about the 1893 world’s fair, held in chicago and a supposedly normal businessman/serial killer who preyed on the tourists visiting chicago. (i’m not really sure why she was so excited about reading this book! i think i’d find it creepy to know that that kind of stuff happened on the street i live off of, or a street a few blocks away )

i’m a wannabe-history buff… i enjoy random history now and then. so the book was pretty interesting to me. it was interesting to learn about the 1893 world’s fair and all the preparation needed to put it on. supposedly the book does an accurate job with the facts. it did get kind of dry some times… it’s a pretty long book. i think larson does a good job of mixing in the serial killer stuff whenever the world’s fair stuff starts to get boring. the serial killer stuff isn’t that bad… at first i was worried it’d be scared (i’m a big chicken), but i think i was more creepied out by how slick the serial killer was. and that’s what got me hooked in… how could people be so mesmerized (is that the best word?) by this guy so that they became his victims?!

next on my list of serial killer books… dexter! i want to see how different the tv show is from the original book, darkly dreaming dexter. actually, i’m a little afraid to read dexter…

so as part of my 1001 day project, i wanted to read more. i remember after graduating a couple of years ago, i discovered the public library. i seriously hadn’t been to a library for like… 10 years! i remember trying to find books to read only to find myself in the kids/teen section reading books i read in elementary school because those were the only ones of interest. (ok ok… there was also pledged, great book! oh yeah! and paris hilton’s “biography”… i can’t believe i put myself on a waiting list to get that book. actually, i can’t believe my old roommate did too! that means our address was on the list twice!!) so i wanted to become more literate, hence #36 – Join a book club or read at least one book a month. so i didn’t end up joining a book club… too much work. and i haven’t been reading a book a month. but i have been reading!!

on the suggestion of geoffrey the giraffe pimp masta g funk, i got a couple of bill bryson books. he’s a travel writer. i never really knew there was such a thing but apparently there is. i’m a stranger here myself: notes on returning to america after 20 years away isn’t a travel book. it’s a random collection of observations bryson has on america. having lived in england for a long time before coming back to the states, he compares british and american cultures. he picks up on every day quirks about america and its citizens… that seem completely random. he has a pretty funny sense of humor. some times it comes off a bit much (like when chandler got annoyingly oversarcastic on friends), but i think overall, i found the book amusing. one of my favorites is when he talks about cupholders he mentions slurpees in that one!

hoping to read his a walk in the woods next. i heard that’s his best book.

got any book recommendations? i’m always looking for things to read!