Sharing news and commentary about education, careers, investing, and life.

Sharing news and commentary about education, careers, investing, and life.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Book Review: "Doing Nothing"

I've learned my lesson - do not listen to (most) book recommendations from authors, particularly the authors of Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell. The last few books I've read via their recommendations have been pretty disappointing. I get the feeling they're just trading outstanding book quotes with other authors so that when their next books come out they'll have all sorts of glorious praise.

Regardless, Doing Nothing has been a waste of my time. I only got 1/4th of the way through before dropping the book. As Tyler Cowen says, sometimes you have to cut bait on the losers - and that's exactly what I did. So don't even bother reading the book reviews for the book. Unless you're supremely patient and enjoy mishmash novels, you won't enjoy Doing Nothing. Now if only I could get my money back!

P.S. I re-re-read Harry Potter 7 - by that I mean that I skipped through most of the book, re-reading scenes I enjoyed, and definitely skipping the poor epilogue. Also, this past weekend I re-read Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? by Lou Gerstner - it's a pretty good read about IBM's "return to glory", but it reeks of occasional arrogance which is a big turn off in a book.

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