Weekly Non-Fiction Reading List 7.24.23
This week, we have five books from some incredible authors. We start out with one of my new favorite books about how we get fooled and what to do about it. We also have an amazing new book about how we talk about fatness as well as some others on great topics. Enjoy!
Each of the links to the books are affiliate links, so if you use my link to purchase any of these books, some comes back to support what I do (and it also helps fund my reading habit).
Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris
I don’t know why you’re reading my review when you should be reading this book. It’s so damn good. This is by two cognitive psychologists, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, who worked on the famous invisible gorilla study. I read a lot of books on this topic, and I thought this was just going to be another book about how people fall for misinformation. I was wrong, and I loved every second of it.
The book starts out with the psychology behind why we get taken, and a lot of it has to do with how we default to assuming people tell the truth. Throughout the book, there’s a ton of research that I hadn’t heard about before along with stories of people getting scammed and fooled. While the book does discuss misinformation and other common scams, the book actually takes a ton of shots at academic research. The authors have a ton of criticisms of bad studies, and I loved it so much.
Right now, we’re in a tricky time where if you question science, you’re likely to be called a science denier. But this book goes over so many different ways researchers have manipulated data and how it spreads through the academic community before anyone catches it, and this is extremely important for people to be aware of.
I can talk about this book all day, but for now, just go get a copy and thank me later.
Making Conversation: Seven Essential Elements of Meaningful Communication by Fred Dust
Sweet Jesus. I would have rather read a book on the pseudoscientific topic of body language reading. After finishing this book, I’m just extremely grateful that I didn’t buy it because it was available through my library app. This book is just anecdotal evidence from cover to cover, and the author has made an extremely good living doing what many entrepreneurs do, which is selling BS to large companies and governments.
In short, the author was an architect and then realized he could make money teaching people how to have conversations. Then, throughout the book he gives a ton of activities and extremely weird recommendations to make conversations better in the work place. The way you can spot BS books like this is that they say everything is bad and everything is good, and then they try to provide some ridiculous nuance explaining why X is good in Y situation but not Z situation.
For example, knitting can help you be a better listener in meetings but random thing X will make you worse. Why? Just because.
This was a ridiculous book, and I think what bummed me out the most is that the author is a married gay man, and I expected him to cover some more heavy topics. Finally, at the end he discusses how to have some more difficult conversations, but like the rest of the book, they’re silly, non-scientific recommendations.
Do I recommend this book? Only if you’re a masochist like myself who enjoys binging terrible books to see what dumb thing the author says next.
Zen Cats: Meditations for the Wise Minds of Cat Lovers by Gautama Buddha
This book was okay. If you like Buddhism and want a book of meditations, this book delivers. I don’t have much to say about it except that they literally just named it “Zen Cats” to target the cat-lover market as a cash grab. There’s not one mention of cats in this entire book lol. It’s legit just Buddhist meditations. The meditations are great, and I’ll revisit this short book, but the cats thing was shady.
Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture by Virginia Sole-Smith
This is a must-read book for not only parents, but for everyone. I’ve been on the heavy side since childhood, and I’m just so grateful that Virginia Sole-Smith put together a book discussing how our society treats bigger people. There are so many negative stereotypes about bigger people, and a lot of it has to do with ridiculous myths and misconceptions about why people are overweight.
The book really focuses on how the way we talk about fatness to our kids is extremely damaging. It not only leads to depression and a negative self-view, but it also often leads to extremely harmful eating disorders. And as previously mentioned, a lot of it isn’t even rooted in science.
Although this book discusses young women for the majority of the book, as a father of a 14-year old son, I was glad there were some sections about young men and fathers as well. While I do think this book is a must-read for everyone, I don’t have high expectations that the perception of fat people will change anytime soon, unfortunately. But this is a fantastic book overall.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
This is a classic that’s constantly referenced in books about misinformation and conspiracy theories coming from the right, so I decided to finally read it. I now get why this is a classic, but good God, it reminded me why I hate reading books about history. If you’re into that stuff, you’ll love this book. But if you’re like me, the first half is great, but the second half took me weeks to finish because I was bored out of my mind.
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