false 3 31 26 true 5660705 read 2 true 2610805 currently-reading 3 true 2610804 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26469854 The History of Love (Paperback) by Nicole Krauss
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26469803 to: To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback) by Harper Lee
]]> http://apps.facebook.com/good_reads/ check it out » ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24388437 to: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Paperback) by Dave Eggers
I love it when authors pay little to no attention to the rules of the English language.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26468291 to: Blink (Paperback) by Malcolm Gladwell
See my review for "The Tipping Point." Just another way for Gladwell to make a buck off dumb readers who buy into senseless pseudo-science & pop psychology.

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure nothing in this book resembles an original thought. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26467723 to: The Tipping Point (Paperback) by Malcolm Gladwell
Can I give this zero stars?

When I read this book, back in 2006, I got really mad and wrote a scathing review of it on Amazon.com. Here it is:

"I've been duped!, June 20, 2006
By Sarah (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This book sucks. Don't waste your hard earned money on it. Let me save you a few bucks here: Malcolm Gladwell is either a self-aggrandizing ass who is too busy thinking he is the god of marketing to notice that a great majority of his arguments lack any kind of cohesion or credibility whatsoever, or he is just so excited about his self-proclaimed 'paradigmatic' keys to the essense of social epidemics that he conveniently forgets to include that much needed credible evidence to support his long-winded theories, resulting in a book fit to satiate the appetite of audiences hungry for pop pseudo-science BS that will make them feel smart for reading it. Basically all this book is is a compilation of anecdotal evidence that is supposed to prove the truth in his words. Gladwell's arguments clearly violate some very important rules guiding intelligent thought: correlation does not imply causation (and the fact that two events happened on one occasion at the same time does not necessarily imply correlation), and the idea that a theory is bankable because one instance of anecdotal evidence exists. Umm, okay, that's like saying that I know a guy who won the lottery (I don't, but humor me), so it must be a logically good place to invest my paychecks (I don't have paychecks, but, please, humor me). I mean, I'm a 21-year-old college student, and not even a GOOD college student at that, and I could easily point out the flaws in his arguments -not just a single argument, but ALL of his arguments -as soon as I read them. I didn't even have to put the book down to think for a few minutes before I realized how absolutely pointless and downright ludicrous his 'insights' were. All that aside, his writing style is so patronizing and self-congratulatory that I could hardly stand to read any more than five pages at a time before my face got all scrunched up and I started uncontrollably muttering curse words under my breath. It makes me sad that people read this book and consider it a revelation in modern psychological and scientific thinking, not seeing it for what it is: an apparently very successful (thanks, readers of America) profit-driven waste of time. Gladwell made a ton of money off what probably only took him, like, 15 minutes to write, and THAT is the only thing genius about this book."

Yeah, I was kinda mad when I wrote that. This book doesn't really do much in the way of illustrating how to market ideas -rather, it seems more like a marketing tool itself. Gladwell sure knows how to create a brand for himself, complete with a legion of raving followers who can't think for themselves. That scares me. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26467112 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Paperback) by Milan Kundera
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24388572 to: Angels & Demons (Mass Market Paperback) by Dan Brown
Maybe I'm biased... I read this on my 23rd birthday, to pass the time while on the long flight back to California after a six-month stay in Rome. ...It made the flight more painful; I regretted not having read it earlier. Visiting certain locations mentioned in the book would have been all the more enthralling. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24774719 Sarah's review of A Wrinkle in Time (Time Series, #1)
by Madeleine L'Engle

This book blew my 4th grade mind. I've been exploring ever since. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24774761 to: Tacky the Penguin (Sandpiper Books) by Helen Lester
valuable life lessons learned here. ]]>