Island Reading

One of the great things about vacation is that my internet time goes down dramatically, and I spend more time reading.  For this trip I took along a 400-pager with great reviews.  Hailed as "Harry Potter for grown-ups" I thought it would be perfect beach reading.

It would have been, if the writing was even as *good* as Rowling's.  (Note - I'm being sarcastic.) Flat characters which are also completely unlikable, a complete rip-off of Narnia, and dull prose should have compelled me to stop, but I wanted to find out if the book redeemed itself in the end.  It didn't.

Many of my reader friends shy away from fantasy and science fiction, and if this is what they are reading to give them that impression, I understand why.  I should have read this review in the NY Times before I picked it up.

On the other hand, I enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking after arriving home.  I believe I have now read all of his books.  This one focuses on how our snap decisions are often flawed, and how people have, in certain situations, learned to pare down unnecessary information to help them make more accurate decisions in the blink of an eye.