Jeremy Dean

I read a review about this book in a science magazine I read occasionally and thought that it sounded interesting and could be helpful to me. My local library system didn't have it so I did some book hunting (I didn't need much of an excuse for this) and found a copy.

Sadly, I have to say that my optimism for the book was misplaced. I can't quite put my finger on why I found this book difficult to get through but the writing style didn't capture me. In the reviews etc I read about the book beforehand some had it labelled as a self-help book, others as a popular science book. I thought that this was just poor reviewing but having read the book I can see why this happened. This book falls between both categories whilst not really fitting into either at the same time.

From a popular science point of view there just isn't enough of the science. There are some interesting facts presented however, for example, people often say (myself included) that it takes 21 days for a habit to form. It turns out that this number was come to by a writer and has been accepted as fact without any scientific basis. There is a decent amount of psychology presented but it felt massively dumbed down and very repetitive.

For a self-help point of view the suggestions put forward to help with habits was poorly presented and lacked detail. There was almost nothing that was new to me and a lot of it again was repetitive in nature. One of the suggestions to help was using 'mindfulness'. This is a subject I know well with my experiences with Buddhism and the explanation in this book was very poor. I imagine someone new to the subject would be left a bit underwhelmed and confused.

I didn't hate this book but it was only ok. It has received some decent reviews so perhaps it just didn't work for me.… (plus d'informations)

For a relatively short book (it's exactly the size of a CD, evidently designed to fit on your CD shelf), this packs a big punch. It's written in a vibrant, somewhat darkly humorous way, and even the photo captions are memorable, as are the photos themselves. A lot of the events of Trent Reznor's rise to success seem a bit hard to believe (e.g. a balloon carrying a camcorder filming a video floated away on its balloon and a year later led to the police investigating what they thought was a snuff film), or NIN quickly opening for Guns N' Roses before a crowd of 85,000 a year or so after releasing their first album, but in hindsight it's all believable.… (plus d'informations)