Pajiba

I can't even describe how annoying I found this book to be. The ideas are just so obvious...he's made a career of pointing out the banal as though he was the first person to ever notice it. And he's so smug about it. I kept trying to read it, I wanted to find out what everyone was so impressed by. Well, I never found it. Actually it reminded me of reading a first-year Sociology textbook in college.

I read Blink and was blown away, I am reading Outliers and so far I am quite impressed. However, the Tipping Point just doesn't match up to the other two. It's still an interesting book, but it doesn't flow as well as the other two. But as far as sophomore slumps go, it's one of the better ones.

Gladwell does sometimes think he is reinventing the wheel by bringing up things that we've known forever. (something like water is wet or salt tastes salty) but I enjoy the stories about the people themselves and how he ties them together. I recommend all of the books, but Tipping Point is like the Return of the Jedi of this trilogy.

True, but the Pajibaverse strikes me as more educated than the general population. This book is aimed squarely at the general population.

I saw Gladwell on cable and thought what he said was fascinating, but "Blink" was just too much to bear, especially the guy who took the scientific test over and over again to prove he wasn't a racist. It was one of those non-fiction books that makes the same point about 25 times in slightly different ways.

My problem with the Gladwell phenomenon is that a little bit of misplaced knowledge in the wrong hands in a dangerous thing. Perhaps my annoyance is more at folks who read these books but don't think about them critically than it is at Gladwell's intent.

The Tipping Point is basic Advertising/ Marketing 101. At some point every kid in the area has read it. When I was working in music PR I actually saw my boss guffaw at someone who hadn't read it. I've heard his use of the term 'maven' used in actual conversations more then once.

That being said...everyone knows he isn't a rocket scientist. These aren't hard facts by any means. They are correlations. And as such correlations never equal causation. The Tipping Point was a good blend of anecdotes, Blink...seemed, well, obvious, and Outliers...well that book is trainwreck honestly. It's like he tried to play both cards to the nature vs. nurture debate. He circled around and around, stated, rebuked, and restated things again,...then topped it all off with a chapter on how awesome his mom is.

Barf- I do agree that he skips a couple of points. For example the hush puppies story- kids in manhattan end up in a lot of magazines (my high prom was in Seventeen)and/or have parents in publishing. Therefore a couple of kids wearing vintage stuff in NYC can have an overwhelming influence on fashion.

But I do like the discussion about connectors, mavens and salepersons. I happen to be a connector and have a friend who is a maven but we don't yet have a salesperson (weird slightly creepy people in general) to push our idea/website. Therefore, it languishes as a low-level non-profit.

I despised this book. While reading it, I found myself thinking, "huh, that's interesting. . .," and "I didn't know that." Then, after finishing, and letting it digest a little bit, I realized that the whole thing is a made up bunch of horseshit. To say his conclusions were not "entirely" scientific is a colossal understatement. He just writes something he believes and uses an anecdote to bolster his position. For example, the whole bit about the "phone book quiz," has to be a joke. I even thought that was absurd while reading--no digestion required. It seems to me that he is mostly interested in destroying commonly held ideas with counter-intuitive claims backed up only by his half-assed observations. Anyway, I'm not a huge fan, in case you were wondering.