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People that still read books for fun/insight?

post #1 of 16
12/4/09 at 10:37pm
Thread Starter 
do you ever feel that they have waaay too much time on their hands and probably should focus on more important things, like their careers, significant others, side bitches, or raging with friends? i used to be that ideal douche who would jerk off to malcolm gladwell's psychobabble pop psychology, seth godin's blog, some indian guru who jizzed his thoughts at google's conference so he must be right if they hired him, or a clockwork orange to discuss its current significance to your emo friends at starbucks who have too much time to read books bc they chose to mooch off their trust funds in the interim to delay having to focus on work or a mortgage... but then i realized writers were always salesmen first, 'authors' second. all of them. i probably haven't read a book since college, unless its work related, as the little free time that i get i spend with the concubine, or post on fashion sites trying not to sound too homo while maybe still being curious.
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post #2 of 16
12/4/09 at 10:41pm
Clearly doing anything not motivated by your penis or your bank account is for homos.
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post #3 of 16
12/4/09 at 11:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zillka View Post
do you ever feel that they have waaay too much time on their hands and probably should focus on more important things, like their careers, significant others, side bitches, or raging with friends? i used to be that ideal douche who would jerk off to malcolm gladwell's psychobabble pop psychology, seth godin's blog, some indian guru who jizzed his thoughts at google's conference so he must be right if they hired him, or a clockwork orange to discuss its current significance to your emo friends at starbucks who have too much time to read books bc they chose to mooch off their trust funds in the interim to delay having to focus on work or a mortgage... but then i realized writers were always salesmen first, 'authors' second. all of them. i probably haven't read a book since college, unless its work related, as the little free time that i get i spend with the concubine, or post on fashion sites trying not to sound too homo while maybe still being curious.
Reading Malcolm Gladwell's books is not something somebody should do unless he wants to become dumber and less insightful.
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post #4 of 16
12/4/09 at 11:36pm
I haven't read Gladwell's books. Why do you say that?
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post #5 of 16
12/5/09 at 12:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by iammatt View Post
Reading Malcolm Gladwell's books is not something somebody should do unless he wants to become dumber and less insightful.
+1
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post #6 of 16
12/5/09 at 11:59am
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post #7 of 16
12/5/09 at 12:30pm
You have got to be kidding me.
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post #8 of 16
12/5/09 at 3:10pm
good thread/wrong forum
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post #9 of 16
12/5/09 at 3:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zillka View Post
do you ever feel that they have waaay too much time on their hands and probably should focus on more important things, like their careers, significant others, side bitches, or raging with friends?

i used to be that ideal douche who would jerk off to malcolm gladwell's psychobabble pop psychology, seth godin's blog, some indian guru who jizzed his thoughts at google's conference so he must be right if they hired him, or a clockwork orange to discuss its current significance to your emo friends at starbucks who have too much time to read books bc they chose to mooch off their trust funds in the interim to delay having to focus on work or a mortgage... but then i realized writers were always salesmen first, 'authors' second. all of them.

i probably haven't read a book since college, unless its work related, as the little free time that i get i spend with the concubine, or post on fashion sites trying not to sound too homo while maybe still being curious.

'nuff said.
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post #10 of 16
12/5/09 at 3:46pm
Thread Starter 
sardonicism.. incognizable in rural, uncouth northern italia
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post #11 of 16
12/5/09 at 3:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by InsBrokerTX View Post
I haven't read Gladwell's books. Why do you say that?

He simply uses well documented sociological phenomena to write popular books filled with lame buzzwords. There is nothing original or insightful about his writing except perhaps its intended audience.

That said, I don't have that much time to read beyond work, bedtime stories and SF but I always have a few books (usually popular science, econ or middle east politics) on the go and read a few pages before falling asleep. Right now my bedside table has the latest Dawkins book (he's a great writer no matter what you think of his ideas or science), Startup Nation (just got it and haven't really started it, and a novel my uncle wrote that I haven't finished.
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post #12 of 16
12/5/09 at 4:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EL72 View Post
He simply uses well documented sociological phenomena to write popular books filled with lame buzzwords. There is nothing original or insightful about his writing except perhaps its intended audience.

Where do you rank Gladwell in comparison to the Freakonomics guys?
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post #13 of 16
12/5/09 at 4:58pm
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Originally Posted by Dakota rube View Post
Where do you rank Gladwell in comparison to the Freakonomics guys?

No comparison. Although there is surely some overlap in their audiences, Levitt is an accomplished economist who publishes original work (his coauthor is a journalist who handles the writing).

Gladwell is very good at marketing his buzzwords as new concepts but none of his ideas like the tipping point, outliers... are new or original. They are just repackaged.
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post #14 of 16
12/5/09 at 5:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zillka View Post
sardonicism.. incognizable in rural, uncouth northern italia

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post #15 of 16
12/5/09 at 5:43pm
Agree 100%, bro. Nothing more to life than making big bucks and getting ahead. Ambition is everything. Fiction is for little "faggots" living in some la-di-da fantasy world, too afraid to face reality. Sorry - gotta cut this post short b/c I need to continue browsing the Personal Finance stacks at my local Barnes & Noble. But great thread, seriously.
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