Friday, July 13, 2012

Boomerang~ Michael Lewis

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I actually enjoyed this audiobook A LOT more than I thought I would. It's great at both being enjoyable and understandable by economic idiots (AKA: me) and those who really understand economics (AKA: my father). Lewis is good at getting to the good stuff, and also entertains you with some awesome tangents! Here are just a few things I want to remember:


  1. The Icelandic collapse was due to a "failure to ask for directions." It was mostly men at the "wheel," and none of them questioned why Iceland, a country that has never before succeeded in economic trading/banking, was suddenly a booming industry. He actually says "The less the female presence, the less rational the approach to trading in the markets."
  2. ~
  3. Greeks are INSANE! They'are "all" cheating on their taxes. I loved how he said that no Greek would ever compliment another Greek behind his back, because they were all sure he was cheating on his taxes or lying about the property he owned, etc. And they were doing the same thing! Also, the tangent about the monastary may have been my favorite. There's a place that no woman has EVER been for 1,000 years?! Crazy!
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  5. The Irish are the complete opposite of the Greeks. I love how he said that when the Irish economy collapsed, EVERYONE chipped in to help and almost no one complained! I cannot imagine American citizens helping to bail out banks without some major griping.
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  7. This is probably my favorite thing in the whole book: the brain core of a human being is remarkably similar to a lizard. We are meant to thrive on scarcity. Therefore, the human brain is definitely not meant to thrive the way the typical American lives. We still have this idea of "get it before it's gone. And it's that which causes us to hoard money, become obese, and run ourselves into the ground. This theorist suggests that there are two solutions to this: either we have to self-regulate (which he's not sure we can do, since we are lizards), or we just have to hit rock bottom and be forced to self-regulate by our environment (or in other words, return to a state of scarcity where our lizard brains can flourish).
  8. ~
  9. This line was great: "They are saying that their present wants are so important that it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain, they are implying that when that future difficulty arrives, they will figure it out." I'm definitely going to think about this in my financial future, even though I like to think that I already do!
  10. ~
  11. And I love that the ending line of the book is "As idiotic as optomism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off."

Great book! I certainly don't think I'm an economics master now, and I'm not going to take all of Lewis' opinions as fact; but I at least have a jump off point for my own opinions! Which is WAY more than I had before.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Hiding Place~ Corrie Ten Boom

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Ho.ly.Cow. This was one of the most amazing books I have ever read. Seriously! I ADORED this book! More than once I was nearly in tears. Corrie Ten Boom is an amazing woman.

The Hiding Place does for the Dutch what Between Shades of Gray does for the Lithuanians. But I think THP might win just because it is 100% TRUE! So amazing!!!

My only fear now is that no other book will be able to measure up!


Wednesday, June 27, 2012

A Beautiful Mind~ Sylvia Nasar

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I listened to this on audio, and to be completely honest: if it hadn't been audio, I probably would have given up.

It read/listened like a research paper. The author just went on and on about what theories were being developed at the time, and the history of Harvard/Princeton. For the first part of the book there was almost no mention of John Nash at all! It was almost like the author couldn't find very much information on Nash, so she decided to fill in space with a bunch of stuff that was roughly related to Nash.

I did get a kick out of whenever there was a reference to a mathematician or a formula I understood! That was cool. And when she did talk about Nash it was interesting to see how other people treated him. That was probably my favorite part.

But overall I feel like this is the kind of book that you skim when you have to do a research project, not when you feel like reading.


P.S. My reviews on this site are going to be much more informal than my reviews on Squeaky Books. This really is just a place to organize and record my thoughts, not true "reviews."

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Welcome to Enna's Journey!

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However you came to be here, welcome! My name is Enna Isilee, and I typically review YA books but I've decided to branch out into nonfiction and adult books! This is where I'll be reviewing these books. I'm really new to the adult/nonfiction scene, so if you've got any recommendations I'd love to hear them!

Happy reading!

 

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