Okay, this book.

Right, this book.

I have no idea why I have this book. I have tried to read this book three times. This time was the fourth time, and I guess that the fourth time is a charm. And, hey! I managed to finish it! Go me!

I couldn't stand this book the first three times I started this book. Aaaaaaaaaaand, well, once I managed to read to about a third of the say in, I was okay enough with it to finish it. Finally.

Right, so this book is part of the Inspector Rebus series. It was clear enough that reading the rest of the books isn't really required, which I appreciated. I didn't care for the writing style, unsurprisingly. I liked that I knew the areas (-ish) of the book. The plot was okay, and the mystery mysterious enough to be interesting. Enough clues, but not too many to make the plot obvious. It had that going for it.

I didn't like this book, so, unsurprisingly, I don't recommend this book. Maybe someone else thinks differently.

I'm fairly sure I bought this book after a Book Riot post of the best books of 2014. It has zombies in it, which pretty much goes right along with my current delight with zombie books. I've been lucky so far to have read some good zombie books (World War Z, and Mira Grant's Feed trilogy), and this one continues that trend.

The beginning of the book is odd, and I struggled to follow along but briefly. Once I relaxed into the story, it read very quickly. I really like the explanation of the cause of zombie-ism (new word, totally correct), along with the consequences of the continued existence and development of said cause. The social fallout of a post-apocalyptic zombie world is also well portrayed, with different levels of coping with the end of the world (as we know it).

The ending was satisfying, with pretty much the only way the zombie world could continue (given the parameters of zombie-ism provided).

I enjoyed this book and recommend it if you like the zombie fiction genre.

This book was recommended to me in Susan's Slack channel by Francis. It had been mentioned in a meeting as a good business book to read. I read the first chapter, maybe the introduction, online, and bought the book. It's about the theory of cognitive dissonance and how reality intrudes on our beliefs, causing us to do things we don't think we would do.

The book is an easy introduction to the theory and the consequences of what happens when we have two opposing beliefs, how we justify bad actions to ourselves, and how we do those bad actions in the first place (one small step at a time). It also describes just how many people don't follow scientific methods before making declarations, making assumptions, or moving forward. In particular, most people including those in the health professions, don't understand statistics and control groups.

Memory is another area where justifications are made. The book discusses false memories, as well as how people remember how bad things are. The depth of "bad" is dependent on your desire for the experience, and inversely proportionate. If you want to do something and it sucks, it sucks less than if you do something and didn't want to do it, even if the experience is the same. You know, that whole justification thing, which is why we were reading this book to begin with.

The fundamental issue in all of this justification, however, is the lack of space to make mistakes. Mistakes are associated with being stupid in American culture, which means kids are trained to fear making mistakes. This, in turn, incentivizes not trying.

It's a horrible way to live, by the way.

I recommend this book highly, along with the philosophy of "Try, try harder. Fail, fail harder. Try, try again."