Christmas Books: James Allan

The most intriguing book I’ve read this year was Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan. It’s a book about risk and probability and argues that many of the assumptions that we live in a Gaussian Bell Curve world are wrong, badly wrong. It’s not terribly well written prose and style wise, but the ideas are powerful.  

I’m about to start Denis Dutton’s book, The Art Instinct. This book has won lots of awards. Denis is the creator and publisher of the Arts & Letters Daily website; I got to know him when I lived in New Zealand and we were in the New Zealand Skeptics together.  

Lastly, how about an Agatha Christie or two? I’ve been trying to read and re-read just about all of her books, from the one that made her name (The Murder of Roger Akroyd) to any of the later Poirots. She was an absolute genius of plotting. Yes, you know what you’re getting, but it’s delivered perfectly.