Books and good times

I am here at Carbondale library. One of the resolution for this new year is to maintain getting up early in the morning and today after struggling for two days I made it at 6:40 in the morning. I been reading several books including a graphic novel by Edgar Allen Poe, How to think about big ideas by Mortimer J. Adler and A new life time reading list.Yesterday I went to Barnes and Nobles and read part of Tipping Point. It was interesting. It begins with the example of how Hush Puppies shoes become a rage when few beatnik kids started wearing them and how an abrubt drop in Harlem crime rate. There was also an example of how a suicide in micronesia prompted more such suicides. To me that was one of the cornerstone example of his book. Bad news influence more bad news and its imperative that we should consiously try to dwell into bad news however if you look at the media bad news is the rage. Gladwell elucidates his example with yawning and how yawning is contagious. Just mentioning of the word yawn introduces yawn in us.
Adler's book is getting more interesting. His thesis is that most of the arguments can be boil down to few generic arguments and his book is a synthesis of this over arching idea. The book is structured in a form of question and answer session with Adler acting as a sawant. Adler is famous for his book "How to read a book" which I gather is one of the best seller.
The exceptional presenter seemed interesting too. It actually has a list of hand gestures to emphasize the points. The book is very sparsely written and can be read pretty quickly