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Manny Rayner's book reviews
I love reviewing books - have been doing it at Goodreads, but considering moving here.
Currently reading
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
R in Action
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture
Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics)
Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology
The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
Lifemanship
Following on from Gamesmanship, another fake self-help manual from Potter. Now, however, he is overtly targeting social interaction in general, and gives you innumerable handy "tips" on how to discomfort people and gain a social advantage. The point, of course, is that they are all things people (at least British people) do already, slightly exaggerated for comic effect.
I have a long-running joke with a friend based on the chapter "Wine". Most people like to give the impression that they at least know a bit about wine. The problem is that few of us actually do, and there is the dreadful possibility of being made to look like an idiot by someone who is a real expert. Potter's advice is to go for what he calls the Boldly Meaningless. Instead of something about acidity or tannins which may turn out to be completely off, say "A little cornery round the edges!" Though his absolute favorite, which my friend and I use regularly, is "Too many tramlines!"
I hardly ever read self-help manuals. But hearing people complain about the ridiculous advice they often contain, I do wonder from time to time whether at least some of them are, like the Potter books, only really meant as social satire.
