What should I read?

For years I have seriously and semi systematically read the right books, the ones everyone recommends, the ones with really great messages, or good concepts or models I could use. Not the ones from the book clubs or the reading groups, not the ones with the glossy covers on the bookstands or at the front of the bookshops. I also managed to avoid ones about really important topics, like the latest research on the environment sponsored by ‘save our endangered species’ or the ‘green forever’ groups. Cynic I hear you cry.

Well, deciding what to read is not a simple matter, I try the sci fi and every now and then one of them really grabs my attention. I read the detective stories, and some of them, like the majority of PD James and Frost and Morse they please me. Then I tried the mortuary set; they died, but you can hardly believe the exciting data in the gruesome and no longer living tissue. Decided that there was something excessively morbid and whilst loaded with seemingly stimulating science problem solving; not really my thing.

If I am about to get a flight, should I find myself sitting next to that enormously important executive who has this swathe of figures to peruse and commit to memory, or use to make some mind bogglingly difficult decision about whether to buy some unfortunate business to merge its capabilities and books his, with of course the usual round of redundancies. Or, should I give up and just enjoy Malcolm Gladwell’s latest clever collection of reassembled data go grasp an especially titillating concept to share with my colleagues.

Oh hell, I brought my computer, time to enjoy my 230th run through of M.A.S.H.