2 ms·

I haven't checked out Black Swan; is it worth a read?

• zem 10y ago
  i went and dug up my review from when i read it (the blanked out name is a friend of mine whose review i was replying to, and who hated the book). amusingly, my feeling that he was a good writer seems to be me remembering his style as better than it actually was; i tend to remember the good bits of stuff longer than the bad: Reading part 1, I thought "Oh God, ____ is right, the man is an idiot." I realised, though, that he simply wasn't all that good a writer, which is not the same thing. I also got the impression that he was indulging in stylistic experiments, which detracted from the book. Anyway, one or two good ideas in there, and a nice discussion of Hempel's Raven Paradox (even better than Gardner's, so score one for him). But mostly part 1 was a matter of slogging through a lot of text for little reward. Part 2 got a bit more interesting, though here ____'s second claim of "the good parts aren't original and the original parts aren't good" was sadly borne out. Some decent material, but mostly stuff I'd read in lots of other places, pulled together into (to be fair) a pretty coherent narrative. Part 3, surprisingly enough, got a lot more interesting. I'm not sure what the difference was, but it did seem that he was genuinely offering insights of his own, rather than regurgitating other people's. He did also seem to have some genuinely valuable stuff to say. At any rate, I found myself reading the rest of the book with a lot more engagement and a lot less feeling of having to slog through it. On the whole, I think he does have a few genuine, and genuinely insightful points to make, shadowed by his rather clunky writing style and by the fact that he's rather full of himself. I think I will reread the book a chapter at a time, to make sure I get his point.