50 Books POC Reading Poll

[rachelmanija]

Help me prioritize my to-read stacks! Please comment to tell me which I should read first and why, and if there's anything I should avoid and why.

Note: This is just the first poll.

Other note: I have already read and enjoyed other books by Butler, Myers, Johnson, and Liu.

[Poll #1342964]

Comments

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

After reading Outliers, I decided I had to buy and read his other two books. I didn't like The Tipping Point as much. I've started Blink. I am pretty sure Outliers is going to remain my favorite. I started reading a chapter in a bookstore, thinking that it might be glib and something to wait for in paperback, but I ended up buying it then and there.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I decided I couldn't read Outliers after an Asian-American blog I read (maybe AAM?) tore into it because of the bit about rice paddies. Seriously: rice paddies!

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

That was actually the chapter that I read in the bookstore that made me buy the book. Do you remember what the criticism was? A few points I got out of that chapter and related in the rest of the book:

• More education = better scores, as reflected in how poorer kids tend to not learn things over the summer because they don't go to summer school or similar activities.
  
• Crops in the Western world often strip soil of nutrients and thus the soil needs time to rest and recover, plus farming, while hard, often involves periods of just waiting around. With rice paddies, it tends to involve work year around, and extra effort invested tends to have clearly demonstrable improvement in yield. Now look at school schedules, which apparently take farming as a metaphor for cultivating knowledge in students. Western countries have huge summer vacations; Asian countries have summer classes.
  
• Effort pays off in math (well, if given problems appropriately selected to build upon past topics). So maybe (and yeah, it's not clear how seriously you can take this) Asian test scores in math are so much higher because they are used to working and seeing it pay off, and possibly this somehow even extends to Asian Americans.
  

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Link (http://www.angryasianman.com/2008/12/ancient-asian-math-secret-rice-farming.html).

Like AAM, I am inclined to see this as crackpot theories plus cultural stereotypes masquerading as social science. I've liked Gladwell's previous books, but I'm taking a pass at that one.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

When I have more spoons I will make a post about this theory and reply with its link here. I'll just say for now that Tipping Point seemed more crackpotty to me than Outliers, and I am concerned that Blink will strike me as even shakier, but I haven't gotten too far into the latter, and so far it seems reasonable.