(almost) always thinking

a bedtime reading recommendation

12 March, 2012 at 10:20 am Leave a comment

This book was actually recommended to me by a research respondent.  I called someone up to do a pre-booked telephone depth interview and we quickly worked out that they’d seen me do a trends presentation a couple of years ago.  On the back of that they suggested that I’d enjoy Michael Lewis’ Boomerang.

Boomerang is a romp across Europe, looking at how the cheap credit boom and subsequent bust revealed aspect of entire country’s characters that they couldn’t normally afford to indulge.  As Michael Lewis himself puts it, the Irish wanted to stop being Irish and the Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack…

Boomerang is perfect bedtime reading for Planners (and almost anyone else with an enquiring mind).  We all know how the story (currently) ends, so there’s no temptation to read on late into the night to find out.  Each country has a chapter devoted to it, the prefect length for some serious bedtime page turning.  And as a writer for the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis has a writing style that can make even the most complicated or boring financial shenanigan fascinating, while offering real insights into the mindset of a county’s citizens and government.

I really struggle to wade through academic books or the latest thinking in behavioural economics at the time of day when inevitably I am most tired and least likely to persevere when it gets heavy going.  So I tend to gravitate towards non-fiction that uses great storytelling to put the message across – Boomerang hits that sweet spot perfectly, as do books like Perfect Pitch, Truth Lies & Advertising and Freakonomics, all of which I’ve recommended before here on the blog.  Happy reading.

Entry filed under: reading. Tags: Boomerang, credit boom.