Outliers

by Malcolm Gladwell

OMG! as my teens would say.

This book was amazing, I can't wait to read another by Gladwell.

In it, each chapter is dedicated to those individuals or groups of individuals, that stand apart as unique and exceptional. Everything from professional hockey players to Bill Gates, to a town of Italian immigrants to Jewish lawyers.

He examines who they are and how that got that way and in the most unique manner.

He's a former journalist, specializing in business and science, so he knows research and numbers and technical facts. But he has a gift for writing about very detailed stuff in a very simple, story-telling manner.

Very impressive.

Heart Full of Lies

by Ann Rule

I've read several books by this true crime writer and have enjoyed most, finding the behind-the-scenes view of damaged people, overworked police officers and both shady and dedicated lawyers fascinating. Her book "Small Sacrifices" was incredibly creepy, in fact I don't think I finished it. A woman killing her children because they're inconvenient, that's too horrible to contemplate.

This story of a self-absorbed woman who reacts with murder when the people in her life don't do everything she says was good, a fast compelling read. Not great literature but a good beach book, which is where I started it.

Reading about a narcissist with a "personality disorder" was unsettling. I always thought it was a bogus, catch-all diagnosis like "oppositional disorder' for bratty kids. But reading about people who aren't crazy, as you think of the term, but live in their own world and in denial that others are equally important, struck a bit too close to home. Likely, we've all known people like them and if we ever got a good look at them just figured they were assholes.

This book was a good example of the extreme end of the disorder.