Reading around... and other plausible excuses

This is the time of year academics spend "reading around" their subject.

Reading around is about broadening understanding, exploring texts that are not directly connected to the still unwritten lecture you are about to deliver in around and an hour and a half; (that is called 'preparation').

Put another way, reading around is a conscience-salving code for spending hot summer days immersed in books that wouldn't make it on to any of your Reading Lists but are lot more fun than most of the ones that do.

On one level this can justify romping through Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic and saying it gives an effective insight into PR ethics. (It does, but I am rather hoping no-one is going to point me to a PR connection lurking within 50 Shades). It is also a good way exploring subjects that should be seen as essential to understanding how PR works, such as psychology and sociology, or statistics and probability, which are not part of many courses and are actively shunned by some academics. 

Among the Read Arounds I am enjoying this summer:

Neuroculture, by Edmund T. Rolls

The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China's Political Animal, by Henry Nichols

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman

The Decisive Moment: How The Brain Makes Up Its Mind, by Jonah Lehrer

From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet, by John Naughton

What are yours?

Comments

[Judy Gombita]

Interestingly, following Heather Yaxley's recommendation, the next non-fiction book I plan to read is:

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

I have already Read Around (in this order):

The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering the World Around Us, by Nora Young

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption, by Clay A. Johnson (which was the inspiration for my recent column, Nutrition Byte: Conscious PR Choices on the Social Media Plate)

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (which plays a huge role in my Boring Byte: Polishing Dull Stereotypes Into Social PR Gold, which publishes the last week of July)

Oh. And I'm more than 3/4 of the way through Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (her followup or #2 in the now trilogy to the Man Booker-winning Wolf Hall. Heather and I are both convinced that Thomas Cromwell was very public relations savvy. Not that it prevented him from losing his head, literally, in the end.)