No, I didn't die. I just... uh... Blinked.

So, um, hello everybody.
Figures, when I stop writing for a while, there actually is and everybody. I've been getting so many views lately. Over the past month, I've gotten nearly 400 views. I know that doesn't seem like a ton, but it's more than this blog got from January to August. So I'm pretty excited about it.
Also: HELLO RUSSIA! And Thailand! And Italy, Poland, Columbia, India, Ukraine, France, Bulgaria, Germany, and Latvia. Excuse me, but why in the world (heh... like countries... in the world... oh never mind) are you looking at my blog so much? I don't completely understand it. But I appreciate it, nonetheless.
So. Anyway. Books.
I've sadly only read 2 (almost four...) since I last posted. Yes, I know, that's pathetic. You're thinking "Jackie, you read 27 books last January. What happened this month?" But school happened. And my girl scout gold award. And college applications. And general people drama. But, now, I am hopefully going to be reading a (little) bit more. I'm still swamped with work and stuff, but I really want to begin reading again.
SO. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell was not quite as good as Outliers, but it was still quite good. Essentially, it was about how people unconsciously make decisions without thinking, judging a book by it's cover, so to speak, before they even realize they've glanced at the book. The book applied this concept to a lot of different areas, but it was probably most relevant to stereotypes.
Gladwell essentially argued that most stereotypes are relatively innate, even if a person is "unprejudiced" and not remotely racist. This is largely due to the influence that society has over us. I found one study particularly interesting. The study showed that after being prepped with an image of a black man which was flashed before them, subjects were faster to identify a gun as a gun than when white faces were flashed. Yes, this is awful, but it doesn't really surprise me. Just as people automatically associate things like "career" with men, although women also have careers, people associate "gun" with "African-American". However, even more alarmingly, people also associate words like "bad", "evil", and "thief" with African-Americans. Even Malcolm Gladwell, who is half black, found himself doing this. That, to me, was the most shocking part.
Additionally, the book talked about how much small things we do tell us about ourselves and our unconscious thoughts. There was an interesting study in which psychologists learned to predict with 95% accuracy if a couple would get divorced simply by filming them having a discussion and then analyzing their facial characteristics. It was pretty cool, but sort of scary at the same time. I like to think that I'm not the readable, but I guess, really, nearly everyone is.

I know this entry is short, but I really need to do my Chem homework now, and I want to at least post something. I love you all, readers, but I would love you even more if you commented. :)

I'm going to save the other book that I read for the next blog. It sort of goes along with the theme of another book that I'm about to finish, so I want to write about them together.

Total Books: 75
NonFic: 25 (33.3%)