No, not the movie/ballet. The NYT bestselling nonfiction (because “philosophy” sounds too scary) book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I’ve heard a lot about this book, and I’ve heard it’s very good. It’s definitely challenging.

After reading Outliers, I was a little disappointed. I wanted something more in-depth and controversial. The Black Swan is definitely that. The central theme of the book is summed up in its subtitle, “The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” Broadly, Taleb thinks that humans as a whole are poorly adapted to live in an environment where a single event can change the world. These are “black swans” (a couple of black swans that Taleb, or “NNT,” as he calls himself, uses as examples are the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and the “black Monday” stock market crash of October 19th 1987). Because we don’t appreciate the impact of these events, Taleb argues, not only are we driving a car while blindfolded, but we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that we can see the road.

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This week I read Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. I would call it a poetry textbook, but handbook is more appropriate. It’s short, but it’s very challenging. John Hollander wrote each example in the form of the poem he was describing. So, an Elizabethan sonnet about about sonnets, and an Italian sonnet about how Italian sonnets differ from the Elizabethan ones.

I’ve never been a big fan of poetry. I’ve never read much, I’ve written less, and I’ve never really enjoyed it. But Rhyme’s Reason gave me a better understanding of how to read poetry in 3 days than years of formal English classes. It’s only 70 pages long (plus an ample appendix), but because it’s almost entirely written in verse, you spend a lot of time on those pages.

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