Review - Incognito: The secrete lives of the Brain

Worth re-reading

This is yet another one of the books that made my list of brain books to read.  I really enjoyed this one.  It was well written, interesting, and had useful points.  It was recommended to me by John Graff, the VP of Americas at my company.  I'll have to write him a thank you for recommending it.  The main point behind the book was that we are strangers to ourselves, and that what we think of as ourselves is actually just the part that is aware.  Below the surface there are many other competing autonomous systems that are running on their own.  Along those lines, there are many things that happen automatically under the hood.  We don't recognize that those systems are going on at all.  This was an extension of "Thinking, Fast and Slow," which was also a very good book, however, it was a bit drawn out.  He had a few good actionable points.  However, I'm writing this a few weeks after I read it and I can't remember the specifics.  Hopefully they got buried in my subconscious for future use.  It wouldn't be horrible to re-read this book again at some point in the future, maybe ~1 year from now, and see how salient the points are then.

Review - Spark

This is yet another book in my list of brain books.  This one you could definitely read the cliff notes and get the same thing out of it.  The main point can be summarized to say that cardio exercise is good for the brain, and can help with mood.  It's particularly good at sorting out problems, such as ADD, depression, and PMS.  Other than that, it was a lot of anecdotal stories about how exercise dramatically improved some people's lives.  It had obviously dramatically improved the author's life, and he felt he needed to share that information with everyone.  I'd get the abridged version if you get it at all.