Customer Reviews

Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking at All (A Mindless Parody)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Although the idea is good (There's "Blink!", there's "Think!" and there's "Blank?"), and the quotes on the back are funny, the book itself is not funny.
The author tries very hard to be funny, and that makes it weak. He uses almost-funny names, and a succession of forced-weird situations and comments in a desperate tentative to crack the reader up.

Instead of entering into specifics, a suggestion: Read the entire "Look Inside" sample of Amazon before deciding, to be sure this kind of humor makes you laugh.

Being only 83 pages and a virtual bargain on the Amazon marketplace, Blank is a book that you must pick up if you're looking for a short/humorous book. Having not read the original Blink, I found it pretty humorous just as a stand-alone humor book. The author is Noah Tall, who belongs to the organization known as NAMES , the dyslexic branch of MENSA. The book features characters such as chess playing midgets disguised as taunting and obnoxious children, escapees from mental institutions pretending to be Antiques Roadshow experts, or bagpipers who are shot 247 times by the police just to make sure they hit their mark. Some parts of the book are just plain odd but a majority of the parts are amusing and very fun to read through. For a buck or whatever the price is these days on Amazon, pick this book up. You won't regret it for an afternoon pick me up and remember if this stuff doesn't work in real life, as the author says "you're doing it wrong, you MUST be thinking."

:D

-Travis

Fans of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" may still find plenty of room in their admiration of the author to admit the possibility that his work is subject to affectionate parody. This amusing send up of Gladwell's book is a perfect companion piece to his thought-provoking effort, in that this one provides no provocation for thought at all -- in fact, it exhorts the reader to stop thinking altogether. When you come to think about it, that's a pretty good prescription for laughter. The author, whoever he may be (the pseudonym is almost translucent) also displays a deep understanding of deli meat, always a strong element in any truly satisfying work.

Forgettable Blah - blah. I have read in some of Seth Godin's and Eric Sink's books about how you first select that which you can sell and only then do you create the product. This book is exactly of that sort. Capitalizing on the catchniness of Blink and riding its coat tails, this book is about getting itself sold to you. Well, I took the bait, plopped down my $ and reading it was my penance. Utterly devoid of anything of interest or of use. Trite and overworked. Stay away

Yes indeed it IS mindless drivel - just like the subtitle ( A mindless parody) says..

Another good example proving that anyone can publish a book. Completely humorless.