FREAKONOMICS by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

I'll just start off by saying this book was required reading for English class and it was good enough for me to actually read as opposed to looking up cliff notes. I think that's the best way to summarize my feelings about Freakonomics. This is nonfiction book, as you may have guessed, and is focused around economics. The book was filled with statistic after statistic having to do with people and why they do the things they do. We read the book to study the argumentative techniques so we could incorporate some of the strategies into our own writing. Personally, I didn't find the book very convincing. There really wasn't much said that was arguable. To me, it was more of less a book of facts somebody was rambling about. A lot of points were poorly made. The authors tried to make comparisons between unlikely parallels and when I was through with each chapter I still didn't feel they had anything in common. Even though I didn't really enjoy reading it, Freakonomics isn't so bad. I've been assigned a lot worse books. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would dissagree with me, but the main problem I had with it was there was no essence of creativity. Then again, what do you expect? It's a book about economics. The cheapest version of the book I found in stores was almost $30! I'm sorry, but that's a little out of my, and other book lovers, budget for only an okay book.

On a side note, I think whoever designed the cover is fantastic. It's an apple-orange. How cool is that? Yet, the pages of the book have those faux distressed edges you find on Lemony Snicket books. The whole time I was reading I couldn't get over somebody would make the mistake of matching these antique looking pages with the stark white cover complete with neon green font. Not to mention it's a very current nonfiction book about economics. I don't get it.

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