The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

I read this on my dying old Nook -- and it was an experience that made me feel more than comfortable with letting the old Nook die. It is definitely going to be paper and glue books for me going forward. They’re so much easier to take notes in, and especially to go back, ripple through those notes, and get a better sense of what the book in question was all about.

But I can’t entirely blame the Nook for the negative experience. Using the awkward highlighted notes feature I was able at one point to record this fairly explicit reaction to the actual words I was reading:

What the fuck is this book about? Let me wander around until I find a point?

Ouch. 

The last book I remember reading that left me with a similar impression (which was also read on the Nook) was Brain Cuttings by Carl Zimmer, and I think these two books have more in common than just their juxtaposition on my Nook’s library shelf. They both are what I would call “pop-science,” where the author dances across a dozen or so angles on a fairly serious subject, but never truly treats anything he finds as serious. Indeed, both authors seemed much more interested in entertaining the reader than informing them about anything substantive about their material.

The only useful thing I gathered from the book were some references to other books about psychopaths that sounded more interesting than the one I was reading. Top of that list are a pair of dueling biographies about a psychopath who was a successful businessman -- one an autobiography written by the psychopath himself, and one a biography of the same person written by a business journalist. I’d like to think that comparing and contrasting the two stories would teach me more about the psychopaths walking among us than the flippant little tome that Ronson has put together.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.