My Rating: 4 Stars
Book & Author: Reading People by Anne Bogel
Genre: Non fiction/Personality frameworks
Have you ever judged a book by its cover and realized you were quite off the mark about the book, when you got down to reading it? Well, I have to say, I am guilty of doing that with this book, and luckily was pleasantly surprised with what the book turned out to be.
If you have read my previous blogs, you’ll know that I have recently started following Anne Bogel and might even have a girl crush on her <lol>. So it’s no wonder that I have signed up for her reading challenge for 2018 as well and I’ve picked up one of her books to check off one of the categories from the challenge.
Coming to judging the book by its cover story – I found out about Anne Bogel from her podcast- What should I read next, and wrongly assumed, that since her podcast is about literary matchmaking, where she talks to people and gets to understand their reading lives/preferences to recommend a book to them, that this book will be about people’s ‘reading habits’- hence the title- reading people! I was so off the mark there! Lol! I had thought, that the book will talk about people’s personalities, based on the types of books they lean towards reading or enjoy reading.
Well, I have to give myself some points for guessing that the book will deal with personality types and understanding different types of people, just not in the way I had imagined it to be. So once I got over the initial surprise, the rest of the book was an easy read.
Anne talks about a couple of personality frameworks in her book, and nicely clubs each framework in a separate chapter, and gives her readers a short and easy summary of what each type of personality framework talks about. I used to read a lot of personality framework kind of books earlier in my reading life, but haven’t read one in a long time now. So all of this was quite refreshing and new to me- except the chapter on introversion and extraversion. I did try to ask my friends and partner as I went along each chapter, which category they saw me and themselves under, and was quite surprised to find out that a lot of our answers didn’t match!! And I thought we knew each other..haha..food for though:) I also enjoyed the fact that she doesn’t tell you what to do or which type you should be, to be a better person- she just gives you the facts and some information so you can decide how you want to use it. I also loved the fact that she gives some personal and even embarrassing stories of her own, regarding how she identified her personality type and that makes the book more personal. It feels like you’re talking to a friend who is opening up to you and not judging you for being different than her. It made me feel that none of us are perfect and that’s alright:)
It is difficult to digest and remember everything in the book in one reading. So I don’t have any quotes to highlight, but I would recommend that you buy the hard copy version of this book instead of the kindle version, if you’re serious about trying out the different frameworks, just so you can go back to any chapter you want to and re-read it more easily. I know kindle has a content section too, but I just don’t enjoy flipping back through an ebook as much as I enjoy flipping through a real page book:)
What is everyone else reading? And what were your thoughts on this book or books on personality frameworks in general?
By finishing this, I completed the category: A book by an author of a different ethnicity than you- Reading People by Anne Bogel:) One book done from Anne Bogel’s reading challenge:) Yay!
Starry Eyed Enigma 