Sunday, August 19, 2012
Freakonomics Purpose
I think the purpose of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in Freakonomics is to open the eyes of the world to the subtle things that happen in the world around us. They pay attention to the little things that occur in the world and wrote the book to help the common person understand what they see on a daily basis. I think it is an excellent topic to write about, but i believe that the two authors could have done a slightly better job writing the book. The hook in the introductory chapter was very good. I was really excited to read the rest of the book when I read the introduction. Then my interest kind of dropped off when i started to actually read the book itself. I believe this is because the authors go too far in depth with some of the topics. When they do that, I completely lose sight of what they are supposed to be "teaching" me about. That is the thing I would change the most about the book. Other than that, I think they did a good job writing their stories.
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I too think that the authors could have done a better job in the writing. Even thought it was well written, at certain points they would go off on a sort-of tangent. The stories always connected back to the bigger picture but I felt like some of them weren't terribly relevant.
ReplyDeleteI also thought the writing was not fantastic, but the book still kept my interest from start to finish. The one writing aspect I disliked the most was that they discussed certain things in two sections of the book, instead of finishing their topic in whatever section they started it in. One example of this is how they discussed abortion being related to crime in the very first pages of the book, and then went back to it again in Chapter 4. I think it would have made more sense to keep all the abortion and crime relationships in one chapter instead of two.
ReplyDeleteLike Alex, at first I was kind of excited to see what the two authors would have to say about certain things, but then I read a little bit more into the book and I didn't want to finish it. They really did go too in depth with the topics. Some of the things they said were interesting, but then I would completely forget what the purpose of what they were saying was and forget that they are going to make a comparison to an entirely different topic. And like Brian said, Levitt and Dubner jumped around too much. They should of wrote about a topic in one chapter and then moved on to another comparison.
ReplyDeleteI actually really liked the way that Freakonomics was written, the author kept things interesting by jumping around from subject to subject. I also thought that he did do a good job tying in why he jumped from subject to subject, sometimes it took a little thinking, but that doesn't make it bad writing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ryan on this. I think the way they jumped around kept things more interesting than if they just had it all together. They did go a little too far in depth on some topics though. I don't know if I'd call it bad writing but it wasn't perfect, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteI too thought that the writing style was interesting to read. The way you never knew what boundaries he was going to push and explore next made me actually want to hear more. I agree with Michael where as they did get a little repetitive at certain parts but after all Levit and Dubner are economists, not writers. I think they were just trying to explain what was going on in their heads but just couldn't communicate it well at points.
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