monk222 | Reading Life

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I'm glad Krugman has taken to sharing his reading life on his blog. You know it has to be a rich one. Usually too rich for my blood. But he has pointed the way to an interesting science-fiction series that I might be game for: Charles Stross's "Laundry" series. It might even make my summer reading.

Current Mood: curious

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I want to share an observation, because I am curious to know if it is merely due to coincidence or because of more general, cultural reasons.

I have noticed that even when giving a technical lecture, Americans will slip in 1-2 personal anecdotes into their talk. This seemed a bit weird. After witnessing this quite a few times, I asked a speaker, who explained that he thought it helped his audience connect with him better. Another writer (also American), who blogs about her work mentioned that she gets a more favorable response from her audience, (mainly American) on those posts where along with the description of some technology if she also mentioned how she felt about it.

I have not seen people from other countries do it nearly as much. In addition to Twitter, professors keeping online journals is still mainly an American phenomenon. I am curious, is this a cultural thing? Do you find that you like Krugman more, now that he has been revealing more of his non-professional interests by writing in his journal?