Teen Ink

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a sort of primer to understanding the unconscious mind and that mysterious, ubiquitous sensation known as the “gut feeling.” Gladwell names the processes we go through when making split-second decisions, illustrating the way we make choices.

Gladwell explores almost every facet of automatic judgments, which after a while ­becomes rather repetitive. One can easily get the gist of the book just from the introduction, and once you understand the author’s point, the rest becomes nothing more than a collection of anecdotes culled from ­research and experience.

While this really does drill the message of the book into the reader’s head, sometimes the drill is less of a drill than a blunt rock. The reason I ­became aware of the book’s repetitive nature was because Gladwell points it out! He ­prefaces many stories with phrases like, “By now, you probably ­realize ….” In all honesty, it’s ­unlikely that I’d have ­noticed his constant rehashing if he hadn’t said that.

Consequently, I’m reticent to fully recommend Blink since I’ve got some reservations. The book does relay an enlightening concept, however, if you’ve read Freud’s discourses on the subconscious, there’s really nothing new in Blink. That said, most will benefit from it, and I’m sure that some will enjoy its many anecdotes. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

I enjoy reading accounts of “mind-reading” New Yorkers and face-searching marriage counselors as much as the next guy, but after a while, I realize the irony of being able to thin-slice a book about thin-slicing, and it’s then that Blink loses its luster.