I don’t have favorite authors, alas. I tried years ago.

The last ‘thinkers’ book I read was my 2nd Pinker book – I forgot which one – it’s before he got into his defense of inevitable progress schtick – and while I mostly enjoyed it, a lot of things that only bothered me a little in Language Instinct that I thought were options Pinker-isms ended up being important FEATURES; his hard-wiredness stance was not an optional thing with him but required and littered in everything he wrote.

I realized I just couldn’t really enjoy it as a small error at the start can lead to big errors later on or just a constant irritation running throughout.

Malcolm Gladwell, I’d tried. I liked the 10,000 hour book and then another one but I mentioned above how that kind of turned out not well for me.

Oh! I _did_ finally break down and read a Dennett book. Everything pointed to me liking his stuff and so, as is usual for me, I avoided reading anything by him.

But finally I did.

And I found myself nodding in agreement about 3/4 of the way through this book – I’ll have to find the title – and this was just maybe two or three years ago.

But then he made the fatal leap into an area where everything beyond that just doesn’t ‘click’ with me and the final 1/4 of the book I just couldn’t finish as he’d gone off track from what I could agree with.

Still though, I understood why through the years he’d always show up as very “close” to my way of thinking. And it’s close – but still, not quite. But close.