Review: Made to Stick - By Chip and Dan Heath (The book that caused me grief)

Browsing the local Waterstones bookshop I came across this in the sale section. It looked like a decent book so I picked it up and showed it to my girlfriend. She grabbed it off me without a second glance and plonked it on top of her pile of ancestry books, then bought it.... for herself! Now, after reading it, I'm trying to buy the darn book off her, a book which I picked up to buy in the first place! She says she wants to read it before selling, but I don't want to let her as she'll just put it amongst her scores of other ignored books and never read it. I won't see it again then.

The moral of the story is that Made to Stick is a damn good book. Anyone who ever has to get messages across, which is most people, will find this book both enjoying to read and useful. There's certainly things in there which I will apply regularly to things throughout my life.This book aims to help people not only communicate their own ideas better, but to be able to spot potential sticky ideas from other people. This is explained through examination of past failures and successes, how the brain works and how people work. The structure of the book focuses around a checklist for sticky information, "SUCCES"s (you'll have to read the book to find out what each letter stands for). Each chapter covers a different part of the SUCCESs checklist and there's plenty of interesting anecdotes, tests and examples to keep you entertained and educate. There's information from subjects such as psychology, sociology, economics, politics and so on, but it's less like reading an educational text and more like reading an enjoyable story. They clearly follow their own advice, everything said in this book is made to stick.

The back of the book contains a useful checklist of keywords and phrases to jog the memory of the information read in the previous chapters.... and it works well. That brings me back to the beginning of this review.... I need my own copy of this!

Very good book, would highly recommend!