I often go to the library to try and find something entertaining, intriguing or just different. Last week I found just the thing. It was a book called Master-Mind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova. Now this is the kind of book I love to find. After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to think like the famous detective of 221B Baker Street?
The title itself intrigued me enough to take it home right away. It promised to free my mind from being common and show me how to be a logical processing machine. Perhaps I could become as great a thinker as Holmes was portrayed to be in his stories.
I won’t go into a deep book review here. If you want to know the details you will have to read it yourself. I will tell you, however, that after reading the entire thing, my brain is not yet governed by a Holmes-like system of thinking. I have not yet mastered the skills of observation, imagination or deduction that it takes to become a master thinker. But I am further along that road than before reading Mastermind. Many of the book’s insights have actually already helped me solve problems with my programming using the methods that Holmes used to solve his own puzzles.
The book was a fun read. I would encourage you to buy a copy or go to the library and check it out.