True blog confession: I didn't actually read The Tipping Point. A couple weeks ago, our neighborhood lost power during a snowstorm. Since our thermostat requires electricity to work, I decided Alliclaus would have to nap in the car. So I ran to Borders and picked up the audio book.

I will likely read The Tipping Point someday. I think reading a book is a decidedly different experience than listening to an audio book. Plus, the audio book was abridged, so I feel like I totally missed something important.

The basic idea behind Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is that it isn't big things that cause epidemics, but small changes that start a process that leads to a major shift. (This is a horrible description of the book, yet I can't seem to come up with anything else, so there you go.)

On an abstract level, I really enjoyed the book. It was really interesting and when you spent time thinking about it, the idea was rather intuitive.

I tend to think of marketing as a fairly shady field, so the thought that people were going to use the ideas from The Tipping Point to sell their consumer goods left me feeling kind of, I dunno, icky, I guess. But the descriptions of how it can be used to create epidemics of literacy or activism or healthy living made me feel all warm and squishy, so I guess it all balances in the end.

Jessie recommended the book, as well as Blink from the same author. Since I enjoyed The Tipping Point so much, I'm thinking I might add Blink for 2008.