Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling
This book is justification for the people who inspect others’ bookshelves and secretly judge them. As we all pretty much knew already, you CAN find out a lot about people by looking at their stuff. The question is, how much?
That’s what this book delves into. Gosling has done much of the research himself, for which I commend him, and he has plenty of tables and charts peppering the book with visual explanations of what this research has revealed. However, despite what the jacket says, the bulk of his research deals with where people fall along the big five (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeability, and Neuroticism.) It’s not going to let you in on the secret that if your boyfriend uses a red toothbrush, he’s more likely to cheat on you than if he uses a blue one, or that if your co-worker wears toe socks she’s less likely to embezzle from the company. In fact, the most revealing parts were what you COULDN’T tell from people’s stuff.
This is a pretty fun and easy read, and it gave me one or two tidbits to drop at parties, but it wasn’t life-changing. I think my expectations were set a little high by the jacket flap. I thought it would turn me into a Sherlock-ian sleuth like that producer on 30 Rock, but instead it just told me that neurotic people are likely to have those inspirational posters and wear black.
