I have never been one to read in my free time. But this summer, I spent a lot of time at the beach and decided to be one of those cliche girls who read books on the beach. I went to the used bookstore down the street and saw the first book on the display shelf and bought it. It had one of those “Bestseller” medals on it, so I thought, why not?

The book, “Blink”, is written by Malcolm Gladwell, a five time bestselling author who is known for his work in research and writing. The book is a nonfiction research-based piece that focuses on how we, as humans, think without thinking. The mental processes that go through our head unconsciously; the way we can form an opinion of thought in a split second. He focuses on our unconscious biases as humans, and our ability to make a decision or judgement about something in less than two seconds. And although that concept sounds complicated, the book is actually written in colloquial language with everyday examples.

The book opens with an anecdote, as many books do, but the difference with “Blink” was that the anecdotes didn’t stop. Nearly every chapter was a new real-life example that proved the ideas Gladwell was proposing; they varied from everyday situations, like why we buy Coca-Cola, to huge ideas, like the reasons for the current police brutality controversy going on in America right now. Gladwell related all of our human actions back to how the brain was unconsciously working behind them. Then he followed with real, true statistics about how the human brain worked. And why it worked like that.

I haven’t been much of a reader in my life because no book has every gotten me to truly think about it after I finished the last page; therefore, I thought of reading as a waste of time. “Blink” has been the only exception. I read this book in early June; now it is the middle of September, and I still think about this book nearly every day.

When someone comments on the new packaging of a product or why they bought the newly packaged Gatorade bottle, I think of “Blink”.One of the many situations he used to prove his points about the unconscious work of the brain was a study about how the same exact product, only altering by two different packages, would be rated as significantly better or worse by people trying the product, based on the packages. And we can know it’s based on the package because everything else about the product was the same.

“Blink” taught me about the human nature of biases and emotions and prejudices because of Gladwell’s understandable writing and his plethora of examples that we all have already heard about, but just haven’t thought of in the way he presents them. And for that, I have a great respect for Gladwell and I recommend the book “Blink” to everyone, especially my fellow non-readers.