My holiday read was "Black Swans: The impact of the highly improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It was a seriously mind-opening read, and given the curious and 'unexpected' events in the financial markets at the moment, strangely topical. It has introduced me to great ideas like the Ludic Fallacy and Umberto Eco's Anti-Library, and how Gaussian Distribution, experts, and a whole lot of other things are often a sham. I'm now reading his earlier book, "Fooled by Randomness", which is proving equally inspiring.
