Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected

"Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected" is a well balanced book that offers the right combination of insight, humor, practicality and caring for both the subject matter and the audience. You can tell how much the authors are committed to the concept that surprise can be a rich and meaningful part of the human experience. We can benefit from focusing our attention on this experience rather than just letting it happen to us as yet another random factor in our lives. The words "embrace" and "engineer" in the title speak to this. By intentionally understanding and opening up to surprise, we can use it to our advantage, without it losing the spontaneity and serendipity that makes it special. That's a balancing act: how to engineer surprise and still maintain its very nature. This book shows you how you can do that, and along the way be both entertained and enlightened.

I've just finished reading it, and tomorrow I'm going to start all over and read the whole thing again. I am. It gives fun/easy/practical strategies to ramp-up your work life, romantic life, and your inner life and backs all of it up with the very simple (but super fascinating!) science of surprise. There's a quick summary at the end of each chapter--like little cheat sheets for a fast review when needed. Overall an easy and INTERESTING read! It's what Malcolm Gladwell books SHOULD be like (and almost are). Perfect Christmas gift, and yes I know it's only April, but thinking that I might as well buy a stack now and be done with it.

Many books purport to change the way you see and interact with the world; few actually deliver. "Surprise" is one of those rare gems that actually accomplishes not only transforming the way you think about the world, but changing the way you live in it. Written in an engaging and simple (though never simplistic) style, the book invites its reader to explore one of the most overlooked yet essential qualities of being human - a capacity for creative surprise. Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger have penned a lovely little book that will enlighten, delight and vitalize readers for years to come. A must-have.

I love this kind of stuff and this book is one of the best ones I've read. Got it for my birthday last week--and I tore threw it. It wasn't fluffy at all--obviously based in real science and research, but still totally accessible and actually, really funny.Plus, finding out that my brain grows a tiny bit bigger every time I get surprised makes me feel like I might embrace the unexpected hiccups in my life a little more warmly.I mean, maybe not...but I like the idea.

I loved this book. I was looking for a way to be creative, generate interest and also be relevant as a presenter. This book is the answer. I am going to read it again, as soon as I finish this review!

Really well written, easy to understand, funny and I learned a lot.

What a surprise to find out that I live a surprised life. I often find myself looking for witty ways to view life and share it with others. A quick read that I will review a number of times to make sure that I absorb most of the information.

I ripped through this book and found it incredibly stimulating. There are ideas in here that are so well organized and useful, but that's just the beginning. What I love was that the concepts were very generalizable; by this I mean that I could apply them at home, at work, in all aspects of my life. There is nothing like a powerful idea beautifully synthesized. This is one of those rare manifestations.