Should five percent appear too small

Last night I finished up the last book I assigned in a class this semester (review forthcoming at a later date) and I engaged in my annual ritual of reading A Christmas Carol.  The end of the semester is obviously nigh.

Now I have to turn my attention to picking out the books I am gong to assign next semester. It's odd in a way--during the semester, my reading list is largely dictated by the books I have assigned.  When the semester ends, my reading list becomes terribly serendipitous.  Some day I want to work out a class in which the reading is entirely whatever I feel like reading at the moment--but I am pretty sure such a course would a) have a hard time getting approved for college credit and b) have a hard time attracting students.  (Imagine the description--"We will be reading whatever the professor decides to read at any given moment.")

But, back to the last semester. I have not yet reviewed two books which I finished weeks ago:
Taxing Ourselves, by Slemrod and Bakija
Animal Spirits by Akerlof and Shiller
Both books present the same serious problem for reviewing:  they are both encyclopedic, with no natural hook or anything which particularly struck my fancy.

Taxing Ourselves is meant to be an encyclopedia of taxation.  It's subtitle: A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes.  It is now in its 4th edition.  It is comprehensive.  Why are taxes the way they are?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of all the reform proposals?  And so on.  And on.  And on.  And on.  I haven't yet heard whether the students liked this book--I think I would have liked it as an undergrad, but reading it now wasn't all that fun--I didn't learn anything.  That's the problem with books which aim to be an encyclopedia--there really isn't any new argument or information in the book.  But, if you are fascinated with taxes and you don't know much about them, then this book has a good chance of satisfying your yearning to know more.

Animal Spirits also aimed to be comprehensive, but it was a failure.  (My students liked it a lot more than I did, though.)  Animal Spirits is a technical economic term:  the Animal Spirits are waves of optimism and pessimism which affect human behavior--one can be bullish, thinking the world looks wonderful, or bearish, thinking everything is a Lost Cause, and said attitude will affect how much you consume, for example.  This book falls into the genre "Take an interesting economic idea and try to force the idea to explain Everything." But, the idea doesn't explain Everything.  So, first, the authors redefine Animal Spirits to mean "Human psychology" and then they to show that the way people think affects the way they act.  Shocking, no?  But, that isn't enough--then the authors need to show that the way humans think means that the way Other economists talk about lots of things isn't right.  But, that isn't enough either, so then the authors need to show that if everyone thought about things the way the Enlightened Authors do, then we would have all sorts of government polices that look suspiciously like the sort of policies which would be endorsed by, say, Obama.  And, lo and behold, Akerlof was formerly an adviser to Kerry when he was running for President.  So, much of the book just made me think, "That's enough.  You can stop now.  You've pushed this idea way past the breaking point."  But, like I said, my students liked it--well at least the ones who have told me about it--so maybe it isn't as bad as I thought it was.

And just to end on a high note.