It has been some time since I've done a book review on Certainly Candid (but not because I haven't been reading!). With that being said, I'm currently in a nonfiction phase. I go through these phases every so often, reading books that capture my attention on a given topic. For the majority of 2015 it was astronomy: star charts, manuals on various telescopes, astronomical events, etc. This year the tread is engineering, probably because I considered electrical engineering as a career path once upon a time. As such, I've been pouring through books on electrical engineering for the most part, but very recently Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World caught my eye at Barnes & Noble.
A nonfiction book categorized in the sciences (and surprise, surprise, engineering), the book focuses on innovation and how inventions come to be. I cannot begin to describe how much I learned from just this one book alone. It discusses how inventors have, in the author's terms, a different mindset from the rest of the population. This mindset allows them to see problems in a different way and how to tackle these problems creatively.
What I enjoyed most about this book was the wide range of topics it covers. I learned about 3D printing and its origins, advances in oncology and hematology, how the transistor changed the way we approach building mechanical devices, InnoCentive (a program that allows the general public to tackle invention problems), bioengineering, and so much more. As someone who loved to make things growing up, the creations of the inventions presented in this book challenged me to consider even more out-of-the-box approaches to innovative ideas.
