Review - Unmasking the Face by Paul Ekman

Reading this book is like reading the instruction manual for your 10-year-old TV only to discover it has a bazillion functions you never knew about. Except the TV is your emaciated, pockmarked, 40-year-old-looking face and, like your TV, none of the newly discovered features are particularly useful.

It's actually a frightfully fucking boring book, but it will teach you how to display happiness and anger at the same time as masking both emotions with disgust and hiding your true sadness behind a wall of fear and surprise. In a nutshell, it is every facial expression the human face can make precisely cataloged along a spectrum (i.e. fear ranging from 'apprehensive' to 'terrified', anger ranging from 'annoyance' to 'fury', etc.) of composite facial photographs.

It also deals briefly with how to spot lies. Written by the scientific adviser to the show "Lie to Me", this book will make you take notice of people's faces and the way they change with their emotions. It will also make you more aware of the involuntary look of abject disgust on your own face when the woman opposite you on the train picks her nose and wipes it on the seat.