Gear Patrol

Psychology was the easy way to learn in college — sorry, psych majors — and Maria Konnikova’s Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes ($16) is the fun way to bone up your brain skills as an adult. In our age of lean diets and expensive gym memberships, we do often forget about that pink, fleshy master and commander of ourselves: our brains, that is. Ahem.

Normally, we’d never showcase any kind of book dealing with those grey area subjects such as self-help or self-improvement. That’s because, in the majority of situations, these books really boil down to self-aggrandizing dribble spat out by “experts” whose only credentials appear to be a hefty helping of ego and knowing the name of a…