August Results
[25] Play 30-40 hours of poker
Coming off the heels of the WSOP meant time away from Harradise. Enthusiasm for playing live has been low all month, but I dragged myself in and booked 6/7 winning sessions. On the other hand, I've been playing a bit online and am enjoying those games quite a bit.
read
[X] Sheri Fink,
Five Days at Memoriall
Fink’s book takes an in-depth look at five harrowing days in a Nola hospital during Katrina and the aftermath in which one doctor and two nurses were accused of euthanizing patients. I admire Fink's exhaustive reporting and detail-driven narrative. Still, I felt like the book, at 500 pages, was a tad overwrought, and I’d recommend her article-length piece
“The Deadly Choices at Memorial” instead.
[X] Jesse May,
Shut up and Deal
[X] Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
Go read her books, now.
[ ] Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child.
[ ] James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
[ ] Richard Campanella, Geographies of New Orleans
[ ] Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
[ ] Cal Newport, Deep Work
will be done with this within a week and will poast some reading notes as promised.
I also read two books not on my list. Janet Malcolm’s
The Journalist and the Murderer is a fascinating, pessimistic account of the relationship between reporters and subjects. In the infamous opening lines she writes: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.” She explores this subject through the scandalous lawsuit between convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and reporter Joe McGinniss. MacDonald's claim was that McGinniss, who embedded with the defense team with the understanding that he'd write a book about the trial, lied over a course of years about his true thoughts about MacDonald (namely that he was guilty). The two sides would settle out of court.
I also read
Random Family, a journalistic tour de force by Adrian Leblanc, who spent eleven years among poor families in the 1980s Bronx. The writing is sparse, detailed, and strangely compassionate yet detached. While I'd like to recommend this book, the truth is that it didn't grip me. The book has a ton of characters to keep track of and it's essentially plotless/repetitive: girls get pregnant, dudes go to jail, people get shot and smoke dope. Having watched The Wire and other dramas that are essentially "about" the same subjects—the American underclass, addiction, the war on drugs—I might have set the bar too high. Still, I appreciate Leblanc's style and her attention to detail. The one scene I have burned into my memory is when Lourdes, a grumpy drug-addled matriarch, gets in a sour mood and calls sweetly to the family dog, Scruffy, who trots tail wagging to her mommy. Lourdes punts her down the hall. This happens over and over, Scruffy getting excited in spite of herself and Lourdes kicking her through the air, until the dog would eventually whimper at the sound of her owner's voice. Come to think of it, another reason why I didn't finish is cause the book's so damn depressing.
[X] establish consistent reading/writing/exercise schedule
I feel pretty good about this one given a few curveballs thrown my way. I started teaching again, which was an unexpected but welcome addition to my schedule. Teaching has always been my favorite thing to do, it's instantly satisfying. The downside is there's no tangible "payoff," there's nothing to show for your hard work, since your "finished products" are unfinished students who wander to their next class, perhaps no better off (and maybe even worse!) than before they met you. Writing, on the other hand, is rarely satisfying but offers something tangible—itself—as proof of hours, days, weeks of toil.
[ ]dominate kickball league
Despite none of its members having any experience past fifth grade, Uptown Oysters is in second place after seven games. That's what happens, I guess, when you throw a bunch of ex-athletes onto a team. Sorta connects to the discussion a while back about how a team of poker players would do vs a team of lawyers, or doctors, or whatever. So far we're doing just fine!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrTJO
^ Good reason for me to explore this area of the poker novel genre. It's interesting that your view of the book has changed considerably over the space of four years: I guess you're effectively a different reader now.
I'm sure that you'd find lots interesting in the book, Dr., because of its attention to the culture of the poker room, the gossip, the rivalries and the chatter. And yeah, my views have changed and are changing because of this
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrr63
I'm guessing OP has seen a lot more of the "regular" poker world in the last four years than he had previously seen
I'm convinced that, just as most poker writers and media sensationalize the game, May also exaggerates the "reality of poker." He latches onto the most colorful characters, the marathon sessions and big games. The majority of poker-playing is boring, and who wants to read about that? Or, put differently, how can you make something that's boring interesting? I'm sorta interested in the aesthetics of boredom—whether it's Seinfeld ("a show about nothing") DFW's The Pale King (the IRS daily grind; cant get more monotonous than that!) or Knausgaard (writing 3,000 pages about every damn thing LOL).
meh, this is getting long, only one solution