Post Office was very funny. First day on the job gets his ashes hauled...then years of misery on the job, dogs, junk mail etc. with never another sniff
His short story “There’s No Business” illustrated by R. Crumb strikes a perfect note.
If you can find the (Black Sparrow) paper edition grab it. I see on Amazon the hardback used (17 pages) goes $400

"Kid Stardust" perhaps greatest name in literature.

The hardback is available from multiple sources on Amazon for a lot less than $400.

There's No Business https://www.amazon.com/dp/0876856245..._nN.wDbNKV3YM8

Finished In the Valley on the Sun, a Texas vampire horror novel. High points were the close eye for detail and the evocative descriptions of South and West Texas.

This is a good description and I'm curious if the homoerotic element was intentional or something that wouldn't even be considered of it's time. I don't see it mentioned in the Goodreads and Amazon reviews.

It's slow to start and the first 100 pages should be condensed to fifty. One it gets to main part, that of wandering Goldmund, it's excellent. Left me wanting more.

I've read them all, most of them are quite good. There was def one I remember as subpar though. The fact that virtually any character can die at any time is awesome.

started reading A Drunkards Walk recently, nothing new really but it's an interesting read on keeping me humble when i do data analysis

I read it shortly after it came out, when it was one of the first of a group of books to point out the dangers of statistics, and I found it very interesting. While it makes the familiar point indicated in its subtitle ("How Randomness Rules Our Lives "), it does so in an engaging fashion, arguing that humans are hardwired to refuse to recognize randomness and to see instead (and overinterpret) patterns. In its early pages Mlodinow makes the closely related point—that people are not intuitively equipped to understand probability—through a retelling of the Monte Hall paradox, followed by a useful discussion of why M.D.s are very bad at interpreting probabilities—for example, because they misapply statistics about false positives.

Among his many examples of how badly we judge and evaluate, and of how we impose expectations, is Mlodinow's history of the random events that saw Bill Gates rise from minor league software programmer to the place of power he occupied—which reinforces his point that careers that seem to have some shape to them are often just a series of lucky accidents.

One of the benefits of reading this book as a non-mathematician and someone who's never taken a stats course is that it left me with a better grasp of concepts such as standard deviation, regression toward the mean, and confirmation bias.

And on another plane altogether...or maybe not...comes this review of ‘The Institute’. Mostly an appreciation of Steven King

https://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...003_story.html

really appreciate seeing this, most of these books tend to start hot and then the last 3/4 of it are simply filler - they tend to have some very interesting stuff to say that only requires 50 pages but then the publisher says it need to be at least x many words

Sapiens is one of the bigger disapointments... first few chapters were amazing and then he just repeats the same stuff over and over again that's largely off topic because he needs to fill a word count - nearly everyone i know who I've messaged who praised it on social media confirmed they hadn't finished it at the time of the praise but were just blown away by the first few pages

Speaking of statistics, in the current issue of The New Yorker the piece called "What Statistics Can and Can’t Tell Us About Ourselves" has a great line:

It's out in America.

I just bought a copy out of curiosity. I will report back once i have formed an opinion on it - hopefully resisting the temptation to mimic the novel’s narrative style that has seemingly befallen most Amazon / Goodreads reviewers so far.

Thanks. I've ordered it and put it in my never-ending to-read-fiction queue.

https://www.invaluable.com/buy-now/b...CABEgKUIfD_BwE

Full of characters; all interesting. Sam stands out.

I've probably read this book as many times as any other, and like to quote from it. Whenever I call an all-in bet (or go on a date, for that matter) I announce it as, "The triumph of hope over experience."

Just beginning Simon Winder's "Lotharingia" - history book about a country/region of Western Europe that just never made it as an ongoing entity - I really enjoyed his two previous books - Danubia and Germania, as it's an area of history that I know little about, and he's an entertaining writer.

MM MD

I won't start this for several more weeks, but I did peek at it and the promise of one sentence may have been exaggerated. I started thinking about sentences, however. Anthony Powell may be my favorite all-time sentencer, but here's a gem from Salman Rushdie:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...a93_story.html

This is great!

I'm loving Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. I had tried his Fortress of Solitude last year, was a near-miss for me that I quit halfway thru, liking a lot of it but not quite on board. But this Brooklyn book is hitting me just right, really awesome. I look forward to retrying Solitude and getting into his other novels next.

I also won’t start it for a couple of weeks. Going on holiday next week and this isn’t a hand luggage-friendly book!

I sat behind a woman who was reading it on the bus today. Curious, I asked her how she was getting on with it. She said she was “struggling with it” and that she “wants to like it more than I do.” So, random bus woman was not an advocate.

Seems the kind of book that doesn't sell well - surprised random bus women read it.

All I know is that Speed keeps winning the Random Buslady Oscars, they love that movie! Trip to Bountiful does well too.