I liked under the dome

Read Don DeLillo's Point Omega last night. It is a quick and fantastic read. I have spent most of my life reading mostly science fiction and fantasy so I am always blown away when I read something this well written. Think I will let it settle and give it another read through in a few weeks.

I just read this piece online, essentially a postscript to Moneyball, which appears in the current Vanity Fair:

It also serves to sound a cautionary note for those infatuated with Blink!

Great essay by Jonathan Lethem:

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387

Going to start one of these tonight. Probably Blood Meridian.


Clash of Kings, Blood Meridian, Underworld, Mockingjay

I just finished reading The Big Short, which has been discussed several times on this list. I went back and read those comments and also some of the other online criticisms of the book (basically that Lewis's financial analysis is not as sophisticated as some other books on the recent crash), but I thought this one stands up because of Lewis's general strength, which is his ability to create portraits of the characters involved.

I followed up Lewis's book with Matt Taibbi's often mentioned attack on Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, “The Great American Bubble Machine”--in which appears the line: "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." I was particularly struck to learn the history of the institution!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...chine-20100405

The main problem with Big Short is that it is riddled with factual errors and erroneous conclusions resulting thereof. If you're going to write a history of the 'Crash of '09' you can't make error after error while doing so.
I love Lewis and was sorely disappointed in this one, but perhaps that's because I work in the industry and a 'wrong, but somewhat close' book sells better and takes far less time than actually getting it right.
The secondary problem is celebrating as heroes the hedge-fund managers who were short, while demonizing the I-banks who were short or hedging their MBS expsoure. Totally hypocritical given his attitudes, but whatever, I just wish there weren't 2-3 factual errors in each chapter.

Also, leveraged Trusts were a cause of the Crash of 29, but not individual Trusts like Blue Ridge, per se. Individual investors [as a group] were equally if not far more guilty, due to the usage of 90% margin -- or 9-to-1 leverage. Reading Mr. Horse Semen Pie on financial history is like asking Julia Child about fat-free, low carb cooking.

If there was any one major cause, it was probably the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, or the leverage of all major market players. Needless to say, a PE of 33x didn't help when combined with 90% margin. Or the lack of a Fed/lender of last resort to provide liquidity - Friedman and others blame the contraction of the banking system for the Depression.

It is interesting to note the biggest down day in 1929 was ~13%, versus the 22% in 1987 that didn't cause a Depression or even a recession. That was due to the presence of the Fed, whatever its mistakes in later years.

Need some book rec's.

Some favorite books: A song of Ice and Fire series, Catcher in the Rye, The Things They Carried, Catcher in the Rye

I was thinking of either: The Master and Margarita, Cryptonomicon, or The Dark Tower series.

Any other recommendations or suggestions?

I just finished Clash of Kings. It was so gooood imo. Starting Storm of Swords right away because I can't wait to see what happens.

Fan of BEE, but Glamorama felt like an after thought to american psycho. Less than zero and the informers are both far better.

all pale in comparison to Jay McInerney's BLBC (and I was a fan of BEE first).

If you liked O'Brien's The Things They Carried, then you should certainly enjoy Going after Cacciato!

I finished Rules of Civility tonight. It's very readable but I was more deeply moved by The Art of Fielding, thought The Marriage Plot had more depth, and felt that A Visit from the Goon Squad was wittier. Towles's book is skillfully written with some beautiful passages, and he creates engaging characters--but all that nostalgia for lost romance ultimately felt sentimental, and the young female protagonist seems a bit too good (brash, self-confident, innately capable, and remarkably "liberated" for the 30s) to be true.

I was going to wait until tomorrow to post, but I thought I should throw this out now. I am 95% done with Underworld and I absolutely love/loved it. It is a big, sprawling work and you could argue could have used a little more editing. 800+ pages and I just thought the prose was wonderful. It covers 40+ years of American history in the second half of the 20th century and the cold war dominates the book. Lots and lots of characters and nothing much happens.

Comparing it to Blood Meridian which I've also read recently I would say I preferred Underworld, but the character of the Judge in Blood Meridian is a superior character to any of the many characters in Underworld. As far as the prose is concerned, I think it is just a matter of taste.

I've read Clash of Kings, but not the other book so I cannot comment on it. As far as The Game of Thrones novels are concerned, I've decided to take a pass on them until he finishes the series. I found I couldn't remember the story from one book to the next when he goes so many years between books. I'm planning on just starting over from the beginning when he completes the series.

Next up for me will either be False Allegations by Andrew Vachss (I thought I had read all of the Burke novels but I guess not) or Napoleon's Wars by Charles Esdaile. Non-fiction.

Read a book called Before I Die. It's about a teen who has cancer and is coping with her last months and such. It's somewhat interesting, but I'm not sure it's interesting enough to make up for being such a downer. Time to go live life right for a few days until this wears off.

OK I am getting to the point in Infinite Jest where I am tired of not having any idea what the hell is going on and who these people are, and this is where I've stopped reading both other times I've read this. I will push through, TLDR, I will push through.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll definitely check it out.

I'm thinking I'd like to read a book where the protagonist is depressed or detached. Any recommendations?

Well, the classic of detachment is, of course, Camus's The Stranger.

I thought the portrait of bipolar depression of one of the three characters (the one based on DFW) in The Marriage Plot was very well-handled.

For first-person narratives from the point-of-view and in the voice of a depressed character, it's my impression that almost any of Thomas Bernhard's novellas will serve. I've only read one, Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Friendship, which is a one-hundred-page-long paragraph of internal ruminations by a character who shares the author’s name (and experiences) and is a sour, supercilious, arrogant misanthrope. This kind of long internal monologue of a disturbed and socially-alienated individual seems to be a form that Europeans particularly like. I guess its tradition is rooted in Notes from the Underground, which I do admire, but it is rarely something I enjoy. (Though I did like Bernhard's book more than the often-praised but extremely sour Houellebecq’s Elementary Particles.)

You could probably read the entire Suzanne Collins trilogy in a week or less. Fun and light.

I am currently reading and enjoying The Mote in God's Eye. It was one the NPR top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy. I got it on the Borders huge sale. It is about the first contact with aliens. I am a quarter of the way through and it has been awesome so far.

just started and finished Vonnegut's Mother Night in one or two sittings (had a great time reading it at the union by the fireplace overlooking the lake). It's the second Vonnegut I've read (S-5 being the other), and I have absolutely loved both books. I guess I don't read often enough, but it seems like every properly recommended book I read these days vaults into my top 5.

what's next? should I save the Vonnegut enjoyment/freshness for later or just tear through his work?

Cat's Cradle is my favorite Vonnegut book. You'll love it.

great book...I remember going through all of Niven and Pournelle's books in about six months back when I was in college.

agree with this. it's on par with Slaughterhouse Five.

1a. Slaughterhouse Five
1b. Cat's Cradle
3. The Sirens of Titan
4. Galapagos
5. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Breakfast of Champions

They seem to write better books together than apart although I love many Niven books. Niven just seems to have problems with endings when writing alone.

Inferno and The Legacy of Heorot along with Mote are the best imo.