Quoting this so I can remember to get this book. Sounds like my kind of read.

I read Leviathan Wakes, then the sequel about a year later and haven't read any of the sequels yet. They are nice books, but nothing special imo. Not rushing to get through them at all, and have a lot of better stuff that needs reading first.

If you're looking for a dose of Dostoevsky but aren't in the mood for a massive undertaking, The Gambler is a very good tale of depravity.

And I also finished Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which chronicles his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail. Of course it's funny as hell, but Bryson also throws out a ton of facts and interesting tidbits, many chronicling the devastation of US forests and wildlife, and the swiftness with which mankind destroys everything around him.

I've actually had this on my to-read list for over a year. I think I've been putting it off because I figured it was to some extent a rehash of concepts I read about in both You Are Not So Smart and Thinking Fast and Slow. Maybe I'll move it up the list.

I wouldn't say there is much overlap between thinking fast and slow other than maybe just some general stylistic ones. The content is much different. Haven't read the other book so don't know.

It's kind of a catalogue of biases/fallacies and was preceded by a blog with the same name.

This post is what I had in mind:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06...ckfire-effect/

Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis is also very good. Righteous mind is sitting on my shelf, perhaps it should be next up.

Am 1/3 through Shantaram right now. Very interesting so far!

Also just re-read Fooled by Randomness over the past couple of days. Taleb can be full of himself, but his points are great. Most poker players (should) have the main concepts from this one internalized at this point though :-)

Lol @ the Dan Brown article from a couple pages back

+1 for Sapiens

The Gambler is a GOAT book. Especially if you know the backstory of how fast/why he wrote it - he was going to lose the rights to all his works because he had borrowed against them and lost the money gambling obvs, and he had 30 days to come up with a new novel or else poof!

Finally getting around to The Sellout, which I read a couple chapters of, forgot it was on my Kindle for the past 21 months, and am now restarting.

Won NBCC award and Man Booker.

I didn't like The Gambler. When I heard the backstory I thought "no wonder it wasn't so good, it was rushed".

+1. Couldn't get into it, as much as I did want to.

karamazov is better the 2nd time through but it's still not nearly as good as Crime and Punishment, that's for sure.

Just finished The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. It was shorter and had a simpler story plot than I expected from an espionage novel but the simplicity is deceptive as there is actually a fair amount of complexity and subtle detail to the mission that is executed within the story. The storytelling is first rate - giving you all the info you need to understand the ending without telegraphing anything and giving the game away. A great example of the "show don't tell" maxim.

I was expecting more about roulette and not all the interpersonal byplay among the idle rich at “Roulettenberg.” Still, these relationships and characters turn out to have interest. I was struck by a passage early on about how the nobility disdain to show any passion when gambling and go out of their way to show that winning is not in itself an object:
And I especially liked the portrait of the General who, eager for his inheritance, keeps telegramming home to see if his mother has died yet—and the shock when she shows up, apparently hale, to gamble at the tables. Its in this aspect of the novel that its real themes are developed.

And even if gambling isn't as central as I'd anticipated there are insights. In the closing sections, there is an incisive portrayal of the narrator having become overwhelmed by his compulsion for wagering. (There has been some debate as to whether or not he will be reformed after the narrative closes, but I don’t think that that's implied—even though Dostoevsky himself was able to put roulette behind him.) Elsewhere, there are some acute observations of what it’s like to be gripped by gambling mania: “as though I were delirious with fever … my whole body tingled with fire,” and “Every gambler knows how a person may sit a day and a night at cards without ever casting a glance to right or left.”

Listening to Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run. Probably one of the few times where an audiobook is superior to a printed book. Bruce is a natural storyteller and it's great to hear his life story in his own voice. I guess you need to be a Springsteen fan to enjoy it. I really identify with his family stories from his childhood, as his family dynamic, economic situation, etc. is incredibly similar to my own upbringing.

ND, Russell,

The grandmother was an especially fun character -- the General's horror at her blowing his inheritance (and the trickle down effect to deCriet and Blanche), how she doesn't have a clue how to gamble so she enlists Alexei as a guide, how the Poles surround her after she chases Alexei away, and so on.

I also liked how deCriet casually mentions to Alexei to have fun in Paris while Alexei's still caught in the whirlwind, as if his fate was drawn out before him and there's no other possible course to take. And the complete apathy Alexei feels at living the high life.

The book's not perfect by any means (Astley could've been done better, in particular), and I'd heard -- and forgotten -- about the 30 day deal with the copyrights, which makes it all that much more impressive that it's as good as it is (Enrique and LKJ be damned!).

I agree that it's never implied that Alexei will break out of his rut. He seems resigned and hopeless in that final conversation, and there's not much sunshine and rainbows in the conclusion.

Back in the day when the Lounge had a book club, The Gambler was one of the books we read. The thread should be there somewhere.

QFMFT.


When the Grandmother shows up, I literally LMFAO. So perfect.

I've started listening to audio books when I walk our dog at night and I'm like 24 chapters in (so not very far) on Anna Karenina. It's really good. It's kind of up my alley. I haven't read a ton of this type of thing, but the well written, insightful, social/political, but you still have to admit are largely romantic - are pretty engrossing.

I literally got a semi at one point. It's very good.

As long as you weren't listening to Lolita, that's fine.

I'm a bit late, but, what were your thoughts on Babel? I've been meaning to read him for a long time.

Finished Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman. It's okay. The author won the Pulitzer for newspaper articles on Cheney. An issue I have with the book is that it often feels like it's a few long-form newspaper articles packaged together, which it might be (I'm not clear on how much is newly written vs. adapted). It has those irritating qualities that long articles often have, like jumping right into the action somewhere at an "exciting" moment and then later going back to flesh things out. Several chapters follow that formula.

The book is semi-chronological with chapters focusing on various issues (Iraq, domestic spying, the VP selection process, etc.). In general I prefer a more fully chronological non-fiction narrative.

As for the content - this actually made me more optimistic about the current political situation in the U.S. Cheney undoubtedly got some nasty, dishonest **** done (Iraq, though I do not think that his inner justification was particularly evil; torture; Guantanamo), but he was also thwarted a number of times and eventually was pushed to the side. It shows that the other people in government do have tools at their disposal to say no and stop somebody trying to wield power in a way that goes against America's core values. You get a sense of what those specific tools are.

Also, Cheney is significantly sharper than Trump and far more capable of secrecy, which was key for his agenda.

A quick note about notes: reading through the notes took me a few days worth of bathroom reading. They were generally interesting. I wish I'd known they were there during the reading of the book proper, because I would have been referring to them more or would have read a chapter's notes immediately after finishing the chapter.

The notes were arguably too in-depth and interesting, in a way that [arguably] implies more should have been integrated into the text itself.

The Martian - Andy Weir.
This story works so much better in written form. Far better than the movie and quite a thrilling read. Once I'd started I found it hard to put down.

Gotta admit I hated it and it's put me off checking out the movie.

Read Killed or be killed volume 1 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Brubaker and Phillips are my favorite comic book author/artist team by far. They write excellent crime stories (Criminal, Scene of the Crime, Fade out) and also crime+supernatural stories (Sleeper, Incognito, Fatale). They're a fantastic team.

This book starts their new series. It's about a young man who is killing bad guys. I won't reveal the spoiler of why he's doing it. The story also includes some complicated romantic bits for our protagonist.

Brubaker seems to like to have protagonists with dad's who were either artists of writers and it happens again here. In this case, the protagonist's dad was a porn artist, but in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. It seems like this will be relevant as the story moves forward.