Book reviewed: Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

My wahine left me unattended in Chapters the other day and in a vain attempt to appear less obsessed about Nazi’s I bought this book on, well it’s not economics, it’s really a couple of guys who decide to pick some really large data sets, like the results of the Chicago public school system SAT’s or the Japanese Sumo Federation fight results or even names registered for new birth in California, and go mining for interesting causality or correlation.

I had hoped this book would be a little more “in depth” than it was but it ended up being an awful lot of anecdote and short on hard facts. There were some interesting outcomes, I know a lot more about Real Estate Agents now than I did before working my way through this book.

But, being written for the masses, the book has it’s shortcomings and feels more like a series of Salon articles stacked together and bound. Each chapter sits individually and doesn’t build a central theme or argument. I always find books like this a bit pappy and unsatisfying. Good in the bathroom.

Book reviewed: Lost to the West : The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth

The Byzantine Empire. All I knew about this was some of the beginning from a book on the fall of the Roman Empire that I read last year and the end from a book on the 4th Crusade that I read about three years ago. Now I know a shit load more but you know, fucked if I can recall much from this book. The trouble with reading a book about an empire that stretches over 1,000 years is that all the Constantine’s and Julian’s merge together. Now I am buggered if I can remember if Constantine IV was an ass or if that was Constantine VII.

I did learn about Belasarius, what a jumbo package of manslaughter he was! And now I know that the Roman empire didn’t actually fall until the 15th Century, go figure. Add to that the stuff about how St. Cyril taught the Russians to write, how byzantine came to mean sneaky and corrupt and how Greek Fire is not the same as Greek Fashion and I judge taking the time to read this book as not a complete waste of my life. Bueno!

Book reviewed: The Age of Lincoln by Orville Vernon Burton

I approached this book with some hesitation, primarily because of my innate distrust of anyone who uses three names, like Orville Vernon Burton. Two names dude, there are people out there with just one, like Cher or Seal who could do with a little restraint on your part.

This book came from the $5 table at my local supermarket and if it wasn’t for the fat guy with more than 8 items in the “quick” checkout I probably would never have read it. What a shame that would have been. About the only U.S. history I have bothered to read is Revolutionary War and Woodrow Wilson onwards. There is a big gap of 150 years there that has only been, for me, broken by a 3 volume history of the Civil War by Shelby Foote.

This book focuses on the years between about 1840 and 1900, centered on Lincoln and the Civil War of course, but covering all of the Reconstruction as well as the reactionary politics and rail road ethics that came to define the last half century before 1900. I learned a whole lot about American history that I never knew before, how the negro (as they were called) gained the vote and then steadily lost it, how the Democrat Party turned from being the slavery party of white supremacists into the liberal left that it is today. What a dance. Great book, well worth the $5. Perhaps even worth $10.

Book reviewed: Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg 1943 by Keith Lowe

I don’t know if it was because this was the first book I read using my Sony Reader or some inherent fault in the book itself but I found this account of the fire raids on Hamburg to be an unsatisfying effort.

The author has tried his best to stitch together survivor accounts from both the RAF bombers and the poor bloody Germans to get that “there” feeling in his story but it doesn’t work. The book is lacking in detail and it just feels like he tried to make a 700 page book out of a 50 page story. Maybe it’s the fact that the fashionable way to write these accounts nowadays is to get interviews with the low level combatants hasn’t helped him here because there’s just too few of them left in any condition to recount their experiences.

Additionally I found the book too ready to assign feelings of remorse or horror to the Allies which just isn’t borne out by other books I have read. From my experience the fliers were just thinking about how to survive their 30 op tours to really give two shits about the civilians they were incinerating below. This book felt like revisionism and to tell you the truth, I wish the Sony Book Store had a better return policy.

Book reviewed: Native Son by Richard Wright

This book, written over 70 years ago was controversial at the time, it’s subject being the plight of the “negro” in America in the 1930’s. I read it because it took me too long to get through the grocery store lineup and it was only $3. The protagonist, a violent and utterly poverty stricken balck man called Bigger Thomas, kills a white girl in the first 50 pages and then spends the rest of the novel getting in deeper with every chapter.

You know, I am sure I would have enjoyed this book if it had been written by a modern writer. But the trouble with reading old fiction is that the styles of writing become so dated. I found myself wading through molasses at times and it was a real struggle not to just flick through the book 5 pages at a time. The author keeps waahing on using 10 words where one will do, kind of like Cliff at work. Avoid this book, unless you have a time machine to put you back in the social context. Maybe this was “protest fiction” back in 1938 but now it’s just a curiosity.

Book reviewed: The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz & William Noel

This was a $5 pickup from my local grocery store. I buy books there regularly, the actual readability is pretty hit or miss since all of these books get there through the remnants process.

If you did calculus or geometry in high school then you you were unwittingly taught by the Greek mathematician Archimedes. Pretty much anything discovered in mathematics right up to the 20th Century is based on the shoulders of the work this guy did 2300 years ago. Much of what he wrote has been lost in time and is only known from excerpts quoted in others work or in commentaries on his papers written before the medieval period. This book is about his third and believed lost manuscript that describes some core parts of what we consider modern math. This manuscript was recycled and used to record some Christian prayers in the 13th Century in Byzantium.

In the 1920’s this manuscript resurfaced and in a series of accidental and deliberate turns, was almost completely destroyed after having miraculously survived for centuries. The book details the efforts of a specialist team to recover and read the lost books of Archimedes. Amazing tale, brilliantly told (considering how dry the actual material found in the codex). I ate it in a weekend.

Technical books make me sleepy

Because of my work I am forced to read heavily technical books on a range of subjects, development, project management, security. Yawn fucking yawn. The part I find difficult is the most crucial, turning three pages without nodding off to sleep. The trouble is that these things don’t have a plot, have neither an antagonist nor a protagonist and frequently wander between the trivial repetition of the banal and stunningly wooden complexities that make ones eyes water.

I try my best but I am afraid that the ones beside my bed are unable to keep me awake for longer than ten minutes. Is there a trick in order to complete this? I am thinking the best idea is finding a dull ass job that doesn’t require an education. Hold on, I used to have one of those in municipal government! And I left because I couldn’t stay awake at my desk? Crom save me, I am screwed.

Book reviewed: The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers by Kevin D. Mitnick & William L. Simon

You know I was ultimately unsatisfied with this book. If you don’t know who Kevin Mitnick is then short story he is probably one of the most well known hacker out there. Since he is so well known then you’d be right in presuming that he is also a graduate of PMITA Federal Prison. He was, at one time, the proud pwner of most all of the major telecommunications companies infrastructure and became a hunted man through the desire of MSM to have some street creds by writing a lot of bullshit about hackers cos we all know hackers are sexy.

I approached this book from the perspective of someone who is technically savvy and looking forward to reading how hackers hack. Instead I sort of got the everyman’s intro to hacking with some truly suspect tales that smelled like teen fantasy to tell you the truth. By doing what he did, try to appeal to the droid book buying public I think Kevin missed the mark by the way. Non-geeks won’t buy this book because they don’t care. Geeks will buy it and then never buy another book by the guy. Kevin, here’s a truth, if you target a book at an audience too dim to even avoid being botted then you aren’t going to hit the mark.

Meh. I won’t even lend this book to my friends as they will probably think I’m a lamer for even buying it. Oh and by the way Kevin, don’t spend a chapter of your new book blatantly trying to sell me your old book. Recycling is for trash not treasure.

Book reviewed: Sharks and Little Fish by Wolfgang Ott

This book was originally published in 1957 and is basically a novelised memoir based on the authors own experiences in the U-Boat service in World War II. If you have ever read “All Quiet on the Western Front” or seen the movie “Das Boot” then you will know what I mean when I say this book is written in a typically German style. Almost entirely written in a first person perspective with the main protagonist being a young midshipman named Teidemann.

Now, to the skinny. This is a good book. The main character is lifelike and rather funny. There are the required nasty bits in it where crewmates lose heads or limbs. And of course, the Germans lose. I don’t know that this book is quite the classic that those girly gushers over at Barnes & Noble claim but it was certainly better than that turd I just finished by Arnie what’s his name.

Book reviewed: Too Fat to Fish by Artie Lang

You know, I think I am a pretty engaging writer when I can be bothered. Most of the time my writing here is simply me saying something appalling about some twat or other. And you know, when I get my shit together and finish that book I am writing I sincerely hope that I don’t end up writing a turd like this.

Honestly Artie, I know you are a comedian (never seen you) and I know you are on the Howard Stern radio show (you must have mentioned that a hundred times). But a book almost entirely composed of you giving handjobs to Stern and writing formulaic  drivel like “I really love bloke x, he’s really talented and a great person” about everyone in your life just seems like you have really low self esteem and understand you don’t really deserve the shit load of cash people keep throwing at you.

Personally, I thought this book was a complete fucking waste of time. Except for the buying-drugs-while-wearing-a-pig-costume story which was pretty funny. Except for that, which was outlined on the back cover for Crom’s sake, the whole book read like it was written by a 14 year old in a late night bender trying to make a deadline. You may be a talented comedian (and I’ll give you a mulligan on that since I can’t even be bothered youtubing you) but you are complete crap as a writer. Writers need to be interesting and understand how to engage over the long haul. You think saying fuck and bastard is edgy and really your drug stories are so 1992.

If anyone wants this book, leave me a comment with your address and I’ll post it to you for free.