A Life Spent Reading

If the title doesn’t get you, the book itself probably will. Elle Newmark has concocted a pleasant tale of late 15th century Venice, centered on a chef, his apprentice, his kitchen, and a secret, centuries-long movement to collect and preserve knowledge. Along the way she gets to poke some gentle fun, most of it aimed at the Christian faith. (”If [Jesus] knew he could [resurrect himself], what value would his death have?” Yes, indeed.) Catholics uncomfortable with difficult questions need not bother with this book.

But the main story is that of the apprentice, who starts as a homeless beggar on the streets of Venice and eventually finds himself, and manhood, among the pots and pans of the Doge’s kitchen. It’s an unlikely scenario, but in Newmark’s hands works smoothly enough. This isn’t a book that is likely to stay with you for years and years (albeit some of the dishes discussed seem good enough that you can smell them on the page), but the storytelling is good and will hold you.

The other thing really worth mentioning is the superlative job that Simon and Schuster did with the book itself. The dust cover is textured, and feels like you’re holding the skin of an orange. The endpapers are sumptuous, lush images that are works of art unto themselves… the best I can recall seeing for at least three decades. Everything, right down to the serif font, has been calculated to enhance the experience of reading, and if you are considering buying the book, I would recommend getting it in hardback simply for the pleasure of holding it in your hands. It is also flawlessly edited. Someone took a lot of time and care with this one, and madre mia does it show.

Every American citizen, as well as anyone who is financially invested in America, should read this book.

I think that people generally know that America’s time at the top is coming to an end, the usual cheerleading notwithstanding. The collapse of the housing bubble is just the latest manifestation of America’s mania for spending more than it earns, and the country has been doing that for a couple of decades now. The question isn’t if, but when the American lifestyle will undergo a severe readjustment – downward. And the answer is: soon.

Peter Schiff has done the best job I’ve seen in laying out the causes and effects of the coming crisis. (I say “coming”, but really we’re already into the leading edge.) In plain, non-technical language, Schiff lays out the primary movers in the housing crisis, why inflation is much worse than the government would have you believe, and the reasons that America is in for an extended period of adjustment, after which we may or may not emerge whole. Certainly, even in the best scenario, Americans are in for a decade or so of relative austerity, and given America’s dislike of inconvenience, it’s not going to be a pleasant ten years.

The primary lesson is: get your money out of the US dollar, which is already starting to be massively devalued. In the age of the Internet there are plenty of ways for people to move their money into other currencies and so on, even for those who are not experienced investors. My own personal recommendation for those who may not know what to do (aside from: Read this book!) would be to open a bank account with Everbank (www.everbank.com) and put some money into one of their foreign-denominated CDs. Alternatively, you can get an account with an online trading service like Ameritrade and put your money into a foreign index fund. Schiff has some good recommendations for choosing one, as well as a quick discussion about which options are best for your level of tolerance.

Most Americans are financially illiterate; this book will go a long way to help you out if you’re sitting there watching your nest-egg “appreciate” and can’t understand why you’re continually losing ground. Highly recommended.

I really hate it when a publisher fudges on the credentials of a writer, and I also hate it when people who don’t know the first thing about Japan try to set a novel there. Unfortunately, The 47th Samurai suffers from both of these problems.

First, the copy along the top of the book reads, “Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Point of Impact and Hot Springs STEPHEN HUNTER”. I think that it’s fair to assume that a potential customer looking at the cover could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Mr. Hunter won his Pulitzer for writing, if not one of the two novels listed, at least some novel. But no. He won it for his work as a newspaper film critic – laudable, to be sure, but if I wanted an expert on movies I’d go visit Roger Ebert’s website.

As for the Japan stuff, Mr. Hunter has certainly done his homework on swords and samurai movies (of course). He throws so many Japanese sword parts into the text that it could actually serve as a sort of katana primer course. Unfortunately, he also throws in pretty much every silly stereotype that exists about Japan. We get the salaryman reading horrific porn comics on the train, people crossing streets to avoid having to walk directly past the gaijin, yada yada. It wasn’t fresh (or particularly true) when Michael Crichton wrote Rising Sun back in 1992, and it’s certainly not fresh now. Is it too much to ask that successful novelists, who presumably have the money to spend on research, actually try going to Japan and seeing if there are actually pervs reading bondage comics on the public transportation system, women who will cross the street to avoid them and so on? Apparently it is.

And what about the level of English that’s spoken by virtually (it seems) everyone in Japan? Okay, fine, you need to have at least one Japanese character speak good English in order to explain difficult points, but come on. A guy serving coffee throws out slang that sounds like he’s lived in the States for decades: “I can fire it up in the microwave if you like”. Or this bit from a different character:

Nakago is the rusted steel tang under the hilt. Even it is full of tantalizing communications from the past… It was as if the desecrator was paying homage to his superior… The cutting-edge side is at an acute angle to the bottom end of the shinogi line…

Even native speakers don’t talk like that, and I can tell you that after more than a decade and a half of dealing with Japanese learners of English at all levels, I’ve never met one who would use the word “desecrator” in a spoken sentence, much less that plus “tantalizing” plus “acute” all in the same paragraph. But stuff like this runs throughout.

And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunter has an engaging style and can plot a book pretty well. Sure, there’s a little too much in the way of Hemingway envy (check out the photo on the back cover), and he doesn’t do the whole honor thing as well as Robert Crais or John D. MacDonald, but still, it’s certainly a readable book – at least those aspects that don’t relate directly to Japan. I might well pick up another of his books next time, one that’s set in the USA. As for this one, if you don’t know anything about Japan and don’t mind being served up a bunch of stale central-casting leftovers, have at it. You’ll probably enjoy yourself.

A. S. Byatt is a writer and poet who was educated at Oxford, Cambridge and Bryn Mawr, and the depth of her learning and love of language show in every paragraph of this superbly written novel. It is a dual story, first about two modern academics and second about two fictitious Victorian poets. Told in a tripartite structure that is almost equally straight prose, poetry and epistolary back-and-forth, the book spans about a century and a half of English literary history.

Be forewarned: Possession is not an easy read. But oh, the language! If you appreciate unusual metaphor, elegant dialog and believe that words like “aliment” and “odylic” should be brought out from English’s basement and dusted off, you will savor this exquisitely crafted work. If, on the other hand, your idea of a romance novel is taken from Harlequin, you might want to have a dictionary handy…or better yet skip this one altogether.

I will say this: the ending to this verbally and thematically complex novel is possibly the most satisfying I have ever read. If you’re up for a challenge, Possession is most definitely worth your while. This is one to return to again and again.

I think I like Richard Preston’s stuff even better than I like his brother Douglas’. Richard tends to write more in the way of dramatized real-life stories than novels, and he’s very good at it. The Hot Zone, for example, will make your blood freeze a bit if you take the time to understand what he’s saying at all.

The Wild Trees deals with redwoods. You might not think that that huge trees would lend themselves to drama, but Preston makes it work. There were times I was actually short of breath as I read his descriptions of the scientists climbing around in the California canopy. If you like nature, or conservation, or have ever seen a redwood and wondered what it would be like to climb it, or are just are in the mood for something a little different, this book won’t disappoint you.

Wilbur Smith has been writing action novels centered on Africa for something like four decades now, and he hasn’t lost his touch yet. This latest is the fourth installment of his “Egyptian” series, which takes place both in the time of the Pharaohs and (in one book) modern times. The series started with River God, which was one of the best historical adventures I’ve ever read. It continued with The Seventh Scroll, which was also very good, and then Warlock, which was all right but a bit of a let-down after the first two. Well, even Smith can’t hit homers every time.

The Quest picks up the story of Taita, a couple of decades after the action in Warlock. Personally, I didn’t care for Taita’s transformation from da Vinci-like genius into a full-blown magic-wielder, but Smith, having gone that route in the previous novel, of course develops the idea further in this one. And I have to say that while The Quest may not be quite up to the standard set by the first two books in the series (it starts off rather slowly), it is better than Warlock and is certainly very readable. By the time you get halfway into it, you’ll be hooked.

Smith lost his beloved wife Danielle a few years back and has since re-married to a woman far younger than he himself is. Knowing this gives The Quest an added dimension; Taita regains his youth and has the chance to get together with the reincarnation of Queen Lostris from River God, the love of his life, but one that he was earlier unable to consummate due to his status as a eunuch. (Yes, that gets taken care of too. Ain’t magic great?)

At the end of the day, this book is a worthy addition to the Egyptian series. Smith still had a knack for telling a story, corny dialog and all, and his novels bring you back to a time when honor was something to be proud of and it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad. If what you want is escapist beach-reading, you can do a lot worse than to pick this one up.

I don’t know why Owen Wilson is famous. Or successful. He plays the same sort of character in every movie, reads his lines the same way, and has the same no-energy delivery no matter what the situation. If he were a stock I’d short him, because I can’t believe that people are still going to be watching him five years from now.

Drillbit Taylor is a formula “comedy” about a couple of nerds who are just starting high school. They get picked on by upperclassmen and hire Drillbit — who’s actually a homeless guy — to be their bodyguard. I guess there might be something in the premise that wasn’t mined by My Bodyguard twenty or thirty years ago, but this movie doesn’t utilize it. When the best joke in the movie comes from mangling German, well, you know you’re just about out of ideas.

The only redeeming part of this film is the girl who plays one of the nerd’s love interest. She’ll be hot in a few years, and seems like she might be able to act as well. But she’s not enough to justify the price of the rental. Give this one a miss.

Okay, this was a bad movie. I mean, I was prepared for it to be bad, but not bad. Gorgeously shot and heavy on atmosphere, pretty much everything else disappoints (and that’s not easy to do when you have Michael Mann directing and Gong Li in the cast). I don’t make a point of trying to figure things out in advance, but this flick is so by-the-numbers that when there is a more or less gratuitous love scene thrown in after about fifteen minutes, you know that the only reason it’s there is to set up how pissed off one of the characters is going to be when his girlfriend gets taken hostage by the bad guys. The dialog is clichéd, the plot is old moth-eaten hat (with holes the size of the hand grenade that Crockett somehow pulls out after he’s been searched by bodyguards), and sorry, but Colin Farrell ain’t no Don Johnson. (And I have to say that it’s amazing just how little passion there seems to be in his love scenes with Gong Li. Really makes me wonder about the guy.) I did prefer Jamie Foxx to Philip Michael Thomas as Tubbs, but that’s about it.

Unbelievable when you think about the original series, but this movie is actually boring. Don’t bother with it.

Dan Simmons, who seems to be able to write anything, and write it very well, has produced a beautifully flowing novel that combines historical fact with a good dollop of fantasy/horror. The base of the story is formed around the mystery of what happened to Captain John Franklin’s “Lost Expedition” back in the late 1840s. Franklin was one of the last explorers looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, and no one has ever definitively found out what happened to his two ships and crew (although later explorers have pieced together much of the puzzle). The sound-bite is: two ships, The Erebus and The Terror , go into the Arctic, get stuck in the ice, and never come out.

It is Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, in command of The Terror (second in command overall), who is the protagonist of the story. And the book’s title is taken not only from the name of his ship, but from a monstrous thing that stalks his crew during their time stranded in and on the ice.

I normally don’t care much for horror, but I liked the way that this was done. Eskimo mythology combines with semi-modern science to produce, in Simmons’ deft hands, a tale that is equal parts fact and fantasy. Although the main part of the story tracks the crews as they slowly starve to death, the story is surprisingly free of morbidity. Simmons uses the large number of crew members to show a variety of perspectives about their situation, and how they choose to die. And I liked the ending very much; it was, if anything, uplifting.

A year or two freezing and starving to death in the Arctic might not sound like much of a story, but even though the book is over 750 pages long, I never got tired of it. If you like historical fiction, or fantasy, or horror, it is highly recommended.

First, let’s be clear about what this book is: a guide for entrepreneurs (which is what the “E” in the title stands for, not anything to do with the Internet) on how to make their small businesses function better. And there is some good advice in here. Michael C. Gerber’s insights into treating your business like a franchise, even if it isn’t one, the distinction between working on your business instead of working in it and so on are valuable and, I would think, pertinent to anyone who starts a business and then finds himself wondering how to get on top of it.

Unfortunately, this valuable message could have been condensed into about 50 pages — and the book tops out at almost 270. I have to say that I have rarely read a book in which the writing style was so obtrusively awful. Gerber uses three main techniques to get his point across. One is that about half the book is told in the form of an extended “fireside chat” he has with a client of his, a woman who ostensibly owns a bakery. The tone of this chat is so full of cloying 1950s paternalism that I wonder if he has any female readers at all. Even the choice of his “business client”… I mean, come on: a woman with a bakery? I guess a food business made things easier to explain, as Gerber holds McDonald’s up as the ultimate franchise prototype (and deservedly so), but could we not have something a little less barefoot and pregnant?

Technique number two is the One Sentence Paragraph. He uses this to such exclusion of anything more fully developed, this business book sometimes reads like a William Shatner novel. Okay, so business people don’t have to be great authors, but there’s a point beyond which stylistic peculiarities become a little ridiculous. And that point is passed very early on.

Finally, there is the mind-numbing repetition. Gerber seems to have an obsession with saying things three times or four times. Usually this is a stylistic affectation; it begins on Page 1, in the second paragraph (also the second sentence, of course) and two hundred and sixty-some-odd pages later, he’s still going strong. (Take a look at page 232, where six of the eight paragraphs start with “And”.) Often, however, the repetition appears as repetition of actual information, where Gerber seems to be trying to say exactly the same thing using as many different words as possible, just to make sure the reader gets the point. Consider this excerpt (p. 211):

“I’m beginning to see the connection between all these things we’ve talked about,” she said. “They’re all beginning to make sense. The puzzle is coming together. I can see the parts merge into an exciting picture…”

Imagine a couple hundred pages of this sort of thing and you’ll have some sense of what reading the entire book is like.

Final verdict: There is good information here, but if you’ve read the back cover you’ve gotten 50% of it already. Boiled down, it is this: 1. Treat your business like you intend to franchise it. Quantify everything, and write up rules so that any untrained idiot can step in and follow them. 2. Care about what you do. 3. Spend time working ON your business, so that later you don’t have to work IN your business.

Now, if any of that was unclear, or if you happen to be a masochistic type who enjoys mental torture, feel free to go out and buy the book.

This is a very interesting book. Sub-titled “The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, it deals with our (in)ability to predict events, and the meaning that this has for people in their non-everyday lives.

Taleb is an elegant and wide-ranging writer, and the book is full of pithy quotes (”Doubting the consequences of an outcome will allow you to remain imperturbable”; “We tend to use knowledge as therapy”) and odd connections. He likes to tease the reader a bit, and he’s not afraid to take a stand against conventional wisdom, especially when said wisdom makes things seem more certainly predictable than they really – according to Taleb – are. He deals with probability in an engaging and accessible way; readers without a strong background in math need not worry.

Basically, Taleb’s thesis is as follows: Conventional probability studies (using the Gaussian or “bell” curve that all of us remember from college) are of limited application. Much of what happens around us is understandable only by throwing away the Gaussian and using a Mandelbrotian (i.e., exponential) approach. Things that seem unimaginably unlikely (because they lie so far outside the tails of the bell) are in fact not so unimaginable at all when seen through a Mandelbrotian lens…rather, they are downright likely to happen given enough time. And that time is shorter than what you think.

Taleb’s background is in finance, so he uses the market to illustrate much of what he says. And many of his arguments seem convincing, especially when it comes to options valuation and the like. But some of his examples would seem to ring false. For instance, he says that the October 1987 market crash was unpredicted, and happened for no discernible reason. But some of the world’s best traders and investors apparently did see the crash coming, because they got out of the market and into cash with, in some cases, uncanny timing, and then jumped right back into the market when it was about to turn around and go up again. There are also investors like Jim Rogers who seem to be right time after time, over decades, which would also seem to argue against Taleb’s idea that the markets are basically unpredictable.

Or maybe it’s just the case that with six or seven billion people on the planet, the odds are that a few of them are going to be right. I really don’t know.

I would think that anyone with an interest in finance or investing, as well as those people who just enjoy having their minds expanded a bit, would want to read this book. I bought it in hardcover, and found it to be well worth the price.

This is a quick but well-researched read into the life and times of one Nick Zappetti, ex-pat New Yorker and would be yakuza/mafioso. The book deals with the half-century after the war in Japan, and Zappetti’s activities along the way to becoming one of the most successful (and heavily investigated) foreigners in Japan. Along the way, it delves deeply into the ties that exist between the Japanese government and organized crime, the question of who really runs the country, and the way that a person like Zappetti, who spent most of his life in Japan and took Japanese citizenship but never bothered to learn much of the language, could rise and fall so dramatically.

The political stuff is covered in far more detail in Karel Van Wolferen’s seminal The Enigma of Japanese Power (probably the most impressive book of its sort that I’ve seen), but only those with a very intense interest in Japan will be able to wade through the whole thing. Tokyo Underworld is far more accessible, and sketches a quick line-portrait of how things work in Japan for the more casual reader.

One of Tim Ferriss’ recommendations for traveling light is the Pack Towel. I thought the idea was kind of cool, so I decided to get one. Below is my unsolicited, impartial review of this towel.

First, when you get the towel you definitely want to wash it out once or twice before you use it. This will accomplish three things: one, it will dilute the chemical smell and coloring (green, in my case) of the towel a bit; two, it will make the towel significantly softer once it’s dried; and three, if you do what I did, which was to run a sink full of water and push the towel down into it, you will get to observe just how absorbent the towel really is.

There really isn’t too much you can say about a towel, so I’ll just stick to the claims made about it, along with a few personal impressions.

Claim: The towel is lighter than a conventional towel.
This is true. So if you’re really worried about eliminating every possible ounce from your luggage, go for it. If you’re a mountaineer or something, one of those guys who saws his toothbrush in half to save weight, this will likely matter to you. But I have to say that the whole idea of a normal traveler, especially someone as young and robust as Ferriss, objecting to an extra couple of ounces in his bag seems a little odd. You would think that a guy who can put on 34 pounds of muscle in a month wouldn’t be that worried about how much his grip weighs.

Claim: This towel can dry your body more effectively than a regular towel.
I don’t find this to be true. The drying performance seems to be about the same as a regular towel. To be fair, this is something that Ferriss said, not the towel manufacturer.

Claim: The towel can absorb nine times its weight in water.
This is true. It is weirdly impressive to submerge the towel into a sink full of water, take it back out and watch half of the water disappear. It’s also fun to watch the towel change shades as you wring it out. On the other hand, this X-factor absorbency is mitigated a bit by the towel itself not weighing much, if you see what I mean. Also, plain old cotton can absorb about twenty-five times its own weight in water, a fact that the Pack Towel touts don’t really mention much.

Absorbency claims are fine, but the real point is the next one:

Claim: The towel will wring 90% dry immediately, and dry fully within about 3-4 hours.
The towel does wring very dry compared to cotton. And it did dry much faster than two other towels that were hung out with it in my personal experiment. This, in my opinion, is the main reason to buy the thing; if you’re traveling, there’s nothing worse than having a hump of wet cloth in your bag. You could always just carry a plastic bag if you were toting a regular towel, but that wouldn’t be very high-tech. Plus, the weight factor really would come into play here, as — generally speaking — water tends to be heavy in most countries.

Some other observations:

How does the towel feel?
After three washings and about fifteen usages, the towel is getting softer. But it still feels a little strange against my skin. Sort of halfway between using a piece of chamois and a piece of cardboard. I think that if I order another one, I’m going to spend the extra few bucks and get the new softer version.

Is that hanging snap thing really useful?
Yes, very. All towels should have one.

The best place I found to order from was Walkabout Travel Gear, which sells the large towel for $13.25. This is especially true if you’re going to order internationally; they only charged me seven bucks for shipping, as opposed to a few other sites I checked that wanted as much as $20 for the towel and another $40 for shipping. Gotta wonder sometimes…

Michael Lewis has written a well-crafted and entertaining book. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in places, with that special sort of humor that seems only to be found in sports. But make no mistake, this is a book that raises some very serious questions for anyone interested in baseball.

The author’s thesis is this: traditional “wisdom” about baseball, in terms of (a) scouts knowing what to look for, (b) statistics such as home runs actually meaning much of anything, and (c) money being the primary determinant in which team is going to win, isn’t worth much. This is the story of how a manager named Billy Beane took a team with one of the lowest payrolls in the sport and made them into a winner. It is (c) especially that the book addresses; by virtue of superior sabermetrics, Beane was able to scout and recruit good players that other teams didn’t value very highly. In this way he was able to get around the old canard of more money equalling better talent. If he’d been in a bar, Beane would have been the good little guy beating up the good big guy.

While Beane’s success is now a matter for the record books, a larger question, one that may obviate Moneyball’s relevance, is still waiting to be answered. Now that Lewis has shined the light on what happened, other teams will undoubtedly hire their own statisticians and begin to use the same techniques as his team did. (In fact this has already happened.) In other words, the playing field will once again be leveled in that respect, leaving the teams with more money able to make higher bids for better players, and thus bringing things back around full circle, where money is in fact the determining factor.

It’s a bit ironic, but maybe it’s just one more step in the evolution of the game.

One thing’s for sure. If you play Fantasy League Baseball and haven’t read this book, you’re losing your money to someone who has.

I like Stephen King. He’s one of our best writers, and he has a talent for evoking mood and dialog that I don’t think I’ve ever seen equalled. The Stand was amazing, The Green Mile sublime, On Writing both poignant and helpful. But lately, geez. Ever since Gerald’s Game his fiction has suffered from a kind of creeping paralysis, and unfortunately Lisey’s Story is a prime example. I read about eighty pages into the book, and while King’s skills at characterization and metaphor are as good as ever, I was practically crying for something – anything! – to happen. What small smidges of action exist occur in flashback, which kind of robs them of impact.

Okay, so it’s not supposed to be an action novel. Fine. But still, how much can a reader take of a widower sitting in a study and going through her husband’s old stuff? There was far too much of that, too much perfluckity rumination, and not enough happening in the story to move it along. I don’t know if the pace picks up later on, but I’m not really inclined to find out. The title of the book is Lisey’s Story, not Lisey’s Character Study. And I want a story.

What King should do is write an action novel. Go in completely different direction, along the lines of John Sandford or Robert Crais. Now that would be something.