A Life Spent Reading

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.

Tim Ferriss is a smart guy, he’s done a lot in a relatively short time, and he seems like he’s got a sense of humor. The 4-Hour Workweek is well-written, has a lot of good information, and addresses a real problem in today’s society. But for all that, something about the book seems a little too calculated. And a man who wins an athletic competition by exploiting a loophole in the rules — and then brags about it (in print, no less!) — is just a bit too smug for my taste.

Maybe that’s just me, though. Certainly there is a lot of value in the book (and on Ferriss’ accompanying website), and I found myself agreeing more than once with Ferriss’ view of what’s valuable in life. Calculating free time along with income, the distinction between relative and absolute income, the benefits of travel and language learning… All of these are important in my own life, and I’d be a hypocrite to dismiss them in this book. But I have to wonder if we’re seeing the start of a new sort of imperialism, this one based on the power of the Internet.

Ferriss’ basic idea is this: Find or create a product that you can market effectively over the Net. Do some testing to tweak things for maximum profitability, then outsource everything possible to get and keep the ball rolling. Website design, marketing metrics, production and distribution… all of it can be done from your home if you have a computer and you’re connected. And there are companies in places like India that will do a bang-up job for you for $5/hour.

This is the point I just can’t make up my mind about. Doing things this way strikes me as living like a British colonialist in 19th century India. Just issue the orders; everything else will be taken care of by the servants. The only real difference is that you’re operating at a considerable geographic remove. Furthermore, not everyone in the world can do what the book recommends, since these guys lying around in hammocks need to have someone to outsource to.

On the other hand, $5/hour is a good wage in India (at least for the moment), so why shouldn’t they be allowed to earn it? It’s a real question.

Bottom line, I think that most people, especially most young people, should read this book. It will likely change your thinking about work, the role it plays in your life, and just exactly how much of your life it should take up. Ferriss’ answer is: not much, and in that, at least, I completely agree with him.

Robert Crais’ latest outing deals more with Joe Pike than Elvis Cole (in fact, it’s listed on Amazon as “a Joe Pike novel”), and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Everyone seems to like Pike a lot, and it’s good to see the “old” Elvis back in action, even if he is shot up and limping. There haven’t been this many wisecracks for at least half a decade, and they’ve been missed.

Still, while this is a strong book I wouldn’t rank it with Crais’ absolute best. The main female character (a Paris Hilton type) is just too much of a pain in the ass, and, you know, Pike can’t just shoot her. So it detracts. Give it an 85%, which from Crais is still well worth your while to read.

Despite having something to do with the Orient (normally a sure-fire hook for this reviewer), this second installment in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series just didn’t grab me. Stylistically, she’s as good as ever, it’s just that nothing much seems to happen; the inter-cultural stuff isn’t all that great, and the way that the dragon and his “master” relate to each other still seems just a little homoerotic for me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my cup of tea.

I’d probably finish the book if there weren’t anything else lying around to read, but there is.

Broken Prey, the latest in John Sandford’s seemingly endless series, ranks with the best of his efforts. And that’s saying something. There are few writers who I feel can really “pull” a reader along a novel, but Sandford definitely is one of them. The latest installment has everything that readers have come to expect, plus a better-than-average helping of plot twists and turns.

I read Sandford and find myself wondering just exactly how he does it so consistently. But, whatever. The man’s good, and that’s enough. Buy this book; you won’t be disappointed.