A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
lonewolf wrote:..... I believe this is the first novel by Buckley I have read. I plowed through about half of it last night. The man does have a way with words, lots of words. I am a reasonably erudite person but I recommend If you plan to read him have a dictionary and thesaurus at hand.
The one I'm reading threw "benignant" at me last night.
"The Physics of NASCAR". i picked it up for some beach reading in Miami, this past week. The author is a physics prof who developed an interest in the sport after catching a glimpse of a wreck during a race on television. She was curious about why one car seemed to slam into the wall for no obvious reason. That curiousity branched out into this book, which is a light, but intoxicating read. I give it two grease-covered thumbs up.
William L. Shirer's Collapse Of The Third Republic just threw "tergiversation" at me (appearing soon in a T&FN near you!---perfect for the Reno goings-on, one suspects).
Marlow wrote:Any one else read The Road, soon to be a movie? Very
Loved it... the book that is. Not overly confident that it will translate to film, as the unknowns of their surrounds and ambiguities of their circumstances are so central to the tale.
I have the same trepidation about the impending adaptation of Saramago' sBlindness.
What am I reading?
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Last edited by AS on Wed Feb 04, 2009 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Marlow wrote:Any one else read The Road, soon to be a movie? Very
Yep, I read it a few months ago. It's a very good book but not exactly upbeat....
It sure grabbed me, page by page.
It did me too. I think I read it in two sessions, couldn't put it down. His style is perfect for such an atmospherically gloomy scenario. Looking at the movie on imdb I'm wondering how they'll handle the mother character, who Charlize Theron plays. I can't remember the mother being in the book at all, beyond reference to her committing suicide.
The Ascent of Money by Harvard prof Niall Ferguson - a history of money. Might sound boring but is actually fascinating and surprisingly exciting. Well, we can all relate to money - or the lack of it!
The premise is to have most of your funds in low risk, certain return assets, and putting a small proportion in assets with huge upside but little downside
very uninteresting
it's called putting 95% of money into highest deposit bank account & 5% into penny-shares ( 95% of which do bugger all & stay as penny shares thru a decade )
if you want to read a book on risk, borrow/beg/steal/buy this
His Black Swansare high improbable, impactful events that we didn’t see coming. Among his examples are the World Wars, the rise of religions, of the internet, of Google, of Harry Potter and the September 11 attacks
err...
1st coupla events were very predictable - former since 1870 & next since 632
latter mentioned are technological ( web ), trivial ( potter ) or burgeoning ( 9/11 - documentaries say something was brewing since attacks on east african embassy & warship in late '90s )
i'll go out on a limb & say :
- HIV cure in 20y
- limitless fusion power in 30y
- an american heavyweight regains undisputed crown by beating up ruskie in 100y
Taleb's arguments re: the "penny-shares" is that you can make much informed choices amongst them by having a better appreciation of what exposure they have to downside or upside risks.
On the issue of "highly improbable, impactful events", Taleb's point is that most major events are retrospectively predicted - can we post-hoc see the signals for WW2, 9/11 etc? Of course we can. Did we see them beforehand and act to prevent such events (or to protect ourselves from their impact, or indeed proft from them)? No
As for Harry Potter, artists, religions and all the other 'trival' aspects the point is that who wins here can are very impactful but very hard to predetermine, and also that the scale of their impact is unexpected beforehand. We can doddle along with village/tribe level beliefs and all of a sudden a religion can "explode" over a couple of decades/centuries to unprecedented sacel and influence.
And I find it hard to consider the Potter example trivial. The series of books has made the author a billionaire and both a publishing house and a film studio much more significant than they would be without them. Before this, noone was expecting a childrens book to be such an enormous seller. It changes the game in publishing...
Sort of like the impact of Usain Bolt, Paula Radcliffe etc
I'm now into (while taking a mid-book hiatus from The Collapse Of The Third Republic) the Simon Winchester work The Map That Changed the World, about stratigrapher William Smith. If Winchester's name is vaguely familiar that's because he wrote The Professor And The Madman about the creation of the OED.
I'm reading old Arthur Upfield mysteries. Upfield was the first Australian mystery novelist, beginning back in the late 20's. He was the inspiration for Tony Hillerman's series of Navajo detective books. Upfield's protagonist is a half white, half aboriginal who uses both cultural heritages to solve murders in the outback. The writing is antique in style and dripping with colonial racism but is a fun glimpse of the time and place.
And guess what? It's not a novel; it's non-fiction about a railroad job called The Innocent Man.
Makes it hard ever to trust the legal system again.
I couldn't put it down; fortunately that was the day it took me 12.5 hours to get from the Arkansas stadium to my house, so I had plenty of reading time on tiny planes that don't facilitate laptopability. (That's why the NCAA newsletter didn't come out Sunday night.)
I was reading a book about ships that have disappeared without a trace. Can't remember the name of the book. Interesting speculations about the probable causes but about half way through I realized that was the bottom line, we will never know what happened and threw it into my return to Library Book Fair donation box.
