Started: Nov. 8th, 2012
Finished: Nov. 24, 2012
Pages: 344
Any review of this book calls out for a compare and contrast with The Life of Pi. After all, how many books can there be that feature a boy, a tiger, and a shipwreck? Unfortunately, I can't do the honours: I may be the only person in the history of the world who started The Life of Pi and didn't finish it. (Don't ask: I am also the only person alive who got through the 1980s without seeing E.T.)
So, I'm on my own here, and am feeling a little at sea. Jamrach's Menagerie is engaging....it follows the adventures of a Victorian boy born into the mud of the East London slums who encounters a tiger. Knowing no better, he pets the tiger on the nose and it reciprocates by taking him in its jaws and carrying him into a much different life.
So far so good.
But....when I read a literary novel I feel as if I ought to be able to figure out what it's trying to say. Instead, as far as I can tell the author was struck by a couple of historical incidents and decided to spin a tale. The end.
Nothing wrong with that. But it feels like empty reading calories.
Sunday 25 November 2012
Sprig Muslin by Georgette Heyer
Started: Nov. 19th, 2012
Finished: Nov. 23rd, 2012
Pages: 276
By 1956, Georgette Heyer was supporting her family by her writing, was contemptuous of her fans, and was evidently a little bored. So she'd started twisting her twisty little romantic romps to amuse herself. In this one, the hero *doesn't* fall for the high-spirited runaway girl, even though he literally pursues her (to save herself from herself, of course) for the first two-thirds of the book. Instead he woos a frumpy, respectable and superficially shatter-brained lady who refuses to marry him.
Don't worry, just as in a Bollywood musical, all comes right in the end. Speaking of which, I wonder how many Bollywood films follow Heyer plots? And if any of them do so on purpose?
Sunday 11 November 2012
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor by Stephanie Barron
Started: Nov. 3
Finished: Nov. 9
Pages: 318
This novel features my least-favorite "historical novel" trap: it makes its characters and their attitudes modern. I know, I know. These books are written to entertain. They're written to appeal to a contemporary audience. And *of course* they're written to sell. So what do I expect from a novel that features Jane Austen as the detective?
Sigh. I know, I know. If I pick up a piece of trash at the library, I get what I deserve. But I refuse to forfeit my right to complain about getting exactly what I ought to have expected..... :-)
Finished: Nov. 9
Pages: 318
This novel features my least-favorite "historical novel" trap: it makes its characters and their attitudes modern. I know, I know. These books are written to entertain. They're written to appeal to a contemporary audience. And *of course* they're written to sell. So what do I expect from a novel that features Jane Austen as the detective?
Sigh. I know, I know. If I pick up a piece of trash at the library, I get what I deserve. But I refuse to forfeit my right to complain about getting exactly what I ought to have expected..... :-)
Sunday 4 November 2012
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Started: June 16th, 2012
Finished: October 31st, 2012
Pages: 481
Wow. I think this is a record. I'm not sure I've ever taken this long to read a book. At least, not one that I never gave up on or restarted during the time period in question.
Oddly, this is actually a recommendation for Thinking, Fast and Slow. It was so interesting that I really wanted to finish it. And its short chapters are conducive to intermittent reading, so I could pick it up and read a self-contained chunk even after a couple of weeks away.
What's it about? How we think. How we make decisions. And how the structure of our brain can work against us.
Daniel Kahneman is an experimental psychologist who shared a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on decision-making, and more specifically on "prospect theory", an explanation of how human beings make decisions involving economic risks and rewards in uncertain conditions. His shocking conclusion: people do not typically make rational decisions. Instead they make "irrational" ones in predictable ways that overweight the risk of losses, and underweight the benefits of probable but uncertain gains.
Kahneman and his chief collaborator, Amos Tversky, were led to this conclusion by years of work on decision making. But the book is fundamentally not just about prospect theory, as interesting as that is. Instead it's a coherent summary of the current understanding of how our brains function, and how that affects our thoughts and the decisions that we each make every day.
In some ways this is a very depressing book. In the same way your visual intuition can be quite easily fooled by any of the standard 'optical illusions' (like the ones that ask you to judge which line is longer or shorter), your judgement can quite predictably affected by a number of perceptual factors like "narrow framing", "anchors", and a failure to understand the phenomena of regression to the mean. Kahneman demonstrates this with specific examples. In each case he provides a scenario, asks you to make a judgement, describes the typical responses and how those responses are logically wrong, and then explains the research in that specific area.
Why is this all depressing? Everyone likes to believe that *they* aren't easily fooled. But if you're honest about it, at least some of the time you'll find yourself making exactly the responses that Kahneman analyzes. And even if you avoided every erroneous intuition in the entire book....it would be by concentrating on the specific questions that he asks. In Kahneman's terms, it would be by employing "System 2" in your brain: the thoughtful rational agent. But none of use "System 2" all of the time. It's slow. It requires effort. And the quick-thinking, reactive "System 1" is what gets us through most days. "System 1" recognizes habitual situations, and warns us and allows us to react quickly when we encounter something surprising....like the car that's about to sideswipe us in traffic. We can't live without System 1. In real life we use System 1 all of the time. And it's primarily the behaviour of System 1 that Kahneman describes.
Kahneman had a noble goal in writing Thinking, Fast and Slow. He wants to make people more aware of System 1 and how it works, and wants to give us tools to help ourselves to recognize situations where we need to trigger System 2. But he also says that after a lifetime of studying the brain and decision-making, he hasn't noticed himself getting notably better at decisions.
The next time you get excited, or upset, or motivated by political rhetoric, or advertising of any kind, you should stop and think about exactly *how* that statement was put together. It's likely that it was crafted by someone who has studied Mr. Kahneman's work. Which is the real reason that this is such a depressing book.
Finished: October 31st, 2012
Pages: 481
Wow. I think this is a record. I'm not sure I've ever taken this long to read a book. At least, not one that I never gave up on or restarted during the time period in question.
Oddly, this is actually a recommendation for Thinking, Fast and Slow. It was so interesting that I really wanted to finish it. And its short chapters are conducive to intermittent reading, so I could pick it up and read a self-contained chunk even after a couple of weeks away.
What's it about? How we think. How we make decisions. And how the structure of our brain can work against us.
Daniel Kahneman is an experimental psychologist who shared a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on decision-making, and more specifically on "prospect theory", an explanation of how human beings make decisions involving economic risks and rewards in uncertain conditions. His shocking conclusion: people do not typically make rational decisions. Instead they make "irrational" ones in predictable ways that overweight the risk of losses, and underweight the benefits of probable but uncertain gains.
Kahneman and his chief collaborator, Amos Tversky, were led to this conclusion by years of work on decision making. But the book is fundamentally not just about prospect theory, as interesting as that is. Instead it's a coherent summary of the current understanding of how our brains function, and how that affects our thoughts and the decisions that we each make every day.
In some ways this is a very depressing book. In the same way your visual intuition can be quite easily fooled by any of the standard 'optical illusions' (like the ones that ask you to judge which line is longer or shorter), your judgement can quite predictably affected by a number of perceptual factors like "narrow framing", "anchors", and a failure to understand the phenomena of regression to the mean. Kahneman demonstrates this with specific examples. In each case he provides a scenario, asks you to make a judgement, describes the typical responses and how those responses are logically wrong, and then explains the research in that specific area.
Why is this all depressing? Everyone likes to believe that *they* aren't easily fooled. But if you're honest about it, at least some of the time you'll find yourself making exactly the responses that Kahneman analyzes. And even if you avoided every erroneous intuition in the entire book....it would be by concentrating on the specific questions that he asks. In Kahneman's terms, it would be by employing "System 2" in your brain: the thoughtful rational agent. But none of use "System 2" all of the time. It's slow. It requires effort. And the quick-thinking, reactive "System 1" is what gets us through most days. "System 1" recognizes habitual situations, and warns us and allows us to react quickly when we encounter something surprising....like the car that's about to sideswipe us in traffic. We can't live without System 1. In real life we use System 1 all of the time. And it's primarily the behaviour of System 1 that Kahneman describes.
Kahneman had a noble goal in writing Thinking, Fast and Slow. He wants to make people more aware of System 1 and how it works, and wants to give us tools to help ourselves to recognize situations where we need to trigger System 2. But he also says that after a lifetime of studying the brain and decision-making, he hasn't noticed himself getting notably better at decisions.
The next time you get excited, or upset, or motivated by political rhetoric, or advertising of any kind, you should stop and think about exactly *how* that statement was put together. It's likely that it was crafted by someone who has studied Mr. Kahneman's work. Which is the real reason that this is such a depressing book.
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