jasonfurman's reviews
1367 reviews

A reasonably good book, draws you in from the beginning, American gothic, but the twists and turns eventually got too predictable.

Wasn't the best biography, a bit matter-of-fact, and way, way too hagiographic about its subject.

A decent book on Entanglement. Suffers from my pet peeve in popular science books -- which is repeating lots of material you have read over and over again. You would think that someone coming to a book on Entanglement would have read a few other accounts of quantum mechanics before and doesn't need to re-read the familiar history starting from the Greeks through Planck and Bohr, Heisenberg and the rest of the early pioneers. Or that someone who wants an introduction to quantum mechanics would not want to start with a book that focuses on one aspect. The book also suffers from too much biography, which would be fine if it were not for the fact that it features 20+ scientists -- so that mini-biographies of each weigh down the explication.

The second half is interesting, including both theoretical work like Bell's theorem and the experimental tests of it. You can never really understand this material without going through the actual physics (and even then you can't actually understand it), but the shortness of the explication made one suffer a little more than normal in a book of this sort. Plus there was a lot less on applications of entanglement, like encryption, than I might have liked.

I may be the only person who has read two books by Daniel Defoe, neither of them Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders. Decided to finally remedy that. It may be heretical to say, but Robinson Crusoe feels more like a historical curiosity than a great novel. If the Odyssey or Bleak House were published for the first time today they would be considered masterpieces. If Robinson Crusoe were published today one would think the action was somewhat lame, the character's psychology implausible, and the novel lacking in a coherent structure, especially as manifested by the ending, not to mention the books racism and imperialism.

That said, it as a very worthwhile historical curiosity and it is hard to imagine it not having been written and it is generally enjoyable to read,. The first quarter is a series of adventures culminating in Crusoe being stranded on an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. The last quarter is another series of adventures, not just his escape but -- oddly continuing to adventures like being attacked by wolves while traveling overland from Portugal to Northern France.,

The middle half of the book is the timeless story of Crusoe's 27 years on the island, starting with his meticulous efforts to save as much as possible from the ship and continuing through his becoming increasingly productive through agriculture and livestock rearing, much of it described in minute and fascinating detail. Crusoe himself, however, is a stock character who has no psychological depth, no depth of emotion about his situation, and often has attitudes that seem implausible for someone stranded alone for more than twenty years.

An early young adult novel by Philip Pullman, it is similar in character to his The White Mercedes. Although no where nearly as good as that one, it is still worth reading.

The novel is about a sixteen year old girl Ginny who grows up with a single father father in a coastal village in Wales. Her mother, she is told, is a Haitian artist. Over the course of the novel she learns that a number of her most deeply held truths are anything but. A half brother she never knew about moves in with her and she eventually uncovers more and more about her past and the past of her father.

Throughout the "broken bridge" functions as both a central piece of the story (a literal broken bridge that was damaged in an accident around when she was born) and also a metaphor for her various relationships all in various states of repair.

The book does not have one central revelation or plot twist that puts everything in perspective, instead it is an unfolding of Ginny's awareness of herself and the friends and relatives that surround her.

Joann Sfar is a wonderful graphic novelist and the best books I've read of his are the Rabbis Cat and this sequel, not-overly-creatively named Rabbi's Cat 2. It is set in a Jewish community in what I believe is French Algeria in what I believe is the 1920s. It describes the intersection of different cultures and religions, from Judaism to Islam, tradition to modernity, Europe to Africa, etc., with a sympathetic and insightful eye. The imagery is beautiful. And the cat featured in the title is the best character of all.

What's not to like in this short, fast moving, novella with a high body count, almost all at the hands of a sexy French woman. Without the shortness (90 pages), the French provincial setting, and the woman, it would not be a particularly memorable or worth reading pulpish noir.

The implicit references to Madame Bovary, like a reply of the famous agricultural fair scene, are crude and more of a minus than a plus. And then there's the phrase "Hell's bells," which oddly appears in this translation -- after marring Wilbur's translation of Don Juan.

The book wears its politics lightly, showing rather than telling the attitude towards the local provincial elite. And ultimately, their fate speaks for itself.

The Carl Zimmer books I've read get smaller and smaller. First I read Parasite Rex, which as the name suggests, was about parasites. It was a Copernican attempt to remove animals like humans from the center of the biological universe by showing how badly numbered our large multicellular kind are outnumbered by parasites. Then I read Microcosm which was all about e Coli.

Now A Planet of Viruses is smaller in three respects. First, it is about viruses which are tiny compared to parasites and e Coli. Second, the book itself is just short of 100 pages, really a well-connected set of essays about different viruses. Finally, the book feels smaller in terms of the sweep, depth, and insight that Zimmer brings to it. That said, it is worth reading because it is a fast read and has lots of full color pages with interesting pictures of viruses.

Zimmer starts with an introduction, then he has short chapters on the history and biology of about 10 different types of viruses from the common cold to Ebola, with several other less expected ones in between (e.g., ones that live in oceans and in conjunction with sea algae are responsible for much of our atmosphere). It ends with a conclusion that generalizes on the specific observations about individual viruses. The chapters are well chosen to illustrate a range of biological points.

A great graphic novel. Beautifully drawn, beautifully told, these are three stories about a rabbi and his cat in Algeria around the middle of the last century. In the first story the cat eats a parrot and as a result becomes able to speak. He wants to get Bar Mitzvahed and has a theological debate with his rabbi's on the topic. It contains two other equally good stories, all told with humor and wisdom reminiscent of Issac Bashevis Singer.

Fantastic, highly recommended. Basically three books in one: history of major economic/financial events over the last fifty years, an analysis of hedge funds and the financial economics, and the motivation for a policy recommendation.

Mallaby has lots of nuance, appreciates the pro and con of every argument, but basically the main arguments of his book are: (1) hedge funds can get above market returns by exploiting information or anomalies that others do not; (2) in the process they improve the allocation of capital and, on balance, stabilize markets by, for example, minimizing bubbles by selling short; and (3) when they fail, hedge funds rarely pose a systemic risk to the economy or financial system, when they go bust it is generally another hedge fund that rushes in to take them over (see points 1 and 2 above).

Mallaby manages to convey all of this in a suspenseful page turner that uses well chosen anecdotes and stories to keep you engaged from beginning to end.