The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver

I loved this book for the same reason that I loved The Predictioneer's Game and Data, A Love Story. All of them lie at the intersection of math/statistics/data/modeling and psychology/sociology. While I still think Nate Silver is brilliant, after reading this book I have a better understanding of just how terrible at modeling and predicting so many other people are (& I'm talking about people who are paid for making predictions) & why it's so easy for him to look that much more brilliant by comparison.

What it's really about is the use & abuse of statistics & data--what sorts of things can be predicted (short and/or long term) and which kind of can't, the most common mistakes people make when they try to use data to make predictions, and how living in the age of "big data" actually puts us more at risk for bad predictions.

The great tragedy of this book is that the people who are most likely to read it are probably the people who already have a pretty decent understanding of data/statistics, and the people who have a less-good understanding of those things are probably the people who would most benefit from reading it.

Assassin's Quest (Farseer #3), by Robin Hobb

First, just about all my comments from Book #1 still hold.

Realistically, I kind of want to give it 4.5 stars. The characters & writing hold up, the story was unpredictable enough to keep me intrigued & guessing about how she'd wrap it all up, and the ending satisfying, if a bit heart wrenching. My only quibbles are that books #2 & #3 both felt just a tiny bit slow in places--at times it felt like there were long stretches where I didn't see where things were going. Not to say that nothing happened--plenty was happening; it just didn't always feel like it was moving the story forward. Also it's a complicated story, & in retrospect there are some things where I felt either like the foreshadowing could have been paced better.

BUT, overall, a really excellent, interesting, well-written high fantasy series.

2014: Year of the Classics

The Mission: One classic novel per month in 2014. Which means, like, actually making choices. There are a lot of classic reads I have to admit I just don't have any interest in (War & Peace, Moby-Dick, Infinite Jest, Crime & Punishment, etc)*; also anything with more than three parlor scenes is automatically eliminated via the Austen / Brontë Clause.

Get me out of this parlor forthwith, Darcy, or
I shall straight-up cut a bitch. Looking at you, Elinor.

(While we're at it, let's just all agree that Mr. Darcy is a creepy, creepy man who remains, to quote CaptainAwkward, "the supposedly totally dreamy main character of what became the boilerplate for every romantic comedy ever." Pretty much sums up Pride & Prejudice, eh?)

The Fitzwilliam Darcy School of Victorian Pickup Artistry: "If seducing
her via telepathy / brooding looks fails, just vomit your feelings at her."^TM

So I spent the last few days combing through my Goodreads "To Read" list & trying to pick out some classics that sounded interesting & like they wouldn't make me want to shoot myself in the face after. (Under The Volcano, anyone?) I totally reserve the right to change my mind later, but here are the twelve I chose, and a few pinch hitters in case I finish them before the year is over or abandon something.

Update: Okay fine, it's fourteen now, since two of my original selections are less than 100 pages & it kind of doesn't seem like they should count as part of the one-per-month deal. Still. Books I plan to read this year:

JANUARY: A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller. "In a nightmarish, ruined world, slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infantile rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From there, the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes." Wicked.

FEBRUARY: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. "Eliza Harris, a slave whose child is to be sold, escapes her beloved home on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky and heads North, eluding the hired slave catchers. As the Harrises flee to freedom, another slave, Uncle Tom, is sent "down the river" for sale. Befriending a white child, Evangeline St. Clare, Tom is purchased by her father and taken to their home in New Orleans." This is my Black History Month selection.

MARCH: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. "Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky." I am terrified of Tolstoy so this will be my attempt at getting un-terrified.

APRIL: A Room With a View, by E.M. Forster. "A chance encounter… a murder in the Piazza Signoria … an impulsive kiss…and Lucy Honeychurch’s world is forever changed. Torn between settling for a life of acceptable convention or the calling of her true passion, Lucy epitomizes the struggle for individuality and the power and passion of love." Since we are going to Italy in April/May, some Italian literature seems in order.

MAY: Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron on a small island off Italy, a bombardier named Yossarian is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. (He has decided to live forever, even if he has to die in the attempt.) I've heard this book repeatedly compared to "The Daily Show" in terms of tone & political poignancy, which is probably mainly what sold me on it. A classic that's actually funny? Sold. Not Italian, but set there, so good enough.

JUNE: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz. "Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim." Comes highly recommended from several nerdy book friends.

JULY: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. "Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up." Awwww, this one's going to break me, isn't it?

AUGUST: Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. "Set amid the stifling atmosphere of 19th-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovary is at once an unsparing depiction of a woman’s gradual corruption and a savagely ironic study of human shallowness and stupidity. Neither Emma, nor her lovers, nor Homais, the man of science, escapes the author’s searing castigation, and it is the book’s final profound irony that only Charles, Emma’s oxlike, eternally deceived husband, emerges with a measure of human grace through his stubborn and selfless love." Sounds suspiciously like a parlor book, but how can you pass on something hailed as "possibly the most beautifully written book ever composed"? I wanted to read this one for Banned Books Week, but it overlaps with Hispanic Heritage Month in September, so August it is.

SEPTEMBER: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. "The story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America." This is my Hispanic Heritage Month selection.

OCTOBER: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. "When a brute of a man tramples an innocent girl, apparently out of spite, two bystanders catch the fellow and force him to pay reparations to the girl's family. The brute's name is Edward Hyde. A respected lawyer, Utterson, hears this story and begins to unravel the seemingly manic behavior of his best friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and his connection with Hyde. Several months earlier, Utterson had drawn up an inexplicable will for the doctor, naming Hyde as his heir in the event that he disappears. Fearing his friend has been blackmailed into this arrangement, Utterson probes deeper into both Jekyll and his unlikely protégé. He is increasingly unnerved at each new revelation." Jekyll & Hyde is my Spoooooktacular Halloween selection.

NOVEMBER: Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne. "Noted geologist Professor Liedenbrock discovers a cryptic message hidden in the pages of an ancient volume purporting to show the way into the center of the earth. Liedenbrock determines to make this fantastic journey, insisting his 16-year-old nephew, Henry, accompany him." Something on the lighter side for Sci-Fi Month.

**NOVEMBER BONUS READ**: The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. "The story of a young traveling salesman who, transformed overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. Rather than being surprised at the transformation, the members of his family despise it as an impending burden upon themselves." November is also German Literature Month, & since this book is like 60 pages & I have been meaning to read it since college, I really don't have any excuses.

DECEMBER: The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. "A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. "Please," asks the stranger, "draw me a sheep." And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries." Seriously, how have I not read this yet?

**DECEMBER BONUS READ**: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Because seriously, it's like 80 pages and how have I never read it??

The Pinch Hitters:

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. "In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying."

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. "This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel." I have a hit-or-miss history with Steinbeck, but got a lot of recommendations for this one.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. "Tells the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the story through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them all imprisoned."

Middlemarch, by George Eliot. "Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment." Better not be too many parlor scenes.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within.

Any other classics I should add to my list of pinch-hitters???

*If anyone can give me a really convincing reason to take on any of the books I've already ruled out, I will totally give them a shot. But it's got to be reeeaallly convincing.

2013 In Books

In the grand tradition of setting overly vague, essentially meaningless goals, one of mine for this past year was to "read more," which was not hard since apparently I read exactly 12 books in 2012. I may have failed to run even 1200 miles this year (thanks mostly to tearing my stupid hip flexor), but damned if I didn't finish 59 books--37 audiobooks, and 22 in hard copy.

(It turns out you can knock out a lot of audiobooks when you spend 2 hours a day in the car. I also listen to them when I'm out running, or doing stuff at work that doesn't require reading/writing/listening to people. So if you'd like to read more but don't have much time for reading books made out of paper, I can highly recommend getting an audible.com subscription & trading out some radio/music time for that.)

Here are my top pics:

For The Athlete:

Becoming a Supple Leopard, by Kelly Starrett. Are you tired of being told that your aches / paints / injuries / etc. will go away if you "just do more yoga / strength work / stretch more"? Do you feel like you're just cobbling together a mix of common sense & pseudo-science & hoping for the best without any clear idea of what is *actually* causing your problems and what is *actually* likely to fix things? If so, you might at the very least find this book interesting. Starrett's philosophy is that “All human beings should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves,” & that we shouldn't be at the mercy of doctors & PTs & trainers & whatnot to diagnose & fix every little ache & pain that comes up.

The New Rules of Marathon & Half-Marathon Nutrition, by Matt Fitzgerald. Probably the most useful & straightforward book I've ever read about nutrition specific to runners. Also, lots of great information that I hadn't seen before. Best of all, everything is based on current scientific evidence, not folk wisdom or outdated facts "everybody knows" from fifteen years ago. I doubt I will ever be even remotely perfect about my nutrition, but now I at least feel like I have a logical framework on which to hang my pitiful attempts.

Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance, by Matt Fitzgerald. I first ran across this book a couple of years ago when I was looking for a solid, research-based, user-friendly primer on nutrition for endurance athletes, but dismissed it as probably too numbers-on-the-scale-focused for me. After reading The New Rules, though, I decided to give it a fair shot. Instead of telling you what weight to shoot for, he recommends first determining your body composition (% body fat), then setting an individualized goal. The rest of the book is chock full of science about how the bodies of endurance athletes process various nutrients, & tools for determining & improving the quality of your diet one step at a time.

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, by David Epstein. Is extraordinary athletic performance a question of nature or nurture? Epstein assures us early in the book that it's 100% both. But how? Over sixteen chapters, he delves into a wide range of issues related to athletic performance and genetics, including the role of practice, sex & hormone differences, "trainability", body type, geography, ancestry, injury & disease, pain tolerance, and will power. (The chapter on breeding champion sled dogs for work ethic instead of speed was particularly interesting.) The upshot: there is no simple answer, but the topic is utterly fascination.

Fiction:

The Night Circus, by Erin Morganstern. Without giving away too much plot, this book struck me as Ray Bradbury-meets-Catherynne M. Valente -- beautifully poetic writing, descriptions that appeal to all of the senses, & nostalgic imagery, with a plot that is a sort of modern (well; late 19th century) fairy tale. The characters are carefully crafted and their relationships & interactions are believable and convincing while also subverting your expectations just enough to feel original & refreshing. It's so rare that a love story doesn't make me want to throw up a little, & Celia maybe the best written heroine I have read in a long, long time. I almost couldn't put this book down & that almost never happens to me.

The MaddAddam Trilogy, by Margaret Atwood. (Okay, I am cheating a little because this is actually three books.) Wow. Wow, wow, wow (one for each book--Oryx & Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). If you are a Margaret Atwood fan, get thee to a library / bookstore / kindle / whatever post haste--this is probably her best work yet. If you are not a Margaret Atwood fan, how are you not a Margaret Atwood fan???? I don't often do post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but if someone was going to spin a completely original and unique yarn in that genre full of dynamic and interesting characters and masterful writing and straight-up nail it first time out of the gate, I'm not surprised it was her. Fantastic. Could not put it down.

The City and the City, by China Miéville. This book definitely gets props for one of the most unique and interesting premises I can remember. Imagine two cities which occupy the same physical space--ie, some geographical areas are part of one city, others are part of the other, some areas are sort of "cross-hashed" over each other, and some areas exist in both. Also imagine that interacting with or even acknowledging something or someone who is in the other city--even if they are standing right next to you--is the worst crime that exists. Now imagine trying to carry out a murder investigation in one of those cities. A gripping and completely unpredictable story, thanks to the mind-blowing premise & fantastic writing.

Glasshouse, by Charles Stross. It took me a couple of chapters to get into "Glasshouse", but once the main story got going, it was interesting, creative, full of dynamic & believable characters, and actually really funny at times. In order to hide from whoever is trying to kill him, Robin agrees to be part of a sociology experiment where people agree to be put into "ancient"--late 20th century--bodies & live "as the ancients" for a few years so that researchers can see how social interactions & relationships worked. Before the serious stuff goes down, this made for much hilarity without seeming like a gag. Perfect if you want a bit of fun, engaging, interesting, well-written, not-too-creepy-&-weird sci-fi without a serious commitment.

Nonfiction:

Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen.For all that I've generally been aware that US history as it gets taught in school is pretty sterilized and white-washed, until I read this book, I didn't realize the extent to which it was patently falsified (including falsification by selective omission). I lost track of the times over the course of reading this book where I found myself going, "Wait, what????" & backtracking to be sure that I'd actually read what I thought I'd just read. All the inaccuracies & omissions Loewen discusses are backed by primary sources & fully documented, and he invites you to delve deeper & do your own research if you feel disinclined to take him & his sources at their word.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, by Sam Kean. You might like this book if you 1) enjoy amusing stories about science told with a historical/human interest angle (RadioLab fans, I'm looking at you); 2) knew your chemistry at some point & would kind of like a refresher of the basics, but hate textbooks; 3) are curious about chemistry/particle physics but find terms like "covalence electrons" and "ionic bonds" kind of intimidating; 4) are a young person who has not yet studied chemistry formally (I could totally see this book turning a "fuzzy" on to science); 5) enjoy unconventional histories various & sundry. Entertaining & well-written!

The Predictioneer's Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future, by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita In this book, the author--a political scientist--discusses how he's spent the last thirty-some-odd years harnessing the power of math & logic (in the form of game theory) to make spookily accurate predictions about business, politics, legal battles, & all kinds of other situations that involve human beings negotiating and scheming for the best possible outcome. And these aren't fields in which he has special expertise or privileged information--as he reminds us over and over and over again, humans who want things are predictable, which means their behavior can be modeled mathematically. Impossible, you say? That must be why Bueno De Mesquita's predictions have something like a 90% success rate.

Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, by Amy Webb. After months of truly horrific online dating & feeling pressured by her mother's terminal illness to find a life partner as soon as possible, newly 30 Amy Webb threw herself into "hacking" J-date using an awe-inspiring level of math, science, and color-coded spreadsheets. The topic may sound superficial, but if you are at all a mathy-codey-hacky-data-loving type of person, you very well may find a lot of her story fascinating. Absolutely, online daters will probably find it even more interesting (and informative), but I enjoyed it purely based on its existence at the weird intersection of statistics & sociology.

If you want to get more book recommendations from me, follow me on GoodReads! I rate & review just about everything I read.

Read any amazing books this year? What else must I not miss??

Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer #1), by Robin Hobb

Whenever the topic of fantasy, particular 'high' fantasy or 'epic' fantasy or whatever term you want to use for books involving feudalism and swordplay and wizards and stew, is raised, I general tend to plant myself firmly in the "meh-not-really-my-bag" camp. (This in spite of the fact that GoodReads would have me believe I've read more fantasy than anything else.) Not because I'm concerned about getting labeled as one of *those* people (you know the stigma I'm referring to), but because in my experience, people who are into high fantasy are REALLY into high fantasy, and frankly just not always that discriminating about, like, plot and characters & stuff. There is just so, so much fantasy out there that is so, *so* unbelievably bad.

(My rule of thumb: Is there a map in the front? Some sort of royal orphan / bastard / otherwise problematic or mislaid heir? People inexplicably eating stew at every meal? Two out of three and I am OUT.)

So generally, unless I have a very trustworthy recommendation, I mostly avoid map-king-stew books, even when they appear over and over on OMG-Must-Read lists as Assassin's Apprentice has. (It actually had an additional strike against it, since the cover that showed up most often depicted some sort of deathly serious-looking man in a hooded cloak. I'm not sure what it is but books with serious men in dark cloaks on the front are almost always universally awful.) But Robin Hobb seemed to be getting a lot of praise from Patrick Rothfuss (who has himself written some *amazing* books with maps in the front & lots of stew-eating & menacing figures in dark cloaks on the cover), so I decided to give the first one a read.

And I have to say, this is the first high fantasy I've read in quite sometime that I didn't want to put down. It was too engrossing, too gorgeously & skillfully written. At the end of each chapter, I had to know what happened next. Somehow Hobb managed to pack in just about every trope in the book (see: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland) and *still* write a unique, unpredictable, yet satisfying story packed with three-dimensional characters and exquisite writing. Well done.

The Sports Gene, by David Epstein

This book was right up my alley. Vetted science & peer-reviewed data? Check. Jaw-dropping feats of strength, skill, & endurance? Check. Melodramatic scenery chewing? Er....okay, I could have done without some of that. But that's sports, I suppose. Still, with the exception of a few passages, the writing is reasonably good. I appreciate that Epstein opens the book with the tired old question of "OMG nature or nurture????" and then immediately answers it: "Duh, both, *obviously*, and everyone hates that answer. So let's talk about interesting stuff." Over sixteen chapters, Epstein delves into a wide range of issues related to athletic performance and genetics, including the role of practice, sex & hormone differences, "trainability", body type, geography, ancestry, injury & disease, pain tolerance, and will power. (The chapter on breeding champion sled dogs for work ethic instead of speed was particularly interesting.) The upshot: there is no simple answer, but the topic is utterly fascination.

The Predictioneer's Game, by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

I've been meaning to read this book since it came out in 2009 (I think?) & couldn't have enjoyed it more. In it, political scientist Bruce Bueno De Mesquita discusses how he's spent the last thirty-some-odd years harnessing the power of math & logic (in the form of game theory) to make spookily accurate predictions about business, politics, legal battles, & all kinds of other situations that involve human beings negotiating and scheming for the best outcome possible. Even more impressive, these aren't fields in which he has any particular expertise or access to privileged information--as he reminds us over and over and over again, humans who want things are predictable, which means their behavior can be modeled mathematically. Once you know just a few things about all the major players (level of influence, desired outcome, how much credit they want, how committed to/flexible they are regarding their desired outcome, & whether they have veto power in the situation), it's just a matter of quantifying those things, feeding the values into the model, & interpreting the results.

Impossible, you say? That must be why Bueno De Mesquita's predictions have had something like a 90% success rate over the course of his career.

I also enjoyed the part where BDM engaged in a bit of retroactive predictioneering--ie, using only his prediction model & information widely available at the time to show that both the Cold War & its resolution were basically preordained at the end of World War II, that Britain likely could've prevented WWI, and Sparta might have survived but for its addiction to horse racing. It was also neat to see that predictions he & his students made in the last chapter using the model (the failure of the Copenhagen Conference to do anything about global warming, & the US upping aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion being enough to get them to stop making side deals with the Taliban Al Qaeda, but not to squash them completely) have come to pass since the book was written in '09.

Brilliant. If you want a friendly, interesting, not-too-technical introduction to game theory (and also how to save hundreds or thousands when buying a car), this book is for you.