Tag: reading

Death by Hollywood – Steven Bochco

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I did it! I successfully read a book with a Goodreads rating of 3/5. Given that most people give 5s by default, the 3 is a pretty big deal. It’s like an IMDb rating of 4 for a movie.

What grabbed my attention was the writing style of the first few pages. It sounded like the writer knew the world he was describing very well, and I wanted to learn more. A screenwriter witnesses a crime and decides he’ll write a script based on it instead of reporting it to the authorities. He inserts himself into the lives of the victim, the killer, and the detective. A world of corruption, sin, and hypocrisy uncovers where everyone is greedy and nobody is spared.

The book is not linear. It has a dog named Bob. Half of the books I read in February feature a prominent canine supporting character Bob. Is that even a reasonable dog name? Bob is a very clever dog, so clever that the book leaves the realm of crime and enters the urban fantasy. Bob makes this book a 5 rather than a 4. 4 would be fair – the book is fresh but not that fresh – there is not much to like, except for Bob. It’s difficult to finish and the non-linear nature introduces 2 or 3 brief throw-away-the-book moments. I bet this is what happened to most people who voted 3 or under – they just gave up at the first difficult moment.

TL;DR – 5/5 but the book is unusual and many didn’t like it. It keeps on giving if you don’t give up. Goodreads link

Thraxas by Martin Scott

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Imagine a fantasy world with taverns, elves, orks, bands, guilds, priests, and corruption. A mixture of Tolkien, Pratchett, the dark part of the Middle Ages, and an exploitation version of Conan. In that world, there’s an overweight battle mage who works as a detective but not too hard. He’s drunk half of the time and dedicated the other half when he’s short on cash to support his drinking habits. Feels like he’s intoxicated in the way Jack Reacher would have a toothache – more of a nuisance than an actual weakness. His action style and vision are more of a Bud Spencer or The Mountain rather than a guy with poor health and addictions. If I could imagine one present-day celebrity as Thraxas, that would be Eddie Hall.

Thraxas has a superhuman sidekick. Makri is a former undefeated gladiator who works as a waitress and wears revealing clothing. She has impossible sword and axe skills and studies hard to get admitted to the university. Thraxas has no purpose in life or goals. Makri has a purpose and several very ambitious goals. In a sense, despite being described as a sidekick and only having a small part of the page time, she’s the true main character of book one and is far more appealing. You can’t like Thraxas but can love Makri.

5/5, Goodreads

PS. I already completed book 2 and have ordered books 3 and 4 but I feel book 2 deserves a separate review.

Stephanie Plum – books 4 to 6

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I keep reading the Stephanie Plum series. My original plan was to get to book 5 but I’m going to extend that to book 10. The series keeps being cool and I consistently award high scores.

Stephanie Plum is a headhunter who does more and more PI work and less and less headhunting. She somehow manages to trigger events that lead to flying dead bodies and crashing criminal enterprises. She’s far too lucky though, the cars would always explode when she wasn’t inside and the bullets would miss. I think this is turning into a main positive feature of the series – you can rely on her having some Ring World-style extreme luck and that it will all be okay.

There’s a lingering love story between her and a few gigachads. Janet Evanovich doesn’t let that stand in the way of a good thriller. It’s more of a reminder that Stephanie Plum is a human and has feelings than an actual love story. Both men I’ve previously described as translucent – they are like imaginary resource-rich and powerful genies, essences of some dominant male-ness, and are almost as good as ghosts. Unlike these two, all the other characters, new and recurring, keep being fresh and vivid.

Thanks to this series (and blogging about it), I’m on track to have my best month for reading in years.

Another reason to be kind

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

I found this nice 2012 article on r/psychology about how our experience and intuition fool us into making wrong predictions. The emphasis in the article is on underestimating others and overestimating ourselves. It says that there’s no amount of knowledge about the thinking errors and biases that will make our thinking quality better but it can make us slow down and invest more effort when we recognize that we would like good results.

Not sure if the article is worth a $6 subscription but is definitely worth the read, and so is the main source for it – the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.