Michael Van Cise

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The "Catching Fire" series is an excellent trilogy. I thoroughly enjoyed each of the three books. I would like to say that the third was the best of the three, but the first two were more suspenseful and gripping. "Mockingjay" was in no way a let down and was an excellent wrap-up to the story of Katniss Everdeen and Panem, but the tale of the hunger games and the Quarter Quell portrayed in the first two were just fantastic. I highly recommend all three books.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a great read that I am recommending to all my friends. As you can tell from the title, the storyline is fantastical and hyperbolic, but the characters and events are strangely believable. Brooks' characters and the response of the human race to the zombie plague feels very true-to-life. I loved the politics and the exploration into the deficiencies of our response to biologic threats and the general precarious nature of our existence on this planet. World War Z is great. I highly recommend it.

I feel like the book is like a mix of Hersey's Hiroshima and Heinlein's Starship Troopers both of which I enjoyed. World War Z contains some great social commentary. Because the book is told from so many perspectives, it feels really balanced. Brooks' style keeps the reader engaged and does a good job of footnoting and explaining things (such as "military" acronyms and historical or biographic references) that aren't immediately clear to the reader.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My sister recommended Into the Wild to me. I guess she got turned on to the book in light of her trip to Alaska (she left yesterday). She'll be spending the summer in Denali national park working for Aramark. It'll be an adventure, but one slightly different from the one portrayed in the book (thank goodness).
Into the Wild tells the story of Chris McCandless. McCandless is an Emory University graduate who takes off after college on a Keroauc-esque journey West that culminates in Alaska. Krakauer does a good job of telling the facts of McCandless' story, giving them context and explanation, and also of delving into McCandless' psyche. I am among the many who enjoyed this book. I think Into the Wild has somewhat mass appeal because everyone has had the desire for adventure and "living off the land" and not worrying about tomorrow/enjoying the moment that McCandless sought. Most of us just haven't abandoned everything to try it out the way McCandless did.

Some quotes:

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.

- Jon Krakauer (reflecting on climbing a glacier in Alaska when he was twenty)

you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may have previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

- Chris McCandless in a letter to his friend "Ron Franz"

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like Thud, The Fifth Elephant is a discworld novel that centers around commander Sam Vimes and the watch (the Ankh Morpork police force). In The Fifth Elephant, Sam Vimes is sent on a diplomatic mission upon which he must ensure that the new "low king" of the dwarves is crowned and save the foreign city from usurpation by an "old-school" werewolf.

Although the book is entertaining and humorous, I did not enjoy it as much as I did Thud. As I mentioned in that review, perhaps it's the reading (I listed to an audio recording) that made Thud so enjoyable. I would recommend Pratchett to someone looking for some light reading. He does provide some insight into human behavior and the dialogue and writing often contains puns and other humor. I don't count myself a Pratchett-fanatic (though I think there are some die-hard fans out there), but I've enjoyed what I've read of his.

Thud! by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I listened to Thud! on audio CD on my trip from Atlanta to LA. While I enjoyed the book, I think my enjoyment was heightened by the performance given by the man performing the book. The reader used different voices for the characters and did an excellent job.
This is the third Pratchett book I've read. I read Hogfather, then Pratchett's collaboration with Niel Gaiman in Good Omens.
If you enjoy Terry Pratchett, you'll like Thud!. The story involves trolls, dwarves, a human police force called "the watch", and also includes a cameo from death. The story is set out as a mystery, but includes Pratchett's typical humor. To the book's credit, it also includes some thought provoking content on race relations (albeit between trolls and dwarves). Although it will take you more time than reading it, I suggest listening to this audio version of the book as it is a real treat to hear the performance.

I have been reading Nicholas Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. One of the main points Taleb makes is that the world that we live in is not governed by strict rules that allow for prediction. Taleb argues that the Gaussian bell curve does not reflect real life.

Note the central assumptions we made in the coin-flip game that led to the proto-Gaussian, or mild randomness.

First central assumption: the flips are independent of one another. The coin has no memory. The fact that you got heads or tails on the previous flip does not change the odds of your getting heads or tails on the next one. you do not become a "better" coin flipper over time. If you introduce memory, or skills in flipping, the entire Gaussian business becomes shaky.

Recall our discussions in Chapter 14 on preferential attachment and cumulative advantage. Both theories assert that winning today makes you more likely to win in the future. Therefore, probabilities are dependent on history, and the first central assumption leading to the Gaussian bell curve fails in reality. In games, of course, past winnings are not supposed to translate into an increased probability of future gains--but not so in real life, which is why I worry about teaching probability from games. But when winning leads to more winning, you are far more likely to see forty wins in a row than with a proto-Gaussian.

Second central asssumption:no "wild" jump. The step size in the building block of the basic random walk is always known, namely one step. There is no uncertainty as to the size of hte step. We did not encounter situations in which the move varied wildly.

Remember that if eithe rof these two central assumptions is not met, your moves (or coin tosses) will not cumulatively lead to the bell curve. Depending on what happens, they can lead to the wild Mandelbrotian style scale-invariant randomness.

After reading the above passage (my apologies for the length of the quote, but it beats reading the entirety of the book, right?) I thought about how some games, even those with strict rules, the first assumption is almost never right. Consider card games. Even though with every new hand (assuming the dealer is not cheating, which, as Taleb and reality will tell you is not always a reasonable assumption) each player has the same chance at getting a "good" hand or a "bad" hand, and because there are only 52 cards and they always have the same thing printed on them each time, the chances of someone getting an incredibly good hand (e.g., a hand that would be impossible to beat, no matter how you laid down the cards -- such as getting all 13 spades in a four-person game of Spades) are slim to none. Yet, really good card players (who are either born with incredible abilities or who have gotten better by playing the game) may be able to win consistently with average or even slightly bad hands. Thus, the first central assumption is not met because the players (or at least some players) will likely become better over time.

Now to my discussion of how Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (hereinafter "CoD") approximates real life even more so than the card game because the game itself enhances the abilities of the skilled players.

In CoD, when you begin the game you have an avatar with a certain limited skill set: the avatar can only run so fast and so far, he changes weapons at a slow speed, and his aim is only so-so. In addition, the player has a limited choice of weapons and those weapons have no enhancements (such as a scope, silencer, or laser-sight). In the multiplayer online version of the game this beginning player gets thrown into a game with other players who not only would likely be able to defeat this newcomer (aka "nube" in gamer-talk) even if their avatar had the same slow running-speed, sighting-the-gun speed, etc. because the experienced player (1) knows the map, (2) has played the game and is more familiar and skilled with the controls, etc., but the changes of the experienced player defeating the nube is increased because the experienced player has things such as (a) a broader selection of weapons (some of which are 'better' because they are more accurate, fire faster, cause more damage) (b) weapons attachments that make it easier to kill other players (e.g., a thermal scope that makes it easier to spot and kill opponents), and (c) enhanced abilities such as running speed, speed in changing weapons, etc. Therefore, at least to some extent, the past winnings of the experienced players gives them an increased probability of future wins.

I was, at first, a little frustrated with the game because I felt that the natural advantages of having played the game for long periods of time (e.g., map knowledge, familiarity with controls, etc.) were sufficient to make the players better without giving them exceptional weapons or skills that the beginning players don't have (perhaps the game should give the beginners the "cool" weapons and make experienced players fight with "lesser" weapons to make the players more evenly matched, I thought). I felt like the game was not really fair in that respect. After reading Taleb's work, however, I realize that CoD is more a reflection of real life in that the winners get better: and the game actually enhances their ability to get better as time passes.

Beyond games, I tried to think about how this concept applies in real life. I thought about professions where relationships play a big part in success. Here I'll talk about stock brokers/financial advisors (hereinafter "FA's"). Taleb talks about "cumulative advantage" as the concept that those who have initial success tend to continue to have more success because the early success builds and creates future success. The examples he gives in The Black Swan are of academic authors: once a person gets published and cited by other authors, they are more likely to get cited more and hence, more likely to have their works more readily published when they submit new publicaitons (because journals value authors who are 'recognized' and cited frequently by others). Taleb argues that the initial publication and/or citations by others is due, frequently, to randomness rather than purely on skill. I think you can see the same thing in successful FAs.

Imagine two FAs starting out. They work at the same firm and receive the same training and they both have exactly the same opportunity for success. If FA1 lands a large account in his first week on the job and that client with the large account is well connected and really likes FA1, FA1 will likely add clients from the friends of this client. FA1s success will build the more clients he adds because his network (through those clients) will grow with each new client. The successful FAs become more successful through networking in addition to (we hope) picking up skills along the way, both in salesmanship and (maybe) in advising clients. FA2 might be smarter and better at giving financial advice, and FA2 might even be good at networking and good with people, but if FA2 does not "land a big fish" early in his career he may not make it through the training program and the firm may terminate him.

I hope to write more about this concept in future posts.

In regard to whether or not to read Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, I think it is a must read for everyone. The book challenges the thinking we've been fed in psychology and statistics classes about bell curves and unlikely events. Taleb's book seems to give a practical and real description of randomness, and the book may provide some insight both into how "the real world" works as well as ways to find success in the real world that exists outside the bell curve. The Black Swan does tend to jump around a bit and I think Taleb could both pare down the book and make it more readable (he tends to go on unrelated tangents, or, at least fails to connect the anecdotes or thoughts to the point he's trying to get across). The concepts are too valuable to miss, though, and it's worth reading for the thought stimulation alone.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Collins is wonderful with metaphor. The "mockingjay" that adorns the cover of the book is great. Take this passage:
"A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. They hadn't counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn't anticipated its will to live."
Of course, the similarity between the jabberjay/mockingjay and the people in the districts is not hard to spot. Katniss herself, while oppressed by the capitol and forced to sign up for tesserae to sustain her family after her father dies in a mine explosion, is creative and defiant and hunts illegally in the woods - training that equips her perfectly for the Hunger Games she wins in Collins' previous book.
Overall, I'm impressed with Collins writing. As stated in my review of The Hunger Games, the writing is not juvenile. Although her primary characters are teenagers, they think in a more mature way. Their thoughts and experiences are believable, however, given the hardship they have faced. For example, Katniss has been forced to sustain her family after her father died and her mother fell into a catatonic depression. Further, Katniss has been forced to kill other children to spare her own life in the hunger games. Lastly, as is fleshed out in Catching Fire, Katniss must consider how to preserve her family and friends in light of the Capitol's anger at her rebellion in the hunger games (threatening suicide if she and her fellow tribute from District 12, Peeta, aren't allowed to win the hunger games and live)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I heard about this book on NPR. Since the NPR piece spoke highly of the book and I am in a science fiction book club, I thought I might check this series out. While the book is geared toward young adults, it does not feel juvenile or dumbed-down. In the way that the Harry Potter series appeals to people of all ages, I can see how The Hunger Games would appeal to adults as well as young people.
The basic story resembles lord of the flies, The Running Man (Schwarzenegger movie), and Battle Royale. The book is set in North America in the future where the world, or at least the world of the main character, Katniss Everdeen, is governed by a totalitarian centralized authority. This central authority has divided its citizens into 13 districts (only 12 of which remain, as the 13th has been destroyed by the central government) each of which plays a certain role. Each year, the authority requires each district to send one boy and one girl (12 to 18 year olds are required to "register") to "The Hunger Games" which is a competition to the "last man standing."
The book is rebellious and insurgent. Katniss, though far outpowered by the centralized state, does all she can to resist the government--by hunting illegally and by some of her actions in the hunger games.
The book is well written and the characters and story are compelling. I really enjoyed The Hunger Games and am looking forward to reading the second part of the series, Catching Fire.

Hiroshima by John Hersey


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hersey's Hiroshima catalogs the lives of a handful of survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII. The accounts of the aftermath of the bomb seem to be told fairly even-handedly. Hersey likely opposes atomic weapons and probably war itself, but the book doesn't read as overly political or in-your-face as such. His descriptions of both the immediate impact on the city and its people and the lingering effects of radiation on those in the bomb's wake are eye-opening. Hersey presents the topic well.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The first book I read by Christopher Moore was Practical Demonkeeping. (an interesting aside: the demon "Catch" appears in both books) I found the humor in "PD" to be strained and too deliberate. Although Moore's style in Lamb is probably not too different, I found the book to be hilarious. Moore uses situational comedy, plays on words, historical anachronisms, and other methods of humor throughout. I probably laughed out loud more times in the course of reading this book than any book I've ever read.
After reading Lamb, I understand why Moore has such a following. I highly recommend this book.