Recent reading
Sep. 9th, 2006 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabTall, Dark & Dead by Tate Hallaway. I wanted to hate this one, I really did, because it's a cheap quick knockoff of several popular themes, trying to cater theme-wise to the largest mass-market denominator - but you know what? I didn't hate it. It's a vampire romance, in a contemporary setting, but it also throws in, let's see, witch-hunting killer nuns from the "Order of Eustace" (can you say "let's cater to the Dan Brown junkies"? I knew you could.) and sulking adolescent teenage half-vampire angst. But it's still not bad. Several of the characters are genuinely likeable, particularly William, the shop assistant who tries on another religion every week. And though the plot ends in a flurry of gimmicks, sex, and all-but-deus-ex-machina, there are some nice plot points; it's not totally predictable. And the writing's halfway decent, and - here's a real nice feature - it's got no glaring spelling or grammar or word-misusage errors!! It is *extremely* well edited compared to many current paperbacks (and even, alas, hardcovers). So all in all, while I wouldn't pay money to go out and buy it for my permanent collection, I wouldn't hesitate to say that if you like lightweight romance, with some lightweight supernatural stuff thrown in, then when you run across this one in the library, go ahead and take it out. It's not a complete waste of time.
Chances Are . . .: Adventures in Probability by Michael Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan. I am finding this entertaining, but I have the feeling that most of the people on my flist or among my regular readers wouldn't be interested. You've gotta like math, be interested in probability, and be interested in risk and insurance. A faint idea of what the authors are referring to when they mention "Swiss Re" is useful, for example. And the idea of discussing Galileo's use of the Weak Law of Large Numbers to get around some of the ethical problems of noticing variations in the sky - well, if that idea puts you to sleep, don't read this. On the other hand, some of you may (Chas?) also find this trivia interesting, especially since it's quite possible to skip the actual math (I certainly am) that gets explicated in a few points, and just go with the ideas. A book that jumps from shipping in the Medieval era to breaking the bank at Las Vegas with stops in between for the entire Bernoulli family can't be all bad, right? Really, if you're at all interested in math, this is fun, and if you're not really that math-oriented but like history and especially historical trivia, you would also find lots to enjoy here.
Chances Are . . .: Adventures in Probability by Michael Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan. I am finding this entertaining, but I have the feeling that most of the people on my flist or among my regular readers wouldn't be interested. You've gotta like math, be interested in probability, and be interested in risk and insurance. A faint idea of what the authors are referring to when they mention "Swiss Re" is useful, for example. And the idea of discussing Galileo's use of the Weak Law of Large Numbers to get around some of the ethical problems of noticing variations in the sky - well, if that idea puts you to sleep, don't read this. On the other hand, some of you may (Chas?) also find this trivia interesting, especially since it's quite possible to skip the actual math (I certainly am) that gets explicated in a few points, and just go with the ideas. A book that jumps from shipping in the Medieval era to breaking the bank at Las Vegas with stops in between for the entire Bernoulli family can't be all bad, right? Really, if you're at all interested in math, this is fun, and if you're not really that math-oriented but like history and especially historical trivia, you would also find lots to enjoy here.
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Date: 2006-09-10 03:21 am (UTC)The first book sounds great - I will have to look into it, though it'll be a while - books are a minimum of $19 here. le sigh. I used to buy a book a week at least. Now... almost never. Luckily I re-read.
Books, books, books!
Hot damn! That in iteself recommends said piece of "fluff"! I am so tired of reading poorly edited books, I want to go on a witch-hunt of an entirely different kind!
The second book actually sounds interesting, also. I have three children who ask hundreds of questions about all kinds of stuff, and such a mathematical story makes math interesting - not to mention adventurous reading, as well as fodder for those developing minds in my care.