books read
Aug. 22nd, 2005 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleare-read, Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy. Spoilers follow:
On re-read, I puzzled out this book's flaws. I think there are two, one major, and one minor. The minor is that, despite a lot of things that ought to be funny (Fawnshope wandering about being poetic at random, the ducklings), and some that truly are (the Marquesa making dinner), the final scene/set-piece is neither very funny nor very satisfying. The lack of satisfaction is, I think, related to the major flaw of the book - why does Sophy like Charles? He seems a decent fellow, and we can clearly see his initial exasperation with her change into attraction, but there's no reason that Sophy should like him. Since clearly Sophy is a woman who gets what she wants, she must think it is for the best order of the universe that she end up with him from the beginning, but why on earth? Her lack of displayed emotion makes her a hard heroine to identify with.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.
This is the sort of book that disappoints me. The content is fine, as far as it goes, the topic is an interesting one (though in many cases there seems to be little to do with economics in the monetary sense - the fact that teachers cheat on standardized tests for their students, and the mathematical algorithm that catches them, don't seem very economics-related to me). But it's a slim skimpy book. It's for a popular audience, and yes, it has end notes, but I wanted more more more. It felt like magazine articles (and there was this weird thing where the chapters were headed by quotes from an actual magazine article by one of the authors, lauding the other as, basically, a god, which gave an odd note to the whole endeavor.) Steve D wrote an article about Steve L, and it was wildly popular, so they said, "Let's write a book and get rich!" And they did. On my nickel, too (mr. flea actually purchased this one).
On re-read, I puzzled out this book's flaws. I think there are two, one major, and one minor. The minor is that, despite a lot of things that ought to be funny (Fawnshope wandering about being poetic at random, the ducklings), and some that truly are (the Marquesa making dinner), the final scene/set-piece is neither very funny nor very satisfying. The lack of satisfaction is, I think, related to the major flaw of the book - why does Sophy like Charles? He seems a decent fellow, and we can clearly see his initial exasperation with her change into attraction, but there's no reason that Sophy should like him. Since clearly Sophy is a woman who gets what she wants, she must think it is for the best order of the universe that she end up with him from the beginning, but why on earth? Her lack of displayed emotion makes her a hard heroine to identify with.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.
This is the sort of book that disappoints me. The content is fine, as far as it goes, the topic is an interesting one (though in many cases there seems to be little to do with economics in the monetary sense - the fact that teachers cheat on standardized tests for their students, and the mathematical algorithm that catches them, don't seem very economics-related to me). But it's a slim skimpy book. It's for a popular audience, and yes, it has end notes, but I wanted more more more. It felt like magazine articles (and there was this weird thing where the chapters were headed by quotes from an actual magazine article by one of the authors, lauding the other as, basically, a god, which gave an odd note to the whole endeavor.) Steve D wrote an article about Steve L, and it was wildly popular, so they said, "Let's write a book and get rich!" And they did. On my nickel, too (mr. flea actually purchased this one).
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Freakonomics
Date: 2005-08-22 04:31 pm (UTC)It was about the first book I've read in almost two years that didn't involve baby poop or breastfeeding, but it felt kind of like eating a turkey TV dinner for thanksgiving -- it had all the basic needed elements, but there could have been so much more!
(I've ordered a couple books off ebay about different historic/causal/trending concepts, so we'll see how this goes in the next couple weeks. I hope Squeaky's sleep patterns level off soon!)