Doctorow is great : This book not so much

Andrew's Brain is about 200 pages. There is one voice - Andrew - talking probably to a mental health professional. The narration is fast flowing , hard to follow and at times it seems pointless. Andrew recounts the death of his first wife, but was that for real?
Once I started mistrusting Andrew's narration, it becomes boring. At least it short! It has some good passages. The master has not lost his touch.

Gossip as Weapon -- bring it on

Sure, why wouldn’t there be a Jane Austen RPG that uses gossip as a weapon?

by Kirsten Reach

Today we introduce you to Ever Jane, an RPG from Developer 3 Turn Productions which stars characters from Jane Austen’s novels who are out to destroy one another. Or at least the other’s reputation. We could just provide weird Jane Austen news for you every day, but then you’d be callous when the really good stuff comes up.

“We want to bring women’s fantasies into video games,” said the game’s creator, Judy L. Tyrer, in an interview with Co.Create. “And I can’t think of a more commonly held fantasy than Mr. Darcy. We want to bring you Colin Firth in a wet shirt.”

Characters have varying levels of traits like kindness, happiness, or duty. In a promotional video, Tyrer explains, “Instead of kill or be killed, it’s invite or be invited.” The game will eventually introduce locations like Brighton and Bath.

In other Austen game news, No Crusts Interactive has recently released a Canabalt-like running game featuring Lizzie Bennet. She runs in heels over the full text of Pride & Prejudice in — what else would you call it? — Stride & Prejudice.

Readers can customize the background color on their iPhones or iPads. The developer says it’s “the first endless runner game to include an entire novel,” and it holds your place in the book each time you die.

I suppose it’s a good solution if you need to reread all of Pride & Prejudice really, really fast.

Kirsten Reach is an editor at Melville House.

from wsj: How to set up an iPad, Kindle or Android tablet to corral long articles and blog posts

Conquer Your E-Reads

How to set up an iPad, Kindle or Android tablet to corral long articles and blog posts

Nov. 22, 2013 11:38 a.m. ET

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

ONE DAY, HUNCHING in front of a computer screen or squinting at a smartphone to read anything longer than a tweet will seem barbaric. To engage with text thoughtfully and comfortably, e-readers and tablets are still the most evolved gadgets, especially when they're outfitted with the right apps and Web services.

Implement our simple system below, and you'll be able to peruse, on your own terms, all of the long reads that you never quite get around to. Plow through a week's worth of Web links during a flight. While you're at the salon, sift through those in-depth stories everyone was talking about on social media. Help yourself to the tools below, and you won't feel out of the loop at your next dinner party.

—Erik Sofge

1. Corral Long Web Articles

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

What's the best way to beam documents from your computer to a more reader-friendly device? Erik Sofge joins Lunch Break with a look at the latest services for e-readers on the go. Photo: Getty Images.

You can beam them to a tablet or e-reader and they'll all be waiting for you when you're ready to dive in. Amazon offers a range of options for sending Web articles to a Kindle. The easiest to use is the Send to Kindle plug-in for the Chrome and Firefox browsers, which lets you beam an entire Web page, stripped of ads, to a Kindle or the Kindle app for Android and iOS devices.

Another handy solution is the free Web service Pocket ( getpocket.com ). Like Send to Kindle, you can use Pocket to save articles to a range of devices. What sets it apart, though, is the ability to send stories by simply emailing a link to a Web page. (Kindle has a similar feature, but it requires you to email the article in the body of the message or as an attachment.) Pocket works with Android tablets and iPads, as well as standard e-readers from Kobo, including the terrific Aura HD (see below).

2. Tame Social-Media Mayhem

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

If, like many people, you find your social-media feeds to be impenetrable lists of links that you dread having to click through, download Flipboard (free, flipboard.com ). This popular tablet app for aggregating Web articles into a magazine-like format is also genius at making a dense Twitter feed easier and more enjoyable to scan. Instead of presenting a list of links, the app elegantly displays previews of each story, complete with images and snippets of text. Tapping one of the teasers expands it to a full-screen version of the article in a clean, three-column layout. Tweets without links appear as a list along the side of the page.

Flipboard works with Facebook feeds, too, pulling together photos, videos and status updates into a somewhat more organized-looking scrapbook. Best of all, the app works on just about every major tablet: It's compatible with Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows 8 devices.

3. Wrangle Unwieldy PDFs

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

PDFs were designed to be printed on paper, not viewed on computer screens, but the format is still popular for sharing documents digitally (especially product manuals, brochures and anything that was once a booklet). Unfortunately, trying to read a PDF on a computer, e-reader or tablet can require scrolling to various sections of the page or zooming in on minuscule text.

Although the Scribd app (free, scribd.com ) is intended for accessing the company's e-book service, it also happens to be the least frustrating way to read PDFs on an Android tablet or iPad. Compared with other PDF-compatible apps, Scribd's interface is the most intuitive: You can swipe across the screen to flip through pages, and when you hold your tablet in a landscape orientation, the app displays two facing pages at once, like an open book. As with competing readers, Scribd lets you search text and zoom out to view all of the pages as thumbnails. Biggest difference? Scribd does it all more gracefully.

Which Gadget Is Best for Lots of Text?

From left: Kobo Aura HD, Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and Apple iPad Air Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

The Contender: Kobo Aura HD

Text and images look stellar on the Aura HD's black-and-white, hi-res screen—better than on any other e-ink reader out there. Plus, the device has a slightly larger display—6.8 inches diagonal to a typical Kindle's 6 inches—resulting in a "page" that's closer in size to a paperback. $170, kobo.com

Plus: A broad selection of font and formatting options that typography nerds will love.

Minus: A premium price—$31 more than the ad-free Paperwhite.

The Reigning Champ: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

Compared to the first Paperwhite, the latest iteration has a crisper display and a more evenly distributed built-in light. Battery life is impressive: an estimated 28 hours with the light turned on. Starting at $119, amazon.com

Plus: The ability to get recommendations from the Goodreads community of bookworms (who tend to be a lot more knowledgeable than the typical Amazon reviewer).

Minus: The least-expensive version of the Kindle displays ads when the device is asleep.

The Featherweight: Apple

Although an e-ink screen is easier on the eyes than a tablet's backlit display, the iPad Air is by far the slickest way to access dedicated reading apps, like those for newspapers and magazines. Starting at $499, apple.com

Plus: Weighing only 1 pound, this is the first full-size tablet that can be comfortably held in one hand for long stretches.

Minus: The iPad Air's battery life (rated at 10 hours) is impressive for a tablet but trails e-ink readers like the Aura HD and Paperwhite.

Buffets for E-Bookworms: All-You-Can-Read Subscriptions

Think of the latest crop of e-book subscription services as Netflix for bibliophiles. For a low monthly fee—usually less than the cost of a single e-book—you can read as many titles as you like.

Oyster ($10 per month, oysterbooks.com ) offers a solid selection and pleasing interface. Although many of its 100,000-plus e-books are obscure, you'll find over 1,000 New York Times best-sellers in the mix, according to the company. The Oyster app is currently only compatible with iPad (and iPhone), but an Android version is in the works for release next year.

Scribd ($9 a month, scribd.com ) is similar to Oyster in price and selection, but its app isn't quite as polished. Still, if you own an Android tablet, this is your best option.

Finally, there's the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which is included in an Amazon Prime membership ($79 per year, amazon.com ). The fee includes access to one book per month from a list of some 400,000 titles. The collection is large but includes only about 100 New York Times best-sellers, according to Amazon. Access to this feature requires a Kindle device (the apps for Android and iOS are not compatible). At $6.58 per month, it's not worth signing up for Amazon Prime just for the books alone, but if you're already a member for the unlimited video and free shipping that are included with the subscription, the lending library is a modest perk.

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Tatiana (Martin Cruz Smith)

Arkady Renko is a little older and a little more cynical. When an investigative report is found dead, Arkady is reluctant to accept that this death is  a suicide. Inspector Renko's investigation gives of tour of modern Russia, police corruption, and a secret cold war city which officially does not exist. 

The fast pace and intelligent plotting makes this a strong new book in the Renko series.

Tip And the Gipper (Chris Matthews)

This a very light readable book about  a point in time when two polar opposites worked together to craft legislation that worked. Tip O'Neil and Ronald Regan fought hard in the political arena. They had opposite political philosophies. The conservative republicans wanted to rein in liberal social programs, reform welfare and lower taxes. The establishment liberals were committed to the status quo and deeply believed in the rightness of their cause. Despite the obvious differences, Regan and O'Neil made time to socialize across party lines. Together they crafted working solutions to their conflicts. A stark contrast to the modern stalemates.

Chris Matthews makes this a light read, easy to recommend to casual non fiction readers. Complete index and many footnotes.

Bellman & Black: a Ghost Story(Diane Setterfeld)

Setterfelds' previous book stood as classically styled gothic novel with subtle connection to Jane Eyre.

Bellman & Black is another expertly written tale written with a very Henry James flare. The book begins with the death of a rook.  One boy brags he can hit a Rook with  a stone from his slingshot, then surprises them all by doing just that. the young rook dies and the boy is upset, but soon recovers and forgets. But the Rooks don't forget. Artfully interspersed in the story of William's life and successful career are short chapters about Rooks. Just as William has reached the most successful and happiness the Rooks return and they have not forgotten the death.

Good Fortune turns bad. Family and friends die. Business becomes an obsession for William as the story eerily builds to it's dramatic last scene.

Well Done!!!

from Wall Street Journal Re: Jane Austin Project

Bookshelf

Fiction Chronicle: Reloading the Canon

New takes on Austen, Dickens and Emily Brontë.

By

Sam Sacks

Nov. 15, 2013 4:32 p.m. ET

No book series could be both so unnecessary and yet so inevitable as the "Austen Project," which, beginning with Joanna Trollope's "Sense & Sensibility" (Harper, 362 pages, $25.99), will bring out "reimaginings" of Jane Austen's six canonical novels. Why does Ms. Trollope need such a fancy imprimatur? Writers have been exhaustively reimagining Austen's fictional worlds for years in an unstoppered gush of adaptations, prequels, sequels, modernizations and alternate narratives. Her characters have starred in board books for babies and fan-fiction erotica. Her settings have been the site of zombie invasions and murder mysteries (including by eminences like P.D. James). And this doesn't even take into account the cottage industry of Austen-themed self-help books, dating manuals, travelogues, recipe collections and social-science monographs—or the critical studies that try vainly to explicate the international infatuation.

Amid such a flourishing garden, Ms. Trollope's "contemporary retelling" is a rather drab shoot. Just as the title is unchanged (save for the ampersand—some kind of nod to modern times?), the characters keep the original names and play out an identical drama: Thoughtful and guarded Elinor Dashwood and her impulsive sister, Marianne, fall in love with compromised men, console each other when their hearts are broken and are finally rewarded with happy endings.

MIchael Witte

Ms. Trollope's present-day updating offers novelties like text-messaging and YouTube scandals, as well as the frisson of seeing Elinor utter mild profanities. But the writing isn't so much modernized as simplified, like those Shakespeare editions for grade-schoolers that provide colloquial "translations" on facing pages. Egged on by her rakish suitor, John Willoughby, Marianne in Austen's original cruelly gibes at her principled but unglamorous admirer, Col. Brandon, saying: "Add to which, that he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice no expression." In Ms. Trollope's version this becomes: "He's not a fruitcake. He's just very, very dull."

The book's halfhearted rendering seems ominous for the series as a whole. However absurd the profusion of Austen homages may have become, most of the adapters have been genuine Janeites, whose zeal infused even the silliest spinoffs with charm and personality. With the Austen Project, a spontaneous movement looks to have become officially franchised. This puts it in league with recent cynical estate-commissioned sequels such as William Boyd's 007 novel, "Solo," or Sebastian Faulks's Wodehouse pastiche, "Jeeves and the Wedding Bells," about which the best you can usually say is that they don't manage to spoil your enjoyment of the original.

It would be a pity if the taint of commercialization stopped readers from picking up Jo Baker's intelligent and elegantly written "Pride and Prejudice" adaptation, "Longbourn" (Knopf, 331 pages, $25.95). Ms. Baker's novel is about the Bennet family's household staff—Longbourn is the family home—particularly a housemaid named Sarah, whose love affair with a newly arrived servant takes place simultaneously against Elizabeth's courtship and marriage.

Through the brief quotations from "Pride and Prejudice" that open each chapter, Ms. Baker makes it clear that maids, cooks and footmen are omnipresent in the classic and yet are taken for granted not only by the Bennets but by Austen herself. From the point of view of their overworked help, even Austen's most lovable heroines cannot escape appearing cosseted and self-regarding (more heretically, "Mr. B." is implicated in a paternity scandal). Ms. Baker at times belabors the quotidian unpleasantness whitewashed in Regency romances—we regularly find Sarah rinsing soiled linens or emptying chamber pots. But the emotional imbalance between upstairs and downstairs is affecting. Darcy, in his famous declaration to Elizabeth, called love a force that left him "properly humbled." But to Sarah, who has had humbling enough for a lifetime, it's the distant promise of fulfillment and self-worth.

Her elusive interest, an enigmatic ex-soldier named James Smith, widens the perspective of the story even further. Although the visiting militia in "Pride and Prejudice" exists purely to tantalize the foolish younger Bennet daughters, Ms. Baker reminds us that they were veterans of ugly battles in the era of Napoleon. To James, the cozy world of the Bennet family is marked by an "innocence as deep and dangerous as a quarry-pit." "Longbourn" reveals these messy backdrops while still, in fitting tribute, inventing a touching love story of its own.

Ronald Frame's "Havisham" (Picador, 357 pages, $26) is the kind of adaptation that expands on the story of one of a classic's peripheral characters, an immensely popular form that includes books like Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" (about the first marriage of Mr. Rochester from "Jane Eyre") from 1966 and Geraldine Brooks's "March" (about the father of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women"), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Here Mr. Frame fills the gaps in the life of Catherine Havisham, the duplicitous benefactress who first appeared in "Great Expectations" as an old crone wearing a wedding dress and grimly bragging of a broken heart.

In Dickens's novel, Abel Magwitch explains most of Miss Havisham's circumstances, so there aren't many gaps that need filling. Raised the stuck-up daughter of a wealthy brewer, she fell in love with the roguish Charles Compeyson. But after Compeyson scams and jilts her, she becomes a half-mad shut-in, keeping company only with her ward, Estella, the abandoned child of a felon.

Mr. Frame adds a few curlicues to the tale, having Miss Havisham constantly quote from Virgil's "Aeneid," especially the verses about the spurned queen, Dido. Allusions to Dickens are similarly cute. Late in the novel, when Pip begins to visit, she remarks on his humility: "This boy had no such expectations." The breathless, operatic nature of the writing ("Anything. He might ask anything of me and I'd do it. All for love.") is a reminder that much of Dickens's brilliance was in caricature. His side characters don't fare well when given center stage.

Minae Mizumura's "A True Novel" (Other Press, 854 pages, $29.95) is a fascinating example of a cross-cultural adaptation. In one of the sizable passages of meta-commentary that frame the narrative, the author explains that the rewriting of Western novels has been "a central project in the modern literary history of Japan." Here she tells a story that is a mix of "Wuthering Heights" and "The Great Gatsby."

It centers on the magnetic Taro Azuma, recounting his bumpy rise in postwar Japan. In the highlands of Karuizawa (since converted to a popular resort town), the orphan Taro is taken in by a family of servants and supported by the aristocratic Saegusa clan. A perpetual outsider because of his low rank and half-Manchurian bloodline, he has no friends except Yoko, the sickly daughter of his employers. But though the two are in love, Yoko rejects Taro for a husband with better prospects. The spurned youth moves to Long Island and works his way up from chauffeur to "the most successful Japanese businessman in America." Despite his wealth, he moves back to the decaying cottage of his childhood, intent on reclaiming Yoko.

Ms. Mizumura's writing, smoothly translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, doesn't have anything close to the pitched intensity of Emily Brontë's, though her depiction of Taro contains elements of Heathcliff's consuming resentment: "His youth was no longer fresh and vigorous," she writes of Taro when Yoko throws him over, "but had settled like a thick sediment, with a stale smell to it." When, years later, Taro tries to lure a married Yoko to live with him in a mansion on Long Island's north shore built early in the 20th century by an "American nouveau riche," he summons the restless apparition of Jay Gatsby. Still, in many ways Taro seems more representative than specific, a means of tracing the changing fortunes in Japan after World War II, particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the chaotic ascendance of new money.

Adding to the broad-canvas effect is the book's peculiar nested format. The narrator is Ms. Mizumura (or a character by that name), who has heard the story from a traveler to Karuizawa who heard it from Taro's housekeeper. This convoluted structure allows the author to present the events that unfold as though they were a real-life chronicle of obsession and tragedy that marvelously takes the shape of great literature. "A True Novel" suggests that it isn't only writers who are influenced by timeless novels but also the forces of history itself.

There's no problem a library card can't solve? I wonder.

"See, we love each other. We just don't like each other very much."

The Andreas sisters were raised on books - their family motto might as well be, 'There's no problem a library card can't solve.'
Their father, a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespearean studies, named them after three of the Bard's most famous characters: Rose (Rosalind - As You Like It), Bean (Bianca - The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia - King Lear), but they have inherited those characters' failures along with their strengths.
Now the sisters have returned home to the small college town where they grew up - partly because their mother is ill, but mostly because their lives are falling apart and they don't know where to go next.
Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiance in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she's thought she could. Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become. And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it's finally time for her to grow up.
The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.

Pratt Library Fan Wrote a Good Book!

New Title Radar, Media Hits, Week of Oct. 28

The Cartographer of No Man’s Land, P.S. Duffy, (Norton/Liveright)

First novelist P.S, Duffy was so delighted that her book was picked for the LibraryReads November list, that she sent a special note to librarians (Norton’s Library Marketing Manager Golda Rademacher notes that there are no more print ARCs, but you can still request digital ARCs):

I’m so proud that The Cartographer of No Man’s Land was chosen for the November LibraryReads program and so very grateful for the early support it’s received from librarians around the country.  On a local level, were it not for the Canadian source materials I received through international interlibrary loan at the Rochester Pubic Library here in Minnesota, it would have been difficult to conduct the research needed to write Cartographer. 

But my gratitude extends back further—to childhood and the countless times I heard these words from a librarian: “Well, if you liked that book, you might like this one …” What power those recommendations had, matched only by the heady thump-thump as my books were stamped and I marched off with newfound treasure. Upon entering the massive Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore for the first time when I was eight, my father leaned down and repeated Mr. Pratt’s decree that the library would be for “rich and poor without distinction of race or color.” It was 1956, and those words meant a great deal. They still do. The stamps and card catalogues are gone. Keeping up with the times, there are computers, online services, the new “e-library,” and books in multiple formats. But librarians have not changed. They’re still there generating new and vibrant programs, encouraging readers, creating new ones—and recommending books. I’m not only proud, I am honored to be on their list.

- See more at: http://www.earlyword.com/#sthash.elXnPatt.PDF

 

How Bezos Got EVERYTHING(Amazon has Everything)

How Bezos Got EVERYTHING

Business profiles can be deadly dull, but Amazon is not a typical story.

E Squared (Pam Grout)

This book is a bit of a stretch for me. It has been high on Amazon's best seller list for a long time. My first look a the book reminded me of the best seller "The Secret" and "The Law of Attraction".  The author writes very casually and simply. She has created these nine experiments to explore the existence of "an invisible energy force that is constantly available for our use and we haven't even explored it yet. "
Published by Hay House, following this book's suggestions does not require the reader to have any specific religion. The spiritual connection to "The Big Dude" does not come from any religious construct. Grout's reasons that there are two elements of the word: matter and energy. Matter is simple energy in a restive state. We are all actually part of the energy around us. We can use this energy to attract good things to us. Our minds and our thoughts are all the tools we need to connect to the energy force that can change our lives. The experiments are very simple, written in plain English. The interpretation of the results are somewhat subjective. For example, Grout describes the results of the book's first experiment intended to connect to the energy force. For one person there was a surprise check in the mail, for another a beautiful smile from a two year old. Some smile are worth a million bucks, but when these answers are equally true, we are not dealing with hard science.

Mr Wuffles' story - this sounds great

WSJ Reviewer is Dead Right about Gladwell's Books in general

I appreciated the way this reviewer summed up the problem with Gladwell perfectly.

This flaw permeates Mr. Gladwell's writings: He excels at telling just-so stories and cherry-picking science to back them. In "The Tipping Point" (2000), he enthused about a study that showed facial expressions to be such powerful subliminal persuaders that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings made people vote for Ronald Reagan in 1984 just by smiling more when he reported on him than when he reported on his opponent, Walter Mondale. In "Blink" (2005), Mr. Gladwell wrote that a psychologist with a "love lab" could watch married couples interact for just 15 minutes and predict with shocking accuracy whether they would divorce within 15 years. In neither case was there rigorous evidence for such claims.  

Book Review: 'David and Goliath' by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell too often presents as proven laws what are just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior.

By
• CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS

David Boies is the super-lawyer who represented IBM against the U.S. government, the U.S. government against Microsoft, Al Gore against George W. Bush and gay marriage against California's Proposition 8. A man at the top of his profession, presiding over a firm of 200 lawyers, he would seem to be a metaphorical Goliath. But Malcolm Gladwell sees this literal David as a figurative David too, because Mr. Boies came from humble origins and faced mighty obstacles to success.
We learn in Mr. Gladwell's "David and Goliath" that Mr. Boies grew up in rural Illinois, where he was an indifferent student. After he graduated high school, he worked construction. He went to college mainly because his wife encouraged him to. But the small university he attended near Los Angeles happened to have one of the country's premier debate programs. Mr. Boies traveled more than 20,000 miles to participate in debate tournaments. He left college early to start law school at Northwestern, became editor in chief of its law review and transferred to Yale, where he received his law degree.
One of Mr. Gladwell's best sellers, "Outliers" (2008), was about how outsize success results from arbitrary advantages and disciplined practice. Bill Gates was lucky enough to have a computer terminal in his high school when personal computers didn't yet exist; the Beatles laboriously honed their craft in Germany before hitting the London scene. So is the story of David Boies just another case like these—of a guy who stumbled into a rigorous debate program that inculcated the skills and provided the training he would need to out-argue his law-school peers and reach the top?

Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy / The Bridgeman Art Library

TOO SMALL TO FAIL: 'David With the Head of Goliath' (1610) by Caravaggio.

David and Goliath

By Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown, 305 pages, $29

Not in this book. The overarching thesis of "David and Goliath" is that for the strong, "the same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness," whereas for the weak, "the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty." According to Mr. Gladwell, the secret of Mr. Boies's greatness is neither luck nor training. Rather, he got where he did because he was dyslexic.
You read that right. In a section on what Mr. Gladwell calls "the theory of desirable difficulty," he asks: "You wouldn't wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you?" You might if you were aware that Mr. Boies himself attributes his success to his dyslexia, as do Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, and Brian Grazer, the Hollywood megaproducer. Examples like these are the main source of evidence Mr. Gladwell marshals for the claim that dyslexia might actually be a desirable trait. Difficulty reading is said to have forced Mr. Boies to compensate by developing skills of observation and memory, which he exploited in the courtroom. It's an uplifting story; what seems on the surface to be just a disability turns out, on deeper examination, to be an impetus for hard work and against-all-odds triumph.
Mr. Gladwell enjoys a reputation for translating social science into actionable insights. But the data behind the surprising dyslexia claim is awfully slim. He notes in passing that a 2009 survey found a much higher incidence of dyslexia in entrepreneurs than in corporate managers. But this study involved only 102 self-reported dyslexic entrepreneurs, most of whom probably had careers nothing like those of Mr. Boies or his fellow highfliers. Later Mr. Gladwell mentions that dyslexics are also overrepresented in prisons—a point that would appear to vitiate his argument. He addresses the contradiction by suggesting that while no person should want to be dyslexic, "we as a society need people" with serious disadvantages to exist, for we all benefit from the over-achievement that supposedly results. But even if dyslexia could be shown to cause entrepreneurship, the economic analysis that would justify a claim of its social worth is daunting, and Mr. Gladwell doesn't attempt it.
To make his point about the general benefits of difficulty, Mr. Gladwell refers to a 2007 experiment in which people were given three mathematical reasoning problems to solve. One group was randomly assigned to read the problems in a clear typeface like the one you are reading now; the other had to read them in a more difficult light-gray italic print. The latter group scored 29% higher, suggesting that making things harder improves cognitive performance. It's an impressive result on the surface, but less so if you dig a bit deeper.
First, the study involved just 40 people, or 20 per typeface—a fact Mr. Gladwell fails to mention. That's a very small sample on which to hang a big argument. Second, they were all Princeton University students, an elite group of problem-solvers. Such matters wouldn't matter if the experiment had been repeated with larger samples that are more representative of the general public and had yielded the same results. But Mr. Gladwell doesn't tell readers that when other researchers tried just that, testing nearly 300 people at a Canadian public university, they could not replicate the original effect. Perhaps he didn't know about this, but anyone who has followed recent developments in social science should know that small studies with startling effects must be viewed skeptically until their results are verified on a broader scale. They might hold up, but there is a good chance they will turn out to be spurious.
This flaw permeates Mr. Gladwell's writings: He excels at telling just-so stories and cherry-picking science to back them. In "The Tipping Point" (2000), he enthused about a study that showed facial expressions to be such powerful subliminal persuaders that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings made people vote for Ronald Reagan in 1984 just by smiling more when he reported on him than when he reported on his opponent, Walter Mondale. In "Blink" (2005), Mr. Gladwell wrote that a psychologist with a "love lab" could watch married couples interact for just 15 minutes and predict with shocking accuracy whether they would divorce within 15 years. In neither case was there rigorous evidence for such claims.
But what about those dyslexic business titans? With all respect to Messrs. Boies, Cohn and Grazer, successful people are not the best witnesses in the cases of their own success. How can Mr. Boies, or anyone else, know that dyslexia, rather than rigorous debate training, was the true cause of his legal triumphs? His parents were both teachers, and could have instilled a love of studying and learning. He also had high SAT scores, which indicate intelligence and an ability to focus. Maybe his memory was strong before he realized he had trouble reading. Perhaps it's a combination of all these factors, plus some luck. Incidentally, Mr. Boies's SAT scores and debate training aren't mentioned in "David and Goliath." I learned about them from his 2004 memoir, "Courting Justice."
In Mr. Cohn's case, dyslexia is said to have made him willing to take risks to get his first job in finance, as an options trader. Suppose he weren't dyslexic—isn't it likely that he would have still been a bit of a risk-taker? I know of no scientific evidence for a correlation between risk-taking and reading difficulty, and even if there were one, taking risks might just as well lead to bad outcomes (like those prison sentences) as to good ones.
A theorem of mathematics implies that in the absence of friction, any knot, no matter how complicated, can be undone by pulling on one end of the string. The causes of success in the real world are nothing like this: Resistance abounds, and things are so tangled up that it is virtually impossible to sort them out. Mr. Gladwell does no work to try to loosen the threads. Instead he picks one and, armed with the power of hindsight, just keeps yanking on it. Why are the Impressionist painters renowned today? Because they set up their own exhibitions to gain greater visibility in the 19th-century Paris art scene. "David and Goliath" discusses no other possibilities. Why did crime go down in Brownsville, Brooklyn over the past decade? Because the local police worked hard to increase their legitimacy in the minds of the community members. Nothing else is seriously considered.
None of this is to say that Mr. Gladwell has lost his gift for telling stories, or that his stories are unimportant. On the contrary, in "David and Goliath" readers will travel with colorful characters who overcame great difficulties and learn fascinating facts about the Battle of Britain, cancer medicine and the struggle for civil rights, to name just a few more topics upon which Mr. Gladwell's wide-ranging narrative touches. This is an entertaining book. But it teaches little of general import, for the morals of the stories it tells lack solid foundations in evidence and logic.
One of the longest chapters addresses the question of how high-school students choose colleges. The protagonist is a woman with the pseudonym of Caroline Sacks, who was at the top of her class in high school and had loved science ever since she drew pictures of insects as a child. She was admitted to Brown University and the University of Maryland; she went to Brown, her first choice of all the colleges she visited, with the goal of a science degree.
Ms. Sacks ran into trouble early on in her science courses and hit a wall in organic chemistry. There were students in her classes who seemed to effortlessly grasp concepts she struggled with, and she got discouragingly low grades. She switched her major and looks back with regret, saying that if she'd gone to Maryland, "I'd still be in science."
In this conclusion she may be right. Mr. Gladwell reports data showing that, no matter what kind of college students attend, those who start a science major in the top third of the ability range of students at their own college (judged by their SAT scores) are much more likely to graduate with a science degree than those in the bottom third—the odds are about 55% versus 15%.
This is a classic "fish and ponds" problem. Being the Little Fish in the Big Pond can be daunting. "It's the Little Pond that maximizes your chances to do whatever you want," Mr. Gladwell concludes. Ms. Sacks should have gone to Maryland instead of Brown—she would have been a Big Fish, avoided discouraging competition and stayed in science.
This argument exemplifies one of Mr. Gladwell's stock maneuvers. We might call it "the fallacy of the unexamined premise." He starts this discussion by saying that "a science degree is just about the most valuable asset a young person can have in the modern economy." And if you would be a weak student at an elite university or a strong student at a lower-ranked school, the literature says that you are more likely to get that science degree at the lower-ranked school. Therefore you should ignore conventional wisdom and pick the lower-ranked school over the higher one.
The problems here are many: Degrees from different kinds of schools are not assets of identical value, as Mr. Gladwell baldly implies when he writes that students at Harvard University and at a mid-ranked liberal-arts college are "studying the same textbooks and wrestling with the same concepts and trying to master the same problem sets." As anyone with experience at both sorts of institutions knows, this is false. All of the things that Mr. Gladwell says are the same are in fact different, and the market knows this. To be sure, not every Ivy League science graduate is a genius, and many will be outperformed in science jobs and careers by the graduates of state universities and small colleges. But on average, an employer should bet on the Ivy Leaguer.
As for Ms. Sacks, why should she have lowered her sights only as far as Maryland? Even there she might have struggled. A science degree would have been hers even more surely if she had gone to her local community college, where she had already gotten a couple of As in courses she took during high school. But would she have learned as much? And would that degree have much real value?
Perhaps tough competition gives students a more realistic view of their own strengths and weaknesses. An accurate sense of one's own ability could help the process of acquiring expertise. I loved computer programming in high school, so I majored in computer science in college, but by graduation it was clear that I was no standout. Accepting that fact freed me to switch to psychology, where I have had some success. Finding your skills may trump following your passion.
Indeed, Mr. Gladwell never really explains why being a small fish is an "undesirable difficulty," rather than the kind of desirable difficulty like dyslexia that led David Boies to greatness. Shouldn't Caroline Sacks be on her way to a Nobel Prize by now? Aside from the end result—Mr. Boies won, Ms. Sacks lost—we have no guide to which difficulties are desirable and which are not. Losing a parent at an early age is a desirable difficulty because it is common among eminent achievers in a variety of fields, argues Mr. Gladwell at one point. But in later criticizing California's infamous three-strikes law for its devastating effects on families, he says that "for a child, losing a father to prison is an undesirable difficulty." The idea that difficulty is good when it helps you and bad when it doesn't is no great insight.
In a recent interview, Mr. Gladwell suggested that the hidden weakness of "Goliath" enterprises is their tendency to assume that the strategy that made them great will keep them great. But there are prominent examples of companies that failed after not changing direction (Blockbuster and Kodak) as well as ones that succeeded (Apple deciding to stick with a proprietary operating system rather than shift to Windows). There is no prospective way to know which is right, despite what legions of business gurus say. Sticking with what has worked is far from irrational; indeed, it is the perfect strategy right up until it isn't.
One thing "David and Goliath" shows is that Mr. Gladwell has not changed his own strategy, despite serious criticism of his prior work. What he presents are mostly just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior, but what his publisher sells them as, and what his readers may incorrectly take them for, are lawful, causal rules that explain how the world really works. Mr. Gladwell should acknowledge when he is speculating or working with thin evidentiary soup. Yet far from abandoning his hand or even standing pat, Mr. Gladwell has doubled down. This will surely bring more success to a Goliath of nonfiction writing, but not to his readers.
—Mr. Chabris is a psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and the co-author of "The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us."

A version of this article appeared September 28, 2013, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Goliath of Nonfiction.

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Heart and Soul (Maeve Binchy)

Maeve Binchy(1940-2012) always wrote cheerful novels set in and around Dublin. Her novels were like a series of short stories woven together carefully and usually coming to a cheerful optimistic ending.I enjoyed her 2013 title: A Week In Winter.
Sadly it will be her last novel.
Heart and Soul is a good example of  her signature style. I enjoyed reading this gem that I missed reading before. I always recommend Binchy to readers looking for a cheerful book, but a romance exactly.

Hunting Season (Mirta Ojita)

  Librarians help an immigrant community get access to resources and set in motion a struggle between two communities.
This had unexpected appeal for my libertarian friends. Ojita steps far away
from true crime and makes headline issues real to readers.
Not a bad read.

The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higashida)

 Choosing to write this book in Q+A format was an excellent idea.
The book gives answers to many of those awkward questions that polite people would never  ask directly.

The answers from a 13 yr old boy who has autism are honest and insightful. Along with Temple Grandin, this young man will change how we understand autistic people where ever we meet them. 

From the book:

Q24. Would you like to be normal?

... I have learned that every human being, with or without disabilities, needs to strive to do their best, and by striving for happiness you will arrive at happiness.

... But for as long as we can learn to love ourselves, I'm not sure how much it matters if we are normal or autistic.

My LIfe in Middlemarch (Rebecca Mead)

 This book is remarkable. I picked it up thinking - "Middlemarch -Yawn!" Mead makes the book  more interesting than my memory of the book ever was. I was drawn in by the author's love for the victorian classic original. She weaves her own life  into the story, bringing out the connections that make Middlemarch a classic story.  There is no mistaking this for Lit. Crit. for English 101. I will certainly recommend this to readers interested in essays and to those reading classics.

 I also sent this along to a journalism major at UMCP with a strong recommendation to read it and pass the recommendation  along.

Two Old Med Books

An Unsettled Mind  by  Kay Jamison and Brilliant Madness by Patty Duke are both classic older books about patients dealing with Manic Depressive Disorder [now called Bi-Polar disorder].  
I read them recently, because they have been re-released despite their dated medical information.

Both books describe the challenge of leading a normal life with a major mental health problem. Ms. Jamison is a psychologist who is very straight forward about how her illness effects her. Ms. Duke's narrative is interspersed with material from her co-author who is a psychologist. The medical material covers personality types, symptoms of manic depression, treatment and outcomes in easy to understand terms.
Both women are wonderful creative and intelligent personalities. In the manic phase they are energetic and productive until the mania goes over the edge into madness. The manias are addictive highs. Before the crash, they feel there is nothing they can't do.

After the mania dissolves into a loss of touch with reality, they frequently crash to a horrifying low. Friends and family are steady supports, but the up and down nature of the illness strains support systems. Both authors intend their works to demonstrate that with proper medical attention, and consitient use of the Litium- a very strong and powerful psycho-active drug, patients can lead valuable normal lives.

In Unsettled Mind, patients are counselled not to let people use words such as whacko, nuts, or squirrelly to label them. Manic episodes can be the cause of very abnormal behavior.  Re establishing social connections after such an episode can be hard. Through education about the disease and how it works, both the patient and their social circle can create a better environment that supports good mental health.


 In modern times, the disorder is called Bipolar Disorder and there are a range of meds which can be used to address the problem.

Change or Die By Alan Deutschman

Change or Die is a shock of a  title. The author even apologizes for the dramatic headline. Why? Because Facts, Fear and Force do not cause long term changes. They Fail. True change comes from The three R's. Relate, Repeat, Reframe. Relate means you should seek now relationships to inspire change. Repeat mans you should learn new behaviors and practice them. Reframe means you should use your new connections to support your new behaviors.

This seems to work for personal change, but how does this play out in the work environment?  

Happy Money The Science of Smarter Spending/ Elizabeth Dunn Michael Norton

Reading this book is the equivalent of reading a digest of Psych Lite Magazines.

The study of Happiness has developed a large body of literature. The bibliography of this book is brimming with articles (URLs included) from minor journals, newspapers and magazines. Frequently the authors cite themselves.

 The thesis of the book starts with the  commonly held belief that having more money does not bring happiness. The authors' research suggests that how one spends money can create more happiness. Five key principles are proposed: Buy Experiences, Make it a Treat, Buy Time, Pay now- Consume later, Invest in Others.

Buy experiences seems to be a sound suggestion. We grow accustomed to material possessions, or lose interest in them. Experiences such as novel travel opportunities and even smaller experiences such as  dinner with friends have a longer happiness value than material goods.

Make it a treat proposes that it is better to have expensive items as an occasional treat. They retain the happiness boost if they are not everyday purchases. The example of seasonal specials used by fast food chains rings true.

Buy Time is a proposal that one should buy things that free up your time from mundane, unenjoyable things. The example? Buy a roomba and stop vacuuming.  From my personal life I would offer : hire someone to do the lawn.

Pay now, Consume later is interesting. If you pay for your vacation in advance, you will feel like it's all free. In addition your happiness will be boosted by pleasant anticipation of the event. Could work.

Invest in Others proposes that by helping others -- giving money or time, or both -- will make the giver feel happier and wealthier. They state that giving time to help another makes you feel that you have more time.

The key idea proposed seem reasonable and have been proposed elsewhere. 

The core ideas of this book might work as a long journal article. As a book there are problems. The research relies too heavily on research projects involving "students" probably students at Harvard. Possibly undergrads recruited by grad students as part of research class. The sample results of one research project  highlights my concern about bias. When asked to name four material purchases and four experience purchases, all three sample results included extensive travel among the experiences and luxury goods among the material purchases. In other words, the results indicate the subjects have economic resources at their disposal.

Students as a rule are not spending their own money. Harvard students tend to come from comfortable material backgrounds. Can they really be a legitimate model for questions involving money for a wide sample of people?

The subjects derived a  great deal of long term happiness from travel. Might a set of subjects from a different economic background derive long term happiness from material things -- a warm coat in a Boston winter might bring more joy than a concert with friends?

The research on all the Key points has the same problem. The examples and anecdotes reflect a very wealthy educated population was studied. Examples drawn from real life feature the happy destination wedding of one author. The X- Canadian road trip taken by the authors and friends, an Hawaiian vacation taken by one of the authors. These are experiences that are limited to a small group of people with time and disposable income.  One study that was not done on "students" proposed that 600 respondents represented a representative sample of the WORLD.  Nice try. Not Valid.

The discussion of spending on things that save you time was cluttered with an antique diatribe against watching TV. Does anyone do that anymore?  No discussion of Video games, Youtube, smartphones, email, devices in general. The authors think TV is eating up our time.

In the last chapter "Invest in Others", the authors make a nice pitch for  the benefits of donating money to charities and worthy causes. They specifically mention a website called DonorsChoose.org. Teachers post requests for help to buy classroom materials. Donors can choose their project and see the positive impact their donation will have on the students. This sounds like a very nice way to donate small amounts of money and make a difference in children's lives. There are other projects which do similar matching between donors and recipients.

When the authors propose to know that the national  ratio of money spent on themselves vs. money donated to others was greater than 10 t0 1, their credibility falters. They say this is a terrible thing. Americans are not generous enough! The remarks in this chapter are best taken as feel good filler to puff this work out to book length. I need to note: 1) Tithing is a religious ideal, not a law. 2) People who have responsibilities nearly equal to their incomes can not be expected to give 10% of their income away. 3) Not all giving is in money. In kind donations don't show up in this ratio. 

In the same chapter the authors  make a childish argument in favor of wealth redistribution. A poll of Americans indicated that we Americans favor some disparity of income, but would prefer that the poor have more resources. Well, yes, we also want expensive  government services AND low taxes. It is not a real plan of action. The authors seem to be unaware of the real life implications of their filler here. Are they really supporting forced wealth redistribution? No- I think they just liked the idealistic vibe of what they wrote.

The best take away from this book is that buying experiences might make you happier than adding non essential material possessions to your life. Might/Maybe/Depends

Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger by Harbison

 The title was about the wittiest thing in the book.

Imagine if Austen's "Emma" had to choose between two bothers one very sensible and quiet, the other very emotional and dramatic. Add the now typical heroine's gay best friend.
That's the plot in a nutshell.

This story is very readable. The tone is light and the pace moves a long fairly quickly. There are some quirky characters like the gay best friend. The brothers themselves are nicely developed characters.

The author seems to be aiming at the 'new adult' female reader who wants a light romance to read this summer.

Longbourn by Jo Baker (An Austen Related Novel)

Ms Baker gives us a fresh look at the events of the Austen novel Pride and Prejudice.  The novel uses Jane Austen's Longbourn, the Bennett Family home. The author  creates a new story told from the point of view of a maid of all work in  the Bennett household.
The narrator Sarah is Elizabeth's age. Like Elizabeth and all the Bennett girls, she is looking to the future and wondering what she will do with her life. She is an intelligent observer. Her detailed descriptions of the hard work she does taking care of the household contrasts dramatically with the work free life that the Bennett women live.
 Life among the servants of the household is impacted by the Bennett family, but the family and the staff act independently. The events of the classic novel are referred to as the  plot of Longbourn unfolds. For example, Elizabeth and Jane are invited to stay at Netherfield, the servants pack appropriate clothes, despite Mrs. Bennett's fancier choices.  Sarah laments Elizabeth's walks through the fields, because Sarah has to clean the mud off Elizabeth's petticoats. Mr. Wickham brings trouble to servants as well as to the family. He targets the most vulnerable member of the staff, a young girl, to manipulate and exploit. Interestingly, Sarah observes that  Mr. Darcy and his class are so grand that their presence makes servants invisible.
Sarah is not resentful of the Bennett family, but she is not satisfied to be in service for all her life. The novel presents her with two suitors, both footmen. One is ambitious to be independent. He will leave his position and set up in trade as soon as his savings will allow. The other is handsome, moral, intelligent, kind and generous, but also secretive. Sarah evaluates her options and makes decisions about how she will spend her life.

Baker crafts a new tale in Austen's setting bringing new detail and a fresh point of view. She does not rewrite Austen. She expands the texture and depth of P&P, by providing more context for the story. This is the sort of homage to Austen that will keep P&P relevant and interesting to readers for years to come.

Austen Project to update classics

Joanna Trollope is one of six contemporary authors who are rewriting the books of Jane Austen for The Austen Project. Sense & Sensibility will be published in October (HarperFiction) 


 How? Why?
 Jane Austen's name should not be replaced on these classic tales. It's confuses new readers looking to discover Austen for the first time.

Many excellent authors have written fanfic related to Austen's work. PD James' Death Comes To Pemberly  was excellent. James created a fresh story using Austen's world and characters of course. It was an excellent expansion of a classic setting. The best of fanfic.

There are lots of modern tellings of the tale: Bride and Prejudice(Film) is one of my favorites.

Pop Quiz: Which Character is the satirized in the song: "No life, without wife"?

The Young Woman's Guide to Real Magic incorporates P&P in a modern fantasy tale. 

Amanda Knox and Dara Horn : A Lazy Summer Weekend

It was so hot this July 4th that I read two long books.

Amanda Knox  Waiting to Be Heard is a quick read.  Amanda was an American exhange student in Italy. During her first few months in Italy  she was accused of participating the brutal murder of her British apartment mate. The case unfolds from her point of view.
Amanda writes her side of the story in simple clear sentences. She makes the case for her innocence. The detailed account shows the Italian legal system to be plainly "un American".
Just after the book's release date, the Italian court overturned her acquittal.
I predict she will continue on to become a successful journalist.

A Guide to the Perplexed by Dara Horn is a complicated novel. There are two story lines one contemporary and one historical. The author is a master of weaving the stories together and developing two settings, two set of characters and one over arching theme. This book would be excellent to read with a Book club. It brings up many thoughtful questions.

Book Trailers IMHO Inferno by Dan Brown

 I went to publisher sites and watched random trailers. I searched google / youtube for specific trailers related to specific titles. My research turned up many different types of book related videos.

I especially liked book trailers with cool sound tracks. The 59 second trailer for the Rosie Project hit on the essential contrast between the central characters. It was upbeat and crisp.  Most viewers would know this was a romantic comedy with an OCD twist. The video is a great marketing tool.


I watched a book trailer for Dan Brown's Inferno in Swedish. The sound track was cool.  The text was in Swedish, but it didn't matter that I could not read it. The music and the images combined to catch the viewers attention.

I also liked leaving the book trailers at the publisher's site ( Simon and Schuster) to just run like a play list. I saw several presentations about books that I other wise would never have considered.

Book Trailer w-o speech

This is a book trailer that is based on reading the back cover of the book.

Book Trailer

Sybil Exposed By Debbie NAthan. The author puts her book in context. Her summary take away is very interesting.