EclectEcon

Nostalgia

Over the past few days, I have been reading The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I should have checked before I started it because based on the title, I was expecting a book about some Brit female detectives.

Was I ever wrong. It is a very touching novel about the life of a woman in Botswana who opened her own detective agency. The problems she solved as a detective were mostly straightforward, and the approach to solving them was quite systematic.

But the novel describes much about the evolution of society and the economy of Botswana and is fascinating. I'm glad I stumbled across it.

On rare occasions, the heroine engages in some nostalgia:

Mma Ramotswe was a realist, who inhabited the present, but one nostalgic thought she allowed herself, one indulgence, was to imagine her Daddy walking through the door and greeting her again, and smiling at her, and saying: “My Precious! You have done well! I am proud of you!” And she imagined driving him round Gaborone in her tiny white van and showing him the progress that had been made, and she smiled at the pride he would have felt. But she could not allow herself to think like this too often, for it ended in tears, for all that was passed, and for all the love that she had within her.

That really struck a chord with me. I spent a day, back in my early 30s, sitting at my desk, imagining I was talking with my father (who had died with I was 15). I imagined conversations about politics, life, relationships, goals, etc. I hadn't thought about that day until this past summer when I came across some of his letters written to my mother before they were married.

And now this passage brought it all back. I guess old(er) folks like to reminisce.

Ten Books

A Facebook friend nominated me to list 10 books that have stayed with me the longest or have changed me in some way. Feel free to list 10 yourselves on your own blogs or in the comments here, and consider this a nomination. I posted this list yesterday on Facebook, but here it is again with links.
1. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. This book probably did more than anything else to nudge me away from being a socialist toward being a libertarian.
2. Industrial Concentration: The New Learning by Goldschmidt, Mann, and Weston. The collection of papers in this volume pitted the east-coast interventionists against the Chicago-UCLA economists studying industrial organization. I'd been trained as a "Bainsian" by the former, but this book pushed me toward the Chicago/UCLA approach.
3. The Economic Way of Thinking. When I first saw this book in 1984, I fell in love with the approach and later had the opportunity to write the Canadian edition.
4. Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot. I read the entire collection in chronological during my first summer in grad school.
5. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I think this might have been the first novel I ever read on my own initiative.
6. Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe. Some of the best mystery stories ever written.
7. Summerhill by A. S. Neill. What a bizarre, intriguing approach to education and parenting. I loved it at the time. Not so much now.
8. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffen. As a young white man, this book gave me insights that guided me through much of the rest of my life.
9. The Economic Analysis of Law by Richard A. Posner. I reviewed the first edition of the book in the early 1970s and had my mind blown/altered on so many topics through his careful applications of economics. It is still my go-to book when teaching Economic Analysis of Law.
10a. I'm not sure this qualifies, but I have spent more time with this paperback than with most other books: the pocket score for Dvorak's New World Symphony.
10b. I'd be remiss in not mentioning Bill James' 1984  Baseball Abstract. It put me on the road toward Sabremetrics and becoming a baseball sportscaster.

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Bryan Caplan on Catcher in the RyePhoniness, Lies, Mendacity, et cetera

Bryan Caplan has some wonderful insights into the classic novel about youth and unhappiness, Catcher in the Rye [CITR].

1. Other than losing his brother Allie, Holden has no external problems.  He is a rich kid living in the most amazing city in the world.  Rather than appreciating his good fortune or trying to make the most of his bountiful opportunities, Holden seeks out fruitless conflict.  If you still doubt that happiness fundamentally reflects personality, not circumstances, CITR can teach you something.

2. Nothing on Holden's Five Factor personality googles.  I say he's high in Opennness, low in Conscientiousness, high in Extroversion, low in Agreeableness, and high in Neuroticism.

3. Although I was a teen-age misanthrope, anti-hero Holden Caulfield is more dysfunctional than I ever was.  My dream was for everyone I disliked to leave me alone.  Holden, in contrast, habitually seeks out the company of people he dislikes, then quarrels with them when they act as expected.

4. Even if Holden's enduring antipathy for "phonies" were justified, it's hard to see why the epithet applies to most of its targets....

Translation: ...  For Holden, the main symptom of phoniness is that someone appears to like something Holden doesn't.  But he never wonders, "Is it possible that other people sincerely like stuff I don't?"

5. If phonies are your biggest problem, your problems are none too serious.

6. You might think that only a navel-gazing New York intellectual could write CITR, but Salinger experienced far worse things than phonies.  He fought in the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge.  He entered a liberated concentration camp in April, 1945.  Yet strangely, the moral of CITR isn't that Holden's self-pity is shameful.

7. I doubt Salinger was being Straussian.  Like most of CITR's fans, he thought Holden has important things to teach us.  Yet the book's deepest and most important lesson is that Holden's thoughts are profoundly shallow and unimportant.  The Holdens of the world should stop talking and start listening, for they have little to teach and much to learn.

It is clearly time for me to reread Catcher in the Rye. I didn't much like the novel when I read it as a young adult, and Caplan's points help me understand why. Maybe it was just that I didn't much like Holden Caulfield and was disappointed in his whiny-ness and general dissatisfaction -- his phony criticisms of phoniness.

And yet I wonder if phoniness must have been an important issue for writers then (as if it isn't much of the time, I guess). Coincidentally, I'll be appearing as Charley (the neighbour) in Death of a Salesman in September.

I like the role. Charley seems to be one of the least phony characters in the play.

And these thoughts bring to mind the criticisms of phoniness and mendacity in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

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PJ O'Rourke Reflects on His Life and Aging

Ever since I read much of his work in The National Lampoon in the early 1970s, I have enjoyed the writings of PJ O'Rourke. He rarely disappointed me then, and that continues to be true.

So much of what he says in this interview [via Scoop] strikes a chord with me. I especially liked these snippets:

What has been your greatest disappointment?

My parents died much too young.

If your 20-year-old self could see you now, what would he think?

He wouldn’t notice me. I’d just be another old, hopeless square.

Life, out of 10: as inspired by Spinal Tap – “Turn it up to 11”

If you have never read anything by PJ O'Rourke, try his latest.

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We Need More Gubmnt to Reduce Cronyism Say What???

I just finished reading this piece by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek. It is a lengthy piece that takes on Piketty, the economist who argues for more gubmnt action to reduce inequality. What struck me most was this very insightful comment:

Piketty has a peculiarly strange “then a miracle occurs” step in his analysis.  He argues that one justification for powerful efforts to redistribute incomes and wealth more equally is that the rich are disproportionately likely to abuse power for their own greedy and socially destructive ends.  So what to do?  Answer: increase government’s power!  Qu’est-ce que c’est?!  [EE: this is French for WTF?] (Piketty is like too many economists: ignorant of public-choice.)

This attitude that Boudreaux identifies is far too common among the redistributionists. Essentially it says, "The gubmnt has created policies that favour cronies and promote inequality. But I  know what to do about it. Put me (and/or my friends) in charge and we'll do it right." And all the while this argument does nothing to include the real world of voter influences and public-choice economics: the sad, simple fact is that the more power gubmnt and politicians have over resources, the greater the incentive for individuals to try to influence gubmnt policy, politicians, and the behaviour of bureaucrats.

This is yet another example of Kip's Law:

“Every advocate of central planning always —  always — envisions himself as the central planner.”

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"The Delectable Lie" Wins Hoffer Prize

Several years ago, Salim Mansur published a book that challenges the holus bolus endorsement of multiculturalism. In fact, it refers to multiculturalism as The Delectable Lie.

The book, The Delectable Lie, was quite well-received by many people who knew about it. Current reviews on Amazon.com give it about 4 1/2 stars, pretty much in line with my own impression of the book.

For some reason, the major media didn't pay much attention the carefully reasoned volume. I suspect that most members of the major media didn't like his message, if they bothered to find out what it was.

Despite this notable lack of attention from the media, The Delectable Lie has been awarded the Eric Hoffer award. From the award's website,

Each year, the Eric Hoffer Award for books presents the Montaigne Medal to the most thought-provoking book(s). These are books that either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought. The Montaigne Medal is given in honor of the great French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who influenced people such as William Shakespeare, René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Eric Hoffer. This is an additional distinction beneath the Eric Hoffer Award umbrella.

Isn't it interesting that the panel of judges who made this decision to award the book are Americans, and that an American award was given to a book whose subject is of particular and immediate concern for Canadians.

It would be fitting if the Canadian media recognized this award. It would also be fitting if Salim Mansur were recognized for this accomplishment by The University of Western Ontario, where he teaches political science.

Salim is a classical, 19th-century-type liberal or what might these days be called a quasi-libertarian. Appropriately, he has agreed to run for a seat in the next provincial election for the Freedom Party of Ontario.

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A Beautiful (though horridly simplistic) Mind

I loved the movie, "A Beautiful Mind," starring Russell Crowe. However, I did not much care for its treatment of game theory or economics.

The movie showed Nash arguing that if everyone else hits on the blonde, he should hit on the brunette and he'd be more likely to get lucky. That is pretty simplistic; if everyone thinks the way he does, then everyone will hit on the brunette, and he will be more likely to get lucky with the blonde. Most likely a mixed strategy is called for in situations like this. Or better yet, wait to see what the others do.

And Peter Foster [via Jack] rightly attacks the movie's criticism of Adam Smith and "the invisible hand":

The violence done to Smith in A Beautiful Mind was just one in a long series of misinterpretations and attacks, which at least confirmed Smith’s continued iconic status. To rationalist intellectuals, Smith’s “natural order” has always seemed not merely implausible but downright objectionable, not to mention leaving them little room in which to exercise their own large brains and acute moral sentiments. ...

What sort of guidance does the hand provide? Friedrich Hayek gave perhaps the clearest explanation of its ministrations in his seminal article “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” Hayek pointed out that the issue in commerce wasn’t one of planning versus non-planning, but of who should do the planning, and at what level. He noted that everybody plans according to their own perspectives and desires. The sort of knowledge people use in such planning is not analogous to scientific knowledge. It is “knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place.” It cannot be known by others, much less in toto by any individual or group. It cannot be captured by statistics or fed into government economic plans.

The key question is how to utilize all this dispersed knowledge. That is what the market does, by providing a vast arena for promoting, judging and rewarding efficiency and innovation. This fact, wrote Hayek, is a “marvel” but an unacknowledged and underappreciated one. Not only is the market not “designed,” but those who participate in it “usually do not know why they are made to do what they do.” This, suggested Hayek, is a good thing. He quoted the Cambridge philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who had pointed out that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”

However, there is a downside to this unconscious aspect of the natural order. If you don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to understand or appreciate it, and you become more vulnerable to taking “thoughtful” actions — or pursuing policies — that might damage or destroy it.

The Get-A-Job Tree

Many of you may remember a sacharin-sweet book by Shel Silverstein, called "The Giving Tree". A few days ago, my older son (David Ricardo Palmer) posted this amusing variant of that book's cover on Facebook:

Seems a little less touching than The Giving Tree, but also a bit more realistic. Reminds me a bit of Pierre Trudeau's response to some protestors back in the 70s.

Tyrannophilia and Other Elected Monarchies

Frank Buckley has recently published (today?) The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. It explores the trend in modern democracies toward increasing monarchization of gubmnt. We elect leaders and gubmnts, but increasingly, with the use of "executive orders" [in the US] and the dominance of a Prime Minister in parliamentary gubmnts, we treat the head of gubmnt as a monarch. We grant the leader rights, powers, and privileges that go well beyond the civics-class types of checks and balances or separation of powers.

From his chapter, titled  "Tyannophilia":

Tyrants have gotten a bum rap. Oedipus... wasn't a bad ruler. Marrying his mother and killing his father was simply bad luck (Really bad luck.) In Greece's classical period, a tyrant was often a benign ruler who had risen to power with the support of the middle and lower classes, whom he thereafter protected against the aristocracy.

As little people, we love having a protector and benefactor. We cheer for someone who comes along and delivers us from the evils of the power-mongers who have oppressed us. And we happily bestow equal or more power on the newcomers, expecting them to look after us. And so we're willing to tolerate tyranny. Or, to be more precise, we are willing to create the conditions that lead to tyranny and centralized control.

George III did not hold all the cards. He could not ignore Parliament, and over time power shifted from him to the House of Commons, and to Bagehot's cabinet government. More recently, this has been overtaken by what I have labeled Crown government, with a much more powerful prime minister. So too, the former American Constitution, of a balanced separation of powers, has been overtaken by a Constitution of strong executive power, which I also see as a form of Crown government.

I have known Frank Buckley for several decades. We first met at the Canadian Law and Economics Association meetings. He was born in Canada and understands the parliamentary system. He now teaches law at George Mason University and understands the US-Congressional system.

His book is chock full of insight, along with considerable back-up data and references to substantiate his observations and insights. I was delighted that he asked me to look at an advance copy of the book.

 

 

I understand it, but too bad Frank misspelled "gubmnt".

Non-Readers: I'm Surprised the Number Is So Low

According to surveys reported in The Atlantic, 23% of the surveyed adults in the US did not read a single book last year.

Without question, the American bookworm is a rarer species than two or three decades ago, when we didn't enjoy today's abundance of highly distracting gadgets. In 1978, Gallup found that 42 percent of adults had read 11 books or more in the past year (13 percent said they'd read more than 50!).  Today, Pew finds that just 28 percent hit the 11 mark.

The article tries to downplay the influence of TV and the internet, but I don't see why. I know many, many young adults who don't read books. They read a lot, online, but they don't read books. Alas, in some instances, not even their assigned textbooks.

And given the wealth of material available for information and entertainment (and, yes, education) via other media, I will be surprised if the number who read books doesn't continue to decline.

Efficiency, Borrowing Items from the Lost & Found, and Theft

Last summer I wrote a short blog post about borrowing things like umbrellas or sweaters from the Lost & Found. I lamented that due to our socialization we feel reluctant to do this but instead we inventory these things for our own personal use.

I was not suggesting that people should borrow things from the Lost & Found, especially not given what appear to be the extant morality systems under which most of us operate. Doing so would at the very least seem bad form to most people.

And I certainly was not recommending that people just take things from the Lost & Found. But apparently at Heathrow Airport, nine employees decided that some of the items in the Lost & Found were sufficiently valuable or attractive that they should just take the items rather than let the loot go to auction for charity or [horrors!] be retrieved by the original owners [ht MA].

Nine members of staff at Heathrow Airport have been arrested on suspicion of stealing items from lost property, police have confirmed.

The suspects, six men and three women, are accused of being involved in 43 separate thefts, between May and September this year.

Apparently all nine of the suspects made bail the next day, but I have not been able to learn what has happened in any of the cases.

This news item leads me to think of a couple of things

• Envy is an important force in directing human action. I can readily imagine some employees at Heathrow justifying their actions with, "Well, it was just going to go to charity anyway, so I might as well have it." In fact, I can recall several incidents from my past when people took things from me that I had been planning to give away, using precisely that justification: "You were planning to give it away anyway...."
• If it were acceptable to borrow things from the Lost & Found (e.g. umbrellas or sweaters), how many "borrowed" items would be returned for others to use? One of the major problems with common-property goods (which, I guess, is what they would be) is that people try to possess them for their own use or over-exploit them. And do you think borrowers would be as careful with them or devote much to the maintenance of them? Examples abound showing that we tend not to.

Imagine: you lose an unlocked smartphone. I don't know about you, but even if I knew I wouldn't get it back, I would much rather it was sold at auction with the proceeds going to charity than that some airport employee take it.

Reading All the Great Books

I read a LOT. But most of what I read is news, opinion, essays, blogs, etc., all on the internet. I must spend at least a couple of hours each day reading things I come across or that have been sent to me by Jack, John, or Jonathan. I also spend quite a bit of time reading economics articles and blogs. And, I confess, I spend a fair amount of time on Facebook (that counts as reading, doesn't it?)

Other than the internet, I read a few ebooks now and then. Fiction. Generally spy or mystery novels. Maybe 20-30/year.

I don't like "great literature". I try to read it and find it boring. Maybe it's "great writing" or "great literature", but it puts me to sleep.

So here's my plan: I'm going to start trying to read the Wikipaedia summaries of the great literature that I cannot bring myself to read. Maybe this would be a good start: a list of short famous novels or novellas [ht Patsy]. Maybe I'll even finish a couple of the Wikipaedia entries.

So on the weekend I read the Wikipaedia entry for Camus' The Stranger. I actually read that book over 50 years ago, but I must say I had no idea then what that book was about. But back then, I wouldn't have understood the Coles Notes version either.

It looks as if this is plan might be okay.

Update: MA sent me this link to lists of books that I might consider working my way through.

What Is the Price Elasticity of Demand for Newly Published Books?

When books are newly published (almost always in hardcover editions), the sticker prices are quite high. Some retailers, such as Walmart, Costco, Chapters, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon discount these titles heavily, sometimes as much as 30-40%. They do this not because they love consumers, and not because they love book readers, but because they expect doing so will increase their overall profits.

In the process, these deep discounts mean that smaller bookstores with smaller volume and higher per-unit costs find it difficult to compete. Slowly the smaller bookstores that specialized in customer browsing and knowledgeable staff are being competed out of business.

Some people find this form of creative destruction sad. Others see it as a spur to innovation and new forms of growth. But simply put, the smaller bookstores are being out-competed because they are inefficient compared with the large firms that offer mega discounts. In part they are being out-competed because they offer a service (browsing and knowledge -- see this) for which they cannot effectively charge a price. But in part they just do not have the sales volume required to cover such discounting.

The gubmnt of Quebec is trying to forestall the tide of competition by prohibiting deep discounts on newly published books.

Specifically, retailers — online, digital and traditional — would not be allowed to offer discounts to Quebecers greater than 10 per cent on new books for the first nine months of their release.

Their goal is to protect the less efficient smaller bookstores. The effect, however, is to reduce the quantity demanded of new books in Quebec bookstores, large or small.

Unless Quebec can somehow interfere with the mails, people in Quebec can and will order new books from elsewhere. Also, sales of ebooks cannot easily be limited or controlled. And, of course, many people will wait out the 9-month period of the price controls and buy the book for a lower price later.

How big might these substitution effects be?

I'm expecting that sales of new books in Quebec will fall by roughly 20% during the first year after this law is imposed. Most of that drop in sales will occur at the big-box stores, of course, but I really doubt that smaller bookstores will have a noticeable increase in their own sales. Rather than leave the big-box or online retailers for the smaller, protected, stores, people will either buy the books at the big-box stores anyway, shop online, or defer their purchases.

The result will be that fewer new books will be sold in Quebec, especially to price-conscious consumers/readers. This sounds like a law designed to protect inefficient businesses, but it will not help them much, if at all, and meanwhile it will hurt consumers.

China's Great Shame: The Famine that Killed 36 Million People

It was a classic example of the failure of central planning.

There was an abundance of hubris by the planners, who believed they could do better than markets (sound familiar?).

There was an abundance of predictable bureaucratic behaviour in response to incentives as subordinates padded the numbers to satisfy their superiors (and out of fear for their lives if they didn't meet optimistic production quotas).

There was an abundance of force used to make peasants go along with the massive centralization that occurred (sound familiar?)

There was an abundance of stupidity (sound familiar?) as, for example, bureaucrats confiscated peasants' cooking implements to melt them down to make steel.

And there was an abundance of death: executions, murders, starvation, and cannibalism. Somewhere between 20 million and 36 million people died because of Mao's "Great Leap Forward".

I have been saving this piece from the NYTimes for over a year. It is a painful summary of the death and devastation that occurred from 1958 - 62. Some of the Amazon reviewers claim the author of Tombstone, which is summarize in the NYTimes piece, is lying, but for the most part it seems well-regarded and factual.

THIRTY-SIX million people in China, including my uncle, who raised me like a father, starved to death between 1958 and 1962, during the man-made calamity known as the Great Famine. In thousands of cases, desperately hungry people resorted to cannibalism.

The toll was more than twice the number of fallen in World War I, and about six times the number of Ukrainians starved by Stalin in 1932-33 or the number of Jews murdered by Hitler during World War II.

The horrors of life after central planners' decisions went awry are well-documented in many countries. Bureaucrats falsify numbers, higher-ups believe someone is hiding something, and those at the top set impossible goals, wanting to believe the padded numbers and biased information provided to them and dismissing anything contrary (sound familiar?).

At the same time, the higher-ups suffer little. The granaries are well-guarded, and the centralized crop is used to generate foreign exchange to fund larger projects.

How can people write about the evils of capitalism when there are so many horror stories about the evils of centralization in the 20th century? How can people write about the evils of capitalism when we see the failures of central planning in Venezuela, North Korea, or even in otherwise well-functioning markets?

Here's how: As one of my friends says, “Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.” This statement, known as Kip's Law, was first enunciated by Kip Esquire. Too bad he stopped blogging.

Sure, markets are not perfect. But we can look around and see how much better they are than centralization.

To read more about the tragedy in China, begin with the Wikipaedia entry "Great Leap Forward". It sets the death toll at between 18.5 and 42 million.

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Apple Does It to Me Again

According to several news releases, iOS7 will take over the swipe up and swipe down commands. Grrrr. From the Telegraph (via MA):

A new way to access search

The ability to search on the iPhone and iPad has been around for a while, however, iOS 7 will introduce a new way of accessing it.

Simply swiping down on the homescreen will open a search box and the keyboard, allowing you to search without having to swipe to a dedicated screen as in previous versions of the software.

Swipe up to close Apps

Like in previous versions of iOS, double clicking the home button at the bottom of the phone will show all of the Apps that are currently open.

Simply swipe up on the screen to close the app.

One of my favourite e-readers on my iPad is Stanza, and one of the many reasons I like it so much is that I can swipe up to brighten the screen and swipe down to dim the screen. 

iOS6 buggered things up for Stanza for awhile, and Stanza had to redo their app. And now Stanza will have to redo their app once again.

[and meanwhile, of course, Apple has still not addressed the segment of the market that would like a larger phone]

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith J. K. Rowling

I just finished reading The Cuckoo's Calling, written by J.K. Rowling under the nom de plume, Robert Galbraith. It was an okay read. It could have been better. I'd give it a three or four star rating out of five.

The plot of the novel was complex, which I considered a plus. It was also almost believable, which was also good. A super-model plunges to her death from a balcony and Cormoran Strike, the novel's hero, is hired by her brother to find the killer. The characters of the novel are all extreme in one way or another, and the plot requires many, many quirks of luck and timing to work, but it does work. It works well enough to have held my interest despite the turgid writing in far too many passages. 

In my personal taxonomy, there are two types of crime novels: (1) mysteries and (2) detective stories. The first category comprises the works of such authors as Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, and Ellery Queen; the second category includes Mickey Spillane, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, et al. Rex Stout's Nero Wolf novels fall more into category (1) than category (2).

The Cuckoo's Calling is mostly in category (2). The reader follows Cormoran Strike but doesn't quite know why the detective is doing what he is doing; we are left without some information, much of which he only guesses at until he can acquire some confirmation. But it is a good detective story.

I nearly didn't read past the first 50 pages or so, though. The reading is a hard slog, especially early in the novel. The writing reminds me of all those prissy assignments we had in high school English classes where we had to fluff things up by adding tonnes of description. Maybe Rowling was trying to describe the scene for whomever does the screenplay, but it was boooorrrrrriiinnngg. With a good edit to chop out all the drivel and meaningless, useless verbiage, The Cuckoo's Calling would be a solid 4 or 4.5 star airport novel. 

If you read it, don't be afraid to skip the verbiage. It adds nothing.

 

Disclaimer of sorts? Believe it or not, this is the first and only thing I have read by Rowling.

The Ghosts of Manhattan by Douglas Brunt phttt

Well, it worked yesterday. I closed up my computer and read Calico Joe. So I thought I'd give it another go today. I've had The Ghosts of Manhattan by Douglas Brunt sitting around for a couple of months; it was sent to me by someone wanting me to review it. 

I hated didn't much care for it.

A bright young man, without really knowing why, takes a job at Bear Stearns. By the time he is 35 years old, he is well into the life of alcohol abuse, cocaine, strippers, hookers, infidelity, and rulers: whose is longer, metaphorically speaking. That's what most of the book is about. It was shallow, sensationalist, and trite, despite the pangs of conscience felt by the hero, Nick Farmer. At rare instances, it has some fakey cloak-and-dagger stuff about the run-up to the Bear Stearns melt-down in 2007, and that is what I had hoped to enjoy, but even that was disappointingly weak. 

I don't know what it was, but from the beginning there was something about the writing style that made it hard for me to concentrate on The Ghosts.  As I read it, I was reminded of my dislike of The Bonfire of the Vanities, which I gave away after having read only the first third or so. At least Bonfire was well-written.

Furthermore, maybe it's just me, but I don't really enjoy reading about people spiraling to destruction, as was the case in Bonfire. At least in Ghosts, there appears to be some hope for the man. 

If you really want read about life on Wall Street, and if you want what you read to be gripping and well-written, go back to Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, which I still highly recommend.  I'd give The Ghosts of Manhattan a miss.

I have no idea what the readers who gave it more than one star saw in this novel. I pretty much agreed with the Amazon reviews (which I read AFTER I read the book) that gave it one or two stars.

 

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Calico Joe by John Grisham

Calico Joe by John Grisham

Today I decided not to spend every waking moment on my computer. I shut it down to read Calico Joe by John Grisham, and I'm glad I did. I have plenty of e-books, and I like reading books on my phone or on my iPad, but I also find with e-books that I keep checking my e-mail, blogs, and Facebook far too often. This was a good break for me.

Calico Joe  is about a baseball player, a young phenom who made it to the bigs but didn't last very long. The story is told in the first person by Paul Casey/Tracey, the son of a sometimes-okay pitcher for the Mets. The story really is about Paul and his father Warren as much as it is about Calico Joe. 

Calico Joe is VERY well-written. The word choice, the flow, the subtle humour, and the human warmth of the novel all made it a very enjoyable read. It does not have nearly the suspense of, say, Bleachers by Grisham but it has the same human appeal told in a similarly retrospective manner. And it doesn't have coming-to-grips-with-life phase that is in Playing for Pizza, also by Grisham, and yet it has much of the same love of living that was in that book, which I reviewed here.

I like most (not all) of Grisham's novels. He has a captivating style for sure. Like many of his mysteries, Calico Joe is set primarily in the South, but much of the reflection is about the life of the Tracey family in White Plains, NY, as well. Grisham's admiration for the hominess of the south comes through, as does his wariness of small town living, where everybody knows your business. 

The book is really about "the code" in baseball, a set of unwritten rules about how one must play the game, and what must be done to enforce those rules. It is also about the depth and shallowness of human relationships.

I really liked Calico Joe. I liked it as much as I liked Bleachers or Playing for Pizza. Taken as a group, they make an excellent sports trilogy from John Grisham.

 

. .

Maybe It Is Time to Reread "The Great Gatsby"

If I have ever read The Great Gatsby, I do not remember it. Contrary to the general stats in this article, I was not ever required to read it for any course in high school or university. I may have seen the movie with Redford and Farrow at some point, but I do not remember much of it if I did. Obviously it was all pretty forgettable for me.

But having read this review, it is pretty clear to me that I had no idea what was going on in the book/movie. 

This is just more evidence for me that I need to read reviews and summaries before I watch movies and before reading many of the books that are "significant" or "meaningful". Wikipaedia entries are great for this sort of thing.

Another option, of course, is to ignore them all.

Plutocracy and Cronyism: Pro-Business.NE.Pro-Market

In today's Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente reviews Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland.

I'm delighted with her (and the author's) distinction between being pro-market and being pro-business. Too many people somehow get the impression that economists are pro-business when in fact most economists are, if anything, pro-consumer and pro-market.

...[T]he super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents. They claim they’re pro-market, but what they really are is pro-business. They use their lobbying power to tilt the playing field, not to level it. As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.

You’d think the crash of 2008 would have taught Wall Street some humility. Instead, those tensions are as bad as ever. Last year, Mr. Dimon’s firm got into a mess with “whale trades” – a series of huge bets on derivatives that blew up. JPMorgan suffered large losses. But the scary part is that nobody in charge had a clue what was going on. A damning Senate investigation has concluded that bank officials ignored the warning signals and misled regulators and the public. In other words, nothing has changed. Wall Street is still unable to police itself, and the regulators are unable to police it, either.

There are no simple answers to these problems. The fundamental challenges of democratic capitalism won’t be resolved by a wealth tax or by redistributing more money from rich to poor... .  As Ms. Freeland writes, the credibility of capitalism itself is at stake. 

 

Prima Facie Evidence of a Lack of Competition:the case of e-books

Have you noticed how expensive e-books are? There might be a good reason, according to the US Department of Justice: collusion to fix prices (via MA).

Penguin has settled with the Department of Justice in the e-book price-fixing case brought against Apple and five publishers this year. Three of the other publishers involved: Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins — have already agreed to settle.

Penguin and Macmillan were holdouts, insisting that the case had no grounds. "We did not collude," said Macmillan CEO John Sargent in April, when the DOJ brought its case.

They may not have colluded, and unless there is "smoking gun"-type evidence, we may never know for sure. However we do know from all our theoretical models that if the e-book industry were competitive, prices would tend to reflect the costs of publication. But when e-book prices exceed the prices of paperbacks for the same titles, and when paperbacks are more costly to produce, it's an indication that competition is not driving prices down to even approximately reflect publication costs. 

Higher prices for e-books probably reflects price discrimination across different consumers with different price elasticities of demand. But that type of price discrimination can occur only when there is a lack of competition.

Tablets. Still Not Right for Me.

After I had my iPhone for a few months, I wondered if I might prefer something just a bit bigger..... not so big that it wouldn't still fit in my shirt pocket, but maybe even a half inch bigger in width and length would be nice. 

I read a lot of novels on my iPhone. A slightly bigger screen would be nice. I also check email and Facebook on my iPhone (especially when I wake up in the middle of the night). Typing on the small screen is pretty hard, which helps explain why some of my email correspondence is so brief or non-existent. 

And so I wondered about whether I might like a tablet. In the end, though, I'm not at all enthused with tablets, even though I have two of them. Details:

About 7 months ago (early summer, 2011) Ms. Eclectic bought us both iPad2s. She absolutely loves hers. I'm okay with mine. I love the "Wow!" factor. And it is sometimes easier to read novels on it than on my iPhone -- but not always. Unfortunately, the iPad2 is just too big and bulky for me to carry around all the time, whereas my iPhone is in a pocket whereever I go. If I'm waiting somewhere, I can whip out my iPhone and read. That's not so easy with my iPad. So size and convenient portability are issues for me.

But so is extendability/expandability. I would love to have a tablet that has easy access to my files via an SD or micro SD card, something not available on an iPad or iPhone.

Also, initially we tried to use the iPad2s as substitutes for our laptops by trying various cases that had keyboards. None of them was satisfactory -- several had keys in the wrong place, and others had poor typing response. After trying quite a few, we just gave up on this idea. An iPad is not a substitute for a full-featured laptop. Typing on an iPad is easier than typing on an iPhone, but nowhere near as easy as typing on a laptop. So I try to avoid doing much email work or Facebook typing on even the iPad; and I never try to write a blog post on my iPad (much less my iPhone!).

Other than these three drawbacks, I quite like both my iPhone4 and my iPad2. But these drawbacks are enough to keep me looking.

At times I have thought I might really like a 7" tablet. It would fit in my jacket pockets, and it would fit in the extra pockets of most cargo pants/shorts. I'd be especially tempted if it had a slot to take an SD card.

Over the holidays, I gave some consideration to getting a Kindle Fire, but I am not at all keen on storing my files in Amazon's cloud: I don't always have wifi access, and I have some files that I consider private.

A few weeks later, when RIM's Playbook went on sale, I nearly bought one. Then I learned that there was no Kindle app for the Playbook. Huh? Since reading is one of the things I like to do with my toys, the Playbook is out for now.

Shortly after Christmas, my son and I each got 7" tablets by PanDigital. These tablets are at best quasi-Android, difficult to load apps on (I never figured it out), and extremely slow. I loaded quite a few books in epub format onto an SD card and used that card in the tablet (a nice potential feature), but quickly discovered the reader was bogged down with so many books there. The PanDigital is a convenient, almost okay tablet that has slow access to the internet and FaceBook, but it's just too slow and incompatible (or at best inconveniently quasi-compatible) with other programmes to suit me. Also, it might be possible to load a Kindle app on the PanDigital, but I never figured out how. Thank goodness they were quite inexpensive.

Next, I might look at the Samsung Galaxy 7. It looks to be a full-fledged, fast Android tablet with the Kindle app pre-loaded, and it accepts a micro SD card (only up to 32gb, however). Judging from the specs and the reviews, it should be pretty much what I'm looking for. But given that I already have two tablets (one and a half, really), I think I'll hold off for now. Also, I'm not terribly eagre to try to work out synchronizing my iPhone with an Android tablet, and I'm not ready to move completely to Android with everything either.

I understand that Apple is bringing out an iPad3 soon. I'm sure it will be very nice. But I also fully expect it will not have a 7-inch version, nor will it have a card slot for loading extra music, videos, and books.

So I'll wait and keep looking. I think what I might like is something like a Macbook Air or a Toshiba Portege with a touch screen (maybe in a swivel lid?) for a laptop. However, I'm still not sure I want that AND a tablet to carry around. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate them.

Street Freak: Should Make for an Exciting Movie!

Several weeks ago I received a review copy of the book Street Freak by Jared Dillian. [note: I have no connection with and have never met Dillian, his publisher, his publicist, etc.]. My review will be slightly different from many of the reviews I have seen, in part because of my interest in finance and the recent financial crisis, and in part because of my background and training.

I was particularly intrigued by Dillian's perceptions and reactions to The Efficient Markets Hypothesis, [EMH]. I think the EMH is correct in the sense that markets tend toward its implications even if not instantaneously. For perhaps a better explanation of the EMH, see this. My own take on the EMH is this:

The general idea (for me) of EMH is that schmucks like me are unlikely to be able to beat the market consistently because by the time I receive new information and by the time I figure out what to do about that information, others who are much smarter and much more actively involved in the markets (e.g. people like Dillian) will have already taken advantage of that information.

And we see this theme emerging time and again in Street Freak. Early on, Dillian questions the validity of the hypothesis,

Theories on market efficiency had killed people's work ethic. If you can't beat the market, then why try? But you can win, I thought. The market can be beaten. ... This was the most passive, spoiled, unmotivated group of [people] I had ever come into contact with. [p 16. In all quoted passages, emphasis in the original, expletives altered in brackets].

Dillian was in a major investment bank (Lehman Brothers), where traders had up-to-date nano-second information on multiple terminals about the markets. That's a little different from the folks with a single terminal and a two-second delay in receiving information from the financial centres.

And Dillian would probably subscribe to some form of the weak EMH, as is clear from this:

... I was relieved that index arbitrage involved actual skill. This meant that the markets were, for the most part, efficient. ... Other index arbs around the street were bidding and offering futures, conspiring to limit the arbitrage profits of the other players. [p62]

Smart guys with up-to-date information bidding and playing against each other, driving prices to efficient points. But it is a process, not a fixed equilibrium. New information and new analyses move the equilibrium all the time.

I mentioned nano seconds above. Here is a good example of how Dillian exploited those time differences (thus forcing markets in the direction of the EMH all the more quickly):

Efficient market theory says that the arrival of news in the marketplace is immediately and perfectly disseminated, and no one person acting independently can get ahead of it. But I'd spent days watching this. The number would come out --- boink --- and for a split second, nothing would happen. This tiny period of time, a half second, maybe, was enough of a window for me to send out an arb basket and move the market before anyone else did. It was a delay that could be exploited (let alone discovered) only by someone with exceptionally fast reflexes and exceptionally acute concentration. [pp 89-90]

Of course once the arbitrage possibility became known, it was programmable. Computers could make the trades even faster, thus driving the market toward new equilibria that incorporate the information even faster. As Dillian says,

I realized that I was becoming a victim of technology. If both futures and stocks are traded electronically, you can replace labor with capital. You can instruct a computer to do a human's job. It would be a very basic program, one that an intern could write.

... The pit was becoming increasingly irrlevant. I was becoming increasingly irrlevant. I'd just gotten a job making buggy whips as the first automobile was rolling off the assembly line. [p140]

... It was clear that the arb had been turned into a robot trade, and we were the last holdouts trying to do it by hand [p145].

As long as there are people looking for opportunities, then deviations from the EMH tend to be narrowed. As an example,

I'd arrive at the floor in complete darkness, the streets deserted, and I'd check trades for breaks, buy/sell errors, and [goof]-ups.

It's hard to believe markets do not tend toward efficiency with traders like Dillian around.

Further support of the EMH comes from Dillian's work in the small cap [small firms] segment of the market:

...[There were] basically penny stocks that would issue a press release about some new government contract, and the stock would be up 1,000 percent in a single day.

[We] noticed that before these stocks would spike, there would be a small but noticeable increase in volume. We figured that this  was dirty insider buying. [Stuff] like this happened all the time; it was not uncommon for there to be a small increase in volume before a major news event.

Economists and others have long been aware of this phenomenon. And he is absolutely right. What is more, as he and others exploit this knowledge, markets move toward even the semi-strong variant of the EMH. 

My point with all this is that with traders throughout the market looking for angles to exploit, and with computers operating at the speed of light to execute the trades, it isn't surprising that many traders with access to quick information and gi-normous computing power can beat the rest of us in the market. Further, those same traders may sneer at concepts of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, but they are the very ones, competing with each other, who drive us relentlessly toward it.

Of course that doesn't mean the EMH explains everything. I love contemplating how such a massive financial crisis like the last one could be consistent with the EMH. It just doesn't make sense. And I conclude that the EMH indicates tendencies, but it certainly is not the end all and be all of finance.

- - - - -

What about the rest of the book, though? I loved a couple of lines. For example,

Most people know thre NYSE as the friendly trading floor that they see on television, but what they do not know is that it is also a mean-spirited regulatory bureaucracy. [p207]

and

Human beings are not well-equipped to deal with randomness. [p263]

But overall the book was off-putting. It is an amazing story of a driven man who was non-Ivy-League but who became increasingly successful on Wall Street as a trader. His insights rival those of Michael Lewis in Liar's Poker. But Liar's Poker is much better written.

To be blunt, Dillian comes off as a bully, not as a careful chronicler. Even if he was a Street Freak during his days with Lehman, he shouldn't have written in that style for this book. Maybe it's just the academic in me, and the language and style of the writing evoked a kind of revulsion I didn't expect to find within myself. I know people talk like the quotes in the book. But Dillian isn't content just to quote all the expletives. He uses them at a high rate in his writing between the quotes, too. This style may capture Dillian's personality, but it is also distracting or worse [this all said despite the fact that I sometimes talk like that, even in my lectures, and I have been known to break a phone or two in anger, as Dillian seems to have done with some regularity]. If anything, I think this style is what put me off the book the most. 

At the same time, there is a straight-forward tale of his growing difficulties due to his bipolar condition and his obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Dillian's challenges as he worked his way through these conditions are insightful and touching. His wife must be an angel to have put up with his behaviour. But to start the book with a completely confusing rendition of his obsessive-compulsive behaviour is another turn-off. 

Despite these criticisms of the book, the story is good. And it is especially intriguing in light of the recent UBS $2.3billion losses resulting from actions of an index trader. 

The energy, the crises, the challenges all make good drama. I expect this would make a tremendous film. The language would be appropriate there, as would the transitions. I fully expect the film rights to this book to be worth quite a bit. I just hope they get good writers and a good director.

.

[note: both of these books are available in e-book format, my preferred method of reading these days.]

Decision Rules for Valuing Things

As we prepare to move from our present house to an apartment condo, we must downsize, purge, get rid of stuff. Parting with many of the things is actually a joy (no more yard work! no more snow removal!) but parting with other things has required me to think carefully about my decisions.

These seem to be the rough rules that have evolved in my mind as I have been going through the process:

• Is there any chance I will use or want to have access to this item ever again in my lifetime? e.g. old files, books, tools, equipment, etc.  If the answer is no, then the object is a strong candidate for disposal, subject to the next question.
• If I think the probability is low that I will ever want the object, is there much of a chance that my children and grandchildren might find it of any interest or value when they go through my stuff after I die? If so, I have tried to pass it on now rather than wait for them to have to go through everything then.

If the answers to both questions are no, then it goes. Here are some examples:

• Tools? almost all are gone. I'm keeping a few basic hand tools and my latest power drill. If I ever need any of my other power tools, I'll borrow them back from my son or daughter (and actually try to use their places to do any work!).
•  Hardware? I have tonnes of cabinets with little drawers of screws, fasteners, door knob sets, hinges, etc. Gone. If I need them, I'll borrow them or buy new ones. 
• Books? Ms. Eclectic and I mostly read e-books these days. Nearly all the books are gone, including copies of those I have written. More difficult decisions involved old books (and other old items) that have been in the family for generations. I finally realized my children and grandchildren won't want to be saddled with them, so I have found good homes for them.
• Old files. What a thrill to be forced to go through all my old files and clear them out. And it was so much easier once we realized that nearly all the files we use are on our computers.
• Old slides? We have 2800 slides (five boxes worth!). I took 'em to a photo shop and am paying through the nose to have them put on DVDs for us and our children. The memories will be fun, but setting up an old slide projector to look at them wouldn't be worth the effort. Gone.
• Alcohol? We're doing our best to get rid of as much as possible so we won't have to move it. 8-)

We still have a long way to go over the next several weeks, and parting with memories is always a bit painful. But for the most part, this cleansing is both physically and emotionally cathartic. 

Having had to sort through and make decisions about so many things from my mom's house after she died 16 years ago helped me develop these decision rules. There were so many things in her house (she had lived in the same house for nearly 50 years) that I didn't even look at but just threw out or donated to local charities. But I also kept a bunch of family memorabilia and enjoyed looking through it as I packed it up. I'm hoping I've kept mostly similar types of things for our progeny.

Digression: several years ago I apologized to my older son, David Ricardo Palmer, for having so many boxes of stuff that he'd have to go through after we die. His response, "My only hope, Dad, is that you go in a house fire." I think our downsizing will have been a satisfactory alternative.

Islam's Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim

Salim Mansur is a well-known columnist and political scientist who often writes about the Middle East, about Islam, and about North American politics. His book, Islam's Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim is a collection of some of his more poignant writings, with the addition of longer essays that have not been published as his weekly columns in Canada. 

If you are not familiar with Mansur's writings, you might want to take a look at his columns as they become available on line with Sun News. Better yet, buy his book. 

Here are a few excerpts that particularly caught me. On Palestine:

 At best Arab claims to Palestine and Jersusalem were based on squatters' right ... Palestine was "liberated" from Ottoman Turkish rule by Britain towards the end of World War One and then partitioned twice. In 1922 for the first time when Britain demarcated the land on the east bank of the River Jordan as Transjordan (later to become the Kingdom of Jordan); and then for the second time in November 1947 when the United Nations divided the remaining territory on the west bank into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.

On the impact of 9/11 on his Muslim faith:

The events of September 11, 2001, ... made me rethink the basis of my thinking and living, writing and teaching regarding the politics of the Middle East, the world of Islam and its relationship with the West. That morning of 9/11, I along with so many of us, was overwhelmed by the horror of the evil we witnessed. That night I went to bed unaware of how greatly changed would be my sense of the world on awakening. I soon realized that I was beginning to reclaim a history and meaning for my faith -- Islam -- that was obscured, if not deliberately erased by those in authority and those aspiring to replace them. 

Salim Mansur and I have known each other for many years. We have met in the hallways at the university, we have met frequently on Saturday mornings for coffee at Starbucks in Masonville, we often socialize with our friends Ben, Eva, and Rory. His emergence as an intellectual leader, promoting and encouraging a Muslim reformation is inspiring. 

Judging from the reactions of many Muslims to his work, he is in a small minority. But his influence is growing.

.

Disclaimer: Salim gave me an autographed copy of his book.

Side note: For once it looks as if the Canadian price is roughly the same as the US price.

Is a Non-Reader the Same as a Philistine?

There is a survey going around on Facebook, purportedly from the BBC. 

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

As I scanned through the list, I thought, "Well, I probably brought the average down." It turns out I've read ten, maybe eleven, of them, more than I expected (some were such non-standouts, I can't even remember for sure whether I've read them). I had to read two of the books in high school for book reports, but the rest were all recreational (or "personal growth") reading.

Most of my Facebook friends have read LOTS more books from the list than I have. I find that when I start many of these books, my mind drifts and I'd rather be watching television. For others, I've seen the movies or made-for-tv movies and have no interest in reading the books. In fact, I've seen performance versions of fifteen of the books.

One anomaly: am I the only person among my Facebook friends to have read the Wind in the Willows? I read that just for the heck of it one summer when I was in grad school. 

Tarek Fatah, a Reformist Muslim, Writes about Jewish-Muslim Relations

From Barbara Kay's column in the National Post,

In his new book, The Jew is Not My Enemy, to be released Oct. 19, Fatah summarizes the present situation between Jews and Muslims: Jews hate Islam, and Muslims hate Jews. “Even the most radical Islamist websites [attack Jews viciously but] do not have a single sentence attacking the Jewish faith,” Fatah notes, while even the most rabidly anti-Islamist Jews “rarely attack Muslims, yet have little reservation in deriding Islam and the Koran.”

Even if this observation is true only in general but not universally, it is a pithy insight. But the rest of the column expands the idea (i.e. read the whole thing). Some excerpts:

Tarek Fatah grew up in Pakistan. He does not remember any anti-Semitism in his youth. But on a 2006 visit home, he was revolted by the ubiquity and virulence of the anti-Semitism he met when socializing with even educated and wealthy Muslims. In a posh neighbourhood of Karachi he saw a banner over a grocery store announcing, “Bird flu is a Jewish conspiracy.” He was dumbstruck to hear the store owner’s theory that the “Yahoodis” wanted to destroy the poultry industry of Muslim Indonesia. The owner then pressed a free copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Fatah and told him it would explain everything, including how the 2004 tsunami was a joint venture by the Yahoodis and the United States.

Anti-Semitism spewed forth from every social and media spigot on this visit, from the Karachi Press Club to the upper crust’s charity balls. In Pakistan today, Fatah sadly notes, “expressing hatred of the Jew…is the easiest way to establish one’s intellectual credentials.”

and

Fatah’s basic arguments come down to this: The Koran itself — the sacred text — does not express a shred of anti-Semitism. The Hadith, though, were written by men centuries later, and certain Hadith verses “can best be described as hate literature.” They can and should be revised or dumped. True anti-Semitism — the blood libel and the exterminationism — are imports, Fatah says, from medieval Christian converts to Islam and Western fascism. The convergence of Arab and German enmities permitted Nazi-style anti-Semitism to penetrate and flourish amongst Arabs and then throughout the Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood is behind the successful transmogrification of the Jew into Islam’s existential enemy.

Steig Larsson: A Reassessment

I posted last week that after having read the first two novels by Larsson, I wasn't so keen on the Steig Larsson novels about Lisbeth Salander. It turned out I am far from alone in this view (see this, for example) I'm retracting that view here, to some extent. Encouraged by Ms. Eclectic's comments to me about it, I downloaded and read the third novel in the series.

It's a long book, but I have now finished reading Larsson's Hornet's Nest. It was by far the best of the three Salander novels. But, unfortunately, to understand the plot line in this one, you pretty much have to have read the previous two in the series or at least be quite familiar with their plots.

I liked Hornet's Nest for several reasons:

• It wasn't gruesome. There were references to the perversions and atrocities that took place in the previous two novels, but despite some violence there was nothing outstandingly gruesome in this one.
• The computer gee-whiz-isms seemed ingenious, yet plausible, especially enabling Salander's use of a Palm in the hospital. Maybe the rest didn't bother me so much because I had become inured to them in the previous two novels.
• The complexity of the plot was fun. It probably reflects more about my tastes, too, but I quite liked the increased emphasis on espionage and legal stratagems.
• The writing, as in the previous two novels, was gripping. I had a hard time putting the novel down to do other things.

I must say, though, that I thought the paragraph-long gratuitous attack on the peaty, smoky flavour of Lagavulin scotch near the end of the book was both incorrect and uncalled for .... 8-)

I recommend Hornet's Nest as a fine airport novel with two side recommendations. First, before you read it, you must familiarize yourself with the plots and names from the first two novels so that you understand what is happening in this one; it is not a stand-alone novel. But I'm sure there are good summaries somewhere on the internet so you don't have to wade through the unpleasantness of the first two. And second, if you are going to read all three, do so fairly close together. It had been over a year since I had read the second in the series, and I had trouble remembering the names and places from that novel.

Final note: as with the other two, I read this novel on my mini-iPad, aka iPhone. For those who want hard copy, the Amazon prices are quite a bit better than the prices in our local discount shops.

. .

Stieg Larsson: A Dissenting Opinion

Everyone I know raves about the Stieg Larsson "Girl Who" novels. I have read the first two (Played with Fire and Dragon Tattoo) and recently downloaded the third one, Hornet's Nest, to read soon. 

I'll say this about Larsson: the novels are gripping. They are quintessential airport novels... the kind you buy to read in airports or while traveling and then leave somewhere when you finish them.

But the first two were gruesome. The sex crimes and perversions were far beyond anything I even care to know about, much less dwell on. They reminded me of the first couple of "Deadly Sin" novels by Lawrence Sanders (I read the first two many years ago and then decided I couldn't stomach any more). Quite frankly, I'm non-plussed that his stuff continues to sell. Sure the writing is gripping, but the content is pretty off-putting. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, given that I've read many novels myself from this genre.

Also, Larsson's heroine is a nearly impossible to believe computer geek/wizard. In a bind? Wave your hands and magically she can use computers to extricate them from the situation. I was reminded of Kidd from the John Sandford novels, which are also fun to read but which tax credulity. But maybe I'm just computer ignorant.

Putting Sanders and Sandford together, though, and combining the worst of both, makes the Larsson novels far from something I would recommend. 

So why did I download the third one? I decided near the end of the second one that I wouldn't bother to read any more of his novels, but Ms. Eclectic assures me the third isn't nearly so gruesome. I hope she's right.

. , . .

Stefan Zweig, on Kapuzinerberg in Salzburg

Last month while in Salzburg, I spent an afternoon wandering around on Kapuzinerberg, a small near-mountain on the north side of the river, across from the Fortress. It felt like a mountain while I was walking up the trail, but when I looked at it later, from Untersberg, I realized it is more like a really big hill. There is an active monastery on the hill, and there are shrines all along the main path.

 

I was mildly amused, as I walked up the hill, to see this, a US mailbox:

As I was taking the photo, a young man emerged from the property and explained to me that this was the former villa of Stefan Zweig, a Jewish poet and author who fled Austria when the Nazis came to power in 1934 and who lived in the United States briefly. I doubt that there is any connection between his having lived in the US in the early 1940s and a new US mailbox, but the coincidence intrigued me nevertheless. 

Up a little higher, nearer the monastery, there is a tribute to Zweig, a plaque and a bust:

 For more on Zweig, just google him. Or start here.