I have decided to post this information because it will be
useful to me to have a handy place to find this information and because I am
delusional enough to believe that some people might be interested. This list will not contain all the reading I
have done in the prior month because I have read, without completing, some
books that I started reading before July.
I also do a lot of reading on the internet. I might at some point write up a blog about
what I regularly read on the internet. I
also do a vast amount of reading for work.
In July, for example, I read (and in some cases, re-read) a couple of
thousand pages of court reporter’s transcripts for several different cases as
well as several dozen published cases and a handful of briefs written by other
attorneys.
Books Finished
The Game: Inside the
Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers by Jon Pessah
This book provides a detailed history of Major League
Baseball from the early 1990s until just recently. It primarily focuses on three people: Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball, Don
Fehr, the head of the players’ Union, and George Steinbrenner, the owner of the
New York Yankees. It is clear that
Pessah has great inside sources. There
is information in the book that had to come directly from Fehr and Selig and
probably Steinbrenner as well.
The interesting thing about this book, in a strange way, is
how little it had to do with baseball itself. There was almost no discussion of
baseball strategy. Instead, the focus was on the financial dealings and political
infighting. Selig was trying to get the
owners to stick together to keep down costs.
Fehr was trying to get the players as large a share of the money as
possible. Steinbrenner was trying to win
even though he spent so much money that he drove up player salaries for all the
other clubs.
My sympathies have always been with the players and nothing
in this book changes that. Certainly
Fehr’s behavior appeared more ethical and competent than that of Selig and
Steinbrenner. On the other hand, in a
sense, none of it mattered because baseball’s income grew so dramatically over
the time period that there was plenty of money for everyone.
I intend to read similar books about other sports especially
football and American football. (See
“The Football Business” by David Conn below.)
Mr. Monk and the New
Lieutenant by Hy Conrad
This is the umpteenth book in the series of novels based
upon the Monk TV show. These are not
novelizations of TV shows but additional stories about the same characters. The first novels were written while the TV
show was still on the air and included additional cases not covered by TV
shows. Subsequently, the books have
carried the story of Monk and his friends forward.
This book is not suitable for anyone who did not enjoy the
Monk TV show. On the other hand, if you
liked the Monk TV show you would probably like these books. I thoroughly enjoyed both. However, you
should read the book chronologically by publication date.
The only thing about this book that disappoints me was the
announcement by Hy Conrad that this will be his last Monk book. Conrad was chosen by the prior author to take
over the series when that author retired.
Conrad has apparently gotten an exciting new job and no longer has time
to write the series. As a result, this
maybe the last of the Monk books.
Working for Bigfoot by
Jim Butcher and Vincent Chong
This is a collection of three stories about Butcher’s
continuing character, Harry Dresden, a professional wizard working as a private
investigator in modern day Chicago. In this book, Dresden takes on three
separate jobs for Bigfoot looking after Bigfoot’s half human son.
If you are a fan of Harry Dresden you will enjoy this
book. If you are not a fan you will
probably not enjoy this book. If you
have never heard of Harry Dresden but think you might enjoy a set of fantasy/crime
novels set in the modern day you will probably enjoy the Dresden series, but
this is not the place to start reading it.
Money and Soccer: A
Soccernomics Guide by Stefan Szymanski
The original Soccernomics book is one of the books that most
strongly influenced how I think about football.
My thought process has also been greatly affected by the vast number of
Sabremetrics books I have read over the years going all the way back to the
Bill James Baseball Abstracts from the 1980s.
I found this book by one of the two Soccernomics authors to be
interesting and informative. That being
said, I was not entirely impressed by the fact that early in the book, he
analogizes the skills involved in buying players and making scouting decisions
in football to the decisions of investment managers in the financial
markets. He claims that “there is very
little evidence that any fund manager can invest your [money] better than any
other fund manager. The same reasoning
applies quite closely to soccer.”
I think this conclusion is wrong. Instead, I believe that there is strong
evidence that most money managers and football managers cannot reliably provide
above average results. Obviously, the
typical money manager provides his investors with returns that are slightly
below the average for the market as a whole.
This is inevitable because the market is primarily made up of stocks
being traded by money managers and, when you syphon off their fees, the average
return must be slightly below average. The
same is true of football managers. The
average manager provides averages results, by definition.
What Szymanski ignores are investors such as Warren Buffett and
football managers like Alex Ferguson who have demonstrated an ability to significantly
outperform over the long haul. No doubt
some people, perhaps even Szymanski, would attribute Buffet’s success not to a
greater level of skill, insight, or knowledge but to luck. After all, if you were to hold a coin tossing
contest with everyone in the world competing, after 20 tosses there would still
be something under five thousand people with perfect scores. Yet, of course, these people would have no special
coin tossing skills—they are simply the natural result of random chance. (I am ignoring the possibility of cheating
stage magicians. I assume the contest is
properly policed.) Is there any way to know
that someone like Buffett has not just tossed heads multiple years in a row
purely through luck?
I believe that the answer to that question is that yes, we
do know that Buffet has invested well through skill, not luck. Likewise, there is good reason to believe
that Sir Alex Ferguson performed as well as he did for so many years because he
had actual skills and not because he was lucky year after year.
This does not mean it is easy to determine in advance, which
financial advisors, football scouts, or football managers, have the ability to reliably
make good decisions. In fact, it is
obviously very difficult, but it is virtually certain that there is skill
involved.
Aside from this one quibble, I found the book very
informative and interesting but it focused almost exclusively on financial
aspects of football and not much at all on game play. If you have read and enjoyed Soccernomics,
you will almost certainly enjoy this book.
If you have not read Soccernomics you should read it first and only read
this book if you liked Soccernomics.
The Fuller Memorandum
by Charles Stross
The Apocalypse Codex
by Charles Stross
These books are the third and fourth, respectively, books in
Charles Stross’ Laundry series. The
books are set in modern day England but it is a world where the Lovecraftian
horrors really exist and careless use of computers and mathematics can summon
the monsters that live beyond our world.
The Laundry is the ultra-secret bureaucracy tasked with defending the
world, or at least the UK part of it, from the dangers represented both by the horrors
and by the people who would worship or summon them.
I started this series a number of years ago and thoroughly
enjoyed the first book. As a result, I
bought the other books on my Kindle as they came out, but never got around to
reading them. When I noticed that a new
book was coming out this summer and that it would be the fifth unread book in
the series, I decided to make a concerted effort to read the books. I have enjoyed them so far although, based upon
the author’s comments on his blog, it is quite clear that I am missing much of
his humor and the homages to other authors. Thus, I failed to recognize the
homage to Len Deighton even though I had read several books by Deighton. I recognized the homage to Ian Fleming but
then it was pretty obvious. I did not
recognize the homages to Anthony Price and Peter O’Donnell but then I have
never read anything by either author.
Once again, these are fantasies set in the modern world and
presumably appeal to a limited audience but if you are in that audience these
are among the best books around. You
should read the books in chronological order.
There are some shorter stories too.
The proper reading order can be found on the internet.
The End of All Things
by John Scalzi
This is the sixth book in John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War”
series. It, too, is not the place to
start reading the series. You should
start with, of all things, “Old Man’s War.”
This is a science fiction novel set in the future universe
where humanity is at war with virtually every alien species around. The off earth human civilization gets its
soldiers by recruiting elderly citizens of Earth who agree to join humanity’s
defense forces. In exchange they get
rejuvenated into super soldiers. If they
survive long enough, they get to retire to a colony in brand new young, but not
super, bodies albeit with the risk that the colony will be conquered or
destroyed by aliens. I enjoyed this book
as I did all of the other Scalzi books I have read.
City of Stairs by
Robert Jackson Bennett
One of the things I like about fantasy novels in recent
years is how they have moved far beyond books that are obviously based on J.R.R.
Tolkien. I particularly enjoy, for example,
Brandon Sanderson’s books. He has the
ability to create a new and completely different, but interesting, magic system
every time he starts a new series of books.
City of Stairs would fit right in with Sanderson’s work
because it too has a new and different magical system and is set in a world
that feels new and different. The book
is set many years after the end of a war in which the oppressed people successfully
revolted against their oppressors and killed the very real gods they worshiped. The action takes place in the former capital
city of the gods which is a complete mess due to the aftereffects of the gods’
deaths. The descendent of the military
leader responsible for the killing of the gods comes to the city to investigate
the murder of her mentor and in the process has interesting adventures and
learns lots of stuff. This is
apparently, the first book in the series.
The next book in the series is due out in January. I enjoyed the book but will probably hold off
on reading subsequent books in the series until the series is complete or at
least until two or three more of them have been published. Bennett has written
four other novels which I will probably read at some point.
Books Started
I tend to start a lot more books than I finish so, assuming
I continue with this project, the books started list will usually be longer
than books finished list. Obviously, I
will not comment twice on books I started and finished in the same month. In fact, I will probably not comment on most
of the books in the books started list.
Sports Analytics: A Guide for
Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers by
Benjamin C. Alamar and Dean Oliver
Mr. Monk and the New
Lieutenant by Hy Conrad
Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher and Vincent Chong
Money and Soccer: A
Soccernomics Guide by Stefan Szymanski
Big Data Baseball:
Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak by Travis Sawchik
The Apocalypse Codex
by Charles Stross
The Rhesus Chart
by Charles Stross
Proxima by
Stephen Baxter
I have read a large number of Baxter’s earlier books but
after a while, I stopped reading his books because their endings tend to be
depressing. The depressing endings are
perfectly reasonable. If you write science
fiction novels that extend into the far future, it is inevitable that things
will not always go well for the characters or humanity as a whole. Certainly, no matter what happens we are all
going to die and the universe is going to end either in a big collapse or some
form of heat death. As an atheist who
does not believe I am personally immortal I accept the concept that by my own
standards my life is not going to have a happy ending and for the most part I
am good with that. However, that does
not mean that I always want to read about something that reminds me of
that.
On the other hand, his books are very good in virtually
every respect so after taking a five or six year break from reading anything by
Baxter, I decided to give one of his new novels a chance. We shall see if I manage to stick it out.
Thirty-One Nil: On
the Road with Football’s Outsiders by James Montague
The Color of Magic
(Discworld Book 1) by Terry Pratchett
Despite his fame and popularity, I have never read anything
by Terry Pratchett. However, people
whose judgment I trust assured me that I should enjoy his books. Since he is not writing any more, I decided
to start with the first book in his Discworld series and see how it goes.
The Football Business
by David Conn
David Conn’s column is one I read regularly. He generally seems to know what he is talking
about and writes about football related subjects that I find interesting.
Unfortunately, his books are not available on Kindle in the
USA which is annoying. As a result, I
have ordered actual hardcopies of his books which, given my current reading
habits, makes it less likely I will finish reading them. Nevertheless, I decided to give this book a
try. It is about the Premier League in
the 1990s.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
Stone by J. K. Rowling
I have already read this book multiple times, but the e-book
version of the entire series was on sale at J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore web site
and I couldn’t resist buying them. Whether
I will actually re-read the entire series again is impossible to say.
Which Lie Did I
Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen
Trade by William Goldman
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