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The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money
I read a review for The Behavior Gap... Would you take financial advice from a cocktail napkin sketch? Well, it depends on who is sketching. If it’s your brother-in-law, who likes to boast about how he “almost” made a killing investing in Google stock, then the advice is probably not worth the paper it’s on. But if it happens to be [...]
QR Markham’s plagiarized spy thriller didn’t stop being good when he was caught
Debutante plagiarist Q.R. Markham's temporarily-lauded spy thriller, Assassin of Secrets, is in fact a string of passages lifted from other books in the genre. No-one noticed until it was released, at which time readers noticed at once. The book's been recalled by publisher Little, Brown, whose president, Michael Pietsch, apologized in a [...]
Third Person Effect: An excerpt from You Are Not So Smart
The Third Person Effect, an excerpt from the new book You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself, by David McRaney The Misconception: You believe your opinions and decisions are based on experience and facts, while those who disagree with you are [...]
The Homeland Directive: Taut technothriller for the paranoid era
Robert Venditti and Mike Huddleston's stand-alone graphic novel The Homeland Directiveis a tight, suspenseful technothriller (in Bruce Sterling's definition of the term: "a science fiction story with the president in it"). Mysterious government spooks are hunting a pair of CDC epidemiologists. One is murdered, the other, Dr Laura Regan, is framed [...]
Adventures in self-publishing: Why I took a year’s work and tried my hardest to give it away
When John F. Kennedy was asked how he became a war hero, he’s supposed to have replied: “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.” That’s how I became a self-published novelist: A large number of New York publishers rejected Thanks for Killing Me, my spiky little crime novel about the aftermath of a con gone wrong. They did so for an [...]
Steve Jobs, the movie
The publication of Walter Isaacson's highly-anticipated, authorized bio of Steve Jobs, formerly titled iSteve (like iWoz?) and now titled, er, Steve Jobs, has been moved up to October 24 and Sony Pictures is reportedly buying the movie rights. (more...)
Pratchett’s Snuff: A rural/nautical tale of drawing-room gentility, racism, & justice
Snuff, Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel is an absolute treat, as per usual. It's a Sam Vimes book (there are many recurring characters in the Discworld series, whose life stories intermingle, braid and diverge -- Sam Vimes is an ex-alcoholic police chief who has married into nobility) and that means that it's going to be a story about [...]
How Mark Boyle Lives on $0 a Year
Decent review of the book Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomics Living, by Mark Boyle... In 2008 Mark Boyle decided to try living for a year without money. His self-imposed rules were simple: he would close his bank account and not spend or receive money (including checks and credit cards). He would live off-grid—that meant he would produce his [...]
Lewis Shiner’s new suspense novel DARK TANGOS as a free download; the action-packed, ugly history of Argentina
Lewis Shiner (one of my favorite writers!) says, "My latest suspense novel, DARK TANGOS, is now available as a free PDF download from the Fiction Liberation Front website. The starred review from BOOKLIST said, 'Delivers its grim story line with artistic mastery....Short and precise, the novel uses the elegance of tango to radiate sensuality [...]
John Landis: Monsters In The Movies
Filmmaker John Landis, director of the classic An American Werewolf in London and a slew of other great films, is a connoisseur of monster movies. In fact, he has just written a history book on the subject, titled Monsters In The Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares, with chapters on vampires, werewolves, space monsters, and, yes, zombies, [...]
Zahra’s Paradise: A graphic novel about Iranian uprising is a story and a history
Zahra's Paradise, a new book from FirstSecond, collects in one volume the serialized (and brilliant) webcomic, written by two pseudonymous Iranian dissidents. It's the gripping story of a Medhi, a young man kidnapped by Iran's secret police during the election-season demonstrations of 2009, and it is a heart-rending tale of loss, hope, technology, [...]
Feynman: A comic biography of an iconoclastic physicist
Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick's Feynman is an affectionate and inspiring comic biography of the legendary iconoclastic physicist Richard Feynman. I've reviewed Ottaviani before (I really liked T-Minus, a history of the Apollo program, as well as his Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists) and I expected great things from Feynman. I [...]
Ready Player One: The best science fiction novel I’ve read in a decade
It seems like every decade or so a science fiction novel comes along that sends a lightning bolt through my nervous system: Philip Jose Farmer’s To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971). William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992). Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003). And I recently discovered [...]
You are Here by Colin Ellard
We live in a world crowded by street signs and arrows. With the click of a computer mouse we can find exact directions to just about anywhere on earth, and with a hand-held GPS we can find our precise latitude and longitude, even in the remotest of places. But despite all our advancements, we still get lost in the mall, can’t follow directions [...]
Deeper look at why prices end in .99
The companion site for the book Life’s Little Mysteries: Answers to Fascinating Questions About the World Around You has a short post summarizing why most prices end with .99. Of course, there’s the obvious “psychological pricing” reason that when a shopper sees something that costs $5.99, the .99 is subconsciously ignored, making the item [...]
Steven “Jumper” Gould’s new novel 7th SIGMA: Genre-busting science fiction/western kicks ass
Steven Gould's latest novel 7th Sigma is his best since Jumper, and while it shares Jumper's excellent pace and likable characters, it is otherwise as totally unlike Jumper as it could be, except in the field of overall awesomeness, which it has in spades. In 7th Sigma, the American southwest has experienced a unique apocalypse: out of [...]
Dirty, Drunk, and Punk: the untold history of Toronto’s BUNCHOFFUCKINGGOOFS
Jennifer Morton's Dirty, Drunk, and Punk: The Twisted Crazy Story of the Bunchofuckingoofs is an impossible and glorious history of Toronto's legendary punk band/bike gang/social phenomenon Bunchofuckingoofs, who maintained a series of club houses/speakeasys/music venues/communes in Kensington Market called Fort Goof, stuffed full of vicious [...]
An Optimist’s Tour of the Future: Inspiring and funny look at the evidence for a bright future
Mark Stevenson's An Optimist's Tour of the Future is a hilarious and inspiring romp through some of the most promising directions in technology -- from permaculture success stories in Australia who are beating the drought and sequestering carbon to nanotechnology boosters who are showing off successful prototypes for effective energy [...]
Lockdown High: how schools put the emphasis on crime, security and violence instead of freedom and education
The Guardian's John Harris reviews Annette Fuentes's Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse, an investigative book on how "zero tolerance" policies have produced high-schools that "reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence." Harris points out that the insanity isn't a mere American phenomenon, [...]
Psychologists found out why we “choke” under pressure… and how to avoid it.
Beilock's research is the basis of her new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To, published Sept. 21 by Simon and Schuster, Free Press. Thinking too much about what you are doing, because you are worried about losing the lead (as in Norman's case) or worrying about failing in general, can lead [...]
