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ckdBetween Arisia and Vericon, I've been shorter than usual on reading time (as well as on book-blogging time). Time to catch up!
3. Stealing Your Life, Frank Abagnale (e-book)
Best known as the author of Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale is a security/fraud prevention consultant (and former check-forger). This is his identity-theft prevention/detection/recovery book; it's pretty good, but if you're a regular reader of Bruce Schneier's blog little of it will be new to you. Worth a library pick-up. (It's interesting to see his view on paper checks in this, as compared to in his earlier Art of the Steal or his original "career".)
4. Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, Richard McKenzie (hc)
This sounded a whole lot more interesting in the description than it turned out to be; I started to be suspicious when the foreword had nine endnotes, four of which were references to Hayek. This reads like a combined textbook and Wall Street Journal op-ed, which is not too surprising since McKenzie is a professor at UC Irvine who regularly writes for the WSJ and Investor's Business Daily. He argues fairly persuasively that the price of popcorn is heavily influenced by the nature of movie distribution contracts, but then blames the 1948 U.S. v. Paramount decision for the high total cost. (Clearly, if studios could once again own theaters, their costs would be lower; therefore, naturally, the total cost of tickets + popcorn would go down and the popcorn buyers would also no longer subsidize the non-buyers. Right?) This isn't the only argument he makes where "too much regulation" is part of the problem, either.
The last chapter, where he hauls out sociobiology as an explanation for the gender wage gap, really heads off the ranch. (Quick and incomplete summary: since men look for appearance and women look for the ability to provide, men compete harder for money in order to get mates; by competing harder, they'll earn more, so their average pay will be higher.)
Detracting further from the value of the book: the bizarre choice of chapter endnotes instead of either footnotes or back-of-the-book endnotes, a bibliography that's incredibly long, and an extremely sparse "subject index" instead of a full index of subjects, names, court cases, and so forth.
Not recommended; if you liked Freakonomics, look for Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life (out soon in paperback!) instead. (For example, both Harford and McKenzie address the question of why cars lose so much value immediately after leaving the lot; Harford does it more clearly and in a more entertaining fashion.)
RR4. Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett (mmpb[1])
Not my favorite Pratchett, or even my favorite Witches book, but not bad. Mightily Oats, like most of the universe, is rather overshadowed by Granny Weatherwax.
RR5. The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove (mmpb)
I bet you didn't know that the "E." in "Robert E. Lee" actually stood for "Mary-Sue". (Okay, not really, but Turtledove's alt-hist Lee seems to be the most wonderful person since Honor Harrington.)
RR6. A Stainless Steel Rat is Born, Harry Harrison (e-book, part of omnibus)
RR7. The Stainless Steel Rat is Drafted, Harry Harrison (e-book, part of omnibus)
I didn't bother re-reading The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues, the third book in the omnibus.
These are both light books, which suffer from prequelitis when compared to the "later" SSR books that were written earlier; Drafted in particular could easily be called "The Stainless Steel Rat winds up in Eric Frank Russell's 'And Then There Were None'." The series seemed to be losing quality at this point, and Drafted is the most recent SSR book I think is worth reading.
RR8. The Art of the Steal, Frank Abagnale (e-book)
A fun review of cons and scams and what to watch for. Somewhat dated, in that there's much more emphasis on paper forgery and altered checks than really applies today; it's still a good read, and I recommend it for people who like Bruce Schneier's analyses of security systems and their weaknesses.
RR9. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, Robert A. Heinlein (mmpb)
Also known as 6xH in some editions; as the variant implies, a collection of six shorter works by RAH, leaning toward the fantasy/horror end of the spectrum. (The title story, in particular, is the closest I can think of to an RAH horror story.) Also includes "The Man Who Traveled In Elephants", which always makes me weepy; the classic time-travel short "–All You Zombies–"; the humorous "–And He Built A Crooked House–" (did Frank Gehry read this at some point?); the paranoid solipsist "They"; and the extremely light "Our Fair City".
[1] I use mmpb/tpb as shorthand for the usual trim sizes, not in the strict technical sense of strippable vs. non-strippable books. As a British edition, I'm pretty sure this isn't actually strippable.
3. Stealing Your Life, Frank Abagnale (e-book)
Best known as the author of Catch Me If You Can, Abagnale is a security/fraud prevention consultant (and former check-forger). This is his identity-theft prevention/detection/recovery book; it's pretty good, but if you're a regular reader of Bruce Schneier's blog little of it will be new to you. Worth a library pick-up. (It's interesting to see his view on paper checks in this, as compared to in his earlier Art of the Steal or his original "career".)
4. Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, Richard McKenzie (hc)
This sounded a whole lot more interesting in the description than it turned out to be; I started to be suspicious when the foreword had nine endnotes, four of which were references to Hayek. This reads like a combined textbook and Wall Street Journal op-ed, which is not too surprising since McKenzie is a professor at UC Irvine who regularly writes for the WSJ and Investor's Business Daily. He argues fairly persuasively that the price of popcorn is heavily influenced by the nature of movie distribution contracts, but then blames the 1948 U.S. v. Paramount decision for the high total cost. (Clearly, if studios could once again own theaters, their costs would be lower; therefore, naturally, the total cost of tickets + popcorn would go down and the popcorn buyers would also no longer subsidize the non-buyers. Right?) This isn't the only argument he makes where "too much regulation" is part of the problem, either.
The last chapter, where he hauls out sociobiology as an explanation for the gender wage gap, really heads off the ranch. (Quick and incomplete summary: since men look for appearance and women look for the ability to provide, men compete harder for money in order to get mates; by competing harder, they'll earn more, so their average pay will be higher.)
Detracting further from the value of the book: the bizarre choice of chapter endnotes instead of either footnotes or back-of-the-book endnotes, a bibliography that's incredibly long, and an extremely sparse "subject index" instead of a full index of subjects, names, court cases, and so forth.
Not recommended; if you liked Freakonomics, look for Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life (out soon in paperback!) instead. (For example, both Harford and McKenzie address the question of why cars lose so much value immediately after leaving the lot; Harford does it more clearly and in a more entertaining fashion.)
RR4. Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett (mmpb[1])
Not my favorite Pratchett, or even my favorite Witches book, but not bad. Mightily Oats, like most of the universe, is rather overshadowed by Granny Weatherwax.
RR5. The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove (mmpb)
I bet you didn't know that the "E." in "Robert E. Lee" actually stood for "Mary-Sue". (Okay, not really, but Turtledove's alt-hist Lee seems to be the most wonderful person since Honor Harrington.)
RR6. A Stainless Steel Rat is Born, Harry Harrison (e-book, part of omnibus)
RR7. The Stainless Steel Rat is Drafted, Harry Harrison (e-book, part of omnibus)
I didn't bother re-reading The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues, the third book in the omnibus.
These are both light books, which suffer from prequelitis when compared to the "later" SSR books that were written earlier; Drafted in particular could easily be called "The Stainless Steel Rat winds up in Eric Frank Russell's 'And Then There Were None'." The series seemed to be losing quality at this point, and Drafted is the most recent SSR book I think is worth reading.
RR8. The Art of the Steal, Frank Abagnale (e-book)
A fun review of cons and scams and what to watch for. Somewhat dated, in that there's much more emphasis on paper forgery and altered checks than really applies today; it's still a good read, and I recommend it for people who like Bruce Schneier's analyses of security systems and their weaknesses.
RR9. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, Robert A. Heinlein (mmpb)
Also known as 6xH in some editions; as the variant implies, a collection of six shorter works by RAH, leaning toward the fantasy/horror end of the spectrum. (The title story, in particular, is the closest I can think of to an RAH horror story.) Also includes "The Man Who Traveled In Elephants", which always makes me weepy; the classic time-travel short "–All You Zombies–"; the humorous "–And He Built A Crooked House–" (did Frank Gehry read this at some point?); the paranoid solipsist "They"; and the extremely light "Our Fair City".
[1] I use mmpb/tpb as shorthand for the usual trim sizes, not in the strict technical sense of strippable vs. non-strippable books. As a British edition, I'm pretty sure this isn't actually strippable.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 07:06 (UTC)K.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 11:02 (UTC)Um, ok, what's his explanation for why ballpark food and airport food is expensive, then?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 15:50 (UTC)No, not really; I severely oversimplified his set of arguments in that summary. He notes that theaters (and ballparks) use concessions to allow more price discrimination without having to have highly variable ticket pricing. (Ballparks do have more variation than theaters do, but even there the guy who goes and eats 2 hot dogs and a beer is willing to pay more for the "total experience" than the one who doesn't.)
He discounts the "captive audience" theory because people can eat before or after the movie (and presumably ballgame) or smuggle food in. (Because of course everyone is a perfectly rational economic agent, right?) As someone who once snuck a half-dozen satsumas into the theater, I can see his point.
Also, popcorn in particular is special because the marginal cost is near zero, making it very useful for price discrimination. (The small is $3.50, the large is $7 but three times the size....)
I don't remember him addressing airports, but those do have more of a captive audience, and even so there are airports that proclaim a "fair price policy". (They always write it so they're comparing to other branches of the same chain, of course, so that Trader Joe's prices can't be used as a comparison at the chocolate shop.) I suspect the larger number of interests involved (the airlines, the airport operator, and the stores) perturbs things somewhat.
(Harford talks about the price of a cup of coffee at different locations in The Undercover Economist, and how various factors figure in to the result. Again, much more recommended than the McKenzie.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 12:11 (UTC)This is why I worry when people compare me to Granny Weatherwax. Which happens a lot, albeit not quite as much now that Tiffany Aching has been written.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 13:03 (UTC)What? The books you red are such heavy tomes that they press down on your spine?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 14:46 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 16:16 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 17:05 (UTC)Aw, CHRIST. Thank you for saving me from this book and the author from my wrath.
(Okay, not really, but Turtledove's alt-hist Lee seems to be the most wonderful person since Honor Harrington.)
*laugh* So true.
Ah, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. That's a nifty collection indeed; I was just thinking about the title story this morning. Maybe I'll go dig it out.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-07 00:50 (UTC)All of us womens are just looking for a nice man to lock us in the kitchen so we can make them delicious pot roasts. Wait-what?