Katie Über Alles

Looking for recommendations

I have the next six weeks to do whatever I want to do, no strings attached.  I'm getting ready to go to bed in a bit and it feels so great to know this is the first Monday in forever I don't have to set an alarm to be up by 9am.  Nope, I can sleep as late or as early as I want.  If I don't want to get out of bed...don't have to.

Anyways, I'm looking for some good fiction.  I have a bunch of non-fiction to catch up on already. 

I like Dan Brown/Steve Berry type books, as well as historical fiction.  I've read all Harry Potter books upon their release.  Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy is probably the best bunch of books I've read in the past 5 years.  James Michener is probably my all time favorite author, and I have a soft spot for Kurt Vonnegut.  This is starting to sound like a personals write up so I'll stop.

Please leave recommendations in the comments.

I've got a mule, her name is Sal

If you go to college far away from where you grew up, you quickly realize that some things you thought were universal are clearly not.

For example, I thought everyone knew the Erie Canal song.  Shockingly, people who did not grow up in central NY were not privy to this lyrical masterpiece.

Growing up in upstate NY, especially in Syracuse, where the main drag is Erie Boulevard, site of the old Erie Canal paved over, you learn that the Erie Canal was hugely important in connecting the then frontier with the coast and its ports (along with several class field trips to the Erie Canal museum and on boat trips on the parts of the existing Erie Canal so you can see how locks work).

I recently read Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation by Peter Bernstein which is all about the history and impact of the Erie Canal.  It's a pretty quick read (I was able to read it in a day during which my power was off), well-written, and interesting.  Bernstein is an economist so he pays particular attention to the economic impact of the canal, which is not the kind of thing we ever learned in elementary school.  It also inspired me to mosey on over to Amazon and order his other book: Against the Odds: the Remarkable Story of Risk.  Can hardly wait.

Anyways, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes historical or economic non-fiction.  I don't think most people outside of CNY-ers know much about the Erie Canal and it's a really interesting story, from an engineering perspective as well as an economic/political one. 

Book Reviews

I've recently had some time to read non-political science stuff (rejoice!).  Over the summer I am going to hold myself to the one book/week rule; that is, I am going to read one book a week, come hell or high water.  So if you have some recommendations of good books (fiction or non-fiction) - I'd like to hear them.  The next books on my list to read are:

Ori and Rom Brafman - Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
John Vaillant - The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed (been wanting to read this forever since I actually saw the Golden Spruce before it was vandalized)
Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials Trilogy (I "read" The Golden Compass as an audiobook on my iPod when I was out in Vegas for New Year's and would like to finish the rest of the trilogy)
 
Anyways, the four books I have read in the past few weeks are:

Tucker Max - I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
If you have an off-color sense of humor, I highly recommend this book.  And I don't just mean a little off color...I mean that I can pretty much guarantee that no matter who you are you will be offended by something in this book.  However, it is hilariously funny.  It is rare that a book makes me literally laugh out loud and this book had me cracking up in several spots.  Definite recommend if your mind is in the gutter like mine.

Bill Chen and Jarrod Ankenman - The Mathematics of Poker
This is a book that needed to be written.  I could not agree more with Chris Ferguson in his intro when he says that he has always told people that there are good game theory books and good poker books, but no good books on how the two relate.  This is that book.  I have only thoroughly read about 100 pages and skimmed through the rest, but this book is definitely recommended to anyone who wants to think about poker on a deeper level.  It's not really a strategy book, but more a way to change the way you think about the game.  It was helpful for me because it laid out some basic stats principles and game theory principles that I knew but was having difficulty thinking about how to apply them to poker.  I really like this book a lot, but I know probably the majority of people I know who like poker won't like this book.  Don't pick it up if you don't like math or strategy board games.  Otoh, if you like math, Chess, Diplomacy, or Scotland Yard (or any kind of strategy game) and you play poker, do yourself a favor and buy it.

Steve Berry - The Venetian Betrayal
I have read every single one of Steve Berry's books.  He was my Dan Brown replacement after I read all of Dan Brown's books (The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, Digital Fortress, etc.).  This book came out right before Christmas and I was really excited to see that Santa had put it under the tree for me.  However, I have to say I just don't like this book as much as some of his others.  It's not bad, but it just hasn't grabbed me the same way his other books did.  I could literally not put The Amber Room down once I started reading it and finished it in a day.  I had similar experiences with The Romanov Prophecy, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, and The Alexandria Link.  This book is certainly not bad, it just didn't grab me like the others.  It has all your favorite characters though (Cotton Malone, Cassiopeia Vitt, Henrik Thorvaldsen, Stephanie Nelle, etc.)  He's scheduled to come out with another one next December, so it will be interesting to see if that one is any better.  I don't think anyone has ever said that Steve Berry is an excellent writer, but he usually knows how to write a thriller (just like Dan Brown).  Alas, this book was just not that thrilling.  Maybe because they have already been developed in the other books, but I felt the characters were all pretty two dimensional as well. 

This book really had me wishing that Neal Stephenson would come out with another book already as I ripped through both Cryptonomicon, and all of the Baroque Cycle books (a combined ~4000 pages of novel) in the Summer of 2005  (when I was traveling for work nearly every week and therefore desperate for entertainment) like a junkie who needs to score another hit.  Since reading those books, I haven't found anything that comes even close to the genius of these books.  If you haven't read them, do yourself a favor and immediately proceed to your nearest bookstore.  Come to think of it, maybe I will re-read them.  They are some of the best (if not the best) fiction I have ever read.

James McManus - Positively 5th Street
A poker book that is non-fiction but not strategy and certainly not boring.  McManus is sent to Vegas to cover a murder trial and ends up playing in the WSOP Main Event.  I would recommend this book to anyone, not just people who know something about poker.  It is very well-written, entertaining, and he does a good job of explaining the poker world to people who don't know that much about it.  A movie is in the works.

Schuessler's Logic of Expressive Choice

Been awhile since I've done a book review on here.  I love to read.  I used to plow through a book or two a week.  However, since I've been in school and have approximately 1000 pages of reading per week of political science stuff to get through, not to mention the written analyses of those readings that I have to write, I haven't been reading as much "for fun" as I used to, and most people that read this blog are probably not interested in the readings I have to do for school.

Anyways, I'm taking a class on voting behavior this semester.  It's the topic I hope to write my dissertation on, and I really like the professor and the other people in the class (it's a class of 7, including me).  I have already read many of the canonical books in this area, so I am glad that the professor is exposing me to other works I was not previously familiar with.

Today's class focuses on rational choice.  I don't really need to go into detail about what rational choice is because those reading this in the field have an intimate understanding of it (unless they have been living under a rock - it is one of the most dominant yet controversial theories in our field in the past 20 years...what Kuhn would refer to as a paradigm shift) and those not in the field probably don't care to know that much about it.  Suffice it to say that it is generally the borrowing of economic concepts such as cost, benefit, and utility to explain political behavior (in this case voter behavior).  According to the theory, voters make cost-benefit decisions that are rational based on their given preferences in determining whether to vote and for whom to vote.  There are problems with this theory empirically and theoretically, but it is also appealing in its parsimony.  It is certainly the most appealing to me out of any of the other theories I have been exposed to.

However, for today's class we were assigned a reading I had not yet read (or heard of): A Logic of Expressive Choice, by Alexander Schuessler.  This is the dissertation I wish I could have written.  He combines two of my all-time favorite political science books: two rational choice canons: Olson's Logic of Collective Action and Downs' Economic Theory of Democracy along with some of the more appealing parts of socio-psychological theories of vote choice.  His basic argument is that many people vote based on identity and that voting is an act of displaying one's identity much like making selections from a jukebox (that's why his theory is sometimes known as the jukebox theory of voting) or putting a bumpersticker on one's car. 

Anyways, if you are interested in this kind of stuff, I highly recommend his book.  I was surprised I have not been exposed to it yet.  It should definitely be on more syllabi.  And, as I noted in my reaction paper for today's class, it seems likely to me this theory could account for a lot of people's voting behavior in this year's election if Obama (or to a lesser extent Hillary) receives the Democratic nomination.

The Affect Effect

Just got a copy of The Affect Effect, a book about affect and it's role in political behavior.  Most people who know me as a budding political scientist know that when it comes to political science, I am interested primarily in political behavior, rather than the political institutions we have created.  More specifically, I'm interested in voting behavior: How and why do people make the decision to vote or not to vote?  How do people decide who to vote for?   Are these processes rationally driven?  If not, what are the normative implications of their decision processes?

Affect is our gut reaction to something, either positive or negative.  What causes affect and how it influences our decision-making processes are questions that I personally find very interesting.  Responding to affect isn't always logical or rational and sometimes people aren't even aware that they are doing it.  As a result, it can be a tricky thing to empirically study. 

Anyways, I plan to read the book when I'm done with school in a few weeks during my month long hiatus from things academic dominating my time (along with a whole shelf-full of other books that I need to get to).  I'll post a review, but I'm guessing it's going to be a good book.  I love stuff that looks at decision-making, either from an affective or rational perspective (one of my favorite pieces of work in all of social science is Kahneman and Tversky's work on prospect theory.  Read their original 1979 piece: "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk" here). 

New Take on Audiobooks

Just got back from Vegas - had a good trip.  I was flying on a red eye on the way back and stopped into Borders at the Las Vegas airport to pick up some reading material - it is always hard for me to sleep on planes.  I discovered these new audiobooks instead.

What a great idea - they are small and come with headphones just in case you don't have any with you.  Better yet they are reusable since they have replaceable batteries.  Most of them are unabridged.  I bought this one - very neat.

Time to go to the Bookstore!

Since for the past four years I have been in school, most reading for fun has been put off.  By the time I read everything for school (both required and not) I am usually pretty burnt on reading and use my breaks to do other things like playing video games.  The only free reading I have really done in the past year is cookbooks (which do not count) and poker books (more like self-help books for me, and therefore also do not count LOL).  As a result, I haven't spent that much money on "fun" books the past few years.  I have a whole shelf in my home office dedicated to books I have not yet read and I promised myself I wouldn't buy any more until I made a serious dent in it.

At work this week I've been on site and got permission to bring a book to read during the downtimes since I don't have computer access.  Wednesday I polished off this one - all 400 pages of it in 6 hours; yesterday I finished this one and part of this one.  I'm going to be on site for another week and suddenly it seems like I might empty that shelf which has been growing over the past 4 years. 

When I was younger, I loved to read.  Most of the year I was a library regular, but I looked forward every summer to the trip to the bookstore.  My mom would let me and my sister pick out a few books to buy for our summer vacation and those trips to the bookstore were a big highlight of summer.  I have found the libraries around here to be lacking in selection, but still don't make it to the bookstore that often, except the campus bookstore.  I'm looking forward to making a trip to pick out some books for the boat trip this summer!

And yes, in case you didn't notice, I am a nerd.

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was..."

OK, so I know that is Simon and Garfunkel, but that was the first thing that popped into my mind after hearing about this new book.  Looks interesting.  And at only 147 pages, it's something I can probably get through before Summer break.