Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy And Its Consequences (John Allen Paulos)

Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 1988

With A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market set firmly in my mind as one of the greatest nonfiction books I'd ever read, I set out to find more John Allen Paulos at the Penn bookstore. I knew Innumeracy was his break-out hit, so I snatched it up and began reading it that very day.

The bad news: it's not nearly as entertaining as Stock Market. The good news: it's probably a lot more important. The book is less fun because it's not as personal; it's a little more didactic and less rambling. But the fundamental idea behind the book is, in my mind, vital. As Paulos puts it:

At least part of the motivation for any book is anger, and this book is no exception. I'm distressed by a society which depends so completely on mathematics and science and yet seems so indifferent to the innumeracy and scientific illiteracy of so many of its citizens; with a military that spends more than one quarter of a trillion dollars every year on ever smarter weapons for every more poorly educated soldiers; and with the media, which invariably become obsessed with this hostage on an airliner, or that baby who has fallen into a well, and seem insufficiently passionate when it comes to addressing problems such as urban crime, environmental deterioration, or poverty.

Whew. Couldn't have put it better myself.

For anyone who has a degree in, say, mathematics, this book is not necessary to add to your shelf. But if you're one of this country's many mathphobes, the brilliant people who opted out of science and into English or sociology because the quantitative aspect of other disciplines was too scary to you, or the average people who barely passed the minimum required classes at your high school, this book is crucial. Paulos demystifies probability and statistics, subjects that arise at least every hour in most people's lives, and tries to gently lead innumerate people to the light.

Math is important, and it isn't going away. This book could help you to bridge the gap between confusion and comprehension, and that should be enough to make you want to read this.

Recommended? If you've ever uttered the sentences "I hate math" or "I'm so bad at math," you need to read this, yes.

Drums of Autumn (Diana Gabaldon)

Genre: Historical fiction (with a touch of fantasy)
Year Published: 1996

I have to say, unfortunately, that I enjoyed this installment in the Outlander series much less than its predecessors. It's similar to the first three books in most ways: same unbelievable length, same complex, adventure-heavy plot, same interesting, well-drawn characters.

Where Drums of Autumn stumbles, in my opinion, is on the plot that centers around Brianna Randall (whose provenance I won't explain here, in case others want to read the books but haven't gotten around to the first one yet). Other commentators have remarked that for a smart girl, she makes some dumb choices; I flatly refuse to entertain the argument that she should be blamed for the misfortunes that befall her.

I really hate, though, the particular plot arc that Gabaldon foists on Brianna. (Again, I won't be too specific for fear of spoilers.) I've seen it done in other books, but for a girl of her era, it just struck me as ridiculous. I don't like the whole "damsel in distress, waiting on her ass" gig. In fact, I hate it. Also, the probability . . . well. I won't go into details. I just didn't like her plot, and it dominated the latter half of the book, so the whole last 400 pages or so were pretty much unpleasant.

The thing about these books, though, is that you're too invested in the characters to quit. I have the next one, The Fiery Cross, out of the library, and I'll be beginning it shortly. I hope it's better than this one.

A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market (John Allen Paulos)

Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 2003

This is one of the most helpful books I've read in years. Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Philadelphia's own Temple University, gives his readers a broad rundown of the stock market, game theory, behavioral finance, and basic statistics. Although I am a mathematician by training, I knew next to nothing about the world of finance before starting this book, but I consider myself relatively well-informed now about the very basic structure of the market.

But -- and here's the great part -- this is the most enjoyable work of nonfiction I've read in years. Paulos is amazingly funny, and manages to cram in asides and jokes that take what could easily have been a primer and make it into a wonderful read instead. I found myself laughing out loud, something I rarely do while reading. (One quick example: "I thought news stories in November 2002 recounting New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's criticism of . . . analyst awards were a bit superfluous. Spitzer noted that the stock-picking performances of most of the winning analysts were, in fact, quite mediocre. Maybe Donald Trump will hold a press conference pointing out that the country's top gamblers don't do particularly well at roulette.")

Here's the catch (isn't there always one?): this is not a book for the mathphobes among us. If you hate the idea of being taught something about covariance or chaos theory, skip this book. But if you're intellectually curious and open-minded, and you have a thorough mathematical grounding (say, up to precalculus at least), don't miss out on this one.

Recommended? If you can stomach the math, then don't hesitate!

Secrets of Six-Figure Women (Barbara Stanny)

Genre: Nonfiction (self-help)
Year Published: 2002

As a rule, I don't read self-help books. I'm not against self-improvement by any means, but the idea that you could read a book and suddenly realize your self-worth, or find out how to snag a spouse, is pretty absurd to me. In general, I think the best way to learn about life is to live it.

But the title of Barbara Stanny's book grabbed my attention, and I found myself unable to leave the library without checking it out. The idea of an entire book about women who make what only men are supposed to make was fascinating to me.

Stanny's book doesn't qualify as social science, but if it did, it would be a snowball study; she identified some "six-figure women" and then asked them to help her identify others. Because she doesn't care what, exactly, the women do, her sample gives a refreshingly unconventional picture of wealthy women. So while most are financial, legal, or marketing gurus, a few women read tarot cards, and one is a matchmaker. And because they have to be earning this money through work, the book is happily free of wealthy women who sit on their butts and collect from a trust fund. Most of the women are from middle class or lower-middle class backgrounds, and it's intriguing to watch them grapple with making more than their parents ever did.

There are sections of the book that I would like to photocopy and distribute to all my female friends. In particular, when Stanny compares "underearners" (women who make less than they should, either by virtue of their education or their experience) to her six-figure women, I had to restrain myself from running to the copy machine. Here's an example:

Whether it's family messages, personal experience, or religious indoctrination, many underearners genuinely believe money is tainted, materialism is bad, and there's something virtuous about surviving on a shoestring. According to this line of reasoning, they are much better people for rejecting financial gain . . . . Like it or not, money affects virtually every area of your life. Lack of it leads to dependency and hardship. It can limit your access to health care and lifestyle choices. It can keep you in an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfying job. It perpetuates the cycle of poverty and debt, of discontent and chronic stress.

I really would like to send that message to every woman I know. (The cleverest among you may note that I've just done exactly that by quoting it.) Too many girls and women I've met are blasé about their earning potential and investment regime, because they believe that family money or a future husband's money will "save" them. To put it mildly, this is a bad strategy. We all like to think our future (or current!) marriage won't fail, but statistics indicate otherwise. And crises do happen, regardless of your position in life.

Anyway, proselytizing aside, Secrets of Six-Figure Women is at its best when it is addressing the daily concerns of regular American women in this fashion. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is, on the whole, flaccid and simplistic. Stanny relies heavily on quoting well-known figures in just about every area of culture (including, and I'm not kidding, T.S. Eliot, who, I'm fairly certain, had no idea of his words being taken in such a way) and on quasi-absurd statements about luck and "higher powers" and the universe just sort of stepping in to help those who've decided to become well-paid. Surveying a group of six-figure women and asking them if it really does work to rely partly on luck or the universe (and then pushing that strategy on average women) is like asking a group of clergy folk if they relied on God to help them choose their career. It's a biased sample by design, and to draw any meaningful conclusions about success in a larger sense is circular and misleading.

Recommended? She has a book called Prince Charming Isn't Coming that's all about financial self-reliance, and I suspect that would be a more worthwhile investment, so to speak. I'll try to get my hands on it: stay tuned.

A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (Katharine Hansen)

Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 2000

I have a good friend who has always managed to be that well-placed person, to know all the people in all the upper echelons of whatever organization you could think of. She's never been shy about suggesting to near-strangers that they exchange info; she'll be one of those people, I think, who ends up with an overflowing Rolodex, who can always pick up a phone and find out what's up.

I am decidedly not one of those people, but in my search for a satisfying, long-term job since college (still haven't gotten there yet), I've quickly learned how much personal relationships can grease the wheels in a job application process. In short: a blind C.V. and cover letter drop is about as helpful as standing at the bottom of a canyon and shouting up. Sometimes someone wanders by and you get lucky. Most times, not so much.

A Foot in the Door is an easy, practical guide both to creating your personal network and utilizing it when the time comes. It's simplistic to roll out the old adage, "It's not what you know; it's who you know," but there's more truth in that than most people would like to admit.

This book will give the average reader a lot of ideas about expanding their own network -- creative ones that may not have occurred to them -- and sample business letters and questions for informational interviews. It isn't full of annoying exercises or overblown testimonials. It's helpful without being overbearing. This should probably be required reading for anyone who thinks they may ever be on the lookout for a new job, i.e. nearly everyone.

Meanwhile, my only way of imitating my oh-so-connected friend is to learn these techniques by rote. I'll let you all know if they pay off in the long term.

Recommended? Yes!

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

Genre: Memoir
Year Published: 2006

What is there to say about The Year of Magical Thinking that hasn't been said a thousand times in the past year? It won the National Book Award; it's a bestseller; it was on everybody's Best of 2006 list. Yes, it is an astonishing, captivating, illuminating book. Yes, it's brilliant. Yes, it's devastating. Yes, yes, yes.

So what can I say that hasn't been written about? Well, what's interesting for me as a relatively young reader is that I have yet to really experience death. I type this with trepidation, for fear some avenging angel will swoop down to punish my arrogance, but . . . no one I've loved has ever died. So Magical Thinking for me was less an affirmation of feeling I've had than a glimpse into another country that I'll undoubtedly be forced to visit against my will in the future.

Not a wholly unfamiliar country, mind you: grief, as it applies to lost opportunities, lost friends, lost experiences, is a shadow of the grief of losing a loved one. We've all probably experienced the former; and indeed, I did find echoes of my own, smaller griefs in Didion's large, all-encompassing grief over losing John (her husband), like this passage, which rang very true to me:

All year I have been keeping time by last year's calendar: what were we doing on this day last year, where did we have dinner, is it the day a year ago we flew to Honolulu after Quintana's wedding, is it the day a year ago we flew back from Paris, is it the day. I realized today for the first time that my memory of this day a year ago is a memory that does not involve John. This day a year ago was December 31, 2003. John did not see this day a year ago. John was dead.

I was crossing Lexington Avenue when this occurred to me.

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.

I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead . . . .

In fact the apprehension that our life together will decreasingly be the center of my every day seemed today on Lexington Avenue so distinct a betrayal that I lost all sense of oncoming traffic.

The rest of the book is just as beautifully written. Of course it's beautifully written; it's Joan Didion. Compelling, too: I plowed through it in about twenty-four hours. At some point in the book I realized I was slowly coming to feel that I knew, at least a little, what this family (Didion and her husband John and their daughter) had truly been like, and that a scrap of her grief was dawning on me. I too wanted John not to be dead. I too wanted to hear what he would have said about a political piece she was writing. I too wanted him to be with Didion as she cared for their ill daughter.

We don't allow ourselves to think about the inevitable death of everyone we know and love, because it would make us crazy -- it would make us like Didion's narrative self in Magical Thinking. A book that not only permits us but forces us to think about those inevitabilities is at once necessary and terrifying.

Recommended? Yes, yes, yes.

Ararat (Louise Glück)

Genre: Poetry
Year Published: 1990

I cannot even tell you all how miserably disappointing this book was to me. I've read one other Glück book -- Vita Nova, which is one of my all-time favorite books of poetry. So I picked up Ararat expecting the same exquisitely refined turns of phrase and beautiful images.

But Ararat is a bitter, clumsy book that focuses on one topic -- her family -- with the singleminded focus of a therapy patient. There was not a scrap of enjoyment to be had from any of the poems. Depressing poetry can illuminate circumstances without being easy to read, but most of the pieces in Ararat read like lines cribbed from Glück's diary. She writes of her sister: "That means/she's going to feel deprived again." Of her mother and aunt: "It's how they were raised: you show respect by fighting./To let up insults the opponent." Of her father: "he showed/contempt for emotion." There is no maturity or art in her observations. It's a rotten read, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Recommended? No. A thousand times no.

Voyager (Diana Gabaldon)

Genre: Historical fiction (with a touch of fantasy)
Year Published: 1994

Well, people, she's done it: Gabaldon has sucked me in entirely.

That's right: the Outlander series has completely engrossed me, and I will not rest until I've read all six books. Well, I mean, I'll rest. But I'll be all jittery until the next two titles make it (via interlibrary loan) to my local library.

Voyager succeeds in a way that Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber didn't -- couldn't, maybe -- because our protagonists have grown up, and the clichéd plot arc of a typical romantic novel (forced marriage, surprise love, blessed pregnancy) has to go out the window. Voyager is the first volume in this series that is really surprising to the reader, and it's this quality that elevates it above its predecessors.

Not that it doesn't have the same glaring flaws of the first two: purple prose, subplots that anyone with three-tenths of a brain could predict, disproportionate length. The biggest problem I had with it, though, was that Voyager has a serious case of Small World Syndrome. Surely you've encountered this in other books: protagonists whose adventurings span great distances inevitably run into the same people over and over again, or meet new people who are inextricably linked to people they already know. It's a cheap way of adding drama, and I wish Gabaldon would be a little more realistic about the chances of running into the very same guy who blah blah blah et cetera.

Yet for all its flaws, Voyager is a great read. Not a great book, mind you, but definitely a great read.

Recommended? It's the best fluff I've had in years.