octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This is a likeable little book, well-illustrated with amusing cartoons, that is designed to teach the basics of mathematical probability to laypeople. It must be said that Huff does this very well - he has an extremely accessible style that explains the complexities of probability in simple ways. As an example of mathematical communication, it's very good... but it might be better.

Where I think the book falls down a little is in its use of examples. Now clearly gambling is an area where probability is key, but do we really need so many examples based around games such as cribbage and bridge? For the record, I have never played either, and so in places this is much less clear than it could be, simply because I don't understand what he's going on about when he talks about rubbers. One of the cartoons makes reference to this. "There are four types of people," it states, then goes on to draw them. "Men, women, children, and bridge players." Given this, I can't help but think that if your goal is to make a field more accessible to the general public, you're best off using the most clear and relevant examples you can. To be fair, in many places Huff does do this, but it felt like half the book was going on about card games. It seems to me a focus on how probability works in insurance and politics and medicine, for instance, would be of greater usefulness to a greater number of people.

Extremely interesting and very well-researched book, but I'm not sure the title is particularly accurate - or perhaps it's just me. I picked it up, thinking that it would be an explanation of how psychology is used to create various levels of effective propaganda. Thinking, too, that a book which purports to be about psychological warfare would actually, you know, go into examples of this. It doesn't really do either, and it took me a while to stop being frustrated with what the book said it was and what it actually was.

What it actually is can be summed up in short quote from chapter 5, wherein America's National Science Foundation, in 1952, found that "over 96% of all reported federal funding for social science at that time was drawn from the U.S. military". I don't know whether I was more shocked at the parlous state of mid-century research funding in general, or that fact that so much of that funding was military in nature... and this was just the beginning. This book is about what happens to an academic and research environment when funding is so monolithic. Researchers want to please the funders - because they're pretty much the only source of money - and so they begin to focus more on things that please the funders, who then think "What useful information, we must encourage more research here" and then people who take a different approach don't get their articles published, and don't get teaching positions, and it all becomes very incestuous and chronically, chronically limited. Yet as Simpson points out, most of these researchers didn't think of themselves as bought... but there was an unconscious move, almost en masse, to a central set of opinions, and how depressing for science that such naivete is present in those who are supposed to be trained in scepticism (and who apparently had no such training in ethics). Because, as Simpson points out, the psychological warfare and propaganda designed to be used against other nations, designed to limit casualties and help bring about what the researchers and their government considered to be positive change... actually helped to worsen pretty much every country it was used in.

Sadly, there's no much indication that this ever occurred, even after the fact, to those researchers who essentially created the theories of mass communication to begin with. After all, professionally at least, they were rewarded very well for it.

3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. This is the best in the series since book 1, and I was on track to give it the full 4 stars (as with book 1) until the end. Starting with the confrontation with the church, it all got a little silly. Really melodramatic, I mean - just too much piled on too much, bombs and secret daughters and explosions everywhere. Plus, I know that there are a lot of serial killers out there, but the ease with with Gretchen Lowell manages to turn other people to the dark side is becoming frankly unbelievable. I'm at the stage now where I'm waiting, in each book, for the murderous sidekick to show up.

On the bright side, however, Archie finally grows a backbone when it comes to that murderous bitch. Finally. It's taken five books too long, but he does, and all this is missing is his realisation that the number of people she's about to kill again is just as much down to his refusal to put her down like the rabid dog that she is as it is to her horrible nature. Which has been my continual complaint about this otherwise enjoyable series, so I'm very glad the corner seems to have been turned. Just in time for the last book... and I'd like to believe it'll stay that way, but part of me is waiting for the backslide on his part.

I continue to find Bliss deeply entertaining, however, and I'm far more invested in her relationship with her daughter than I am in that daughter's relationship with Archie Sheridan, who even with this recent improvement is not fit to be with anyone.

Gothic romance that plays on the idea of a doppelganger - the heroine, a dead ringer for a missing heiress, takes on the role of her double in order to get her hands on the inheritance. There's a twist, which I won't go into so as not to spoil things, but on the whole it's very cleverly done. I have vague recollections of reading this as a teenager, and the twist was the only thing I actually remembered, so I was aware, when rereading this as I just did, of what that twist would be, and so paid much more attention to the construction of the book up to that point, and it's genuinely well done. Like Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it's something that plays very heavily on ambiguity and double-meaning.

So why two stars, when Ackroyd got four from me? The romances - both that of the heroine and that of her young cousin - aren't particularly convincing, but they're not actually awful either. And I quite liked the heroine, even if she was out to scam a number of people. I did get heartily sick of the frequent scattered put-downs of women, though - most of which were from the mouth of said heroine. Things like "I'll try and explain now, like a reasonable human being, which means not like a woman." I realise this was written in a different time, but Stewart had plenty of contemporaries who didn't feel the need for such repetitive contempt. I can only roll my eyes so many times before nausea occurs. More crucially, it plain makes no sense to be so un-wary of someone who you know has already tried to murder you once. For a book that witters on about how women have no logic, it certainly backs up its stupid idea (both from character and author, if not from reader) in how credibly that particular plot line plays out. Even the horses have more sense.

First off: this has a fantastic cover. I mean, just look at it! Outstanding.

Anyway. I reviewed this for Strange Horizons, and the full review will be up there soon. But briefly... I really enjoyed this. There's some very interesting ideas here, and if some of the science was not all that convincing, the grim exploration of corruption in science was well worth the read. More importantly, the tragic, glorious descriptions of the polar bear at the centre of the narrative... even if I didn't enjoy that narrative as much as I did, the prose was justification enough, as was the imagery. Everything regarding that bear was absolutely spot-on, and I will no doubt be rereading this book for years to come, wallowing in the beauty of it. It was enormously affecting, and now I want to go out and find everything else Jarrett has ever written and devour it.

This is an odd little story. It was alright, but the very abrupt tonal change halfway through made it seem scattered and unpolished. Basically, an American family buys an old English house, complete with ghost, and proceeds to undermine that ghost at every opportunity. Blood stains are mopped up with the newest in stain removers, the spectral sound of rusty clanking chains is met with an offer of oil, and so forth. It's funny enough, if a little slight, but halfway through it stops being funny and turns into a highly sentimental horror, of the repentant murderer starved to death whose soul is redeemed by the innocent, beautiful daughter of the house type.

It's two very different stories shoved together, and not very well at that.

This is really an enormously affecting story - I've read it many times, and it never fails to get an emotional reaction. It also never fails to make me side-eye it a little. Like, you couldn't have done this while you were alive, Happy Prince? And for all your compassion for the suffering of the poor, you're quite happy to ask the little bird to suffer in order to compensate for what you never did. Granted, the bird chooses to go along with it - and I think the reason I'm always so affected by this is the bird, because I never feel that sorry for the Happy Prince - so it's not as much of an imposition as it could be, but still. You, and your happy ending (cribbed very heavily from "The Little Mermaid") got off lightly.

This was really interesting! I'm doing Book Riot's Read Harder challenge this year, and one of the tasks was to read a food book about a cuisine I hadn't tried before. I don't think I've ever eaten food from Laos, so I was lucky to come across this. The author, who is a food obsessive on a level far above even me, goes to Laos for what is essentially a food holiday: the entire purpose of her trip is to seek out new food and new civilisations, and to boldly eat what they've all been eating for some time now. There are small bits of history and culture thrown in there, as you would find in most travel books, but really there is a mono-focus on cuisine. There are also quite a few recipes scattered through the book, gleaned after the author has talked her way into many a professional and domestic kitchen to observe. Helpfully, in a lot of them she gives potential (and more easily available) substitutes for ingredients that it might be difficult to source in other countries. But as entertaining as this book was, I don't think I'll be trying them. (Maybe if she'd put in the recipe for green coconut jelly.) My vegetarian self is not going near pig lung salad, for instance, no matter how much the author enjoyed it.

Came across this in the little local free library (set up in an old telephone box as it is) and it immediately brought back memories of reading it as a kid. Or having it read to me... the first form teacher at my school read Alex aloud to my class, skipping over the bits where Alex kissed her boyfriend, because surely that was too much for impressionable twelve year olds, lol. (She was quite old so didn't notice when we stole the book off her at recess to read what she wouldn't... and it was extraordinarily tame, to our great disappointment.)

But anyway, this is one of the classics of YA literature in New Zealand. Alex, a fifteen year old swimmer who is training for a shot at the Olympics, gets progressively more overwhelmed by the rest of her life: school work, other extracurriculars, the awkward yet still friendly relationship she has with her rival Maggie, who has her own problems... of course there is success in the end, for both girls, and it remains an appealing, well-written story even decades later. Nice to have a book so focused on girls and athletics, too... more often these types of stories, especially at time of writing, seemed to be directed more to boys.

The last in the series, perhaps - the story doesn't seem to be over, but it's been a number of years now and no sign of continuance, so I think stick a fork in it, it's done. And honestly, it should be, as it simply can't get over the fundamental problem at the centre of the text. Cain is certainly proficient at tension, and this was an entertaining enough read, but despite Archie's brief surfacing into the heady realms of common sense in book #5, he's as irritating as ever in this one. When everyone around you, even the bad guys, are saying of Gretchen Lowell "put a bullet in her head," it's deeply, deeply irritating to find him prevaricating, still.

Honestly, the high point of this book is when Susan rips Archie a new one for his flip-flopping, and his inability to be honest with the rest of the investigative team, and how deeply his compromised integrity has cost them. About goddamned time, I thought, and was sincerely hoping that now the scales have fallen from her eyes Susan would distance herself from this disaster of a protagonist. Alas, it seems that she's as stupid as he is. Why either she or Gretchen are so obsessed with Archie I don't know. Honestly, this series should have ended with his death. I've no sympathy for him.