audiobook review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney

David Evans1 Comment

This was AWESOME.

brilliant, fast paced 1950s science fiction thriller

Dr Miles Bennell, a general practitioner in a quiet California town, notices a strange psychological epidemic. People begin believing that their loved ones aren’t really their loved ones. And then he finds the seed pods…

This is a brilliant suspense thriller from the 1950s. I listened to the audiobook performed by Kristoffer Tabori, published by Blackstone Audio [and available here under the “Audio CD” edition]. Tabori was the perfect narrator: he really made the story come alive. I couldn’t put my mp3 player down! And to boot, Tabori’s father directed the original film and the audiobook includes an interesting interview at the end with Tabori about his father’s film.

I listened to this during a business trip to Brazil and it was perfect escape listening. Only at one point did the characters make a ludicrous decision (like when people split up in horror movies); incidentally that part was cut from the original movie. And in this “updated” version, the date of the action is moved to the 1970s, even though it seems little else is updated, including the gender roles which feel very 1950s. The ending was a little quick; I had to listen to it twice to catch all that happened, and even so I have a couple of questions. But if you can handle that, What a ride! I loved this and immediately sent off for the 1950s movie. Highly recommended: the funnest audiobook I’ve listened to in months!

Note on potentially objectionable content: a smattering of “light” profanity, 1950s gender roles, and it’s Very Scary.

audiobook review: Martian Time-Slip and the Golden Man, by Philip K Dick

David Evans1 Comment

Dick is always a total trip, and this is no exception.  Great human drama.

what is reality? take a look inside a troubled mind

At one point in this book, I said to myself, If anyone was in doubt as to whether Philip K. Dick took drugs, here is confirmation. But I was just mixed up in the time slips.

It is the future. Humans have colonized Mars but life is hard on the colony with little water and scant employment. The native Martians are a low class. Jack is a repairman whose path crosses that of Arnie Cott, a corrupt local power broker. There are time warps and visions of the future, schizophrenics who live in a different time realm, and Martians with special powers.

But really this book is about people dealing with fear and with suffering, about power and its misuses. And it asks the question, What is reality? What do we really know about it?

Not much.

I enjoyed it. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Grover Gardner and published by Blackstone Audiobooks. Good reading. [Note on content: one character uses profanity regularly, and there are one or two brief, not-particularly-graphic sex scenes.]

The audiobook includes an additional CD with the story The Golden Man, ostensibly the basis for the Nicholas Cage movie Next. In fact, the two have nothing in common except the idea that a person can see the future, but I enjoyed both.

squatting in Rio

David Evans1 Comment

I checked out of my hotel this morning but this afternoon found that my room key still worked and that no one had checked in.  So I used my laptop in the room for a while rather than in the lobby.  (I didn’t use any amenities, just sat and typed and called my wife on Skype.)

Then my nerves got the better of me and I retreated to the lobby.  But it was mildly exciting.

UPDATE:  Maybe it wasn’t just my nerves.  A colleague in the room next door was trying to reach me shortly after the events described above and knew I was squatting, so she went to my room and knocked boldly.  A naked (except for a towel) man who had clearly just woken up came to the door. 

I must have missed naked man by minutes. 

This is what I call living large (now that I’m not getting drugged and strangled).

book review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie

David Evans1 Comment

I have taken to reading very light fiction when I travel.  And I’m on an Agatha Christie jag right now.  This is her first published book ever!  My thoughts:

wonderful travel reading, a great start to an incredible career (for both Christie and Poirot)

It’s exciting to read the first published novel of the world’s best selling author of all time. After reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I decided to read all of the Hercule Poirot mysteries, and this is a natural beginning. We meet the detective Poirot, a Belgian refugee in England, and his future traveling companion, Arthur Hastings.

The powerful matron of a wealthy family is poisoned in her sleep! Whodunnit?

I felt the book started a wee bit slow (as always with the first in a series, no?), but once the poisoning happened, it was difficult to put down. Perfect reading for a long flight to Brazil.

Highly recommended as travel reading (or whenever else you may need a diversion). For the rest of my trip, I’ve brought Murder on the Orient Express and Hallowe’en Party. Poirot to the rescue!

[Note on content: No objectionable content, unless you count poisoning an elderly woman or the general idea of murder as entertainment.]

teaching like the world’s favorite father figure

David Evans2 Comments

Last week I was in Peru for a workshop, and I taught two sessions in Spanish, one on “sampling and power calculations” and another on “data collection.”  we had participants from around the continent.

Today I saw the teacher evaluations.  My favorite positive comment: In response to “What did you like most?”, one participant wrote

que a veces hable como Homer Simpson [sometimes he talks like Homer Simpson]

And – as to be expected – the main “what suggestions to improve the session?” was “menos rápido [slower]”.  Story of my life.

blog break

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I’m taking a little blog break. 

But I am heading to Peru on Sunday for a week, then back for a while and then off to Brazil for part of February.  So you can see there is a shift in my work focus.  I am not leaving my Africa work behind, but there will be a move toward Latin America.  So now I’m reading Paulo Coelho’s «Veronika decide morrer» (first book ever in Portuguese!) and listening to Rosas Negas, by Ana Garcia Bergua.

book review: Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely

David Evans1 Comment

fun writing, fascinating experiments, lots of learning; not enough introspection

Dan Ariely was a victim of serious burns as a youth which left his body covered with serious burns. After surviving the burns and the consequent treatments, he designed some experiments to see how to make treatments less painful, then went back to his hospital and shared the findings with the staff.

In this book, Ariely shares a host of experiments that he has carried out in behavioral economics (the branch of economics that looks at how people deviate from the standard economic assumption of people being logical, calculating, and rational). The experiments are fun, fascinating, and insightful. He shows us our irrational obsession with free things using experiments with Hershey kisses and truffles; he shows the oft unnoticed power of “anchoring” prices in an experiment with random numbers and an auction. He and his colleagues do experiments in bars, malls, and classrooms. This is a great introduction to behavioral economics.

One minor weakness is that – like most popular empirical economics books – Ariely is trapped by the work that he himself has done, with minor supplements by others, and so the book jumps around a bit. That said, he has done enough interesting stuff that this isn’t a major flaw.

My main gripe was the lack of introspection as to how much these experiments apply to non-experimental settings. In the introduction, he tells us, “I would like you to think about experiments as an illustration of a general principle, providing insight…not only in the context of a particular experiment but, by extrapolation, in many contexts of life” (p. xxi). Why? Should we just take Dan’s word for it? Beyond the question of extrapolation from the experimental setting, the vast majority of experiments are on undergraduate or graduate students, with little meditation on whether results might vary for different demographics.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Read it, enjoy it, share stories with your friends, and take a few minutes to think through the questions that Ariely didn’t.

And would someone – please – design a better-looking cover for the second edition?!

reseña del libro: El salón de ámbar, por Matilde Asensi

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puro escapismo, no tan original, pero entretiene bastante de todos modos

Una señora, parte de un grupo internacional de ladrones de arte, roba una pintura para un cliente. Pero debajo de la pintura, ¡encuentra otra pintura misteriosa! Esta le lleva a ella y a unos compañeros a una búsqueda para el legendario «salón de ámbar», un premio valeroso en la historia de Rusia. De allí en adelante hay acción, tecnología, amor, traición, pasión, y todos los otros ingredientes que te gustarían en un cuento de este tipo.

No es un libro que voy a comprar y leer vez tras vez, pero en cuanto lo leía, no me fue fácil dejarlo para otras actividades.

Escuché el audiolibro, narrado por Adriana Sananes. Fue bien narrado.

[Este libro no tiene nada de ofensivo menos la glorificación del robo: ni la violencia ni la pasión son explícitas, ni hay palabrotas.]

my dubious popularity among African students

David Evans2 Comments

In March of 2008, I published a short review of the Senegalese classic novel, The Beggars’ Strike, by Aminata Sow Fall.  A number of the comments on that post have suggested that the book is assigned reading somewhere:

  • i am a student i realy realy enjoy the play (feb 2009)
  • Hi, please i need urgent help on my project topic IRONY OF FATE IN AMINATA SOWE FALL “BEGGAR’S STRIKE”. Will be very happy if anyone can help me with relevant materials to aid me in writing my final year project. Thanks alot!!!!!!!!. (may 2009)
  • please i urgently need help on writing on discussing the general setting of the beggar’s strike in relation to the writer’s handling of the theme. thanks (july 2009)
  • can i please know how dose the setting of the book relates to its theme? (july 2009)
  • hi, i need the summery of the novel the beggars strike please kindly send it to my mail box which is –. thanks in anticipation. (july 2009)
  • sir the book has really tells us africa background, however sir i want to know the theme of oppression in the novel (july 2009)
  • I love this novel but i need to know if it is totaly a satire (nov 2009)
  • pls can u summarize the entire book (dec 2009)

and much more!  I only wish I could be of more use.  Maybe I could post a couple of sample term papers based on the book?  Alas, mine is a paltry little review…