The Fear Index

 

The Fear Index – Robert Harris

This is the second “non-historical fiction” book (at least that’s what I would call it) from one of my favorite authors, Robert Harris.  The first, “The Ghost” was a good book overall, but lacked a lot of the punch, interest, and intrigue as most of Harris’ other works.  This one, though, I found incredibly exciting, hard to put down, and I finished it in only 3 or 4 days.

In all honesty though, I wanted a bit more.  I felt as though the ending of the book still had some unanswered questions, and I was forced to speculate on what actually happened, why it happened, and wasn’t 100% sure that my conclusions are what the author intended.  Of course I must concede that this could have been the author’s intention.  Regardless, it was a great read and a compelling thriller.

The story tells a tale of Alex Hoffman, and incredibly smart eccentric billionaire. His claim to fame? He’s figured out a way to predict the stock market’s algorithms to where, regardless of how the overall market performs, his complex machine-learning program always manages to win the day and make him and his investors billions.  Most of the predictable behavior that this algorithm utilizes is its highly accurate understanding of “fear”.  When people get scared, they make decisions to fight, flight, fret, or freeze and nowhere is this more apparent than when individuals are trying to control their portfolio.

Now, it isn’t as though Hoffman and his cronies are causing unnecessary panic throughout the globe in order to improve their portfolio, but one can’t help but pity these individuals that would utilized the worst of human behavior in order to make such a mammoth profit.  As we get to know Hoffman, we basically don’t like the guy.  Wealth turns people into social recluses, and although his jabs at the rest of society aren’t necessary filled with vitriol nor malice, we still get the opinion that he has the opinion that his billions of dollars means he basically can do whatever he wants and doesn’t have to deal with anything that doesn’t interest him. Especially people.

Now, this is only part of the story.  The other part is that as the story begins, Hoffman is attacked in his well-guarded, insulated private estate.  Who is after him?  And more importantly, how could they penetrate such an insulated security system.  This is what adds to the overall flavor to the story, and the main goal of Hoffman’s predicament isn’t necessarily how to keep his massive amounts of cash flowing inwards, but what is going on with his psyche?  Why is this intruder trying to hurt him?  What exactly has he done?  And why do strange, unexplained occurrences seem to be happening around him that are increasing his paranoia?

As I mentioned, I’m not sure the story wrapped itself up as tightly as I would have liked. In many ways the underlying theme, though, seems to be that artificial-intelligence can be much more problematic and harmful than the benefits that it seems to provide.  Yes, the technology can help us all to things better and become more learned, but if people really are mainly motivated by fear, it’s a bit of a sobering thought to see how all of this machine-learning can be used against us. I read this book in 2026 (it was written in 2011), and as I look at the world around me, it does seem to appear that the world is finally starting to see that these advances in technology might not necessarily be the panacea that many thought it would be, and it’s rather being looked at as a scary Pandora’s Box.

I’m sure there have been masses of books out there about this scary latter day development, and without reading any, I can’t really compare.  However, this book was a very satisfying, yet somewhat frightening, read, despite the small shortcomings I mentioned.

Excalibur

 

Excalibur – Bernard Cornwell

The third book in the excellent “The Warlord Chronicles” trilogy. Before I write the review, I probably should go back and read what I wrote about the first two books as my sentiments are very similar. I don’t want to repeat myself. I’m too lazy, however, so let’s hope that if you’re reading this review along with the first two, you won’t find too many repetitious bits of information.

This series is based on the legend of King Arthur.  I’ve known bits about King Arthur for most of my life (Monty Python anyone?) but not really that much.  Heck, I don’t even know if these books follow the well-established stories that accurately. What I do know is that this was an excellent series. Rarely have I found an author so addictive, so compelling, and so interesting. What makes this even a more remarkable achievement is that the genre and type of story that the author is telling here really isn’t one that I find that intriguing.  I can’t help but be reminded somewhat of the “Game of Thrones” series.   I watched a lot of it on HBO, and found it overall to be a rewarding experience, but I never had the desire to watch the last season; probably because most fans were disappointed.

I bore you with my assessment of that show simply because I’m trying to give someone who may be reading this an indication of whether you would like this book as well as its predecessors.  If you loved “Game of Thrones”, I’m guessing you’ll love these books.  But, if you’re like me and simply ‘enjoyed’ the popular HBO series, well, you may end up loving these books too.

Since this isn’t actual ‘history’, there’s lots of fantasy involved.  No mythical beasts such as dragons, but an awful lot of wizards, enchanters, and magical items that those in the story desire to possess. The story is told firsthand by Derfel, a close associate of the legendary Arthur, and we magically move our way through several tales that usually involve kings, queens, wars, wizards, spells, and a lot of screaming as to which religion is the real one. (There is a constant battle between pagans and Christians, so at least that element is real.)

The only thing that I will add is that if you have Kindle Unlimited, this trilogy is free to borrow, so it should be real easy for you to tell if you might enjoy these books.  I loved them, and so I purchased another series of his that takes place over 13 books. (only a couple were free on Kindle Unlimited). I honestly can’t wait to read that series and others by this author.

This was a very surprising and rewarding read and I highly recommend.  If you’re a medieval nerd, I can’t imagine these books not vaulting their way all the way to the very top of your preferred reading list.  If you’re like everybody else, you may find yourself….er….uh…..enchanted by them as well.

Mark Twain

 

Mark Twain – Ron Chernow

I was greatly looking forward to this offering as I’ve really enjoyed the works of Ron Chernow and I thought Mark Twain would be a great subject for this author to tackle. After reading this book, I was overall very pleased. If I’m completely honest, though, this book could have been a tad better; mostly during the last 300 pages or so.

First the good stuff. This book was incredibly well presented and very easy to read, and Mark Twain’s life proved to be a joy to learn. Most are familiar with him as author, lecturer, and humorist. His wit can be biting at times, but most of his sentiments ring quite true even though he lived and died well over a century ago.  Author Ron Chernow doesn’t spare any part of the man’s life.  To be fair though, this book was so long (over 1,000 pages excluding endnotes, bibliography, etc.) that by the time I finished the book, I had already forgotten a lot of what was written about his early life which was covered during the first quarter of the book. It almost made me wish I had written two reviews – one after reading the first half of the book, and one after the second.    Part of the reason I write these reviews is that it’s easy for me to forget a lot of details, and having a written journal helps me tremendously when reflecting on how I felt about a particular reading experience.

As I recall, there wasn’t really that much here from Twain’s younger days as a steamboat captain when he piloted vessels up and down the Mississippi River.  Maybe there wasn’t that much to tell when reflecting on this portion of his life, but it is at least here for all to have a somewhat small knowledge.   He was also a prospector that lived out west during the gold rush days, but again, I seem to recall that this part of his life was skipped over a bit.

The main part of his life though, author and lecturer, is covered in quite a bit of detail. All of his major works are given a nice overview and summary, and like all good biographies, reading this one makes the reader want to learn more about the subject and the books he penned. It was also fun to read about many of Twain’s crass observations of the world around him. Most of these are recorded elsewhere and aren’t that difficult to uncover, but having everything all in one volume is rather nice.   Had I read this on an eReader, I’m sure I would have made a lot of yellow highlights since just about everything that came out of Twain’s mouth was pure gold.  It would have been wonderful to attend one of his lectures.

Author Chernow states early that Twain’s character, as true of many of his generation, could be flawed at times.  There are elements of racism throughout (we must remember he was born in the South before the U.S. Civil War) yet as he would progress, he would become more sympathetic to his fellow African-Americans.  The same cannot be said, though, about Indians. Twain seemed to abhor the entire race throughout his life, but again, he was a creature of his culture.

Another peculiarity about Twain was he seemed to have a fondness for young teen-aged girls. It must be said that his admiration never dealt with anything lewd, sinful, or illegal.  There is no record of Twain every behaving in such a fashion nor committing any grave actions of touching any of these girls in an inappropriate way.  However, his frequent talk and admiration and also companionship of such ingenues is still a cause for the modern reader to raise their eyebrows.  Some things are much different now, and most would argue mostly for the better.

So anyway – I got about halfway through this book (page 500 or 600 or so) and by then, Twain was already in his late 50s with most of his substantial work and achievements already discussed. (Including an awful lot of expensive inventions and business schemes that never prospered and almost took him to the poorhouse.) I made the comment to my wife at that point that I really wasn’t sure what else there was to read about, and I was surprised that there were still so many unread pages during my journey.  Well, sadly, there really wasn’t that much more, and getting through the last half of this book wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as the first.

My guess is that the author probably had something in the contract that specified a certain number of pages (over 1,000 remember) and when he ran out of things to write about, he padded the book somewhat.  “Somewhat” is a bit of an understatement.  Twain’s family life consisted of his wife and three young-adult (by this point) daughters.  And, oh boy, did we have to read a lot about them.  It seemed like every day of their lives was covered with mundane detail.   One daughter died fairly young, and another suffered from epilepsy and we had to constantly read about the family struggles day in and day out. After Twain becomes a widower, there’s a hired woman who comes and helps, and we read ad nauseum about those details of her life and interactions with Twain and family as well.  It really felt like such a letdown after the brilliance of the first half of the book.

Anyway, overall this was a great read and despite its shortcomings, the author never fails to bore his readers. In fact I couldn’t help but be amazed as to thinking about how much research one needs to do on a subject matter in order to craft a final detailed project such as this.  Chernow does justice to the man, and it really does make the reader wish they could have lived at the same time as Twain did, and share a cigar and a story or two.