What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

I grabbed What the Dog Saw from my bookshelf just as I was leaving for the airport. Malcolm Gladwell's books typically make for some nice flight reading, and from what I remember from reading What the Dog Saw many years ago, I thought that it would be just as good. Even though my flight was only to Copenhagen, I managed to read this one in one weekend. Granted I did skip some of the more insufferable material, but nobody can blame you for that if its the second time you are reading a Gladwell.

What the Dog Saw is essentially a collection of essays published in The New Yorker, and it definitely reads like it. Chapters are independent pieces, so taking a few minutes to let it all sink in after each story is a good idea. You might feel that you have learned something, if you just hunker it down in a few nights, but you won't remember much afterwards.

Malcolm Gladwell always makes for satisfying reading, but it's not really clear to me how I should approach his work. For pure entertainment value, you can just hop through the books feeling somewhat superior but not really learn anything new. But if you go back and try to meticulously wade through all of the information, you'll always run into some wishful thinking on the authors part and some poorly handled source material. I am not saying that this applies to everything in here, but there is just enough of it to always come out feeling a little bit cheated.

That is not to say that people should avoid reading Gladwell. The stories in What the Dog Saw are great if you always remember that they were first published in a news paper and not in book form. This way you won't feel cheated when you read about Ketchup or Cesar Milan, subjects that should only be acceptable in magazines. I want something more from books, even if it is a paperback, popcorn novel heavy on the kitchen psychology.

Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein

It might not be easy to explain why I became so fascinated with Woody Guthrie in the first place. He might be Dylan before Bob Dylan, the original hobo musician riding empty cargo trains across the US, but it doesn't really explain why I (and apparently many other people) are drawn to his music and life. One of Guthrie's friends wonders out loud at the end of the biography why people most often ask him about Woody and not the other, even more brilliant, musicians he worked with. Its a small mystery, one that is not completely understood through this otherwise solid piece.

Most people might not have heard the name of Woody Guthrie, but most likely know him by reputation. Remember those cartoons of a ragged traveller hopping trains through rural America? A fiddle or a mandolin strapped around his back and a bag of possessions hung on a stick over his shoulder. That is essentially who Woody Guthrie was at one point in his life and somehow that character has entered the national consciousness of western countries, especially the United States.

In addition to that travelling hillbilly, Woody was many things. An avid reader of just about anything, a brilliant (but not very productive) writer of novels, a painter of storefront signs and a communist. A small man that could charm his way through any situation, but also a capricious and callous man. His family dispersed around the country in the dust bowl era, with only his first wife staying behind in Oklahoma. All of this is a wonderful story not only because Woody is such a fascinating persona, but also because his story is as much the story of the birth of modern day America.

For the most part, Klein does a decent job with the vast amount of material. Woody Guthrie: A Life is somewhere between a facts-only biography and a memoir, but it does sometimes become somewhat tedious to read. Because Klein wants to keep things historically accurate, he is unable to bring enough color to some secondary characters. This is most likely because not that much is known of the many people that entered and promptly exited Woody's life.

Woody's life is as much a history lesson of America as it is of western music. Folk music was not supposed to enter the mainstream. Most of the songs had been sung in churches in the 19th century, or even in the cotton fields of the South. The Dust Bowl and Union activities in the United States are things that I wish I knew more about after reading this account. Pick it up for the description of a legend, but stay for the making of modern society

The Cuckoo's Calling by J. K. Rowling

By the time I read The Cuckoo's Calling, everybody knew that there was no Robert Galbraith and that the actual author of this detective thriller was in fact J. K. Rowling. On one hand, I completely understand Rowling's decision to work under a pen name. The Harry Potter saga is the best known book series of the last 50 years. Publishing The Cuckoo's Calling under her own name would have felt almost silly. Rowling would have been left standing in her own sizable shadow.

On the other hand, The Cuckoo's Calling is so good that there should have been no need to hide her identity. The characters are well developed and the plot is exhilarating and contemporary. The prose is vivid and concise. I have no trouble recommending The Cuckoo's Calling for anyone looking for a nice detective story or just a nice description of modern day London.

Once again, I won't go into plot details, partly because I just don't remember the names of the characters anymore. A supermodel falls off the balcony of her home. A retired soldier is paid to investigate her death for signs of foul play. The elements of the story are fairly standard, but they do not really feel that way at any point of the book. Once again, I will credit Rowling's ability to conjure complex situations in few words with some of the success.

It should be mentioned, though, that The Cuckoo's Calling is not exactly high literature. It is not Great Expectations, and it might not even be Red Harvest. But in it's own category, detective fiction, Rowling does a flawless job of creating a compelling and altogether delightful read. As a bonus, if you don't enjoy the main character, just imagine that it is Harry Potter during a stifling middle age crisis.

The End of Absence by Michael Harris

With the current backlog of books to be reviewed, I'm having trouble remembering the exact order in which I read them. The End of Absence, a perfectly nice book, is one of those that I am unable to accurately pinpoint on my literature timeline. Did it come before or after The Cuckoo's Calling? I really don't remember. This does not mean, however, that The End of Absence is forgettable or poor. I quite enjoyed reading it, with a few minor exceptions, and felt that I genuinely learned something new.

I guess it was perfectly suiting that I decided to buy The End of Absence after reading a positive review of it in The Economist. A few years ago, I would have had to order it from another country. Now I could just download it to my Kindle with a few taps of my thumbs. The End of Absence is, in a way, the story of that change in the way we live our lives.

It is something that has affected almost everyone's life in the western world. We now have access to most of the world's knowledge everywhere we go. Smartphones help us connect with friends, family, experts and professionals at every moment. The titular End of Absence is exactly that. We are never farther than a few feet from devices that consume our attention better than anything before them.

The best thing about The End of Absence is that it is not a cautionary tale. Michael Harris does a wonderful job of not taking a stand. After all, technological progress is something that we can't stop. We can't turn the clock back to a time before Smartphones or Kindles or Facebook. Progress is a one way street.

The subtitle doesn't do the book any real justice, though. There is no "reclaiming" proposed in this book, the closest that Harris gets to suggesting countermeasures is asking the reader to pause for a moment every now and then to remember the different ways that mobile technology has impacted their life. Has it always been for the best? Are you happier than you were before?

SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Even though I didn't really enjoy Freakonomics (at least when I first read it), I was instantly hooked on the Freakonomics podcast. There is nothing better than sitting on a train listening to well produced podcasts and just relaxing. And because last spring I had plenty of time to sit on Swiss trains, I also ended up listening to most of the Freakonomics podcasts, new and old. This in turn inspired me to read Superfreakonomics, which despite a name that still turns me off, is a fine work. Perhaps even better than its predecessor.

I still consider the podcast to be the best thing that Dubner and Levitt have done, however. For me, the biggest kicks come from the banter between the journalist and the economist, something that is unfortunately absent from the book. Superfreakonomics is by no means devoid of humor, the punch lines are simply better when voiced in turn by the two authors.

I won't be going into the details and stories that make up this work. It continues on the track that Freakonomics set the series on. Therefore, no real surprises to readers of the first entry. And just as before, it really works. I remember Dubner saying in an interview that the book has succeeded if it makes people feel smarter, and that goal has definitely been achieved.

Once again, however, I found the radio equivalent to be more memorable and better paced than Superfreakonomics. The podcasts are so well produced that if you put a camera in front of Dubner and his guests, I am pretty sure it could be shown on TV during Friday prime time (in Finland, at least). Superfreakonomics is great, as I already mentioned, but it probably won't induce heated café conversations between equally unknowleadgable soccer moms in the way that books by Malcolm Gladwell might. And perhaps that is a good thing.

When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein

I had to take a long breath when I saw the name of this book in the drafts folder of this blog. It has been almost three months since I finished When Genius Failed and in that time a lot has happened. I did an internship, I volunteered at a start-up event and, finally, took a little vacation. And now, with the title of the book staring at me from behind a monitor, I realize that I remember very little of what happened in this non-fiction finance thriller.

Or perhaps "thriller" is too strong a word. The main characters here are hardly relatable enough to raise feelings of empathy. These are men who have made fortunes through arrogance, guile and occasional backstabbing. They make a series of foolish decisions and are ultimately undone by what amounts to a combination of hubris and bad luck.

When Genius Failed is, apparently, considered a classic of a genre of non-fiction that I might describe as financial failure. So many distinguished books have been published in that category lately - Too Big to Fail by Andrew Sorkin and The Big Short by Michael Lewis to name a few - that I feel Genius barely makes it into the top ten today. This does not mean that it is in any way a bad work, on the contrary. It is only the competition that has upped its game.

When Genius Failed is the story of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that promptly fails to live up to any of the statements in its name. The highlights of the story include John Merriwether and Myron Scholes, executives of the company who held hallowed positions in finance hall-of-fame. They lost it all in spectacular fashion and Scholes, of Black-Scholes formula fame for those in the know, saw his Noble awarded work in finance greatly devalued. A nice read, but not one I would recommend to anyone off the top of my head.

World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z is actually something that I read last summer. At the time, I felt too embarrassed to actually review it, after all it is a dime-a-dozen zombie thriller with a depressing cast of stereotyped characters and little common sense. The most awkward part? I actually liked it back then. In order to determine if it was only a passing craze brought on by living in Vancouver (and oh I miss that place) or actually a decent piece of fiction, I decided to give it another go.

This time the feelings were not so favourable, but overall World War Z is not bad. The author’s vision for a zombie apocalypse is enticing and draws on so many aspects of the global, modern society that it feels (to the degree that a silly zombie book can) plausible. Nations act like they just might in the event of a real conflict. Israel quarantines itself, China denies everything and the USA fails to see the pattern until it is too late. The tales draw heavily on modern political action, which does give the tale some much needed heft.

However, there is no getting around the fact that the overall premise is utter baloney. So many times, I had to skip over a section that felt ridiculous or skim through a chapter that I remembered from last summer. Nothing here is worth reading twice, unless you are once again bored on your summer vacation. There just isn’t that much thematic depth to warrant a reread.

But as I said before, it is in no way a bad effort. World War Z is the only zombie book that I will ever read, and I imagine most of the others to be at least somewhat inferior to this one. World War Z is a comprehensive, imaginative take on what would happen if the dead reanimated and started craving living tissue to eat. For me, however, the “if” in the previous sentence is just too big an obstacle to ever find this book reasonable.

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut

The other day, as the film version of Slaughterhouse Five was playing on television, I realized that there is something inherently human and timeless to all of Vonnegut’s work. Cat’s Cradle, The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five are all stories that still make perfect sense. "People err", "love thy neighbour" and “Why are we here?” are all powerful topics worthy of inquiry.  And so it is with Jailbird, a touching look at the follies of capitalism and life in general.

Walter Starbuck is a minor criminal implicated in the Watergate scandal and Jailbird is the story of his first day out of prison. Of course, this is Vonnegut, and as Vonnegut always demanded, there is a an autobiographical prologue, references to familiar characters from his other works and a semi-linear structure. Kilgore Trout is once again introduced and quickly discarded, but this time he is the pen name of an inmate not a character per se.

As with many of Vonnegut’s later novels, the ending to the story is versed in small scoops throughout the narrative so that it carries a sort of heft and inevitability. It is a beautifully crafted piece of literature and I kept wondering, how Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five typically receive most of the praise, when Jailbird is genuinely this good. No matter, the two aforementioned novels aren’t bad either and, in fact, I look forward to rereading the whole bunch in just a few weeks.

All in all, there is a lot to love about Jailbird. It succeeds on so many levels that I feel like rereading it immediately. It is a story that comes full circle at the end and, for me at least, inspired some soul searching. Nothing serious, mind you, but it does come after your heart from so many angles that it is difficult not to feel a little moved.

The Winter Journal by Paul Auster

Not too long ago, I harbored a fixation for Paul Auster in the same way that I now have one for Kurt Vonnegut. I read his every book, at least those that were available without too much of a fuss, and enjoyed almost each and every one. Then I read Travels in the Scriptorium, a book so pointless and boring that completely I lost faith. Of course, it has been several years since, and I decided to give The Winter Journal a go. My first thoughts, during the first chapter, were of renewed dissapointment.

The Winter Journal is an autobiographical novel that seems to be a collection of bits and pieces from Auster’s life. Auster talks about his body as a 64 year old man, then he talks about that one time his friend died from a lightning strike. For at least half of the novel, there is no driving force behind the narrative, just a bunch of cookie crums and leftovers. I felt that every time a truly interesting turn appeared, Auster cut it short and moved on to something far less enticing. I mean, how long should a list of the author’s favorite foods go on? Is five pages enough?

The reason I didn’t just dump this one in the nearest waste basket is that there are flashes of brilliance among the mountains of mediocrity. Auster’s record of all the houses he has lived in is remarkable and engaging, on par with his best fiction. Luckily, it takes up almost a third of the book. Also, his prose keeps on getting better over the years. The way that Auster addresses himself as “you” instead of “I” gives surprising depth to some passages. It is an altogether fascinating effect.

It has always been difficult for me to explain what it is exactly that I enjoy about Auster’s work. I heard that his novels have a divisive effect on people, some love him and others don’t. On my side of that line, I see a humanity and humility in his novels that is atypical for almost anyone else. They feel real in the way that a walk in the woods feels real. And just as with a walk in the woods, some people crave the familiar to arrange their own thoughts. In a way, Auster does exactly that. He speaks of “you” instead of “I”.

And So It Goes, Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields

I imagine that anyone who has ever held a Vonnegut novel, even in high school, even in a bookstore, has felt that they know the author, at least on some level. His habit of inserting himself into his books acts as a psychological conduit to understanding the author himself. Or so I thought. It might seem naive that I felt that by reading Vonnegut's novels, I already knew a little bit about the man himself.

Charles Shields' biography of the author shows, first and foremost that, the author, the man and the persona that appears in the books is not the same Vonnegut. As many other novelists, Vonnegut lived a complicated life. A train-wreck left his nephews orphans, which he and his first wife were too eager to adopt (at least informally). His relationships with his two wives were fraught with fights and misgivings, but so was his the relationships with his publishers. Plagued by spells of alcoholism and melancholy, Vonnegut was often sidelined by the literary elite and lambasted in reviews.

The story plays out naturally, with ample exposition for both Vonnegut and his family. Shields does seem to go a bit too harsh on Kurt himself. And So It Goes is by no means a gloating appraisal for Vonnegut's work. At some point I felt that almost all of Vonnegut's novels were described in negative ways. In a way, as a fan of his work, I expected Shields to have something more positive to say.

It seems like a fitting biography for the man that gave us brilliant quotes for both the uselessness of life and its greatness. Vonnegut's life was filled with contradictions. Sometimes, it seams, he went out of his way to anger those around him. For much of the time, he was unhappy with his work, his writing, his family and relatives. But at the same time, he was able to find joy in the minutiae of life in the United States. Whatever the case, it is as important as ever to separate the man from the legend

A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin

The fourth season of the television series Game of Thrones is almost at an end. The show has, so far, been extremely faithful to the series of books by George R. R. Martin, of which A Dance with Dragons is the fifth instalment. Most scenes quote the novels verbatim, characters are portrayed almost with an air of secret fandom and shooting locations range from Iceland to Croatia. This is brilliant, of course and the first three books in the series make for perfect TV material. Immersing yourself in the world of Game of Thrones is rewarding in both the short and long-run.

After four seasons on television, Game of Thrones has now almost exhausted the material from the first three books. However, the directors of the show will soon face a serious problem. As I mentioned before, the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, is a whole lot of wandering around by minor characters and almost no plot advancement. Turns out that A Dance with Dragons is more of the same, only with slightly more interesting characters.

The problem is that both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons are almost void of any actual character development or action. As readers of the other books in the series know, this season of the television show will end with some of the most iconic events of the whole show. At that point of the story, it almost felt like Martin didn't actually need to go any further. Most of the tension had been resolved - at least from a narrow point of view - by some of the most brilliant turns of events I can imagine.

Not only is A Dance with Dragons extremely slow in its pacing, it is also excruciatingly long. I can only imagine what it must feel like to read this brick of a book without a Kindle. A Dance with Dragons doesn't even feature dragons for the first 1000 pages and even then they only spew some fire and bugger off. Most likely, Martin is facing some trouble tying all the plot lines together and resolving the more minor conflicts. Who can blame him? The task of keeping track of all the events, characters and locations is almost beyond any one man at this point.

There have been some indications that the show might catch up to the novels before Martin has time to finish the sixth book. This might actually be a good thing. If Martin has all of the action lined up for the rest of the story, why not let the brilliant TV crew do what they do best. Enthusiasm for the show is soaring, and rightfully so. In a queer turn of the tables, a television show shows more potential than its literary counterpart.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

A friend of mine mentioned Carter Beats the Devil when we were discussing recent movies about magicians (Now you see me, The Prestige etc.). He wondered whether or not there might be a movie about it, since he found it "cinematic". Well, turns out there might be a movie version. There definitely should be one. Carter Beats the Devil is an entertaining read with a huge amount of detail, depth and heart.

Charles Carter, a real historical person, is deployed here in a fictionalized version of his life, from young boy to grown man. There are elements of a typical bildungsroman as well as a strong current of change-of-the-century wonder. The world evolves wonderfully around Carter, as he travels the world, first in the bowels of a travelling circus and later as the headliner of his own show. There are setbacks and lucky circumstances, love and loss, all of which is deftly handled by Gold.

The fiction here is so close to the actual history that it is sometimes hard to tell which parts are pulled from an encyclopedia and which parts are conjured up by the writer. Americans might be more familiar with the relevant history, but I had a hard time figuring out if Warren Harding had actually been murdered or if he was a president of the United States in the first place. Also, the book is rife with celebrity cameos (as I can imagine the movie will be), but most of these slipped my attention. Am I supposed to know that the Marx Brothers performed as "Fun in Hi Skule" at one point of their career? Maybe not, but a little complementary knowledge won't hurt future readers.

The attention to detail is amazing, though, as is the way Gold is able to "show, not tell" his way around tricky character interactions and subplots. The narration is subtle and rewarding, the character arcs realistic and thoughtful. Despite all the magic and sleight-of-hand, I did not feel cheated in any way, even when some plot twists initially seemed absurd.

As with some previous books mentioned here, my only problem was the drawn out conclusion. The finale appeared to be written with only one thing in mind - a transition to the big screen. It doesn't serve the narrative well and takes too much of the readers time describing the twists and turns of... well I won't tell. But, this is a minor gripe, since I was genuinely glad I read Carter beats the devil. In my mind, though, it might make a better television series - à la Sherlock - than a single two hour movie. The exquisite characters and the wonderful attention to historical detail are what drives this literally wonderful novel.

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

I started this book last summer and never finished it. Until last week, when I was feeling sufficiently bored and deprived of intellectual stimulus. That is more or less everything you need to know about The Truth About Dishonesty. It is, in essence, a review work of Ariely's research on cheating, lying and dishonesty. Of course, Ariely is by all accounts a brilliant social-scientist, but in book form his work sounds dull, almost monotonous, and even for someone typically as patient as me, it takes too much time getting to conclusions.

Every topic is discussed in much the same way. Ariely describes a new variation on the research setup that was introduced the first few chapters. He discusses his thought process in designing the experiment. He presents the results. Repeat.

It is not that the topic is uninteresting. Quite the contrary actually, since I was quite looking forward to reading this, but compared to something like Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, it is hopelessly inefficient in its presentation and lacking in terms of vision and content. Even when Ariely offers the occasional anecdote, you hope that he might change his method for handling the subject matter. But no, the fun is sprinkled few and far between.

This is not a book that I would recommend. If you are looking for an enticing read into the matters of behavioral science, try Kahneman. If you want to read a scientific account of cheating, I could imagine that Ariely's articles themselves will provide more insight. This book is stuck in between and, at the end of the day, can be summed up in a few pages without leaving out anything critical. At least now I can say that I finished it.

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

During a lecture, my professor of industry analysis mentioned that a new book had stirred a big controversy around the topic of high-frequency trading. Intrigued, I did a quick online search to see what if it might be an interesting read. Turns out that the book he was talking about, Flash Boys, was written by none other than Michael Lewis, the brilliant author behind some of my favorite non-fiction books such as The Big Short and Moneyball. With the weight of past success propping my expectations, I downloaded the book on my Kindle and, once the lecture had finished, started reading.

Flash Boys is once again an instantly satisfying and endlessly great book. Every newspaper around the world not only praised it in reviews but also immediately took up discussion about what was really going on in the world of high-finance. Once again, Lewis was able to address a topic that was under everyone's nose but had not been given its fair due.

High-frequency trading (as in stock market trading) is an extremely technical affair that has to do with making electronic trades at what Lewis often refers to as "fractions of a blink of the eye". So far so good. Most of us heard about the flash crash a few years ago, where a rogue algorithm made the stock market plunge in an instant, but that is most of what any of us really knows about HFT. But as Lewis shows, there is so much more going on.

The world of HFT sounds like the underworld of Wall Street. Russian programmers (working for Americans in American banks) defraud investors and pension funds by designing the different stock exchanges in a way that gives companies with hyper-fast trading algorithms the chance to rig the system. It's mostly invisible to everyone, even inside the finance world, and even Goldman Sachs, a company known for being on the forefront of everything happening on Wall Street, is hopelessly and hilariously incapable of doing anything.

Lewis's storytelling and presentation are as good as ever. It is clear that he has once again managed to find the right angle to an incredible story. Of course, some of the focus put on the company trying to set things straight is a bit over the top. The divide between the good and the bad is sometimes unnecessarily underlined. Perhaps not all elements of the story are shown in equal measure. But these are minor gripes, the storyline is as thrilling as ever and Flash Boys is just a fantastic read. It should be mandatory reading for anyone remotely interested in finance.

Sycamore Row by John Grisham

While I was going through the new books section at the local bookstore, I noticed that (once again) a new book had arrived from John Grisham. There was a time when I read most, if not all, of Grisham's lawyer dramas so I took a natural interest. After a few minutes of googling whether or not it might be any good, I found that most reviewers had high praise for Sycamore Row, likening it to Grisham's earlier work. Reason enough to read it, I thought, and ordered the book to my Kindle.

If you've read any of Grisham's earlier work, you'll feel right at home with Sycamore Row. The places, people and themes are all more or less familiar from other books. There is Jake Brigance, the rogue defense lawyer from A Time to Kill. There is Harry Rex, the 300 pound divorce attorney who drinks beer for breakfast and so on. Grisham is mostly treading familiar territory, and most of it is not bad.

However, I did find the ending predictable and dim. In my mind, it is not realistic enough to feel powerful or complex enough to shock you. To me it felt like Grisham took the easiest way out, concerning both the story line and character development. Especially the set pieces felt fabricated and obvious.

That said, Sycamore Row has a lot going for it too. The writing is superb (most of the time) and as with all of Grisham's novels, the setting and characters are wonderfully crafted. I especially enjoyed the first half, where the narration had the time to set up the plot and elaborate on some of the more interesting side characters. Overall, it was a worthwhile read, even though I did feel a little bit cheated by the ending. "Everyone goes home happy"-endings are not for 2014.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

There is no hiding it. The Sirens of Titan is sci-fi, even the cover is very explicit about it. Of course, Vonnegut has always been about extraterrestrials, planets, solar systems and faux-science, but here the narrative is only loosely tied to earth at times and the characters mere actors of a larger galactic scheme.

The Sirens of Titan is Vonnegut's second novel and this does show in ways both good and bad. On one hand, earlier parts of the story feel unrelated (though they are connected later on) and some of the story telling lacks the sure-footedness of Vonnegut's later work. On the other, The Sirens of Titan feels fresh and unassuming. It was written before the writers rise into national celebrity and is therefore unburdened by fame and expectations.

All in all, I feel like I don't have a lot to say about The Sirens of Titan. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoyed many of Vonnegut's other novels. It doesn't pretend to be something that it isn't, and does just fine in the confines of its own ambitions.

The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean

Talk about a slippery slope. The difference between success and failure seems to be very thin sometimes, just as Enron was heralded as one of the greatest companies of the modern age, it was actually falling apart internally. Everyone on Wall Street, more or less, believed that Enron was nothing if not a juggernaut of the energy market with only success stories under its belt. At the same time on the inside, a sort of religious fervour drove employees to think that the rumours of failure in different business units weren't true.

The Smartest Guys in the Room is a well researched timeline of everything and everyone that happened to Enron. Unfortunately, it is little else. If you are looking for the definitive account of what happened, look no further. However, if you would like to hear more about what was going on inside the heads of the now-convicted chief executives, you will find no answers. It is a fascinating story and an enticing read, but it also left me thinking about how management gurus like Jeffrey Skilling got so carried away. There is so much more at work here.

Of course, The Smartest Guys was written in the aftermath of the bankruptcy and therefore might lack some of the contemporary insight. Especially since the 2008 financial crisis, I bet that there would be some very interesting connections to be made. They say that power corrupts, and time and time again it has also been shown that absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is true of both Enron executives and bank executives alike (like the ones in Too Big To Fail).

As I well know, business studies tend to focus one-sidedly on the success stories of the current era. The Smartest Guys in the Room is the complete opposite: a wonderful story of everything that can go wrong in business.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

I'm not big on self-help books, but it seems that my recent purchase of a Kindle has had an effect on my attitudes. That said, Quiet is not your average self-help opus, at least from what I can tell. Despite its name, it is a fairly straightforward and determined tale of how extroverts have come to rule corporate, academic and relationship life in the western world. There are a few tick-the-box quizzes and some praising of inane personal attributes but Quiet is mostly able to present a good scientific and social case for rethinking the way we deal with the extrovert-introvert divide.

It starts out with an interesting discussion on the rise of the American Dream and the ideal of an outward-oriented salesmanlike citizen. Charming people with manners and showmanship were able to thrive in an economy that newly needed talent in sales. Companies started looking for these traits in potential employees and the national psyche rewarded extroverts. Those with more inward traits like shyness or reservedness were considered inferior.

Today, however, the world is no longer a place, where all you need is presentation skills (if it ever was in the first place). Innovation seems to stem from quiet, thoughtful people that for now have been considered second rate by the economy. A round of applause for Cain for identifying an important issue in today's world.

The rest of the book focuses on more personal issues and I found a lot that I can identify with. Quiet is a book from an introvert to introverts, so I'm not expecting the extroverts of this world to read it with as much interest, if at all. Does this matter? At times Cain is truly preaching to the choir. As an introvert, I don't need to be told that I should be able to get more say in discussions at the office! That said, it's a good read for anyone who feels threatened by the extrovert ideal and a world of shouters and self-marketing.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Stephen King got it right in his review of Donna Tartt's third novel The Goldfinch. Whatever you do, don't drop it on your foot. On any given scale it is massive, measuring 770 pages as a full size hardcover. It will probably hit Lord of the Rings -sized proportions once it is printed in paperback and even then they might have to split it into two parts (which would actually work very well for the plot). As King said, it begs the question of how long a book today can be without losing some of its relevance. How does Tartt expect people to give up at least 30 hours of their time just to read a piece of fiction?

For me, at least, the question has a double edge. On the other hand I utterly loved The Goldfinch, almost every single page as a matter of fact. It is one of the most finely written pieces of modern fiction I have read. Its characters are perfectly crafted beings that evoke feelings both for and against. Tartt's prose is flawless as is her pacing and she has an amazing edge to her characters that obviously makes nods to classic Dickens, especially Great Expectations.

On the other hand, I devoted a significant amount of my time to something that I knew from the beginning would only leave me cold once finished. You see, not only was the ending a bit of a disappointment, but my goal from the beginning was to finish the book before moving to Switzerland. And so, my sprint to finish it was tied to some mixed feelings about moving away from home for an exchange semester abroad. In the same way that the protagonist Theo stumbles from misfortune to another, I could not help but feel like I was making a mistake about my semester abroad. Why would I leave a comfortable life for an unknowable adventure?

In a way, I would make a similar recommendation to anyone who is planning to make the jump and read this mammoth of a novel. There are plenty of books out there that manage to convey similar emotions and settings without having to do it in three quarters of a thousand pages. But if you want to do something that you will remember for decades, The Goldfinch is definitely worth the time. Sometimes it is a good idea to get out of your comfort zone, even if it involves a novel of almost unwieldy dimensions.