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.