I finished The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I fucking hated it. Too bad too, because I thought that the premise was interesting: we underestimate both the probability of rare events (black swans) and their impact. The errors are due principally to a misunderstanding of randomness, or rather a miscategorization of random events.
Taleb, however, couldn't get his fucking ego out of the way long enough to fully talk about either, focusing instead on how stupid everyone else in the world is and on how much money he made during the stock market crash of 1987. "F*** you money" he calls it, which annoys the fuck out of me. If you are writing your own goddamn book and you want to say , "Fuck you money" then say "Fuck you money". Let the NY Times edit it to "F*** you money". Whatever.
I have a cold today and am grumpy, but even if I were on top of the world, I still wouldn't give this book more than 1/5 stars.
I also finished Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo and wasn't too fond of that one either. It read like a movie or a mini-series and I wouldn't be surprised to find it made into either. The story was compelling (relief work in Sudan), but the characters were poorly developed and inconsistent, to the point where they interfered rather than contributed to the story. Then again, this book won the Pulitzer Prize so what the hell do I know. 2/5 stars from me.
Reading A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, well see if I can turn my streak around.
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