Books: What have you been reading?

[Jack Dracula]

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Opinion, Belief, and Persuasion by David McRaney.
An easy to read and very informative book about how individuals and groups formulate, dispense, and reinforce opinions and beliefs.
Spoiler alert: It’s virtually impossible to change a strangers mind about a subject they’ve become invested in. In some cases they’d literally rather die.

[Deathstroke]

I got to meet author Terry Hayes (I Am Pilgrim) at a signing event last night for his new book The Year of the Locust.

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[Jack Dracula]

The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

[Deathstroke]

Here's an interview with author Jonathan Kellerman.

[The Darknight Detective]

New book: The Bullet That Missed (2022), the third Thursday Murder Club mystery by Richard Osman.

[Scott Taylor]

Perelandra. My copy is the odd one from the 1960s, shown below. Its a pretty intense book with high stakes for the people involved, and has the signature style of Lewis with extreme efficiency in language and deep subject matter that gets deeper the more you look at it. One of the books from my childhood which I think could make for a decent film



I plan to tackle That Hideous Strength next, but so far have never made it through that one.

[Deathstroke]

The March meeting of the mystery book club I co-run at my local library will feature discussion about the Jane K. Cleland book Consigned to Death. It's the first book in her Josie Prescott Antiques series. And even more exciting is that confirmation came today that Jane Cleland will be appearing virtually at the meeting!

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[The Darknight Detective]

New Kindle read (finally finished the mammoth Ramayan!): He Who Hesitates (1965), the 19th 87 Precinct novel ny Ed McBain.

[Malvolio]

Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black

[Totoro Man]

New Kindle read (finally finished the mammoth Ramayan!): He Who Hesitates (1965), the 19th 87 Precinct novel ny Ed McBain.

ooh, that reminds me of Celestial Harmonie's Music of Bali box set. "Kecak Dance - Tojan" has a musical number based on one of those stories. (it's been like 20 years... but it involves a guy using an army of monkeys to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend). I heard this back in 1998 or so when I checked it out from the library. it made an immediate and lasting musical impression on me. it's pretty fun.... if you're into world music. I've got this in my CD collection somewhere. here's a link to the track itself.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=mUkIAotKOuo

now, changing gears to focus on the OP theme.

I've been reading "Surveilance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zhuboff and the book is dreadful! the interviews and articles about her were good... so, I was hoping the book would be great. I swear some 70% of the book (as far as I read) feels like padding and slightly deranged ranting. for every great idea or example, she heaps on piles of lots of infuriating speculation. it's almost as if she can't imagine people living out their lives offline in the customary manner. some of us don't participate on Facebook, MySpace, social media, and barely check our email. it's part of why most of my communication is through old-fashioned phone conversations.

she even holds up the IPod as this revolutionary device that liberates consumers from the tyranny of capitalism (consumers get the music when, where, and how they want it). I never bought an IPod or used a streaming service... because the more I learned about it the more I was convinced that it was the musicians and performers that were getting screwed over while record labels and consumers got the big wins. (I buy CDs or digital downloads because I want the musicians I enjoy to get paid more fairly than they appear to get paid by streaming services)

what makes her rhapsodizing about IPods all the stranger is that Zhuboff never mentioned the infamous feud and legal battle between Apple and Taylor Swift! this took place years before Zhuboff's book was released... it convinced me that she didn't do ANY homework outside of her established specialties. (seriously, just setting aside three weeks to study how the music industry works might have caused her to change her mind on a few things. I always saw the IPod as a mere continuation of the established corruption and exploitation we typically associate with the music industry)

at one point she asserts that surveillance capitalists will one day know more about us than we know ourselves! not exaggerating. she was also really wordy and determined to come across as this deep and poetic thinker... okay. I mean who doesn't want to seem eloquent and thoughtful, right?

however, I quickly grew tired of her conspiratorial crusading and paranoid prognostications about the imminent extinction of human agency and freedom in the face of the jeering juggernaut of surveillance capitalism. I gave up after reading about 250 pages. I might go back and finish it... but the book needed to be shorter. she could have cut out every personal anecdote and poetic reference and simply focused on the history and I would have been a happier reader. the segments about how Google maps was created was fascinating... or how Pokemon Go was primarily about veiled real-world data extraction. that stuff was great.

[Deathstroke]

You can check out my review of Leave No Trace, the first book in the new National Parks thriller series by author A.J. Landau, via this Mystery Scene magazine link.

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[The Darknight Detective]

New Kindle reads: the short stories The Lottery of the Sea (1912) by James B. Connolly and John O'Damn (1918) by Charles Beadle, as well as the non-fiction book 1914 (1919) by Sir John French, 1st Earl of Ypres.

[Jekyll]

Just began Shogun for the first time because I enjoyed the recent episodes so much. Man for a 1,000 page book it's pretty hard to put down.

[The Darknight Detective]

Just began Shogun for the first time because I enjoyed the recent episodes so much. Man for a 1,000 page book it's pretty hard to put down.

The only Clavell I have ever read was King Rat back in the late '80s and that was really good.

[Chubistian]

No longer human, by Osamu Dazai
The bell jar, by Sylvia Plath
Las batallas en el desierto, by José Emilio Pacheco
In the miso soup, by Ryu Murakami