Short Cuts

OK, now for a short, low-brow interlude. Lately I've been reading:

1. Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip: It's entertaining with cartoonish characters. Or else people are really like that in Florida.


2. Barry Eisler's spy thrillers, Hard Rain, Rain Fall, and Rain Storm: As you might guess from the style of the titles, all of these novels feature a brooding hero named John Rain, exotic foreign locations, gadgets, and much sex and violence. The interactions of the characters, male and female, usually occur in various judo holds. Nonetheless, entertaining, and I am both pleasantly and annoyingly addicted to them.


3. Robert Gibbons' Game Theory for Applied Economists: now I should add here that this has been relatively entertaining, at least for a economics book. All of the examples involve excitingly named concepts like 'sequential rationality' and 'the Revelation Principle', which you might think might promise some science-fiction mayhem, or spiritual epiphanies -- but unfortunately, then you'd be sadly mistaken. Economists apply these exciting names to boring things like insurance and looking for a job. I'm considering writing something in between game theory, a spy novel, and a romance novel, where all of the machinations of the various characters are set up, but then left as exercises for the reader. Only economists will be able to read the ending.

A particularly bad influence in my life lately has been.... the Seattle Public Library! It is a terrifically wired library, and so now I am able to check out junky books and jazz CDs to my heart's desire. Unfortunately, right now all my heart desires is fluff, in between schoolwork.