Freakonomics is a great book if you're interested in interesting questions like if you're vacillating on a name for your child and want to pick one that will give him/her a great chance in life. (FYI, according to the book, it's not Shenequa.) I was most definitely interested in the chapters on why some students do better in school, because I had just had a conversation with the principal where we were trying to figure out what parents of failing students might need to help their students. Eventually we came to the conclusion that we were not experts in that arena, given that his kindergartner is reading chapter books (and told me at age 2 1/2, "Bethany, C says 'k.'" and I of course have a pack of dogs and two ducks. (Aside, last year, when said principal and I were throwing around ideas for parental help he suggested that I could teach some parenting classes. I politely replied that someone else might be more qualified.) Again, according to Freakonomics what those kids need is some more educated parents to start with. Recommended reading. Highly interesting and not so full of blah, blah statistics that you will want to poke your eyes out.
Nothing to Lose Lee Child. Let me summarize this book. Jack Reacher walks from Hope to Despair, beats up some guys and then walks or steals a car back. Repeat for 250 pages. If Jack Reacher were around, I'd kick his ass because this book was so not his best. Hope-Despair-Hope-Depair with no real reason why he would be walking back and forth and why there's dead bodies. And certainly no bad guys to keep you wanting to read nonsense. Maybe the Hope-Despair daily traipse is supposed to be some kind of metaphor/theme. But you know what? I don't read Jack Reacher novels for the use of literary devices. I read them because I want to imagine Jack Reacher kicking some damn bad guy ass. And this book was a disappointment.
No comments:
Post a Comment