Book Review Time
Apr. 9th, 2004 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lathanyI discovered that we had a copy of Damon Runyon's On Broadway when I caught Bea ripping a page out of it. Fortunately it was the front page, so the rest of the book was perfectly readable.
For those who don't know it, On Broadway is a collection of short stories set in the Family Business (card game) era. The tone is romantic gangster tales venturing into black comedy and it works.
The book is divided into three collections of short stories of roughly fifteen tales per section. The stories all concern characters such as Nicely-Nicely, Blondy Swanson, Big Nig and Harry the Horse. They all contain romances, sometimes as the main plot and sometimes as a side-line. The narrator is always the same man, an on-looker who isn't quite a gangster himself.
At the start I really enjoyed every story and found many of the twists surprising. However, by the end, the twists and turns were becoming predictable; the romances rather samey and I reached the end with a "finished... at last" feel.
My favourite tales included :
The Brain Goes Home - the twist is average, but the last line more than makes up for it.
The Old Doll's House - slightly different from the rest, both less and more romancey.
Sense of Humour - Mainly for Joe the Joker.
The Snatching of Bookie Bob - Nice twist.
I was less keen on :
The Lemon Drop Kid - Just depressing.
The Brakeman's Daughter - Too predictable.
Hold 'em, Yale! - A situation even less believable than usual.
Another book I finished comparatively recently was Paul Hoffman's The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - his biography of Paul Erdos.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bateleur's father gave me a copy after a discussion on the Monty Hall puzzle during Joanna's 60th birthday meal.
It was a very interesting account. It was as readable for the mathematical puzzles and discussions as it was for recording the life of an eccentric.
Paul Erdos was a brilliant mathematician and his complete obsession with mathematics makes for a great story. I thought that the description of his personality given in the different accounts tended to err on the positive side; but he seemed a genuinely nice person. He spent his life trying to persuade mathematicians to co-operate in a field which was all about competition and would often give money to poor students.
Despite liking him on paper, had I met him I would have probably strangled him within two hours - he was extremely impractical and a real burden on his hosts when it came to being a guest (the brunt of which was usually borne by the wives of colleagues because of the time period he lived in). Having been protected to the point of smothering by his mother after his two sisters died, he had been brought up without any practical training in life. Not being able to tie his shoelaces, or close a window without help is only funny from a safe distance.
Overall, though, it was the mathematics that made the book such an interesting read for me. Having graduated nearly fifteen years ago I was rather smug to discover that I hadn't completely lost all my skills in the area.
For those who don't know it, On Broadway is a collection of short stories set in the Family Business (card game) era. The tone is romantic gangster tales venturing into black comedy and it works.
The book is divided into three collections of short stories of roughly fifteen tales per section. The stories all concern characters such as Nicely-Nicely, Blondy Swanson, Big Nig and Harry the Horse. They all contain romances, sometimes as the main plot and sometimes as a side-line. The narrator is always the same man, an on-looker who isn't quite a gangster himself.
At the start I really enjoyed every story and found many of the twists surprising. However, by the end, the twists and turns were becoming predictable; the romances rather samey and I reached the end with a "finished... at last" feel.
My favourite tales included :
The Brain Goes Home - the twist is average, but the last line more than makes up for it.
The Old Doll's House - slightly different from the rest, both less and more romancey.
Sense of Humour - Mainly for Joe the Joker.
The Snatching of Bookie Bob - Nice twist.
I was less keen on :
The Lemon Drop Kid - Just depressing.
The Brakeman's Daughter - Too predictable.
Hold 'em, Yale! - A situation even less believable than usual.
Another book I finished comparatively recently was Paul Hoffman's The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - his biography of Paul Erdos.
bateleur's father gave me a copy after a discussion on the Monty Hall puzzle during Joanna's 60th birthday meal.It was a very interesting account. It was as readable for the mathematical puzzles and discussions as it was for recording the life of an eccentric.
Paul Erdos was a brilliant mathematician and his complete obsession with mathematics makes for a great story. I thought that the description of his personality given in the different accounts tended to err on the positive side; but he seemed a genuinely nice person. He spent his life trying to persuade mathematicians to co-operate in a field which was all about competition and would often give money to poor students.
Despite liking him on paper, had I met him I would have probably strangled him within two hours - he was extremely impractical and a real burden on his hosts when it came to being a guest (the brunt of which was usually borne by the wives of colleagues because of the time period he lived in). Having been protected to the point of smothering by his mother after his two sisters died, he had been brought up without any practical training in life. Not being able to tie his shoelaces, or close a window without help is only funny from a safe distance.
Overall, though, it was the mathematics that made the book such an interesting read for me. Having graduated nearly fifteen years ago I was rather smug to discover that I hadn't completely lost all my skills in the area.
