December
19,
2005
A while back, I had a two-for-one entry featuring Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Andrew Tobias’ The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. This is sort of a sequel, in that Burton G. Malkiel’s The Random Walk Guide to Investing
is essentially the fusion of those two books.
The first part — about 30 pages — is a super-brief recap of A Random Walk Down Wall Street; the rest of the book — another 150 pages — is doing the financial advice bit that Tobias did in his book, but building on the evidence briefly summarized in the first part of the book.
As a substitute for the main Random Walk book, it’s only for the essentially uninterested — Malkiel’s summarizing conclusions, not making arguments and presenting evidence. If you just believe him, you’ll end up with the same set of facts that you’d get out of the larger book, but you’ll never be able to convince anyone who’s skeptical. But since you’re talking about 30 pages instead of 600 or so, that’s about what you’d expect.
As a substitute for Tobias’ book, it’s more directly competitive. The advice they give is basically the same (because any book that gives good investment advice has to give this advice), and the difference between them is primarily stylistic. Tobias has a breezy, casual style that’s fun to read and not intimidating; Malkiel has a staid, semi-formal style that’s less prone to slightly-silly exuberance (you won’t see him advocating cutting your own hair to save money). I prefer the enthusiasm of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need to Malkiel’s soberness — and I particularly expect that people who don’t normally read investment books would be more attracted to Tobias’ style — but they’re both fine books, and you can’t go wrong reading either of them.
| :::
December
3,
2005
Time for another graphic novel roundup, I reckon:
-
Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man, vol. 6
is, you’ll be shocked to learn, the sixth hardcover collection (which contains the 11th and 12th paperback collections) of the continuing adventures of the rebooted Peter Parker. The thing starts off with an alternate version of Carnage, which I can’t compare to the version in the regular books, because I quit reading comics before he appeared; on its own terms, it felt a bit too much like a Venom reprise, with a very been-there done-that feeling. The second part contains a very, very weird story where Spider-Man trades bodies with Wolverine for no good reason. You can tell that everyone involved is embarrassed by this story, because they’re even writing little apologetic introductions. Did somebody lose a drunken bet? Perhaps! The book finishes up with a surprisingly good Human Torch crossover issue, which neatly turns on its head the relationship Spider-Man and the Torch have in the regular comics; and a vaguely lame meet-up with Dr. Strange, whom I hadn’t even realized had been Ultimatized yet. Overall, it’s just more pretty decent superhero comic stuff. If you’ve been reading up to this point, there’s no reason to stop.
-
James Sturm’s Unstable Molecules
has an interesting premise: It pretends that the Fantastic Four were based on real people in the real world, and tells their stories. It strikes me as being very likely to appeal to people who are grasping for mainstream respectability — it’s got a post-modern twist with the faux-historical angle, it’s got psychological stuff, it’s got all sorts of commentary on the pre-feminist suburbs and Beatniks and such, and it’s got no tawdry superheroes mucking everything up. For my own part, though, I found it vaguely irritating. The premise is contrived, the psychological stuff is more cliched than not, the suckiness of old-school housewife life is obvious enough already, and the absence of superheroes is a bloody pity. Plus, it just feels like obvious and transparent award-bait, which grates at me.
-
Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways vol. 4: True Believers
continues the story of teenage quasi-superheroes, now with their big origin story arc all finished up. Enh. It’s okay and all, but it’s really just another super-group, only teenage style. Based on the manga-format size of the book, and the youthful protagonists, I expect that Marvel is trying to pick up a non-superhero-book reading audience, but if so, this is very much not the way to do it, since it’s laden with intertwinings to the big ol’ Marvel Universe.
-
Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, vol. 2: Dangerous
pretty much continues with the style set in the first volume. He’s writing a very traditional superhero story that happens to be very well done. Brilliant dialogue, tight plotting (this seems like it’d be one of the few modern comics that wouldn’t be actively painful to read in pamphlet form), a good mix of comedy and drama, and just general goodness. Whedon the comic book writer isn’t the super genius that Whedon the DVD writer is, but he’s nevertheless pretty damn good. Highly recommended for all fans of traditional superhero comics.
| :::
December
3,
2005
Martha Well’s The Gate of the Gods
is the third and final book of the trilogy that began with The Wizard Hunters and continued with the disturbingly un-booklogged The Ships of Air. I enjoyed both of those two books enormously, so I’m sad to report that the third book is a bit of a let-down.
It’s not bad, mind. It’s still a pretty good book, and I wouldn’t not read the trilogy in fear of it or anything — but it’s not what I expect from the concluding volume of a tale filled with a huge magical war between worlds. I want action, and lots of it; I want stuff to happen, happen, happen. Instead, what I get is something that’s probably more accurately reflective of how real major wars work: The characters spend a lot of time waiting around for everything to get coordinated and ready so they can go on to do whatever it is they do next. I kept feeling that at any moment, the waiting would be over and the ass-kicking would begin, but after each spurt of activity, it was back to waiting around again.
Despite that, I did read through it quickly; and I still think that the trilogy taken as a whole is well above average. The automobile-and-lightbulb setting is great, the characters are interesting, the plot is generally good, and the pacing is excellent right up until the point where it falls into molasses.
| :::