So what is this 534 page travesty about? It’s a space opera set in the year 4034 A.D. but that hardly matters since the book doesn’t distinguish very well between relative time and “compressed” time which is a conceptual time that passes slower but doesn’t seem to make consistent mapping back to real time so the main character, the human Fassin Taak, is either around 30 years old or 2000 depending on how you read this drivel. Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer which is sort of an cultural archaeologist studying an old race called the Dwellers. The Dwellers are an advanced ancient civilization that live in gas giant planets and live for millions of years and the species has existed for billions of years.

The book also introduces a complex and interesting galactic empire of varied races but it falls into the shadow of the books main content: HORRENDOUS SOULLESS PLOT. The story involves a situation where the system that Fassin Taak lives in gets cut off from the rest of the galactic empire and is attacked by some random pirate like priests. There is nothing else that happens in the book, the characters are all two dimensional and aren’t developed at all and the end…. I don’t want to talk about the end. This is basically a case of taking a thin “back of a napkin” plot that would be a fair premise for the first 50 to 100 pages of a novel and stretching it to death until nothing is left except my anger of having forced myself to finish the book.

This book has made me question my stance on not burning books, please do yourself a favour and don’t go anywhere near it, let alone read it.

Related posts from the blog:

1. When Markets Collide
2. Digital Fortress
3. Liar’s Poker

In the book Lewis tells the tale of the development of the subprime mortgage crisis that devastated the world’s financial markets and was one of the big contributing factors for the current economic recession. Lewis starts off his narrative about subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) before he actually sort of sits the reader down guide him through the jungle that is mortgage backed securities and their derivatives.

Lewis starts the book of by introducing a number of individuals who don’t have much in common except the facts that they saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming and made bets in such a way that they were in an incremental short position against the whole subprime mortgage and CDO market. These individuals include Steve Eisman, Michael Burry, Charlie Ledley who all seem to have poor social skills, highly analytical minds and are willing to stand by their decisions and convictions. I was a bit disappointed that some of the information Lewis chose for his book was just a rehash of earlier articles he’d previously written on these individuals but that’s understandable as the person’s back-story isn’t going to change.

The book also covers some individuals that took the wrong side of the most important bet in years and bet for the survival of the mortgage backed securities but few of them are identified by name except for Howie Hubler who lost $9 billion in his trades for Morgan Stanley.
The book doesn’t offer much new about the market mechanics or the history of the financial crisis if you have spend any amount of time reading through information, news and blogs about the crisis in the last couple of years. Having said that the book is a pretty good read as to show you what kind of people these individuals, who are able to go against the consensus and provide a strong argument for their believes, are and perhaps give its readers an opportunity to identify similar individuals in future situations.

Related posts from the blog:

1. Short two week recap
2. Liar’s Poker
3. Confessions of a Subprime Lender

The onset of the current financial crisis as it began in 2007 (2006, 2005, were did it really begin?) gave The Big Picture a significant boost as Ritholtz voiced his opinions and those of like- and non-like minded people about the crisis quickly as event unfolded. This increasing success pushed Ritholtz forwards into other areas as he decided to write a book. The topic, Bailouts.

Bailout Nation is a very well written book on the financial crisis and out of the ones that have been published during the crisis it stands out as an interesting read. I’m sure more detailed books with better overview will be written ones the whole situation can be viewed in 20/20 hindsight but for now this is one of the best. In Bailout Nation Ritholtz does an excellent job of telling the story of how the U.S. evolved into what he has dubbed a Bailout Nation where companies with sufficient money to basically buy politicians votes and bill issuance through lobbying resulting in these firm self-regulating in good time and being bailed out by tax payers in economic downturns.

The book contains information on all the large scale company bailouts initiated in the U.S. through the years up to and including the ones in the current financial crisis. In my opinion the most interesting part of the book is reading about older crisis’ evolution and how they are similar but at a much smaller scale when compared to the current one.

Ritholtz does an acceptable job of explaining an identifying the causes of the financial crisis but does not spend significant amount of time on going into all the details when compared with Mark Zandi’s Financial Shock and other books on the topic. But that is irrelevant since it’s not the core content of the book and provided that anyone wants to get further information about Ritholtz’s views on the crisis one need only read his blog.

In summation I would simply like to note that Bailout Nation is a must read for anyone interested in finance and/or looking for information on the financial crisis and consequential bailouts. The same must be said about The Big Picture blog which keeps on growing every day.

Related posts from the blog:

1. Nation
2. Financial Shock
3. The Big Short

NOTE: In this post I will try not to spoil The Naming Of The Beasts but will contain extensive spoilers for the previous books in the series.

The Naming of The Beasts focuses on Castor’s quest to help his friend Rafi who has been possessed by a demon and his soul bound with the demon’s essence as Castor tried to exorcise the demon a few years prior but failing miserably. At the end of the last book, Thicker Than Water, the demon Asmodeus in Rafi’s body had just escaped the custody Castor had placed him in after an failed exorcism by extremist Christian exorcists. To try and capture Asmodeus once more and hope to exorcise him from Rafi’s body, Castor is forced to enlist the help of Professor Mulbridge and her squad of exorcists who have rather questionable morals. In return for their help Castor must once again enter the service of Professor Mulbridge in spite of his excessive hate for her operation and methods. The book throws Castor into a array of horrific encounters with varied demons, nefarious henchmen and various other entities of both supernatural and extremely ordinary nature.

The book is a packed thriller with very little downtime at all for Castor to reflect on his actions and consequences as he rushes onwards to save his friend from the clutches on the demon Asmodeus while fighting to keep himself alive long enough to see that goal attained. The book doesn’t do much in the sense of explaining the numerous questions wondering around in ones head after reading the previous books in the series but it does a good job of providing minor information concerning the nature of demons and their development/evolution. The book is a excellent follow up to the prior books in the series and provides a closure to issues that have hounded Castor since the inception of the series. The Naming of The Beasts is a quick read and you won’t want to put it down as you go through it but of course I can only recommend it to fans of the Felix Castor series who have read up on the previous books and if you haven’t done that yet, go grab them today and start reading!

Related posts from the blog:

1. Thicker Than Water
2. The Devil You Know & Vicious Circle
3. Dead Men’s Boots

The story starts of when Dover joins the medium sized bank Vandebro (ABN AMORO) in the credit department. The book then goes on to tell the tale of him rising to the top of the credit derivatives game and moving on to Originator (Goldman Sachs) and ending his career close to the peak of the Credit Crunch at Irwin May (Morgan Stanley).

The book show the evolution of the credit markets and other capital markets from the view of a insider as well as showing the evolution of Andrew Dover from a mild mannered man of the British middle class to a cocky and arrogant investment banker and member of the $1 buck club (earning more than $1 million in total compensation for one year). The insight into the creation of the credit products being constructed is easy to understand and for those that may not be familiar with finance at all a helpful glossary is included at the back of the book. The reasoning for the creation of these products is also explained and is sound and valid up to the point where it gets to CDOs squared and cubed, then Dover starts to question the validity of what he is doing but refrains from being the one to scream fire at the money making factory even though everything was on fire and burning down.

This book is a great read for anyone looking to get a bit of insider information about the development in credit markets which did much is pushing the global financial markets over the edge and plunged us into the current financial crisis.

Related posts from the blog:

1. CTRL+ALT+DEL Credit Card
2. Article of the week (20/2009): My Personal Credit Crisis
3. When Markets Collide

The book starts of after Stephanie’s uncle has recently passed away in unexplained circumstances. Her uncle was good friends with Skullduggery and It doesn’t take long until J starts inquiring about her uncle’s sudden death and falls straight into the world of magic and wizards as she joins forces with Skullduggery in investigating a millennia old legend.

Skullduggery Pleasant is a book that is targeted for young readers but abyone who enjoys a bit of an escape from reality can surely enjoy reading it. The series is a fairly recent one but there are already three books out an I am most definitely going to pick up a copy of the other two books when I have a chance.

Related posts from the blog:

1. Odd Thomas
2. Nation
3. Devils Apocrypha

Lewis does not only focus on the development of the ABS but also spends significant time on his experience within the Salomon training scheme. He does an excellent job of portraying the mentality of the people in the program and how it would translate over to their roles within the firm.

One of my favourite things about reading the book was how in the early 80s bonds were king and equities were crap since I’ve only lived through a time were equities (and equity options) were the top investment assets except for the last four years were CDO took over and now bonds are back on top.

This book is a great read for anyone wanting to get insider knowledge of the trader mentality along with a brief overview of the evolution of ABS to include MBS and other similar products. The book also does a good job of explaining the decline of Salomon through out the 80s with their lack of focused management decisions and reluctance of embracing change in the market place and financial product evolution.

Related posts from the blog:

1. How I caused the Credit Crunch
2. Financial Shock

This is not the case for young Barry Ween, created by Judd Winick and published in the Barry Ween comic books from Oni Press. Barry is a ten year old with an IQ of 350. Barry gained cognitive thought while still in his mother’s womb and decided he would be best of to keep his brilliance a secret from the world in order to keep himself out of government agencies who might possibly exploit him.
Barry is the most intelligent person on earth and utilizes his knowledge and skill to achieve what ever he wants. But he’s also a ten year old boy so although most of the time he’s using his skills to help mankind he sometimes goes of streaks with his friends. His best friends are Jeremy Ramirez and Sara Tan and together they get into various spectacular adventures, time travel, dimension traveling, cloning dinosaurs it’s all possible when you’re the smartest person on the planet.

Here are some preview pages from the author:

If any of this sounds interesting you then grab a copy of The Big Book of Barry Ween, Boy Genius containing all of Barry’s adventures for less than £15 at most book stores or £10 online.

No related posts.

Financial Shock can be best described as the definite guide to why and how our financial system got to the point it collapsed into the current financial crisis. Zandi writes the book in a rather repetitive and at time discontinuous way in order to put stress on the key issues an how they relate. This results in the reader sometimes going into the “Darn, not this again” sentimentality. I however believe that he does this for a reason, that is to hammer his key points into your head so that you will be sure to understand and remember what happened, why it happened and how it happened.

The way that the book is written is in a straight forward and easily understandable manner so that anyone can understand it’s content and the above mentioned iteration concept for writing the book does a great job of making sure that the information in the book is accurately and effectively hammered into the head of the reader. This is important for anyone who would like to understand what’s going on in the world today.

Financial Shock pretty much covers every thing related to the crisis up to the summer of 2008. A quick follow up to it content will most likely be presented in Barry Ritholtz’s Bailout Nation, out this week in the US and next month in Europe.

Related posts from the blog:

1. Financial Humor – July 2009
2. Financial Humor – May 2009
3. Financial news you should read

Thicker Than Water starts off with Felix Castor and “friends” pulling of a rescue of Castor‘s friend Rafi who is possessed by a demon and is suppose to be moved to a hospital to be experimented on by people that don‘t much care about human life. They manage to save Rafi and hide him away so the police might not find him.

As Castor is spending time being paranoid about the police or someone else trailing him in order to find Rafi he gets sucked into the investigation of a brutal attack where the victim has written F. Castor with his own blood before passing out. From this Castor goes on to investigate why this person would take it on himself to make his last act being to write Castor’s name. Castor discovers that the victim is a old acquaintance of his from his childhood who was as far away from being his friend as one could get. When Castor moves on to further investigate the acquaintance’s residence he discovers that something horrible is going on in the neighbourhood and that there are other victims around.

The book is incredibly fast paced and you‘ll be at the edge of your seat reading aggressively to find out what happens next. I was hoping that this book would give the reader more information about why the dead soul‘s and demons are coming out of hell as mentions of a “Great Project” were made in Dead Men‘s Boots but unfortunately the subject is not mentioned in this book. Instead we get a small inside into the origin of demons which basically makes your eyes pop. Also the previous novels made up a self contained story but this one ends in a full scale cliff hanger which made me shout out „Damn you Mike Carey for making me wait for the next novel!“ after finishing the last line.

If you read only four novels this decade make it the Castor series. I can‘t recommend it enough!

Related posts from the blog:

1. The Naming Of The Beasts
2. The Devil You Know & Vicious Circle
3. Dead Men’s Boots