Books and stuff
Feb. 10th, 2011 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAfter the sheer effort of will required to read the (ultimately rewarding) Infinite Jest it came as little surprise that a mere 280-pager from Ian McEwan would not take long. Sadly, I found Ian McEwan's Solar a bit of a disappointment.
I think that I tend to judge fiction writers these days on the level of "could I have written this?" Books such as McEwan's On Chesil Beach, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, Boyd's New Confessions and, yes, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest get a resounding "no" (although I like to think that if I was mad enough and willing to devote the time, I could put together an opus like Wallace's book).
But with Solar I don't feel that McEwan produced anything spectacular. There are of course the occasionally superb descriptive phrases, but the book as a whole struck me as an episodic description of an anti-hero, as if no-one had ever written a book with an anti-hero before. I was at times reminded (unfavourably) of Burgess's Enderby trilogy, or (less unfavourably) of Amis's One Fat Englishman. And even the plot development was rather predictable. By the end, McEwan is laying the anti-hero stuff on so thickly that you feel like crying "enough, already!"
Now, bad McEwan is better than good most-other-writers-in-English. But when he comes out with such masterpieces as Atonement and On Chesil Beach, I suppose I come to expect better from him than the likes of Saturday and Solar.
+++++++
I cleared the Full Tilt Ironman six-monthly bonus yesterday, for a welcome $350. I had been considering emptying the account at that point (about $2.5k) and trying to rebuild through freerolls with my Ironman medals (some 600 in the bank I think) and full tilt points (about 52,000 in the bank). Spending any of these while getting rakeback is a marginally bad EV move (because it cuts into your RB even if you don't cash), which is why they have been building up. However, FTP cunningly decided to let me run OK for a few days - just to drag me back in.
Although the quality of play on FTP is probably slightly worse than Pokerstars, it's a site where there seems to be a large proportion of disbelievers and flat callers pre-flop. That leads to a situation where, if you are a fairly aggressive raiser, you really do have to hit some flops to win money. And I suspect that the volatility is concomitantly higher. If you add to that the fact that I play fewer hands on FTP than on Stars, it's little surprise that I can "feel" as if I am going through a much worse run (say, 8 losing days on the trot) than I really am.
Focusing as I am on stack sizes and opponents' tendencies rather than "do I think I am in front?", I've managed to reduce the number of difficult decisions per session. This has led to a style which I suspect many of the regs on 50c-$1 NL find decidedly odd. My continuation bet in or out of position has probably fallen from 75% to 60%, while my check-call percentage has risen in equal proportion. Instead of the strategy of "build the pot if you think you are in front and make the guy pay to draw", I am tending more towards a "build the pot if you already know precisely what you are going to do if opponent reraises big, and if you know he has a habit of reraising big, only CB an overpair if you are willing to go to an all-in showdown on just that".
This varies from opponent to opponent and from day to day. Sometimes I'll go for the all-in "gamble" (say KK vs a laggyish opponent on a dry board), other times I'll play smaller ball and check-call both KK and AKs with a backdoor straight and flush draw.
The interesting thing about this is that, although a bet can cause someone to semi-bluff-raise KQ on a board such as J95, when you check into them, they often check behind, and your AK gets to showdown (and wins), particularly if you snap check-call any flop bet (just as you do with an overpair).
Then, with the overpair, you can also check-call the flop, check-check the turn and put in a 3/4 pot bet on the rag river in a way that looks all the world like an AK trying to steal against a smaller pair.
+++++++++
That said, it all remains a struggle. It's now all about giving your regular opponents opportunities to make a mistake. If you give them more opportunities to make mistakes than they give you, then it's likely that you will win money off them. There are two exceptions to this. The first is that if your opponent gives you fewer oppoertunities, but they are for bigger money, then he might end up taking money from you. The second is that some guys simply don't make many mistakes at all (i.e., they make fewer than you do), and they are skilled at turning a position where you gave them an opportunity to make a mistake into one where they give you that opportunity (the all-in four-bet being a standard example).
All this is very different from playing the fish at the weekend. There is no need to give these guys opportunities to make mistakes, because they will find such opportunities without your help. So you play in a much more ABC style and wait for them to fuck up. Chances are that they will give their money to someone else, but every so often they will give it to you. I see so many regs playing "subtly" against these weaker players and then berating them because such subtlety has gone over their heads. Yesterday, for example, I raised pre-flop with TT and was called in the big blind. Flop came T52 rainbow and after six raises we were both all-in. He had A2 no flush draw. No need for subtlety there.
_____________________
I think that I tend to judge fiction writers these days on the level of "could I have written this?" Books such as McEwan's On Chesil Beach, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, Boyd's New Confessions and, yes, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest get a resounding "no" (although I like to think that if I was mad enough and willing to devote the time, I could put together an opus like Wallace's book).
But with Solar I don't feel that McEwan produced anything spectacular. There are of course the occasionally superb descriptive phrases, but the book as a whole struck me as an episodic description of an anti-hero, as if no-one had ever written a book with an anti-hero before. I was at times reminded (unfavourably) of Burgess's Enderby trilogy, or (less unfavourably) of Amis's One Fat Englishman. And even the plot development was rather predictable. By the end, McEwan is laying the anti-hero stuff on so thickly that you feel like crying "enough, already!"
Now, bad McEwan is better than good most-other-writers-in-English. But when he comes out with such masterpieces as Atonement and On Chesil Beach, I suppose I come to expect better from him than the likes of Saturday and Solar.
+++++++
I cleared the Full Tilt Ironman six-monthly bonus yesterday, for a welcome $350. I had been considering emptying the account at that point (about $2.5k) and trying to rebuild through freerolls with my Ironman medals (some 600 in the bank I think) and full tilt points (about 52,000 in the bank). Spending any of these while getting rakeback is a marginally bad EV move (because it cuts into your RB even if you don't cash), which is why they have been building up. However, FTP cunningly decided to let me run OK for a few days - just to drag me back in.
Although the quality of play on FTP is probably slightly worse than Pokerstars, it's a site where there seems to be a large proportion of disbelievers and flat callers pre-flop. That leads to a situation where, if you are a fairly aggressive raiser, you really do have to hit some flops to win money. And I suspect that the volatility is concomitantly higher. If you add to that the fact that I play fewer hands on FTP than on Stars, it's little surprise that I can "feel" as if I am going through a much worse run (say, 8 losing days on the trot) than I really am.
Focusing as I am on stack sizes and opponents' tendencies rather than "do I think I am in front?", I've managed to reduce the number of difficult decisions per session. This has led to a style which I suspect many of the regs on 50c-$1 NL find decidedly odd. My continuation bet in or out of position has probably fallen from 75% to 60%, while my check-call percentage has risen in equal proportion. Instead of the strategy of "build the pot if you think you are in front and make the guy pay to draw", I am tending more towards a "build the pot if you already know precisely what you are going to do if opponent reraises big, and if you know he has a habit of reraising big, only CB an overpair if you are willing to go to an all-in showdown on just that".
This varies from opponent to opponent and from day to day. Sometimes I'll go for the all-in "gamble" (say KK vs a laggyish opponent on a dry board), other times I'll play smaller ball and check-call both KK and AKs with a backdoor straight and flush draw.
The interesting thing about this is that, although a bet can cause someone to semi-bluff-raise KQ on a board such as J95, when you check into them, they often check behind, and your AK gets to showdown (and wins), particularly if you snap check-call any flop bet (just as you do with an overpair).
Then, with the overpair, you can also check-call the flop, check-check the turn and put in a 3/4 pot bet on the rag river in a way that looks all the world like an AK trying to steal against a smaller pair.
+++++++++
That said, it all remains a struggle. It's now all about giving your regular opponents opportunities to make a mistake. If you give them more opportunities to make mistakes than they give you, then it's likely that you will win money off them. There are two exceptions to this. The first is that if your opponent gives you fewer oppoertunities, but they are for bigger money, then he might end up taking money from you. The second is that some guys simply don't make many mistakes at all (i.e., they make fewer than you do), and they are skilled at turning a position where you gave them an opportunity to make a mistake into one where they give you that opportunity (the all-in four-bet being a standard example).
All this is very different from playing the fish at the weekend. There is no need to give these guys opportunities to make mistakes, because they will find such opportunities without your help. So you play in a much more ABC style and wait for them to fuck up. Chances are that they will give their money to someone else, but every so often they will give it to you. I see so many regs playing "subtly" against these weaker players and then berating them because such subtlety has gone over their heads. Yesterday, for example, I raised pre-flop with TT and was called in the big blind. Flop came T52 rainbow and after six raises we were both all-in. He had A2 no flush draw. No need for subtlety there.
_____________________
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Audiobooks
Date: 2011-02-10 02:13 pm (UTC)But with the audiobook, I get less from the occasional bloody brilliant bit of English writing that made me re-read whole pages of Atonement, just to say "Wow".
Ordinary Thunderstorms was better but I listened to this in Tuscany on a much more active holiday with Julie and the girls, which meant listening to it late at night and leading me to fall asleep part-way through. Now that doesn't normally happen when you're reading a book. I don't think I'll be going down the Kindle route, which seems to combine the drawbacks of both methods.
Re: Audiobooks
Date: 2011-02-10 02:21 pm (UTC)My mum likes audiobooks but, as you say, you aren't going to appreciate the occasional bit of sheer genius. Ah yes, the crisps-on-the-train. I wasn't really sure of the point of this, although McEwan seemed to be saying something along the lines of "even urban myths can sometimes be true". It was a section that would have made great TV in the right hands, but seemed a bit "so what?" on the page.
In fact, this actually was a book which would work better as a film or TV mini series (already conveniently divided into three!), and I wonder if that is what McEwan had in mind (I hope he isn;t short of cash!)
PJ
The Malaysian Trilogy is also pretty decent
Date: 2011-02-12 10:36 pm (UTC)Speaking of which, btw, I still owe you that ten quid (which I believe is actually twenty), so let's meet up and get it sorted. A week Monday, please, because I'm skint until I get paid.
I have never been keen on McEwan. I wish I could be. He's the sort of author that speaks to me, but unfortunately it appears to be in some obscure variety of Catalan that I don't quite get. I absolutely hated Atonement, even as I read every single bloody worthless smug sentence, and consequently I didn't even bother with On Chesil Beach, which anyhow sounds like something that de Tocqueville would write, translated into Armenian and back again into Gibberish.
There aren't many good modern authors out there, are there? More and more, I am drawn back to Amis pere (One Fat Englishman is better on a re-reading, for example) and Waugh (best single sentences ever written) and Orwell (I need to buy the complete Penguin at some point) and Chandler and, well, Stuff.
I hear that Mr Stuff trounced the lot. Poesy, heresy, you name it and I name it Barnaby for no good reason, and I trust Stuff.
Hell, Beryl Bainbridge never won the Booker even though she spent an entire vastly productive life writing about her childhood misery growing up in post-war misery in Liverpool. Who could argue with a posthumous lifetime award for that?
Me, for one.
I agree with Sharp (or was it Amis? It's so difficult to keep the two apart in my head) here. Elizabeth Taylor. Now, there's a real novelist.
Or, failing that, just keep re-reading "To Kill A Mocking-Bird" and/or "The Great Gatsby."
It's what I do. One-offs are always the best.
That meeting-up thing
Date: 2011-02-12 11:07 pm (UTC)A meal, perhaps? We can put it on separate tabs (I'll collect the tabs) and cheat the fuck out of the Inland Revenue.
I live for that. There isn't much else to live for. Plus which, the fuckers owe me, and legally there's nothing much I can do about it; not even with Geoff's expert help. (It's all Swedish, basically, and it's all too late.)
On the other hand, I can easily afford a £15 account-expensed meal, particularly since you don't actually drink alcohol any more.
Me: greying, bald, pustulous, six foot six and tubby round the middle.
You: My dream date.
Well, to be honest, a teeny bit too short. Also not quite feminine enough.
Books don't do it, so here's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vQl7U6EOak) the immortal Joey Brown.
It'd be nice to tower over you one more time, though.
Re: The Malaysian Trilogy is also pretty decent
Date: 2011-02-13 01:58 pm (UTC)I think that there ARE some very good authors about -- that we are indeed rather lucky when it comes to the current (i.e., not yet popped their clogs) crop of writers in the English language.
But I am just about getting old enough to contemplate some re-reading. I have the complete Orwell, nearly the complete Kingsely Amis, the complete Phil Dick, plus A Dance To The Music of Time (then again, I've already ready that series twice), Strangers & Brothers, Ross MdDonald, Chandler, Huxley, Graham Greene, a FIRST reading of quite a lot of Waugh, John Le Carré (some for the fourth or fifth time, admittedly), F Scott Fitzgerald and perhaps even John Fowles. That's just from a quick glance round the office.
Would probably agree with you re The Great Gatsby. Have read it three times and each time I get a bit closer to thinking: "perhaps this actually is the perfect novel, the pinnacle that all other authors will never surpass".
PJ
Re: That meeting-up thing
Date: 2011-02-13 02:00 pm (UTC)So lunch is out that day. Can we do Feb 28th? Or some other lunchtime during the week beginning Monday 21st Feb?
Whereabouts will you be? Is the City/Old Street feasible?
PJ
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 08:47 pm (UTC)Re: That meeting-up thing
Date: 2011-02-26 09:28 pm (UTC)Or in fact anybody. Even me.
However, I am now in possession of funds. (Not like last Friday, when I was genuinely frightened that I wouldn't be paid and I would therefore be broke.)
The unimportant thing is that I can therefore easily afford the twenty quid I owe you.
The somewhat more important thing is that I can do this on a random lunchtime next week, and I define a random lunchtime as pretty much 11am to 3pm (but not Monday -- coach from Birmingham).
Old Street is fine. The Thai Thai sounds good. I'd like to drag you over to Piccadilly, but basically it's all crap. I'm pretty much open to anything around Bank (or otherwise something half a mile off the Central line).
Up to you, really. Your choice of day. Your choice of cuisine (I favour eating rancid dog in a mangy Korean hole-in-the-wall, but there are apparently laws against this). Your choice of lunchtime bistro-esque establishment. Your choice of practically anything whatsoever.
I owe you twenty quid, and still and all, it would be a god-sent pleasure to see you again.
Re: That meeting-up thing
Date: 2011-02-26 09:31 pm (UTC)pmdouble3012@gmail.com
Or if you want my immediate attention (and who wouldn't, after all?)
a-peterd@microsoft.com
I have a Twitter account, but I keep it personal. Gentlemen prefer to wank in privacy.