A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby

So I realize this isn't my usual fare. There's not nearly enough supernatural stuff in it. But when you try new things, most of the thrill is not knowing what you're going to get, isn't it? Also, I think this book placed highly on the New York Times book list or something. And I like the cover - it's four people's feet floating in a sea of clouds, and that's just surreal enough to be both romantic and really absurd. And I think that's a good way of beginning to describe this book: romantic and absurd. Except that I might have to take back the romantic part later on - we'll see. Oh yea, this is another one from those four boxes of books.

The chapters are named after the four main characters, so there aren't really chapter names. Which makes me think that you could probably read the book out of sequence, except that then maybe it wouldn't make much sense now, would it? So they're called Martin, Maureen, JJ and Jess. MM and JJ. The only thing they have in common is that they wanted to commit suicide on New Year's Eve at the same place, and then they kind of got into each others' way. Then everything begins.

As you would expect with suicidal people, they each have a bunch of problems dragging them down. So it took some time and chapters before the whole character development thing came on. Before that, though, a lot of random stuff happened just because they didn't know what to do with themselves, and that's kind of a very human dilemma. The randomness of all these semi unchained events, as told by four different voices, is what would pull you in. That's a feat in itself - not many writers, certainly not me - can create such drastically different people on the same page and switch voices, just like that.

When they interact, which they almost always do, it's even stranger and more hilarious, because there are four unhappy unfriendly people insulting each other for the company, because they have got nowhere else to go. When you think about it, when an author writes a conversation between characters, and all the characters are part of that author, it's like the author's talking to himself. At least that's why it's so difficult for me, but you know, kudos to all the more successful authors and playwrights and screenwriters who can do great conversations, and Nick Hornby's certainly one of these.

Every time I read a book and finish it very quickly, I don't stop thinking like the voice of that book for a day or two. So I imagine that this is what's happening now, because I just finished this book, and I keep having this urge to type a sentence, put in a comma, and then ask a one word question, like "So this is how we do it, right?" I think this is because that's how Jess talks. A lot. JJ does that to some extent too, but he's a hipster and a musician, so he does that whole "Rock on, man" type of thing. And Martin pretends to be cultured, when he might be even more savage than Jess, who's really just thoughtless. I always go on like this with character commentary.

It's kind of like the psychological profile of four people, but smashed together into a giant mass, that somehow ends up being coherent and even inspiring. Or if not inspiring, then at least thought provoking, which is what most texts are supposed to do, anyway. I'm pretty sure this book is fiction, but it feels like nonfiction, because the characters could be real people. Like your next door neighbor or something. Without talking about the emotions specifically, the story comes out with a lot of heart. There is a plot, but it's not as structured as a science fiction or fantasy book, because this kind of story has a different point to it.

Anyway, I can see why Nick Hornby is an award winning author. My boyfriend said that he has High Fidelity, another book that this guy wrote, so maybe I'll look into that. But then, of course, there are the rest of the books from those boxes that I actually wanted to go into. And some more books I bought. It's like necessary for me, because I only seem to buy books, food and clothing. Well um, that's neither here nor there.

Eldest, by Christopher Paolini

Okay, so I take it back. I take it all back. Christopher Paolini worked really hard to get his name, and his parents could only have helped him so much. I hope he never reads my last post. Then again, no one reads this blog, a tiny dust mote in the vastness of the internet, right? Right. So let's move on.

Because the war against Galbatorix has begun, this book has a lot of battle scenes, and they are all very detailed albeit nodding a bit to the confusion of actual battle. In the first few chapters, I never believed that Murtagh was actually dead, but I was surprised anyway when he came back sometime at the end. Roran's story kept the entire book grounded, because it was a struggle of a normal human being without any special powers except his decisiveness and his charisma. This leads me to believe that he might become king of the land in the third book. I say it keeps the book grounded, because Eragon is no longer fully human as we humans know it - instead, he is half dragon, and half elf. There are so many expectations for him that the part of his personality that deals with expectations reacts like Harry Potter.

Aside from personally pleased that many strong women play roles aside from Saphira the dragon, I was amazed at how much the author had fleshed out the languages. There are complete alphabets somewhere in Paolini's office that he probably keeps as a reference. Most of us have enough trouble learning the existing languages, but he makes new ones. I have yet to decipher the specific differences between the ancient, elven and dwarf languages. The chapters have also gotten longer and harder to keep track of.

We are introduced to elf culture here, and it strikes me as very archaic. There are many rules, and many forms of courtesy with a strict hierarchy. Yet because of the existence of magic, most elves only need to do what pleases them - they don't need to really have a trade to have money or to make a living. I mean, they sing their homes out of trees, so there's no real estate industry, they sing their food out of plants, so there's no farming necessary. The only people who seem to do anything for society are the queen Islanzadi, her courtiers and the weapon smith, whose name escapes me, but who is also kind of a hermit and has no use for the mannerisms of the rest of elven society. Everyone else hones their magic, their fighting, does research and reads a lot - much like Oromis, except that Oromis has the additional job of making sure Eragon has all the skills he needs.

While the lessons Eragon goes through are difficult and detailed, and there's a lot of character development going on, he's just learning and so not much plot is going on there. So the part about plot has been delegated to Roran, who must make sure that his home - all the villagers - survives as well as go find Katrina, for the sake of his love and sanity. So he escapes for a while, and then comes back and helps everyone get rid of the soldiers, until the Raz'ac stole Katrina. Then he convinces everyone to be a part of the Varden, by demonstrating excellent oratory skills in addition to his warrior's prowess with a hammer. Is it bad that I feel our presidents should be selected more based on things like that rather than just oratory skills as in American democracy? While the way Roran came to power can't ensure that he's not evil, it's based upon trust and actions, not words, so I somehow feel that it's a lot more solid. It also brings up the question of whether the ends justify the means.

The other part of plot that Eragon has to go through is to deal with his infatuation with Arya. While everyone relates to this part because everyone has a first love, it just seems to diminish his character a bit - even though I agree with Saphira's words about how he's full of love and he's more so waiting for someone to receive it. I guess while Roran was leading humans, Eragon has to learn to lead people of three or four different races, if you consider the Kulls, so his job is more difficult. But Roran's journey just seemed so much organic, because they had to contend with things that humans are used to: poverty, starvation, sickness, sleeplessness and a race against time.

After Roran had to kill two soldiers at that port town, and had to raze a part of Teirm to escape, the part where they were sailing reminded me heavily of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. There was no albatross, though, only a giant whirlpool that everyone was afraid of. The way that Birgit kicked the balls of one random sailor and then held her knife at another against rampant sexism made me proud, and also reminded me of Dawn Cook's Decoy Princess duology. Duology is a word, right? Cuz bilogy wouldn't sound right. Or maybe it's just duo. And I was happy to see Jeod again, and that Helen loved him enough to make it to the ship on time.

By that time, the battle had started, and it was time for Eragon to move out. I was glad he was using his new skills to help his leadership abilities, and wasn't sure what would happen to Carvahall, because they were too tired to just join in the battle with the dwarves and the Kull and other soldiers. Galbatorix's plan to rebuild the Riders had the same problem as the comic the Watchmen. In fact, when an elf said, "Who watches the watchmen?" I thought it was even a direct reference. Maybe they should have the dwarves and the Kull exposed to dragon eggs to see if they would be accepted to, as a weird case of affirmative action for the Riders. Yes, I know I'm being strange.

Everything came together very well at the end, and even explained the title. The only things that this book managed to resolve was the relationship between Roran and Eragon, and decide the fate of Carvahall. The rest would have to wait til the next book, which I will eagerly dig up or buy.

Eragon, by Christopher Paolini

While I've seen other people reading this book and was curious from time to time, I got this book through sheer luck. One of the people I met through working at Target decided to upend himself from Amherst, MA to go to somewhere in New Hampshire, and he didn't want to burden his family with extraneous items. So he gave all his books to the most avid bookworm he knew, which was me. Eragon happened to be at the top of the stack, out of four large boxes of books.

There was a map on the inside cover. That usually speaks of epic fantasy journeys through this made up map, and I wasn't wrong. Despite opening with three unnamed characters being attacked by villains when they're obviously on a mission, the language narrates in a very leisurely fashion. I guess it would have to, considering that the book is fairly thick. But then I noticed that each chapter wasn't very long at all. And Eragon was described as a simple farm boy, which means that there should be plenty of time for character development. It took a short while before the dragon herself was even introduced.

And then, when shit went down, so to speak, it was a semi realistic confusing mass. The emotions of grief were kind of handled swiftly and efficiently so that the plot can progress. And there was a lot of plot to progress. It was told more or less like a longwinded role playing game, because the protagonist had to train with Brom before anything got done, and Eragon was never really alone. Aside from the dragon, there was Brom and later, Montaugh (probably incorrect spelling) and after him, when they got to the secret hidden rebel base, there was the king of the humans, which was separate from the king of the dwarves, not to mention the elf in the prologue.

This heavily reminds me of either the Dragon Quest series or the Final Fantasy series. Given that the book was written when the author was sixteen, I would assume that's where he got some of his material (from video games). I thought it was also Harry Potter-esque, but it was not nearly as intricate and the list of villains hasn't gotten so long yet.

I read in the back that the book was first published by the guy's parents, and yea, it's all good, but I couldn't help being disappointed anyway. Because I mean, when I write my poems, I have to follow through with a series of hoops, you know, like a cover letter and such and all this other stuff, but the acknowledgments page just made it seem like all the marketing was done by the parents, and Mr. Paolini didn't have to go through this process of sending his manuscript to like a trillion places. Lucky duck.

But all the same, the dragon had strong characterization and so did Montaugh and the politics around Eragon, even though he himself wasn't developed enough to be interesting yet. So I was looking forward to the second book. Which, as I found out today, was also in the same box, so yay.

Black Magic Sanction, by Kim Harrison

One of the things I was really looking forward to before this novel came out was a scene of Rachel in the ever after, and it didn't disappoint. The other thing that all fantasy authors with a modern female audience seems to be good at is the construction of complicated and sultry male characters. This particular one of this series features Trent, billionaire city's son, and the dangerous and devious Algaliarept, demon mentor. Then of course, there's Pierce, heartbroken magical cowboy.

As with most series, a person - or 'a body', as Pierce would say - must read the entire series in order to get the full effect of the changing dynamics between the whole cast of characters. The three characters above seem odd precisely because the first two were fearsome villains in the first two books, while the cowboy just appeared in the last book, and at the very end at that, where he scarcely had a chance to make that much of an impression.

The plot twists are appreciative and many, and I also feel like the author lowered the sex quota here because ultimately, it's more a fantasy - even if there's some science behind it - than science fiction or romance. The one scene that there was, was really primal though.

The action was on par, but it was weird that the final political play was kind of a spoof, something for the fake tabloids to write about. Matalina, Jenk's wife and a total innocent, had to die right in the climax to balance that out. It was the emotional aftermath with Jenks that really made any impact - Matalina was rarely seen, even if she was more than a flat character. I'm curious as to the future dealings that Rachel may have with the fairies in the future, especially since they had the only action scene in the book, where Rachel helped make and pulled back a curse, but was otherwise powerless to do anything.

Among the people short-written this time around were Newt, Ivy and for the purpose of making fun of the enemy, Jonathan. Oh, and David. Finding out that Lee is actually not that much of a villain now is kind of weird. I understand the distinction they make in the line "That was business. This was survival" but it's never going to feel completely right. The new book gives the series a different feel, because after seven books of action, sex and ass kicking, suddenly there's this touchy feely take on politics and interspecies coexistence, with a statement against eugenics to boot. I guess I should have expected this, though - we went from thinking that demons are pure evil and the bane of existence to wondering if Rachel is a demon herself and having a demon mentor who's potentially interested in her. The primary villains this time around are the fellow witches who shunned her, all of whom practice white magic, and Nick, who sadly is the only representative for humankind aside from Glenn the FIB agent.

For the sake of the shippers - wait, Ivy and Glenn? Really? I mean, it was hinted at like two books ago, but I thought that Ivy was just checking him out and that that wasn't the same as him being blood bait. Wrong again. Are we going to hear more about this Krathion guy when we hear about Newt? Now that's a technique - setting up for the next book already in the first chapter. Looking forward to more to come, despite a few mixed feelings about this one.

Living Dead in Dallas, by Charlaine Harris

Very addictive. I finished this book in one day; it was a definite page turner, and I just couldn't put it down. There are two main plot paths, one where the character Lafayette was sacrificed and one involving Sookie being employed to help with vampire cases. The fact that the second one became more prominent surprised me, because the book started out with the discovery of Lafayette's body. Even though the second plot had a missing vampire, I assumed that vampires can generally take care of themselves and finding him felt less urgent to me.

There was continuity, which speaks well for book series in general. I remembered Lafayette speaking about or hinting at having attended some unconventional party in the first book, so the time line seems very linear. It almost seemed expected that he would die, in hindsight, because he was introduced in the middle or latter parts of the first book for a single scene, and we never really heard from him again. Then we got distracted by the second plot, and wouldn't find out later that the two plot paths have essentially nothing in common except for a new supernatural creature - the maenad.

A maenad is another surprising twist, considering the other supernatural creatures introduced were vampires and shapeshifters. Those two seem pretty spread across the board in terms of cultural reference and relevance, so a creature out of specifically Greek mythology was a tiny surprise. The vampires' agreement to give tribute to this creature, after declaring that it was nearly impossible to kill, set up an idea as to the hierarchy of supernatural creatures - maenads are apparently more powerful than vampires, who seem to display less fear than the underground shapeshifters.

More shapeshifters were to be found in the quest to retrieve that vampire. The quest led Sookie and Bill to the organization the Fellowship of the Sun, which turned out to be this group of religious fanatics who believe that all supernatural creatures are abominations against the Christian god. The way that the followers seem so very civilized, but let no discussion happen so that they won't have to acknowledge any dissenting opinions seemed very true to life to me. It is this kind of behavior among people that creates a cult atmosphere in the practice of some religions. The way the organization's name appealed to the sun also seemed Greek-like and paradoxically polytheistic, since there are other stars and planets, but they only sought the sun's destructive abilities as "proof" that vampires were abominations.

The character Godfrey was fascinating to me. He seemed to be somewhat of a tragic figure, used for the organization's political agenda, until he makes known that not only did he agree to have someone burn with him in a spectacle - which is the supernatural rendition of a lynching - he also used to be a child molester and serial killer. A lot about his past was left unsaid, probably due to the gruesome nature of it, but I have to wonder what made him the psychopath that he was, how he got turned into a vampire, and what factored into his decision to turn himself in to the cult in an attempt at seeking salvation and redemption through death.

Speaking of which, I wouldn't mind seeing more child vampires. Especially since Bill's friend got burned with those aggressors in Dead Until Dark without a second thought. This preference is probably due to my taste when it comes to characters, and the fact that I watch anime.

When the minor character Bethany died - and characters seem to die like flies in Charlaine Harris's books, not to mention each book in this series has the word "dead" in the titles - I almost felt like it was supposed to be some fable or some sort. Watch who you hang out with, because the enemies of the people you hang out with might kill you just out of association. I'm sure I'm just overly interpreting this, but I also feel like people do sort of think of other people like that in reality, and it was a very unpleasantly limiting kind of unspoken judgment in society. An unhappy thought.

Down to the final arc in this novel, I thought the preparation for the events at the sex club were hilarious, more so highlighted by the vampire Eric's crooked sense of humor at everything. The orgy itself was nauseating, yes, but it just seems to be the literary fleshing out of another stereotype - that orgies mainly occurred in rural areas because there aren't that many things to do, and because a tight knit community sometimes leads to social pressures of the strangest sorts. There's a part of me that wants to defend this behavior, because if everything is consensual and everyone involved knows to keep their emotions in check, no one would really come to any harm, so the logic goes. The hard part there is for everyone to keep their emotions in check, though. Either way, I don't feel qualified to judge through lack of full understanding.

That doubtful sentiment gets amplified by how these characters who participate in the orgy get done in - by the maenad. It seems like poetic justice, given that maenads are worshipers of Dionysis and engaged in drinking, orgies and terrible destructive acts as well. In fact, the main differences between the maenad and these characters are that the maenad is now supernatural, she does the things she does for religious (and self righteous?) reasons, and that all maenads are female, as the legend goes. This particular maenad, Callisto, also seems to be modeled after Calypso, the witch who kept Odysseus on an island and turned all his men to pigs. I say witch for lack of a better term and clear understanding. Should I have said siren? Hm.

After all of this, I almost wish that Sookie slept with Sam instead, so that she wouldn't have to deal with the instinctive possessiveness that being with a vampire engenders. But then, the series would no longer a bunch of vampire novels, which was its main initial selling point. I have to admit that the sexual tension between Sookie and a handful of characters definitely gives the stories some oomph. One last thought: after Sookie and Bill fought over his not treating her like an equal, and the way the incident was attributed to pride at the end, made me wonder whether feminism has any standing at all in the Southern culture of North America. Oh well. Since this book was even more addictive than the pilot novel, I'm going to look for more.

Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris

This series was recommended to me by a coworker. I had also heard about its television adaptation True Blood, but I feel that the books are always better because my imagination is a personal space where it's just me and the author, and I don't have to accept the additional interpretations of the director and actors. One of my friends also started reading this series, but she didn't like the main character, and so didn't continue. With all of this background and input from other people in mind, I started reading this book.

My first thought was brain candy. It has the feel of urban fantasy but is set in a rural town, where the protagonist is a waitress who thinks that vampires are fascinating. I have this thought that Asians are the vampires of reality, so I read the fascination and fear associated with supernatural creatures in books as misunderstandings and racism. And Sookie seems like such a sheltered, unassuming character. I found her likable right away, especially since she got into a fight to defend the vampire just on principle, and that banished any notions put into my head that Sookie might be a weakling.

It's true that she cried a lot, but given the handful of deaths of loved ones and people she knows surrounding her, I think it's only justified. She certainly doesn't resemble most noir protagonists, but since this novel turned out to be a mystery, she qualifies. As the murders went down, the case was complicated by the long list of suspects, racism against Sookie for dating a male vampire, and the complexities of the relationship itself.

The villain was very well crafted. Since he defended Sookie a few times against people who were hitting on her and such, he was subtly mentally labeled "nice guy," even though she couldn't read his mind. Everyone had a handful of motives, and since it was all around a bar dash coffee place, so many people showed up and left in a day that it felt hard to keep track of. That, added to the way no one suspects someone close to them, even though the majority of all crimes is committed by someone known to the victim. So everyone was pretty much a suspect for a while, and it was hard to put down the book and actually think it over when it was written to be so action packed and fast paced.

Almost everyone was ambivalent about Sookie and Bill dating. Anyone who has ever been in an interracial relationship would relate to this. In fact, interracial dating was referenced by the cook, who happens to be a black gay human. There's the grandmother, who's glad that Sookie is dating at all, but her brother pretty much said something like, okay, if that's what you want. Some from the vampire community felt that it was wrong to mainstream, that it was betraying the culture, so they pushed Sookie around to provoke Bill. Others who intend to mainstream want to use Sookie for her mind reading talents and also think that psychics' blood is very tasty. It's no wonder that she felt so alone.

Meanwhile, Bill and Sookie have a hard time communicating, because of cultural - well, biological - differences, where they have to work around each others schedules because he doesn't come out during the day time and she has leeway, but generally sleeps at night. The first few dates were punctuated by the very different mating practices and the fact that she has next to no experience. (Why do vampire novels emphasize virgins? Is this more about that racism thing again?) I also related to the whole thing where a relationship impacts both parties, but in a heterosexual relationship, I invariably feel that the female is judged far more harshly.

It turns out that beneath all the interactions of the myriad of characters, there is more depth and commentary on society than just a plain old vanilla vampire book cum romance. The mystery, for example, leads to somewhat unusual detective work where instead of talking to people about where they were at a certain time and why, Sookie just reads their minds. The style has the feel of urban fantasy, but with home town and Southern accenting and culture. I also thought the author was very adept at describing vampires in their bloodlust, but that may be why she chose this particular supernatural creature to work with. I was also surprised that Sam was outed so quickly, though I was not surprised that there is a love triangle already, because romance seems to be a staple of many fantasy series for women.

Oathbound, by Mercedes Lackey

Mercedes Lackey has been one of my favorites since around high school. I feel as if I know Kethry really well since reading her in By the Sword more than a few years ago. However, both the author's writing style and I must have changed considerably, because Kethry is not nearly as tough as I remember. Then again, I may be just viewing her in a contrasting light against Tarma, who seems to be by definition as tough as door nails and paired with a harsh countenance for its sake, too.

The story starts out slow. The way it stays slow throughout the first half of the book disappointed me because I wanted something action oriented and plot driven, but the book ended up being something of a fable about the nature of a relationship and all the intricacies of care two people must bring into it. A little voice inside me tells me that I should relate more to this, having been in relationship after relationship - all of them long and serious - but the two characters are in essence trying to start a family and build a business, and I'm just not there yet.

Thankfully, though, there were moments when I still really enjoyed the book. I thought everything was really starting when the two women entered into a part of the forest after the Plains out of curiosity, and there was a sort of Wonderland-like setting where nature was so much alive that the plants can think and move. The arrival of the kyree Warrl - it's such a funny name, like a childlike noise, Warrl - was really what began the book for me. I was interested in why the giant wolf-cat shied away from the spelled sword Need, but oh well.

Tarma's return to her Plains clans and Kethry's meeting them there spoke a little about bringing home an Outclan - fantasy speak for interracial - mate that matches reality in a fairly awkward and sad way, which is how these things usually play out. The pressure that Tarma faced in regards to having to have children to form a clan, despite the clans' own rules about being Sword Sworn and having to wreak vengeance on the destroyers of a clan, seem unduly harsh. I thought of it as a statement on the potential hypocrisies of traditional values.

When they left the Plains, the story line became kind of episodic, because they would go and solve cases according to where the spelled sword Need took them, which is usually to the aid of some woman. And again, I felt like there were many lulls, and the real plot only began with first the banishing of Thalkarsh the demon, and later again with the exiling of the bandit Longknife.

Here I wondered why the evil and suffering that the demon fed on must include sex, though it was probably because he took over people's minds and made them entertain him against their will. Still, the association gave sex a bad rep, and the author knew that the imagery for the villains was kind of cliched, but used the icons of cult practice and demon worship anyway. (Did anyone call the partying, orgies and revelry of Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery, a cult practice? It's all perspective. Of course, nowadays, anything that takes too much money away from its practitioners is considered a cult.)

The twist here is that two major villains came back to get at our protagonists, and that Need is essentially a sexist sword, because it became powerless when Thalkarsh turned Landknife into a woman. When he was made into a woman against his will, he thought it was killing him because his identity was vanishing, but in my opinion, it was really just the dominance and privilege he missed, because that was what he associated with masculinity. It's his weak mind when it came to resisting base bodily pleasures that was mainly his undoing. Being small seems to be the one attribute that the villains kept imposing upon the two women, so that they were too weak to fight. Is this a commentary on modern media standards of attractiveness? Meanwhile, Thalkarsh thrives on the shock value of his deeds, which was why he was nonplussed when the orgies and decoration had no effect on the little priest when he came to talk to him.

When it came down to it, I felt like the plot had a lot of build up for a kind of sketchy and hurried resolution. It just seemed like the protagonists were lucky that Tarma was a friend to this Nemor, arch priest of the Anathei. He was a twist himself, because I thought that he would be a minor character given that at first he was not named. He also serves as a kind of father figure to the two women, especially when he calls them "child". The idea was that the priest somehow used the energy released when Warrl attacked Kethry to switch everyone back, and also to imprison Thalkarsh in Lastel's body. The image of Lastel herself is another stereotype: pampered, weak, blond and attractive.

There are many more subjects touched upon when readers stop to think about what the icons, actions and twists of the story meant. I feel that its message in terms of feminism is kind of vague and contradictory, but maybe that's because I feel so strongly about it that I'm a purist. By itself however, without an analytical mind, it's just a tale that has a slow start with some good buildup, that comes to abrupt finish. In my opinion, this book was not the best that Mercedes Lackey has to offer.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow

Okay, I confess. I'm one of those people who can be attracted to a book merely because of its title (or subtitle), and this was how I was drawn into reading The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow. For something with a catchy title, this book ended up being very cerebral, since it's about the mathematical theory of randomness and the effects of chance just about everywhere.

The author has the best professor's voice I've read in a long time, simply because it's genial and conversational, even when he gets into the technical stuff with the numbers and calculations, and how people draw or don't draw conclusions from these equations or those test results. The text is also interspersed with graphs, and he had a small section at the beginning about how people only pay half attention when reading graphs (because it's ultimately a picture) and that could lead to them being fooled by data.

Roughly, the first four chapters are spent proving that many or most aspects of human life are governed by randomness. I generally think of myself as open to change, but my reaction to these chapters proved that that wasn't completely true, because I was downright discomfited. If almost everything is governed by chance, then does ability mean nothing? And does that mean that I have absolutely no control over my life? (I eventually comforted myself with the thought that, even if that were true, luck has carried me this far in my less than two-and-a-half decades of life.) If the reader doesn't stop reading right there because he feels that it's sacrilegious or reject it as utter nonsense, it may tell you something about his character.

Speaking of which, it's not all about math or statistics. He also goes into the psychology of our intuitive decisions, and why that process is not always logical. The most striking chapter to me was the one about how success is judged by the results all too often, and that is largely faulty because then we don't consider the coincidental factors that could have led to any individual's success or failure. All the academic and scary psychological stuff is peppered with Mlodinow's gently self deprecating humor, where he jokes about the chances of success his book has. He also has several tidbits about the role chance played in his own life, which makes him infinitely more relate-able.