Liar’s Poker is the first book Michael Lewis published and the one that transformed him from a bonds salesman to a writer. It tells the tale of how he came to work at Salomon Brothers and key figures at the company that oversaw rise and fall. It’s an interesting insight into the excess of Wall Street.
I’ve been thinking some more about why I did not find The Blind Side quite as satisfying a read as I had hoped for. I think it is because the story does not really fit together as well as it could have, and thus the ending was a bit of an anticlimax.
The early part of the book set out a clear narrative. The NFL was taking up to the fact that left tackle was a really important position while simultaneously Michael Oher but a quark of fate was both huge and nimble. It was a fairy tale story ready to be put to paper.
Unfortunately, it did not pan out that way.
The NFL had in fact woken up to the value of left tackle well before Michael Oher arrived on the scene. Far from being unique, the league had already sourced a collection of elegant giants to protect their quarterbacks.
He was drafted in 2009 by the Baltimore Ravens and despite trying him out at left tackle, he has spent most of his time on the right. That is not to say he is not an excellent player. The Ravens won the Super Bowl (after the officials refused to call blatant pass interference on what would have been the 49ers winning drive – I’m not bitter about it though) with him in the offensive line. However, re-write the book he did not. Bryant McKinnie was their left tackle.
That is not to detract anything from what is a wonderful story. It was a very moving tale and an enjoyable read.
I am massively disappointed that there are no tiny washing up gnomes involved in the process.
When I went for my run last week I passed two families of baby ducklings. So I decided to go back the next day with my camera.
I also saw what I think is a heron.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s final set of stories about Sherlock Holmes is compiled into Case-Book. It has some interesting tales, but at times I could not help but feel that the ideas were running a bit thin. One wasn’t even really a mystery, it was just someone reciting a story. Others were narrated by Holmes himself. It was true to his character, which while being accurate, was a less engaging style of storytelling. I did not get bored though, so these points aside, it was an enjoyable read.
Pretty disappointed by this book. It was a truly heart warming tale about how a rich white family brought a poor black kid into their home and turned his life around. But what I really wanted was an insight into an industry. That is what Flash Boys and The Big Short delivered.
That is not to criticise Michael Lewis as a writer. He is, as ever, poetic in his storytelling. It is a strange and wonderful story. However, it did not create the “I cannot put this down” feeling as much as the books of his that I have previously read.
The May edition of Sunday Assembly Leeds was hosted by Dr Chris Hassall on the theme of “nature”. It was also Towel Day so Chris ensured we got plenty of Douglas Adams in there – always a good addition!
While walking through Trinity I noticed someone had papered over the Abercrombie & Fitch logo using writing paper.
Premier Sports is a television channel that nobody has ever heard of. It’s an add-on to Sky Sports, for an additional monthly fee. Which is really annoying because they have had, for the past two years, exclusive coverage of the Ice Hockey World Championship finals.
Luckily they have now added Premier Player, an online streaming version of the channel. It costs £9.99 per month. Sign up was painless and we were able to watch it straight away. You can use as many devices as you want, but you can only log in with one device at a time, so you need to make sure you actually sign out if you want to switch devices.
Quality was not great. There are only so much you can expect when you stream a web feed onto a 42″ TV. However, I get good results with Sky Go and iPlayer. The results from Premier Sports were noticeably not as good, especially with the graphics and semi-transparent overlays. However it did offer a continuous stream whereas the free HD stream of a Finland channel we found kept cutting out every 3-5 seconds.
Overall, I am fairly satisfied. It would be great to get a higher quality feed. In a decade or so I imagine we will look back and consider how crazy it was that we watched anything in this resolution. But it was watchable and the whole process was pain free.