andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-115 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I was stunned this from Jenny Davidson about mystery writers: The crime fiction community is smart and adult and welcoming, and so many good books are being written (Lee Child was mentioning his peer group – i.e. they were the new kids around the same tie – being Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman – the list speaks for itself) . . . Why was I stunned? Because just a few days earlier I had a look at a book by Robert Crais. It just happened that Phil, when he was visiting, had finished this book (which he described as “pretty good”) and left it with me so he wouldn’t have to take it back with him. I’d never heard of Crais, but it had pretty amazing blurbs on the cover and Phil recommended it, so I took a look. It was bad. From page 1 it was bad. It was like a bad cop show. I could see the seams where the sentences were stitched together. I could see how somebody might like this sort of book, but I certainly can’t understand the blurbs or the i
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1 I was stunned this from Jenny Davidson about mystery writers: The crime fiction community is smart and adult and welcoming, and so many good books are being written (Lee Child was mentioning his peer group – i. [sent-1, score-0.645]
2 they were the new kids around the same tie – being Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman – the list speaks for itself) . [sent-3, score-0.16]
3 Because just a few days earlier I had a look at a book by Robert Crais. [sent-7, score-0.18]
4 It just happened that Phil, when he was visiting, had finished this book (which he described as “pretty good”) and left it with me so he wouldn’t have to take it back with him. [sent-8, score-0.246]
5 I’d never heard of Crais, but it had pretty amazing blurbs on the cover and Phil recommended it, so I took a look. [sent-9, score-0.249]
6 I could see how somebody might like this sort of book, but I certainly can’t understand the blurbs or the idea that it’s a “good book”! [sent-14, score-0.177]
7 I read A Simple Plan several years ago and liked it a lot. [sent-16, score-0.076]
8 And I like to carry an old pocket book around that I can read while waiting on line. [sent-17, score-0.549]
9 Right now my two pocket books are by Eric Ambler and John D. [sent-18, score-0.244]
10 MacDonald (but not that Travis McGee stuff, which is so smug it makes me want to barf). [sent-19, score-0.081]
11 And I’m not doing that reverse-snob, pulp fiction is the best, kind of thing either. [sent-20, score-0.243]
12 The Robert Crais book just seemed kinda dumb to me. [sent-21, score-0.398]
13 I’m not saying Crais is dumb–maybe he’s just not such a good writer, or maybe he’s carefully writing to the market. [sent-22, score-0.065]
14 Perhaps Jenny or Phil can explain Crais’s literary virtues to me. [sent-24, score-0.072]
15 Later on Jenny writes: I [Jenny] grudgingly have to admit that yes, I will write more novels, and no, I am still not sure what sort of novel they will be . [sent-25, score-0.219]
16 Might spend some time later this summer looking back through the archive – perhaps it will tell me that I should be writing a high-concept series of thrillers with journalists, scenes set in research labs, Big Pharma scandal and genetic engineering . [sent-28, score-0.48]
17 All I can say is, I’m pretty sure she can do better than the last novel I read with that theme , a book that to me revealed a fundamental lack of understanding of science. [sent-31, score-0.831]
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same-blog 1 1.0 115 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Whassup with those crappy thrillers?
Introduction: I was stunned this from Jenny Davidson about mystery writers: The crime fiction community is smart and adult and welcoming, and so many good books are being written (Lee Child was mentioning his peer group – i.e. they were the new kids around the same tie – being Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman – the list speaks for itself) . . . Why was I stunned? Because just a few days earlier I had a look at a book by Robert Crais. It just happened that Phil, when he was visiting, had finished this book (which he described as “pretty good”) and left it with me so he wouldn’t have to take it back with him. I’d never heard of Crais, but it had pretty amazing blurbs on the cover and Phil recommended it, so I took a look. It was bad. From page 1 it was bad. It was like a bad cop show. I could see the seams where the sentences were stitched together. I could see how somebody might like this sort of book, but I certainly can’t understand the blurbs or the i
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Introduction: I was curious so I ordered a used copy. It was pretty good. It fit in my pocket and I read it on the plane. It was written in a bland, spare manner, not worth reading for any direct insights it would give into human nature, but the plot moved along. And the background material was interesting in the window it gave into the society of the 1950s. It was fun to read a book of pulp fiction that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. I wonder what Jenny Davidson would think of it.
Introduction: For “humanity, devotion to truth and inspiring leadership” at Columbia College. Reading Jenny’s remarks (“my hugest and most helpful pool of colleagues was to be found not among the ranks of my fellow faculty but in the classroom. . . . we shared a sense of the excitement of the enterprise on which we were all embarked”) reminds me of the comment Seth made once, that the usual goal of university teaching is to make the students into carbon copies of the instructor, and that he found it to me much better to make use of the students’ unique strengths. This can’t always be true–for example, in learning to speak a foreign language, I just want to be able to do it, and my own experiences in other domains is not so relevant. But for a worldly subject such as literature or statistics or political science, then, yes, I do think it would be good for students to get involved and use their own knowledge and experiences. One other statement of Jenny’s caught my eye. She wrote: I [Je
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Introduction: On the back of my yellowing pocket book of “The Mask of Dimitros” is the following blurb: ‘Eric Ambler is the best living writer of thrillers.’ — News Chonicle What I’m wondering is, why the qualifier “living”? Did the News Chronicle think there was a better writers of thrillers than Ambler who was no longer alive? I can’t imagine who that could be, considering that Ambler pretty much defined the modern thriller.
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