Fragmented Book Reviews: Part Four

Appalachian Serenade: A Novella, by Sarah Loudin Thomas

This is a novella that I was given by one of the publishers I review after having reviewed other books of theirs, and my free download of this book gave the mistaken impression to Amazon that I was a reader of Amish romances, which I am certainly not. Truth be told, this is not an Amish romance either, although it does feature a donkey-drawn cart prominently as a plot device, and it takes place in a somewhat remote Appalachian town where railway work and logging form the basis of the local economy, making it not terribly different from the countryside where I was born and where my identity comes from as a citizen of Greater Appalachia [1]. The protagonist, Deliah, happens to be a woman whom it is painfully easy for me to relate too—she is widowed, 34, despairing of finding success in love because she feels herself too old, a bit cynical after having had a difficult marriage that ended childless, and living with her sister and brother-in-law in a situation where there is some considerable family stress. The novella is a straightforward romance, where she meets and starts to work for a poetic but somewhat awkward and timid and considerably older shopkeeper whose successful small-town store needs a woman’s touch, whose lack of success in love appears to be due to his own insecurity as the result of an illness that almost certainly has left him unable to have any children.

This is the sort of novel that reminds us about the clichés that run rampant in romantic novels. There is the whole “fish out of water,” the meet cute, the slow and awkward and uncertain romance. This hesitating and budding romance appears to be threatened by a rival partner, namely an old flame of Robert’s who married another man and had an unsuccessful marriage, had a few kids, and either left him or was left by him (the novella is ambiguous on this point) who then shacks up with a man without having gotten a proper divorce first, which prompts the ladies of the town to seek to protect the reputation of the protagonist, who has a deep longing herself for marriage and children. The characters struggle with God’s will, and the two romantic leads are chaste and proper in their courtship. This is the sort of novel that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable with the romantic clichés in my own life, not least the fact that no one appears to think sixteen year age differences to be anything unusual at all. The story ends happily, and appears to be precisely the sort of tale that is designed to give singletons hope that disastrous marriage and debt do not destroy one’s hope for romantic success. If only it was as straightforward as a ten-chapter novella to sort such matters out.

Turn Around When Possible, by John C Laird

The author, who appears to have crafted a career of writing horror tales about modern life and technology, crafts a plausible but chilling tale about the failures of a GPS system, along with the communication between a husband and wife, that lead to tragic results. The emotional force of this novel depends on a gruesome final twist, which I will not reveal, but suffice it to say that the GPS named Samantha in this particular novel is one of the most chilling but non-sentient villains that I have ever read about [2], although its villainy is somewhat dampened by the fact that the machine stays alive just long enough, and miraculously enough, not to make the ending a total disaster.

This particular short novel would have didactic appeal, one would think. The many lessons that can be drawn from this gloomy tale include: do not take a vacation to remote areas of Idaho without letting other people know, do not use obsolete equipment that is unable to recognize that roads have fallen into disrepair, generally, stay on the beaten track unless you know what you’re doing, don’t antagonize your wife by driving over boulders in roads that are basically glorified hiking trails, be skeptical of one’s GPS in a healthy way, have a good sense of situational awareness to keep oneself from disaster. Any one of these lessons would have been enough to preserve the lives and sanity of the unfortunate people here, but sadly, some people are just not very wise in life. I downloaded this book over a year ago when I was working designing maps for UPS, and this book would have made the perfect warning to me about drawing maps in areas where the paths were more than a little bit dodgy.

Analyzing The Analyzers, by Harlan Harris, Sean Murphy, and Marck Vaisman

This particular essay is one of pleasing personal relevance to me, although it is unlikely that there are too many other people within my acquaintance for whom this work would be particularly relevant. The subject matter of this particular essay is the desire to make more precise the popular understanding of data scientist, to add nuance to the understanding of distinct groups of people whose jobs involve the analysis of data (this would include people like me) [3]. I am aware that this particular book may not be interesting for a wide audience, but it is short and reads like a pleasant sort of business novel of the kind that I read from time to time[4]. For those readers who are involved in data analysis as part of their own work or who have an interest in the intersection of business and mathematics, this is a good, and quick, read.

The heart of this particular essay, which is a qualitative study (for those who wish to know) is the discussion and division of the rather large and vague buzzword “data scientist” into four distinct types of expertise: data businesspeople (which would be my general category, those who analyze business data with an eye towards discerning profitability in the aid of business strategy), data creatives (who are more jack-of-all-trades who are heavily involved in writing code and creating data algorithms), data developers (who are involved heavily in machine operations and who often come from a strong computer science background), and data researchers (who often come from a social science background and who are involved in the writing of academic research based on their analysis of data, something that is also not too far out of my own areas of expertise and interest). By dividing up a rather large and vague term into four more precise terms with a fair degree of structure and cohesion, the authors hope to contribute to a greater precision in understanding what sorts of people do different types of work with data. Among the more interesting qualities that the authors uncover is that those who are best at data analysis often combine an interest and aptitude in mathematics and/or programming with a rather broad and diverse background that includes hard sciences as well as social sciences. This would seem to describe me rather accurately, which provides anecdotal evidence, at least, of the soundness of the author’s conclusions.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/a-personal-introduction-to-the-students-at-legacy/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/book-review-american-nations/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/from-one-hill-tribe-to-another/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/if-i-could-see-off-this-mountain/

[2] See, also: https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/book-review-the-little-stranger/

[3] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/the-challenges-of-history-from-below/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/on-brackets-and-requirements-the-difference-between-relative-and-absolute-standards/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/book-review-where-are-the-christians/

[4] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/book-review-the-e-myth-revisited/