I grabbed Caro’s Book of Poker Tells at a store in Las Vegas. The book is a classic piece of poker literature. It teaches the science of tells. In poker, a tell is some type of outward behavior that gives away information about your cards. For example, in the last James Bond movie, Casino Royale, Le Chiffre’s eye supposedly twitches when he’s bluffing. Or, in Rounders the guy eats his cookie a certain way. This book is a lot more sophisticated than that.

It’s very useful right away. The book even provides tons of pictures, which will help you identify the tells when you actually see them. The biggest thing I learned was that strong means weak and weak means strong when someone’s acting.

I have yet to be in a situation where I can utilize the skills I’ve learned, but I already know it’ll improve my game. While reading, I came across some behaviors that intended to trick the opponent. Those were things I’ve fallen for so many times. Now that I’ve learned what those behaviors really mean, I won’t be so gullible.

All Families Are Psychotic, by Douglas Coupland, chronicles one adventure of the veritably fucked-up Drummond family. The plot is hard to describe; it veers in many directions. Astronauts, affairs, abortions, AIDS, armed robberies — and that’s just the a’s. Things happen all of a sudden. All in all, it’s an entertaining read, but I didn’t find anything particularly poignant. Nothing really touched me. It was a good piece of escapism, but I didn’t learn anything about the human condition. (No doubt, you’ll hear that exact complaint again and again as I read more books.)

In fact, I found the ending really disappointing. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.) Somehow they’re magically cured of AIDS, which really messed with my willing suspension of disbelief. The rest of the plot is wacky, but you can go along with it. In addition, I didn’t really see how the characters really changed. The family seemed closer, but then, why do we need them healed? I didn’t get it.

So: Fun to read, quick to read, but you won’t learn anything new about the human condition.

I breezed through Alan Dean Foster’s Lost and Found, about a man who gets taken hostage by aliens. They are bandits who capture different species and sell them.

I got absorbed by the story pretty quickly. However, I started reading at around chapter 5, instead of at the beginning. The first chapter actually didn’t entrance me as much. In fact, when I jumped back to the first chapter (after I was a few chapters from the end), I noticed that some of it was unnecessarily verbose, which was sometimes distracting. For example, I seem to remember the use of the word “simian” in lieu of person.

Another flaw was that the characters were kind of flat. That’s okay, though. I don’t need complex characters; I enjoy watching sitcoms.

It is interesting to note that after I read this book, I read Man’s Search for Meaning, which talks about the psychology of being in a German concentration camp. After that, I tried to find parallels between that book and Lost and Found. I didn’t really see anything other than “not giving up” is important. This is not surprising, given that I already said the psychology of the characters wasn’t too complex.

I decided that sales was a topic that I needed to learn more about. It’s a useful skill for life in general, and I’ll probably need to get better consider I’m going to be selling merchandise for my comic. This was prompted by reading Don’t Send a Resume, which I mentioned in this group of reviews.

My dad gave me a pile of books to take a look at. I started with The 25 Sales Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople by Stephan Schiffman, published back in 1991. It was an easy book to jump into. It lists 25 habits and describes each fairly succintly — a few pages per habit, usually.

I didn’t bother memorizing all 25 because I’m trying to get an overview of things. I got two main points. One, you want to develop a relationship with your client. Two, you want to solve your client’s problem(s) — act like their consultant.

The first point is actually something I wanted to do with Chalkboard Manifesto anyway — that is, develop a relationship with my readers.

The second point puts Don’t Send a Resume in better context. That’s why you show how you’re going to help the company do X, Y, and Z.

One last thing. The habit about taking notes is one I’m going to memorize because I can tie it to a concrete example about how useful it is. Also, I’m about to start a teaching job and I think this will be useful:

Taking notes will encourage the prospect to open up. You may doubt this, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Every time I conduct a seminar, I get further proof of how effective the simple act of writing something down (in this case, on an easel) can be in encouraging communication. When I simply stand in front of an audience and ask, “What was good about the presentation we just heard?” — nothing happens. When I stand in front of an easel and write “GOOD POINTS IN PRESENTATION” across the top, then ask for suggestion — wham! The room comes alive!

I borrowed Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone from my brother. It’s a fun read, but has limited real-world utility.

It tells the story of the Kelly criterion. This involves romps through gambling, the stock market, mathematics, and the mob. The connections to the underworld are exciting, and I was really sucked into the story towards the middle of the book, but the beginning starts off very choppy. It jumps from person to person, place to place, and you don’t understand where you are, or where you’re going. You might want to start in the middle, and then read the beginning later.

The book reminded me of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife. (Of course, the history of the Kelly criterion is much shorter than the history of zero.) Fortune’s Formula was a story about a concept. It explains that concept, the Kelly formula, in a way that’s pretty easy to grasp, but if you want to know how to apply the Kelly criterion, one would have to purchase a book that goes more in-depth. For example, it says the company Long-Term Capital Management was making tons of small bets, but they weren’t really diversified, so it was like making a few huge bets. How do you know what counts as diversified?

Another good tip one can glean is “Don’t Overbet,” but this must be applied while using the Kelly criterion. This means you must do math. This tip isn’t quite as useful in its general form, as I put it.

This is not a criticism of the book, but a note to those who would purchase the book. If you’re looking for a good story, then read this book. If you’re looking to make money, then do some more research on the Kelly criterion.

I wanted to make one final note. I recently read Why Most Things Fail, which also looks at the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management. The two books diagnose the failures differently, but I don’t think the approaches are necessarily mutually exclusive. Fortune’s Formula says LTCM was guilty of overbetting, and wasn’t able to avoid ruin because of that. Why Most Things Fail showed why the type of dip seen isn’t as unlikely as traditionally calculated. These shocks are endogenous to the system, not one in a million events. The odds weren’t calculated right. But this is just all the more reason not to overbet, and to be conservative, because it’s easy to miscalculate the odds.