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Single and Single by John Le Carre [review short]

It's quite a distinct pleasure to read Le Carré, but it's certainly not fiction for the Adderall era. The pacing is far different from most modern fiction: there's no cliffhanger or plot twist every ten pages to hold the reader's attention. Instead, his stories take their time and gradually envelop the reader.

Single and Single has an intricate plot, with several characters and threads that the author gradually weaves together, and then, over a bare few pages at the end, accelerates into a rapid resolution. It's not his best novel, however, and if you're looking for peak Le Carré try his earlier novels Our Game and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, both excellent.

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The Prophet of Edan by Philip Chase [The Edan Trilogy #2]

We all have our part to play and our duty to perform. This is a beautiful novel about performing your duty with honor, even in the face of almost certain failure. Author Philip Chase has an unusual gift for telling a compelling story, and The Prophet of Edan works on two levels: on the individual level, with characters we care about and root for, and on the grand, civilizational level, where entire nations  hurl themselves at each other in a desperate war of survival. And the geopolitical dramas in Philip's world of Eormenlond are downright Kissingerian --with betrayal, realpolitik and honor, all in equal measure. Now, any story with a large cast and a lot of moving parts presents the author with a structural challenge: how do you help the reader keep everybody and everything straight, but yet do it in a way that's organic to the story? After all, this is the second part of a trilogy,  and a lot happened in Book I . So I'll share an example here of what this author does,...
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The Rule by Larry Hite [Investing]

It is always valuable to read books from investors who use a different approach from yours. The underlying idea is to develop all-weather investing skills by studying a range of techniques and styles, so you can survive, and even thrive, in any investment environment. Author Larry Hite describes himself as a "trend-follower," and while he found most of his success in commodities, he's willing to traffic in practically anything that moves. It gets the reader to think agnostically about asset classes and sectors, since any investment anywhere can have a trend you can ride.  In other words, think about ways to widen the cast of your net while you widen your range of techniques and styles. Hite made his fortune a few different times, and suffered a spectacular blow-up when one of his employees hid trades in interest rate futures from him. It's not always the case, but usually the guys who blow up--and yet manage to get wealthy a second time--speak most knowledgeably about...
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