Category: books

Categories
books

Born to Run

I saw this article in the NYT during the run-up to the New York City Marathon. It’s a story about barefoot running. I was so smitten by this idea that I bought the book and have started making the conversion to a forefoot strike. Heck, I even announced on Facebook that I was making the conversion. Now I have to do it.

I’m a runner of sorts. I do the occasional half-marathon and running is my number one form of cardio. However, it never feels great. Sure, it feels good, at times, but never great. I certainly never get the runner’s high and I think it’s because I usually have leg and foot pain. I’m not talking about acute injuries like pulled muscles, ripped tendons, or strained ligaments. I’m talking about general pain in my achilles, hips, and/or plantar muscle that have forced me to stop running for a few months after my last two half-marathons.

This needs to change. I’m ready to experiment.

So I’m taking a page out of this book. As I write this, I’m a month into a program comprised mostly of shoeless running-in-place in my living room with a goal of changing my running style. I’ve started from zero and will hopefully be able to run a mile or so outside by March 1st. The ultimate goal is that this new running technique will provide a life full of injury-free marathons and half-marathons.

But enough about me, let’s talk about this book. The author, Christopher MacDougall, faced running injuries much more acute than mine. He’s a writer with big-media type of resources (NYT, Men’s Health), so he set out to find a solution. Along the way, he discovered that there was enough material directly and indirectly related to his running discoveries to write a book about them.

His research sent him down a path to the Copper Canyon in Mexico and an indigenous people who are arguably the best runners in the world. They’re called the Tarahumara and they run like the wind in bare feet or in simple sandals that have no heal support. This book is mostly about them, but it’s also a wide-ranging, wonderful story about running in general. There a few distinct themes.

First of all, and most important to me, there’s a lot of running science in the book that advocates a forefoot landing. The theme being: Nike could be evil. MacDougall basically says that Nike and Bill Bowerman did more harm than good when they invented the modern running shoe with the cushioned heal. It wasn’t until MacDougall ditched the cushioned heal and started going minimalist that he was able to run injury-free.

Before the invention of a cushioned shoe, runners through the ages had identical form: Jesse Owens, Roger Bannister, Frank Shorter, and even Emil Zatopek all ran with backs straight, knees bent, feet scratching back under their hips. They had no choice: the only shock absorption came from the compression of their legs and their thick pad of midfoot fat. (page 180)

Do a search on YouTube about barefoot running and you’ll get a lot of stuff. Here is a video on running form by the guy who helped train MacDougall. The book has a few chapters devoted to technique, diet, and training. It’s certainly not a how-to book, but has enough information to get you started.

Secondly, besides being great runners, the Tarahumara are an amazing people who deserve our respect and our help. The theme being: The Tarahumara can tell us a lot about ourselves and educate us on how to live in the modern world. This part of the story is told in parallel with the story of a mythical figure called Caballo Blanco (white horse), who MacDougall met while researching this story. Caballo Blanco is a US citizen who has been living in and round the Tarahumara for years. It’s a human interest story and you have to stick with it because MacDougall bounces around a lot, but it has an awesome conclusion.

The Tarahumara live right. They are in great health, have virtually no violence, and party like rock stars. That’s something to shoot for.

Just like the rest of us, the Tarahumara have secret desires and grievances, but in a society where everyone relies on one another and there are no police to get between them, there has to be a way to satisfy lusts and grudges. What better than a booze-fest? Everyone gets ripped, goes wild, and then, chastened by bruises and hangovers, they dust themselves off and get on with their lives. (page 187)

Thirdly, the story of Caballo Blanco gets weaved into a history of the ultra-marathon movement. The theme being: Ultra-marathons are fun and just about anyone can do them. I do mean anyone. In fact, at the ultra-marathon distance, there is very little advantage in being male or being young. It’s a fascinating read and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I hope to be able to do one some day. The personalities involved in this movement are infectious.

Finally, the deepest and most affecting point relates to the linkage between running and humanity. The theme being: Without running we may not exist. Take 15 minutes out of your day and watch this:

Running is wired into human beings. Heck, it could be directly responsible for our survival. Our ability to sweat, allowing us to cool ourselves and effectively run all day, gives us dominion over all mammals. We can run down an antelope for food because they’re going to conk out before we do, it’s our natural advantage. There’s science behind this, here’s Dr. Dan Lieberman from Harvard:

To run an antelope to death, Lieberman determined, all you have to do is scare it into a gallop on a hot day. “If you keep just close enough for it to see you, it will keep sprinting away. After about ten or fifteen kilometers’ worth of running, it will go into hyperthermia and collapse.” Translation: if you can run six miles on a summer day then you, my friend, are a lethal weapon in the animal kingdom. (page 227)

But that’s the physical aspect of running. Running is also etched into our emotional well-being. Think about this.

Three times America has seen long distance-running skyrocket, and it’s always in the midst of a national crisis. (page 11)

MacDougall is talking about the big increases in running that happened after the Great Depression, in the early 70s (after Vietnam, race riots, a criminal president, etc…), and after 9/11. He goes on:

… Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe there’s a trigger in the human psyche, a coded response that activates our first and greatest survival skill when we sense the raptors approaching. In terms of stress relief and sensual pleasure, running is what you have in your life before sex. The equipment and desire come factory installed; all you have to do is let ’er rip and hang on for the ride. (page 12)

This stuff just fires me up to run. I say that as I sit here with some foot and ankle pain after a forefoot strike barefoot running session this morning. Hopefully it’s just my body acclimating, not rebelling.

I really enjoyed this book. I encourage you to check out MacDougall’s blog and some pics from the climactic race at the end of the book. I strongly suggest reading the book first, it will make the build-up to the climactic race quite exciting.

Categories
books

Call for the Dead

This is le Carre’s first book and it introduces George Smiley to the world. I happened to snag it from a used book store a few weeks back (gosh it was thrilling to spy it in the smelly racks of old paperbacks). I’ve decided to forego seeing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on the screen until I’ve read it. I’m reading the Smiley books in order and Tinker is book three.

I finished The Spy Who Came in from the Cold a few months back, which featured Smiley momentarily, but is not considered part of the Smiley books. In order, the Smiley books are Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People. The last three are Kindle ebooks, so they’re easy to grab. I’ll have to dig up A Murder of Quality on my own or bite the bullet and order a paperback version. It will be so much more fun to happen across it in a used bookstore, but I doubt I’ll have the patience.

This is George Smiley, as described by a colleague:

Odd little beggar, Smiley was. Reminded Mendel of a fat boy he’d played football with at school. Couldn’t run, couldn’t kick, blind as a bat but played like hell, never satisfied till he got himself torn to bits. Used to box, too. Came in wide open, swinging his arms about: got himself half killed before the referee stopped it. Clever bloke, too. (pg. 76, Bantam Paperback)

It’s a classic character: not pretty but get’s stuff done. A lot of stuff.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

We catch him as he’s getting older. Having spent a lifetime in the field, he’s now middle-aged and working in Cold War London. He’s a cynical, old school type, but his sentiments are prescient. Here’s him reflecting:

… The murder had taken place just in time to catch today’s papers and mercifully too late for last night’s news broadcast. What would this be? “Maniac killer in theatre”? “Death-lock murder – woman named”? He hated the Press as he hated advertising and television, he hated mass-media, the relentless persuasion of the twentieth century. Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. That was why he hated Dieter now, hated what he stood for more strongly than ever before: it was the fabulous impertinence of renouncing the individual in favor of the mass. When had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom? Dieter cared nothing for human life: dreamed only of armies of faceless men bound by their lowest common denominators; he wanted to shape the world as if it were a tree, cutting off what did not fit in the regular image; for this he fashioned blank, soulless automatons like Mundt. Mundt was faceless like Dieter’s army, a trained killer born of the finest killer breed. (pg. 130, Bantam Paperback)

How can you not like Smiley? We may disagree with his sentiments, but it’s the first book so let the character unfold before reaching any broad conclusions. It does make evident the passions that the Cold War stoked.

It’s a short read (148 pages) and worth it. I have a feeling that it will set me up nicely to get a deeper understanding of the master spy as I read the next four books. It would have certainly helped me had I read it before The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It would have set the scene and introduced me to Mundt, a key foil of Smiley’s.

Long live the British spy novel!

Categories
books

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

My man, James Lee Burke. It’s been over a year since I read you, which is too long, considering I’m only on the sixth Dave Robicheaux book out of eighteen. After this one, I may speed things up because you did some amazing work here. I have Dixie City Jam sitting next to my bed, but I’m building quite a backlog of  paperbacks, so it may have to wait.

I’m going to digress and talk about my problems. Skip the next few paragraphs if you’re not interested. Here’s the problem: I seem to be suffering from a horrible case of the recency effect. If it’s happening now, I like it. Is that normal?

I’m reading this book thinking that it’s not only the greatest JLB book I’ve read, but maybe the greatest American crime novel I’ve read. Additionally, I think I may like Burke more than Grafton and Hillerman and Francis. What’s wrong with me? It has to be that I feel this way about the book because it’s in my hands, now. I just don’t trust myself to seriously rank a book while I’m reading it.

Okay, enough with that. Wow, I loved this book though.

Burke’s hero is a dark and brooding crime fighter working for the New Iberia (Loiusiana) sheriff’s department. This book is similar to the first five in the series because Robicheaux gets suspended from the department for a period of time. He doesn’t seem to be able to get through any book without some sort of beef with authority.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

It was different though because of how surreal and mystical it was. In the past I’ve quoted passages where Burke describes Robicheaux’s demons in colorful and sordid ways (here and here). Nothing like that stuck out here, but there was an ongoing fantastical dialogue between Robicheaux and a dead Confederate general that was comparable in it’s strangeness. These conversations were visions that Robicheaux was having and it took a little while to get used to them, but eventually I started looking forward to them. They added a lot of color and worked well to build the suspense.

The suspense was intense. The final chapters, with the malevolence and danger and emotion, were incredible. But as evil as the bad guys were, the good guys (and women) were caring and compassionate. Hopefully good people Elrod Sykes and Rosie Gomez show up in future books.

I also need to note in future books how much Robicheaux reaches into his childhood. In this one, he witnessed a murder as a teen-ager that came back to visit him in current day (I think he was 57 in this book). I’ve already looked ahead to the next one and it seems like there’s something comparable. Grafton does this a little, but not necessarily with the main character. She brings up stuff from the past to add to the current story. I’m getting more used to the tactic.

Long live the American detective novel!

Categories
books

Berlin Game

Like I said, I was inspired to read more spy novels after seeing Page Eight on PBS. I had Berlin Game in the hard copy backlog stack (from a summer trip to a thrift shop or used bookstore) and grabbed it just before getting on a flight. I’ll tell you, the burden of hauling paper around is worth it during air travel because you don’t have to worry about turning off electronic devices upon takeoff and landing.

This was a great spy novel, but there’s not much I can say that’s not a plot killer. It’s just what I expected after reading le Carre and watching Page Eight. Great British, cold war spy stuff. It’s the first book in the game, set, match trilogy, which is actually the first trilogy of three trilogies. There’s a hook, line, and sinker trilogy and a faith, hope, and charity trilogy. So that’s a massive nine book set that Deighton started in 1983 and finished in 1996, regularly referred to as the Bernard Samson novels.

Samson, the main character of the whole series, is a different type of character. Many spy novels, much like works of crime fiction, have an unmarried, surly, independent main character. Not so for Deighton’s hero. Samson is a fearless British spy, but he has a decided sensitive side; and he’s also married with two kids.

I’m excited about the whole beast, but none of it’s on the Kindle. I need to get to Open Books and The Brown Elephant to keep an eye on more titles in the series. What are my other options for getting these old books? This is quite a quandary. I’m going to have to take some careful plot notes so I don’t get confused when I start Mexico Set (maybe the alternative Amazon resellers is the best way to get this book).

** PLOT KILLERS, BEWARE **

There’s a traitor in British intelligence leaking secrets to the KGB and Samson is uniquely qualified to find out who. Why? Well, it’s the cold war and Berlin is the center for much of the spying, where Samson cut his teeth. He was stationed there for a long time, speaks unaccented German, and is the only one who can identify the top agent in East Berlin by sight.

In the end, it’s Samson’s wife who is the traitor. It was a brilliantly complicated plot, but very manageable. The ending scene where he confronts his wife is riveting. She thinks she has the upper hand and was able to keep their children, but Samson had planned for that. His buddy Werner Volkmann informs him in the last couple of paragraphs that his kids are at Samson’s mother’s house, safely out of danger from his wife (Fiona) or any other Russian.

These characters will figure in the next book:

  • Tessa, Fiona’s sister – is she KGB also?
  • Samson’s superiors in British intelligence – Dicky Cruyer (Samson’s boss) and Bret Rensselaer (department head)
  • The East Berlin agent von Munte, whom Samson helped escape
  • The KGB agent, Lenin/Erich Stinnes, who apprehended Samson while he was helping von Munte escape (I know this because I read the first few chapters of Mexico Set on Amazon)

I’m looking forward to the next book greatly.

Also, I love the intelligent and sober character analysis of Samson. The books are told in first person and Samson says stuff like this:

“Don’t be so bloody bourgeois,” said Tessa, handing me a champagne flute filled right to the brim. That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries. (page 57, Ballantine paperback 0-345-31498-0)

… and this, after being told by Lenin/Erich Stinnes that he would not be interrogated by the KGB:

I nodded but I was not beguiled by his behavior. I’d long ago learned that it is only the very devout who toy with heresy. It’s only the Jesuit who complains of the Pope, only the devoted parent who ridicules his child, only the super rich who picks up pennies from the gutter. And in East Berlin it is only the truly faithful who speak treason with such self-assurance. (page 338, Ballantine paperback 0-345-31498-0)

Man I liked this stuff. I could easily become a spy novel junkie.

Categories
books

Drinking from the Fire Hose

People in my generation were there for the real transformation to the information age. I’m not talking about the creation of the supercomputer, or the launch of the PC, or the invention of the internet. I’m talking about the 1990s, when every person, not just the IT department, suddenly had a user-friendly spreadsheet and database program at their disposal. I mean everybody.

Continue reading “Drinking from the Fire Hose”
Categories
books

V is for Vengeance

This latest install of Grafton’s alphabet series is the first I’ve read in real time. By that I mean I read it right after it came out. I pre-ordered it at Amazon and banged through it over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m all caught up with Grafton now… just waiting around for the next one.

This felt like the longest and most rambling of any of her books. I say rambling because Grafton uses the perspective of three related parties along with the normal first person account by Millhone. This all happens simultaneously, unlike the last book, which dredged up a murder from twenty years ago. I like this a lot better.

It was difficult to put this one down. Really difficult. Grafton went in some new directions this time around. It was the first time I recall a scene with Millhone that was not told in the first person. It was fun to get a different perspective of Millhone from someone else. It also had the longest and most involved non-Millhone romance storyline that I recall.

Great book.

I have to believe that most of Grafton’s fans are women, say 75% maybe. Actually, that may be low. If you read through her Facebook comments, her hardcore fans are probably 99% women. I may be one of very few males who has read A through V in order. That makes me feel special.

Well, not really. But I’ll tell you this, I feel like I’ve made some strides since noticing how few books I read by female authors. Fully eight of the 29 books I’ve read so far this year were by female authors. How about that? I’m all about expanding horizons, pushing through boundaries, and great pizza, to name a few things.

Hopefully she is full blast on W right now. I’d preorder it if I could. What’s she going to call it? I can’t think of any obvious crime-related words that start with W.

One thing is for sure, she isn’t selling the film rights any time soon. Check out this interview at the 5:10 point. She says:

I worked in Hollywood for fifteen years. I hate those people. Most of the ones I met were just as nice, they were educated, they were gracious. They would savage your work.

That’s beautiful. It’s a great interview. Among other things, she discusses the book previous to this one and lists some of her favorite authors. I wonder how long this video will be up because it’s from Border’s Media. Hopefully they don’t blow it up along with everything else because of their bankruptcy. Heck, if you go to Borders.com you get redirected to Barnes and Noble.

She’s been on a two year cycle for books so I guess I’ll have to wait until 2013. Too bad.

Categories
books

A Visit from the Goon Squad

This book kept rolling up on award lists and I thought it sounded kind of cool. Additionally, I needed some literature to round out the year, so I grabbed it. Yep, it’s lit. It won a few best book awards, including the Pulitzer. WAIT, don’t click on that yet! Watch the interview in the link after. That’s what I did. It’s better because there are some spoilers.

Trust me on this waiting thing; when things came together in the middle of the book, you want it to feel like something clicked, like something genuine.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

It’s a set of short stories that are loosely linked. Each story takes the perspective of one of an extended group of friends and acquaintances who are mostly connected, in some manner, to either Bennie or Sasha. The stories aren’t chronological and they don’t have any introductions. They do have somewhat of flow, and they all have some connection to the music industry, so you at least have something to hang your hat on.

Just be warned, this is not a standard novel. It’s not linear. I didn’t know that going in and I’m not sure if that made it more exciting or not. It certainly made it more mysterious and confusing until about the middle of the book.

At around half way, in a pivotal and highly memorable scene, the goon angle slaps you in the face. At this point things crystallize and this becomes a very meaningful book. It’s a memorable scene and still sticks in my mind for so many reasons. In it aging rocker Bosco plots his Suicide Tour and says, “Time’s a goon, right? Isn’t that the expression?”

I’ve never heard this expression. But as soon as I heard it something clicked: big theme of this book is the passage of time.

That Bosco story I just mentioned happens in the middle. Then, near the end, in a Powerpoint presentation by the daughter of the assistant (Sasha) of the record executive (Bennie) who’s wife Bosco was speaking to while her ex-con, writer brother (Jules Jones) nods in approval at the idea of a Suicide Tour (he wants to get the story), you find out this:

Conduit: A Rock-and-Roll Suicide by Jules Jones

Mom bought the book, but she never mentions it.

It’s about a rock star who wants to die onstage, but ends up recovering and owning a dairy farm.

There’s a picture of mom on page 128.

Yep, that’s how this book unfolds. It just skips forward or backward, depending on whatever. You have to draw the connections yourself and letting them reveal themselves is most of the fun. And yeah, that snippet above is actually in Powerpoint form. It’s chapter 12. The whole chapter is a Powerpoint presentation. Genius. It may be one of the coolest chapters in a book I’ve ever read – I was dumbstruck, moved, blown away, saddened, enlightened, overjoyed. It was a stack of Powerpoint slides. Seriously.

And to think, Jennifer Egan had never even used Powepoint until this chapter, which she added after the publisher agreed to publish it. Great stuff.

Read the book. Read this post. Watch the interview, in that order.

Categories
books

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

I was inspired to read this by the trailer for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I saw before Moneyball. This is le Carre’s third book and one of the precursors to Tinker. It features George Smiley, the famous spy from Tinker, but for only a few moments. The main character of this book is Alec Leamas.

Leamas is a British spy, and recently, all of his agents in the East German section were killed (talking 1960 maybe). He’s back in London and seems to be playing the ruse of being retired, angry, and drunk, but he’s still working one last job for Control. He consents to this last job because it’s his chance to get back at Mundt, his East German nemesis and the guy responsible for exterminating his whole section.

This is a short, but classic spy novel. You really never know what’s going on, but you can follow it very easily. That’s a great compliment to le Carre. You’re in the dark, but you can easily survey the field so you’re not blind. He leaves stuff out that he thinks you don’t need to know, but not too much stuff. He’s mastered that part of the craft.

I’m starting to understand why I was so frustrated by this when I was younger. I’m a lot more patient now. I didn’t feel manipulated when I finished, I felt outfoxed.

And I enjoy the dialogue reflective of the times. There was a great conversation between Leamas and his captor (friend or enemy?) in the middle of the book about the justification for spying. It’s in the chapter entitled Pins or Paper Clips (page 120 of my paperback) and some say it reflects the mixed emotions of Brits towards the spying and turbulent times of the Cold War. There was a point where the East German agent justified spying because it was in the interest of the state, which he viewed as much different from the point of view of the west.

“You see, for us it does,” Fiedler continued. “I myself would have put a bomb in a restaurant if it brought us farther along the road. Afterwards I would draw the balance – so many women, so many children; and so far along the road. But Christians – and yours is a Christian society – Christians may not draw the balance.”

“Why not? They’ve got to defend themselves, haven’t they?”

“But they believe in the sanctity of human life. The believe every man has a soul which can be saved. They believe in sacrifice.”

While reading this I did not grasp the social commentary le Carre was putting forth. The wiki article for this book seems well-informed. I’ve started to read wiki articles for a lot of the books I read and love the “cultural impact” discussions. Plus, caring wiki editors often toss in links to cool stuff. For instance:

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

This is grim, depressing, and stressful stuff. There isn’t too much action, but there is torture and cruelty. And the ending is not pretty. I’ve read two le Carre books this year and both have ended abruptly and not good for the protagonists. This one ended with an especially touching scene, as two lovers get shot dead in the last few paragraphs.

This is classic spy literature and I’m tempted to classify it as lit. But I won’t. It’s a must read if you like spy novels.

Categories
books

The Little Book of Valuation

This is a highly relevant topic for my work life. I don’t value companies, but being familiar with the concept is important. And who better to walk the reader through this than Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at the Stern School of Business at NYU? In general, he presents a great way to get a deeper understanding of financial statements for any business person, whether investor, CEO, or owner.

This is also a great refresher for any finance professional because the other, more subtle thing this book does is help with the big picture of linking rows and columns of numbers to value. On the very last line of the book Damodaran says “convert stories to numbers,” which I find myself constantly trying to do for clients. Convert… link…, choose your word, but if you’re in finance you need to be able round-trip this concept. You need to be able to take stories, convert them to numbers, then convert the numbers back to stories.

Damodaran tells a lot of stories in this book and you can use his examples to learn how to distill business performance, risk, the market, etc… into a set of numbers that any business person can relate to. The first and perhaps most general story is an intrinsic valuation of 3M, which occurs in chapter 3. For your reference, here is a link to the PDF of the 2007 Annual Report that Damodaran uses (I was able to tie out about half of the numbers, I couldn’t figure out the others).

It may be worth pulling it up while you’re reading the book. I did it after the fact and it was helpful.

Like I do with a lot of business books, I made a reference sheet to refresh my memory on the topic, pull out some highlights, and give me an indication of where to go quickly if I need to look something up. You can see that it’s a pretty short book and can probably be read in just a few sessions. It should be more than enough information for 95% of the non-financial people out there.

It’s not a trend yet, but this is the second short and focused business book I’ve read this year. The other was Harvest, which concentrated on the topic of selling a small business. They are similar in length and scope. Reading them doesn’t prepare you to go out on your own and sell your company or value a firm, but they do arm you with a lot of specific knowledge that will guard against being confused or even mislead by so-called experts.

Finally, I just started following Damodaran’s Musings on Markets blog and it looks like he posts five or six times a month. He just finished a series of posts on valuing growth companies and uses Groupon as an example. It looks like good stuff and I have a feeling that it will help me “convert stories to numbers.”

Categories
books

A Clash Of Kings

I’m hammering through this Game of Thrones quintuplet thing. It’s good stuff and I think I’ll stick with it, but I’ve had my fill for this year. After book one I was really anticipating this book. But my anticipation for the next book has waned a little. I kind of got stuck at times during this follow-up effort, for a couple of reasons, but I’ll stick with it for at least another book.

At about 50%, things started to turn really supernatural and it frustrated me. A primary character was killed by a ghostly intruder and a main character started having visions and believing that dreams of others may be prophecies. In fact, there were a lot of dream sequences, which got pretty laborious. I started to tune them out, actually just glossing over them.

However, I’m still excited about the story. The characters are deep and complicated and the intrigue is well-played and expansive. It spans a lot of characters and a multitude of story lines, which keeps things moving despite an often sloth-like pace brought about by the dream sequences and the constant description of every bit character in the scene. There’s so much stuff going on that I’ve often had to turn to some fan sites to catch up on things. The Kindle does a poor job of portraying maps and makes it difficult to flip back through pages for reference purposes. I actually found it easier to go to a fan website to look at maps and refresh my memory on characters.

The political intrigue is one of the coolest parts of this book. The machinations of gaining and losing power in the relatively familiar political hierarchy is thoughtfully done by Martin. It adds a lot to the drama and makes for some good family carnage, which I love.

For the little sci-fi/fantasy/horror that I read, this is going to fix me up for at least next year. It’s becoming quite the pop-culture phenomenon and will get another boost of excitement next year when season two begins airing on HBO.