Tricks Review

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Tricks Review"Tricks" was my second Hopkins' book. I read "Impulse" a while ago and remember devouring it in a matter of hours and loving it. I wish I felt the same way about "Tricks."
Hopkins has established herself as a crusader of tough teen issues - drug use, suicide, abuse. This book was no exception. The author approached teen prostitution head-on, not sugar-coating it and without unnecessary moralizing. I applaud Hopkins for that, not many authors have guts to touch this kind of subject. As for the novel itself, it left me cold.
First, I was (to my own surprise) extremely bored by the narration, so much so that I started contemplating to drop the book altogether. I might have felt this way because of the multitude of the POVs - too many switches, too little time to get attached to any character. Very often I found myself confused who was the narrator, the stories started to blend together.
I also thought the book was just too wordy, too drawn out when it didn't need to be (too much info about Cody's gambling problems, for instance) and too quick or superficial when some events needed to be explored deeper. I felt I needed more to understand what drove Eden to so easily give herself over to Jerome for a couple of strawberries or how Ginger took on stripping.
Some events in the book felt a bit too cliche or gimmicky - Lucas' reasons for breaking up with Whitney (because she was a virgin and not great in bed - really?) or Carl's transformation to an abusive sugar daddy in a matter of... minutes.
Long story short, too often I felt I was being emotionally manipulated rather than truly touched by the characters' plight. I read another "issue book" not so long ago - "Living Dead Girl." Alice felt real to me, I never truly believed in Seth, Cody, Whitney, and Eden, only Ginger and her story had some authenticity.
The story picked up significantly in the last 100 pages or so, once everybody hit the rock bottom. Those pages were great, gritty and disturbing and painful to read. But it took way too long to get there and by that point in the story I was already tired of the book.
Will I recommend this book? Absolutely, the subject of it is important and has to be brought to light. Is this the best written book about teen prostitution? I don't think so.Tricks Overview

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Jackpot Harrah's Winning Secrets for Customer Loyalty Review

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Jackpot Harrah's Winning Secrets for Customer Loyalty ReviewI have read other books by Robert L. Shook, and he is an accomplished writer of business books. He's at his best with Jackpot. This book is both informative and entertaining. Shook takes his reader behind the scenes at Harrah's, a gaming company with 26 casinos and reveals how the company is able to compete so successfully against billion-dollar properties in the Las Vegas market. Harrah's secret, as the subtitle states is how it wins customer loyalty and does it better than its competition. This is an excellent book for any business reader engaged in a highly competitive industry, and, in particular, goes head to head with the big boys. Shook's writing style is superb--he interwines anecdotal material that makes for a fascnating read. True, this is a business book, but at times, it's such a page-turner, you feel you're reading a novel.Jackpot Harrah's Winning Secrets for Customer Loyalty Overview

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Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue Review

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Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue ReviewMore than four dozens books about Howard Hughes have been published since the 1960s. It would seem that there's little more we can learn about his life. Why, then, should you bother to read another book about Hughes? Because, in addition to being well-written and entertaining, it's the most exact summary of his documented life to date, and because it also has some thoughtful theories on mysteries that still swirl around the erstwhile aviator.
Schumacher's book is a hybrid. In some regards, it's a synthesis of the plethora of previous Hughes works. Schumacher combed through what must have been an endless array of news clippings and tomes of Hughesiana. But he also availed himself of rare and unique primary sources at UNLV Special Collections, the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society, and the treasure troves of private collectors. His thoroughness definitely shows. I doubt there's much about Hughes-particularly his four Las Vegas years-that Schumacher doesn't touch on.
The book starts with a quick summary of Hughes B.V. (before Vegas), then discusses his lesser-known earlier stays in Las Vegas, including his 1943 Lake Mead crash and his purchase of the "Green House," which is still intact on the land of KLAS-TV, in 1953. Then he brings in the story of Hughes' right hand, Bob Maheu. Maheu's story has been well-documented, but seems to gain something by being placed in the context of Hughes.
Here's where business really starts to pick up. As the Hughes roller coaster inches higher up the initial slope, Schumacher stops to describe "what Vegas saw" with a quick chronological survey of contemporary media coverage the Hughes Las Vegas years (1966-1970). The he dives into the real substance of the book-detailed chapters on Hughes in Vegas. These run the gamut from profiles of significant figures such as Hank Greenspun, Paul Winn, and John Meier, to discussions of key topics: the Clifford Irving hoax biography, the Palace Coup that brought Maheu down, and the sometimes-outlandish fight over the estate in the face of competing Hughes wills, none of which was proved authentic. Melvin Dummar's tragicomic tale-more tragedy than comedy, it now seems-gets ample space, and probably its best analysis yet.
Schumacher then jumps tracks, switching from biographer to critic with a section called "Hughesiana" that features a mix of non-Vegas profiles (Jane Russell, Rupert Hughes, and the RKO fiasco) and extended takes on "Weird Tales" (obscure Hughes texts) and "the Fictional Hughes," which is an up-to-date consideration of the reams of paper and reels celluloid fantasy that Hughes has inspired.
The book's key strength is Schumacher's attention to detail and thoughtful use of his sources. Without an axe to grind, he is able to write a dispassionate book about the eccentric billionaire, a decided rarity. One of the mavens quoted on the back cover commented that few Hughes books are "as lucid as this one." I think that is an astute judgment by an extremely insightful critic. Since Hughes was far from balanced, he invites wild speculation and still, more than thirty years after his death, an almost messianic fervior. Schumacher immersed himself in his sources without becoming captured by them-a hard task, indeed, where Hughes in concerned.
If you enjoy books about Las Vegas, I'd say that there is room in your library for this book. Unless you are a Hughes-obsessed maniac, I guarantee that you'll learn something new from it, and you'll probably find, as I did, that Schumacher is able to make some intelligent guesses that make sense of some of the enigma surrounding Hughes-the Mormon will saga, in particular. Barring the discovery of authentic new documents or revelatory confessions from heretofore silent associates, this book will likely be the last word on Hughes in Vegas.Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue Overview

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Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries) Review

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Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries) ReviewThis is one of the better of the Midnight Louie series. I always look forward, with impatience, to the next book! A great, and fun, read!Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries) Overview

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Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling Review

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Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling Review-450 Gamblers
+350 Author
I enjoy books on players of all sorts---criminals, athletes, entrepreneurs, traders, gamblers and noir types in general. They detail the underbelly of our society (often posing as the glamorous top layer) without the reader having to lose all his money, go to jail, or get his legs broken by Angelo. What distinguishes Lay The Favorite is that it's a true story of someone who observes and then slowly becomes corrupted by that world...and doesn't even realize it.
The book ends {mild spoiler here, but not really} with Beth jetting off to Rio on money she's stolen from a "sicko" bettor who had just tried to steal money from her. Her quick moral bookkeeping, apparently done in separate ledgers, seems to escape her irony filter entirely, and in the end she is absorbed seamlessly by the seaminess. It's the perfect ending, for all the wrong reasons.
The best things about LTF are the true tales of the professional sports bettors. Raymer recounts their stories well, and if you like interesting characters, here they are. Dinky is the "hero", for beating the odds as a wildly successful bettor for decades (a million to one shot), while Bernard has the much easier job of fleecing the suckers as a bookie. They both consider themselves losers despite millions stashed away in various shoeboxes (for a while), and their stories are full of fascinating, funny moments, including odd tales of barely legal offshore sports books in Curacao and Costa Rica. These guys might be nutty as squirrels in some ways but they're also very bright, and lots of fun to read about. I'm not sure they and their families will be too thrilled about how they all come off here, but apparently they gave their ok for this. Perhaps not the best wager of their careers.
The worst thing about LTR is having to sit through the author's tales of her personal life, which makes the gamblers by contrast seem balanced and so much more interesting. Raymer casually mentions that when she gets tired of a guy she just stops answering his calls and hopes he goes away; in some ways the gamblers come off as nicer folks. After a while, despite her constant mention of how charmed everyone is by her and how winsome she is, one reaches the sections about her inner turmoils and groans in dismay; this advance copy of LTR hit the floor more than once. How long until we hear about the players again?
Because, all told, it's they who make this book worth reading, and the parts about Beth could be lifted from any memoir of a confused, drifting cocktail waitress who treats men like kleenex and then wonders why she can't gain any traction in life. After working as a stripper and doing online porn, she lucks into working for guys who toss bricks of money around like toothpicks but rarely seems to grasp what a longshot she's hit; one wonders exactly which details we don't get here. Oddly enough, the one part of her life that really is fascinating, her quick rise from neophyte pugilist to fighting in an amateur boxing championship in Madison Square Garden, is given short shrift. If she'd spent the time detailing that unique journey that she spends on meandering, banal tales of her love life, this could have been a really fine tome.
Instead, it feels like there are two books here, one very interesting one about the world of professional sports bettors, and one not very interesting one about an immature young woman's coming of age. Which never really happens, unless becoming the kind of dishonest person she's spent the book chastising counts. Time and again she wonders how everyone can rip everyone else off and why no one cares, and then ends the book by doing it herself and toasting the wisdom of her choice with champagne in first class.
All in all, LTF is well worth reading if you like breezy tales of unique, real-life Runyonesque sharps who beat the gambling world until it beats them (the inherent moral here, however backwardly presented). Or if you like reading about a spacy girl's suddenly shifting crushes on whomever. I'm not sure those two markets overlap, but if they do, this book is a new genre unto itself, a weird literary parlay in which the reader often gets middled.
Apparently this was optioned by Stephen Frears for a movie coming out next year called Lay the Favorite, Take The Dog, and that's great news, as the movie has the choice we readers don't have: excise the boring stuff about the author and focus on the crux of the biscuit--the fascinating guys who for a while get the best of a game that's almost unbeatable. Here's hoping Frears takes the over and lays off the road dog.Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling Overview

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