Circle of Friends Book Club meeting summary for June 2017
June 14, 2017
The theme for the meeting was men/male authors. Discussion this month centered on a new (2017) book titled Everybody Lies, and a group of books by the Michigan author Steve Hamilton.
Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is subtitled: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. The author is an economist who uses a broad definition of “data” to include text, pictures and search patterns on the Internet. He uses Internet searches for data mining, on the theory that these represent more valid measures of a person’s preferences, as contrasted with such possible sources as Facebook (where people attempt to portray themselves most positively) and Netflix queues (where people may list choices based on appearances). His results are often surprising, and appear to show higher levels of negativity, with aggressive, hateful, and offensive material more common than generally thought.
Steve Hamilton is a Michigan native who often uses Michigan locales in his novels. He now resides in New York state, but local readers looking for a home state flavor will find a lot to enjoy in his books. His stand-alone novel The Lock Artist takes place mostly in the Milford area, and is the story of a young man who is drawn to locks as a child, becomes proficient at lock-picking, and is drawn into criminal pursuits as a teenager and beyond. Mr. Hamilton also writes a series of mystery novels with a repeating main character named Alex McKnight, who owns and operates a group of rental cottages, but as a former Detroit policeman becomes involved in solving crimes in the area around Sault Ste Marie. The first book in this series is called A Cold Day in Paradise. The author has also recently begun a new series with a character called Nick Mason, which takes place in and around Chicago. The first book in this series is titled The Second Life of Nick Mason.