Favorite Books involving, what else? Data!
OK, as much as I enjoy catching up on news and learning new things, a girl can only take so much of …well, reality, at one time.
When I need to climb out of the box I am in — and stretch my mind before it snaps, I reach for mysteries.
My friend, Marian recently sent me a book that I couldn’t put down. It’s by Jeffrey Deaver and the title is “The Broken Window”. It is a book about data mining used to commit the worst of crimes: murder.
Here’s a description from his web site:
Data mining is the industry of the 21st century. Commercial companies collect information about us from thousands of sources—credit cards, loyalty programs, hidden radio tags in products, medical histories, employment and banking records, government filings, and many more—then analyze and sell the data to anyone willing to pay the going rate. Some people approve, citing economic benefits; others worry about the erosion of privacy.
But no one has been prepared for a new twist: A psychotic killer with access to the country’s biggest data miner—Strategic Systems Datacorp—is using detailed information to work his way into the lives of victims, rape, rob and kill them and then blame unsuspecting innocents for the crimes. The killer’s voluminous knowledge of the victims and his ability to plant damning evidence mean that even the most vocal protests of innocence go ignored by the police and juries.
http://www.jefferydeaver.com/Novels_/Broken/broken.html
Read this book, it is well-written, suspenseful, realistic and just a great read.
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Other favorites of mine are not pure fiction, but they are so interesting that I didn’t really want to put them down.
They include:
Supercrunchers
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/supercrunchers/
Freakonomics
http://freakonomicsbook.com/
The Long Tail
http://www.thelongtail.com/
