Friday, February 08, 2008

Weirdest poker book review




I'm reading Poker Player newspaper, and find in Ashley Adams's "Stud Sense" column a favorable mention of a new poker-themed novel by Susie Isaacs, White Knight Black Nights, which I hadn't heard of before. I go to amazon.com to try to find more reviews of it, see how much it costs, and maybe add it to my wish list. It's not listed.

So I do a Google search to find other reviews. The first one that pops up is the following, at http://roomreview.net/book-review-white-knight-black-nights-by-susie-isaacs/, which I repost here in its entirety, because otherwise you might not believe just how unreadable it is. It sounds as if it were written in another language and rendered into English by Babelfish or some other computerized translator.

When you get involved with poker employ, you might have heard of the poker
player Susie Isaacs, it is very successful and in the international poker scene
best known. In addition to gains in a number of major live tournaments in Las
Vegas, has Susie 1998 at $ 10,000 buy-in WSOP Main Event, 10 Space. It also has
the women’s events in 1996 and 1997 won. In 2007 it succeeded in to the WSOP
among the top 5% to place.

If you are in the last few years, poker magazines have read, they certainly Susie Isaacs also as a writer of texas holdem articles. Isaacs has a number of poker items with the name “chip Chatter “is written. 1000 Best Poker Strategies and Secrets, Queens Can Beat Kings, Ms. poker Up Close and Personal, and the two-piece Ms. poker I ‘ m Not Bluffing.

What you may not know is that Susie has recently also to the successful novelist authors heard some time ago, the book White Knight, Black Nights (White knights, black nights). I have just finished reading it and can only recommend.

It is not just around a poker book, it is not mainly with poker. Although it is predominantly in Las Vegas plays the main character a professional poker player and also a few other poker players for the act are important - they are certainly no better poker player, if you read this book. It is for you but in any case very entertaining, to read this book.

Isaacs presents us his dramatic story about discoveries - a woman discovers her own identity as a writer and poker player. It presents the reader with the world of unconditional woman, she accompanies this woman in dramatic and painful twists up to the date of their conversion is finished and they are under great difficulties and extensions driven by fear of a self-confident and independent woman has developed.

But the story does not end there. Also featured are some of them Isaacs mass murderer, general chaos and sex addicts.

Isaac’s story sounds almost like a biography - at least in some parts. Writer, poker player, and the surroundings of Las Vegas, which sounds so, as if the author himself fictionalized. But Isaacs wants the readers in this book presents more than just the main character. It shows us a diverse cross-section of society, credible and well described. The dialogs of the characters sound very authentic. The descriptions of events is extremely interesting are sometimes very touching. The action is based on several levels of action, making the book even more intriguing.

I have this book on several things well liked. It is very economically written - in an honest, factual style. I do not believe that the author tries the reader through an excessive “literary” presentation to impress - a problem which many authors of debut works. It is for the characters in this book is not one dimensional caricatures,
there are no easy place for the plot of the book. The fates of the individual characters touched me and I suffered with them.

But I liked best the depiction of poker and Las Vegas in this book. I liked it in an ultra-luxurious suite casino on the Strip to be brought. I liked the action at the poker
tournaments. I wish it would have been a little more in the book to - and I am sure that with their experience Isaac a whole book would have to fill. Perhaps this is indeed the topic of her next book on the action live poker tournaments - I can hardly expect it.


Wow. OK. Glad you expressed yourself so clearly there. Yeah.

Still not sure about the book, though I managed to develop some very definite opinions about the roomreview.net web site.


Incidentally, the lovely etching above is "Tower of Babel" by the great M.C. Escher, as found at http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/escher/jbescher.htm.


Addendum, about ten minutes later

I went looking for other book reviews, and the next one I found was by Ashley Adams, a longer version than the one he wrote for his "Stud Sense" column. See http://www.pokernews.com/news/2008/01/book-review-susie-isaacs-white-knight-black-nights.htm. I was immediately struck by the similarity of the sentence-to-sentence structure of this review with the one I reprinted above. Take a look for yourself.

I think that somebody at the roomreview.net site took Adams's review and ran it through a translator twice, once into another language, then back into English. Why would they do this? Perhaps to change enough of the words that it wouldn't be immediately obvious that they were stealing somebody else's material. In fact, it's hard to think of any other plausible reason for such a maneuver.

Very strange.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a weird review indeed. And I share your opinion regarding its genesis. In fact, I read it about two weeks ago -- egotistically doing a google search for my writing and stumbling across it much as you did. I was so struck by the weirdness and closeness of it to my text for pokernews.com that I forwarded it to Susie Isaacs herself. It gave us both a chuckle. Thanks for sharing it again.

Ashley Adams