{More follow-ups and other works …}
I hadn’t realized Colson Whitehead, long before The Underground Railroad, wrote The Noble Hustle, a first person account focusing on one of my favorite topics: poker, and specifically, No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Published in 2014, Whitehead’s book was written at the height of the poker boom in the late 2000’s, when you could barely turn a channel without seeing players at the felt with chips and cards.
The more interesting parts of the book are the more introspective: Whitehead claims to be a representative of the Republic of Anhedonia, even getting a custom red hoodie made proclaiming his allegiance. Anhedonia is defined as an inability to feel pleasure, and the best parts of the book are Whitehead’s reflections on how that impacts his life, how he struggles and benefits from it, and how it intersects with the skills needed to successfully play poker.
The problem, of course, is that out of thousands of players, only a few hundred survive long enough to make money at the World Series of Poker, and only a few dozen make serious money. And that takes incredible levels of both luck and skill: Colson lacks the latter, and the former runs out on him well before people get paid, leaving the central “plot” of the book somewhat unsatisfying. Still, a decent read, and if either poker or anhedonia seem of interest, better than that.
Sword & Citadel (1982) completes the saga started in Shadow & Claw. This volume is more focused, and more plot-driven than the first, and it demands that you remember what has passed before: what seemed like small details in the first book emerge as major plot features here. The series ends up veering more towards sci-fi than fantasy, but the mechanics are inventive, with a few veering towards being highly memorable.
Whether you should read this one is probably a factor of your enjoyment of Shadow & Claw: if you liked it–or even if you can’t bear not knowing what happened–then Sword & Citadel is recommended.