Week 41: The Con

By -



Everybody should read this book! The Con is a primer on scams and the people who run them. There are great descriptions of the many ways that people will try to steal from you, from the old pigeon drop to Nigerian fraud to fake fund-raising and the worst of them all, identity theft. Learn how to avoid scams, and what to do if you are fooled or if your Social Security number is stolen. I had a hard time putting it down.

Stories of people who have gotten scammed keep the book interesting and sympathetic. It moves fast and is a quick read, easy for anyone to get through.

What I mainly learned is that it really is necessary to be careful. I don't have to be paranoid, but I do need to be prepared to respond to con artists, because they are all over the place. We've all been asked for "gas money" in a parking lot, but there are scams to fit every profile and no matter how smart you are, you can still get conned when someone figures out your weakness. And sometimes even our closest friends or our relatives are the ones taking advantage.

This is a 'necessary life skills' kind of book and I'd want any teenager to read it. My daughter is reading it (by her own request) and I think I'll have my husband look at it too.

And I got a little laugh out of it when I was about halfway through the book and got a phone call that was a type of scam I've never gotten before! A guy tried to tell me that I'd won a prize and that 'they' wanted to deliver it to me. It was a pretty sad attempt, really, but "You've won!" is a common hook.

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more