Sam

Slow Horses was a fun read. I decided to read the book after I had watched the show which means I knew the plot when I went into reading. I would say the changes made to the story for the show were all improvements and if the book was closer to what happened in the show I would have probably rated it a 4. That being said the book is a great mystery and well worth the read. I think the characters are interesting and draw you in a don’t the extending plots make me excited to read the following books. I would highly recommend to anyone whom watched the show as there are some differences.

Matt Parker dos an amazing job showing the beauty of the maths of triangles. I listened to this book and I have to say it feels like an extended numberphile and the quality for the content is amazing. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed any of Matt’s content or books the at he has made he brings the same passion and enthusiasm to this book. I think as someone who already enjoys maths I may be a little biased towards enjoying this book but I think even if you are tuned away by maths I think this book would be enjoyable. Maths literacy and love is something I think everyone should strive for and Matt successfully makes the maths in this book accessible and amazing.

Autocracy, Inc is a good book when it comes to descriptively representing the world political landscape when it comes to democracy vs autocracy. I think the book shows in a relatively short way how autocratic regimes work together, not in a conspiratorial way, to continue to uphold and maintain their power.

While the book was great descriptively I think it’s prescriptive portion a little lackluster. The book follows the format where the entire book describes the problem of what the author calls autocracy inc and then in the final chapter briefly touches on, in my opinion, soft prescriptions on how the world could combat autocracy. I would have much rather a book which lays out each pillar of its argument and breaks down prescriptions for each of these pillars in the following chapter. While this would have made the book longer I think it would have made it a more interesting read.

I would recommend this book to those who are looking for more information on autocratic regimes and their movements in our current political environment.

Osman continues to deliver exceptional murder mysteries that remain fresh and engaging, without resorting to gimmicks or unfairness. As a fan of Osman’s previous works, I had expectations, anticipating a Thursday Murder Club-style experience. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the novel’s originality while still adhering to Osman’s signature style. The book was thoroughly enjoyable and solvable by the reader, which made the reveal feel satisfying. If you’re a fan of murder mysteries, this is a fantastic read.

The God of the Woods was a book that took me a while to read because i was reading it along side other books, which was partially because it took me a while to get hooked to mystery, I think the slow burn start of the book is the books biggest weakness. If you can get passed that hurdle I will promise you it is a book that every time I put it down I wondered when I would be able to pick it up and read again. Highly recommended for those who love true crime as it is based on some truth, and any real lover of thrillers.

Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret is another excellent addition to the Ernest Cunningham series and I'm excited to keep reading more and more of these books. The "gimmick" in this series plays on and is somehow still refreshing and doesn't feel played out. I cant wait to see how Stevenson continues to keep the tropes and stories fresh in the future books in the series! The Christmas theme here is well placed while not feeling like its an additional gimmick on top of the one already set by the series. I found the overall mystery interesting and kept me guessing the entire time!

While I enjoyed What Moves the Dead and will probably read the other books in the series I may be missing context as I've never read the short story it is based off of. Overall i felt invested in the characters and the plot but not to the point where if I didn't read the sequels I would care what happened to them. I think that this book has good descriptive writing and I could imagine being in many of the haunting scenes that the book portrayed. Would recommend to anyone interested in a modern refresh of classic horror.

I really really liked this books dive into the topic of religiosity, and organized religion. I find while I can't relate personally to the authors message I think its very very important to read this to understand in a creative way the feelings of leaving a group whether that be religion or any other life absorbing group. Overall I think this is a must read for those who love psychological thrillers.

I have many mixed feelings about the third and final book in the Atlas Six series. I think some of the payoffs are really well written and thought-provoking as well. Some of them left me feeling very empty. Maybe this was the intention, but ultimately I think it makes a lesser story for it. I truly, truly love the first book of the series, and with each one I felt like the quality had lessened. Ultimately still a good read, but the spark of genius that was in the first one seems to have been lost in the second and third books.

A clockwork orange is not an easy read, from the levity of which horrible violence is talked about to the mind bending slang used by the main characters, but while it’s not easy it is a good read. I think the themes of youth and how they spend their energy and the old adage “youth is wasted on the young” really shines in the pages of this book. I think this book has a lot to dissolve and digest if you are looking for it but. For sure a book I understand why it’s so widely recommended.

White Night is so far my favorite entry into the Dresden series and I hope the trend continues with all of them being just as good, I felt like I could solve the mystery on my own and felt captivated but the stakes in this one.

I look forward to catching up to all the rest of the books in the series!

Asimov does a wonderful job of upping the ante of the first Foundation novel. I found myself constantly trying to figure out what was happening, in a good way. While the first Foundation novel more on the broader aspects of human behavior. I found it refreshing. The second book takes a closer look at individual behavior. We’re trying to remain spoiler free. I think the second act of the book is the better of the two really delving into the human psyche and how we look at those around us while maintaining the broader scheme of the first Foundation novel. I also enjoy the set up for the novels to follow and I’m looking forward to reading them as I get to them in my reading

I’ve seen this book on many classics lists so I decided to go into it pretty blind, I enjoyed it but I feel like it would have been more enjoyable had I read it when I was younger, it reminded me of the warriors books that I read when I was a kid. Overall I think it’s a good read but I’m unsure if I think it’s a necessary read in the cannon of literature.

The War of the Worlds is a great commentary of Imperialism and empire, and humanity within a horror story. I think H.G. Wells does an amazing job bringing the reader into the terror wrought upon the humans in his story. I think it’s interesting to see the commentary in this book and how it can be contextualized in a modern way. A recommended read, as I think it’s a wonderful classic and it’s fairly short but nothing life-changing.

Everything I enjoyed about The Tainted Cup the first story in The Shadow of the Leviathan is amplified and bettered in the second book. I was hooked by every chapter and coming up with my own theories and speculations as to the answers to the mystery and and I’ll say I pleasantly enjoyed the journey the book brought me on. Overall, the world building is great. The storytelling is amazing and I can’t wait for the next book to come out for me to devour it. I would recommend this book for anybody who enjoys murder mysteries, high fantasy, political intrigue. It has so many roles to fill in somebody’s reading arsenal that I think that this book could be read by anybody.

I’ll start by saying I really wanted to like this book. The blurb really captured me and I thought the story would be great. I just couldn’t get into it. That being said, I don’t think I’m the target audience for this book. I’ll start off by saying I really liked the Ethiopian mythology and the characters I found them compelling. I also found some of the mechanics of the vampire system and I wish that there was more exploration into them rather than the enemies to lovers sub plot. Overall, the bones of the book are good, but I found the substance lacking I think if I enjoyed enemies to lovers stories that this book would have been a much higher rated book which is why even though I’m star rating I do think that this book could be a recommend for someone only other thing which quite a lot was the pacing of the last fifth of the book I found that as it progressed, it just became gruesome for gruesome sake, and didn’t really add to the story, even with the explanation, the book I’m finally I do not think I will be reading the sequels of the book as they come out

After reading Dan Jones’s fiction I thought it would be a good idea to read some of history and I was not disappointed. It was both entertaining and informative and I found his writing style kept me interested throughout reading. I found that while it was enjoyable I don’t know if it is something I would seek out had I not already been interested in the subject matter and already familiar with Jones’s work. I recommend this for those who enjoy medieval history. Overall, I think this book speaks to those who are history buffs, but without a doubt, not a necessary read.

in this book brainwashing Kathleen Taylor does an amazing job of describing the and the mechanisms behind brainwashing. Throughout this book, I found myself in awe that it was written in 2006. I read the 2017 re-release with a new preface and I found her insight in the new preface to leave me even more in surprise at how excellent this book is written. To me this is without a doubt, a must read for anyone that is interested in the of thought and how society and the individual. There are many passages which I thought were relevant even to this day 19 years after the book was originally and I think that the everlasting nature of this book makes it one that I will go back to many times and quote in conversations for the foreseeable future. The book left me wondering about Kathleen‘s thoughts on today’s political climate and I wonder about how the from this book reflect on today’s society. Overall, an excellent read and one that I will be recommending in the future to as many people as I can.

Jim Butcher does it again every time I read another entry in the Dresden file series. I that I enjoy it more and more. Even though I take some qualms with some of the descriptions of women in this book. I don’t think that they necessarily take away from the narrative of the book. Since Dresden is seen as a “chivalrous man” it can sometimes come off as sexist. Despite this, I think every bit of this story is necessary for the greater picture of the universe, which Jim Butcher is creating, and I don’t think that it takes away from the quality of Jim Butcher’s writing of his storytelling. At the end of the day, I cannot wait to read the next entry in the Dresden file series and with each one of them that I read, I find myself more enthralled with the universe that Jim Butcher has created.

I’ll start off by saying I wanted to like this book more than I did. When I first started I was drawn in by the world and the descriptive language. About halfway through the book I started to get a growing feeling that something wasn’t meshing between me and the book. So I will start with the and move critiques that kept me from enjoying this book more earlier the descriptive language and world presented in the are amazing and I think that I would be interested in more books placed in similar worlds with similar writing. Now the biggest critique I have is that I think that the swapping POV’s did a disservice to the overall story being told in the book throughout the book I only really connected with Orka and little for any of the other characters. I felt like the vignettes chapter tell a whole story, and when the story started to merge towards the end, I felt disinterested in the larger plot of what was going on. The other thing which soured me was the pacing of the book towards the middle early on each of the vignettes were very short periods of time, and as the story continued to progress in order to progress, the story to have a overarching it seems like the pacing had to speed up and to me it was jarring when certain vignettes took weeks or months as it seemed when the earlier vignettes seemed to be hours if not a day. A comment I made to a friend while reading this book is that it feels like it’s trying to be Game of Thrones but Norse and I think it would’ve been better suited if it was its own product and did not try to en capture that changing POV that Game of Thrones has.

Before reading this I've only read a few short stories of Asimov's and two novels, one almost 15 years ago in high school. To also preface this short review I am a huge fan of Dune. After reading I am excited to read more of the series. Without spoiling too much the foundation reminded me a lot of the bene gesserit from Dune. To me it was an excellently crafted story and drew me in easily. I also remember a short video i watched many years ago which talked about how scientists were concerned that future civilization would be unaware of dangers of the byproducts of progress i.e. nuclear waste. I find the central premise kept bringing me back to that video in my head. I think overall Asimov did a fantastic job create the universe and roping the audience in to future entries in the series. Overall i see myself finishing the series and even returning to it in the future.

I picked up The Bookshop of Secrets during a bogo sale with the Patrick Stewart memoir it was not on my radar prior to that. What I found was a good spy book which captured my intrigue. While I felt like the premise was great and the writing was good I felt as though it fell through from being something that will leave a lasting impression or something I’ll come back to. Overall I found that the pace at some points kept me from caring about some of the characters outside our main protagonist. Overall a good story with some shortcomings.

I was enthralled through and through with the memoir, as a huge fan of Star Trek of course my primary knowledge of Stewart is in his role of Captain Picard, I was drawn in by how his career drew him to the role and how he became the Stewart I know today. All in all I think for anyone who is a fan of Stewart from any point in his career should read his story.

Abundance is a great book for those who want to learn more about the politics which hold back innovation or more or less a theory as to what politics hold back innovation. I've said this about several other books before but I feel as someone who follows politics this book to me is more to know what the zeitgeist of casual consumers of political hobbyism will be talking about rather than a chance to learn and gain something new. I found the argumentation to be good but I already went into this book knowing I agreed with much of the premise. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to gain an overview of the argument.

Richard Osman once again delivers on a great murder mystery. I enjoyed following along as our gang of unlikely detectives solved this thrilling mystery. I found that the murder was solvable and rewarding to finally get that sweet release of a whodunit. The characters are charming and lovely and I can't wait to read the next murder they solve.