Harsh
Why is this book famous? The language and dialogues are as cheesy as a CW series. The story is a generic death match game plot like Hunger Games. The motivations and emotions (if you can figure out their sparse existence) of the protagonist is dubious and there is way too much arrogance in him for 0 show.
There are times when it feels like this is supposed to be a satire on that genre. Maybe that was the intention and even if that were the case, that didn't pan out well either.
Can a book turn around big time? Sure.
Can a book turn around in the last 25% so much that the remaining slog feels bearable? Maybe?
Can a book which is 1.1k+ pages (where the audiobook logs more than 45 hours) in the last ~25%, i.e., after you have read almost 800 pages? A book which has almost 4 parallel stories going on? A book which has a lot of characters to keep track of? A book which creates a whole new magic and fantasy system?
Well, this book did it for me. Having said that, I will completely understand if you say no.
Just because of the way it concluded, I am going to carry on with the series.
Generally, books always tend to be better than the movies, if they get adapted. But that's not the case with this one. I was bored of Jordan's debauchery before I finished even 10% of the book.
Moreover, the title of the book has Wall Street in it. I expected his trading, investments and his strategies would be the center stage in this book, but that's not the case. While you would find what he did, but that's more like sprinkling than being the center focus. Overall, completely not impressed with this book.
AMAZE!
This is easily the best book I have read this year, and the best sci-fi I have read so far.
Yes, this is a doomsday novel, but this is so much more than that. This book is as much about friendship and gotta-do-it attitude as it's about science-fiction. Avoiding spoilers, the major surprise happens just a few chapters down which sets the book on a completely unexpected trajectory from the time you start. It's filled with calculations (though you don't need a math degree to grasp everything. It's completely okay to breeze past them), scientific facts and theories and obviously some make-believe scientific elements.
I kept juggling between the audiobook and the hard copy so much that I almost ended up reading it twice in tandem. If you can, I would highly recommend Ray Porter's audio narration of the book. It's an absolute blast. Overall, it was a fun ride and I almost regret that I am through with it.
The book is a good guide of management principles and doing things The Toyota Way. It mostly teaches you the principles which are common practice everywhere in most industries. When it comes to teaching the things that are eccentric to Toyota principles, it's there where it crosses the line and becomes way too preachy. Throughout the book, it feels like that the only good and right way to accomplish something is to do it The Toyota Way.
I like Stephen King's books. Generally, the books start with a premise which makes it clear what you're in for. The Outsider, however, is a different setup. Yes, the cover indicates that this should have supernatural elements in it, but almost through the first half of the book, Mr King leads us in a way which makes us believe that there is a Sherlock Holmes explanation to all the confrontations. How can someone be at two places at the same time. The book presents contradictory evidence that the perpetrator (or, the victim?) is at both the places with iron clad evidence for both the setups. However, the next half suddenly becomes Josh Whedon's, The Cabin in the Woods. I, as a reader, am left with a feeling where I am not even able to decide whether I liked the read or not. While, I like the execution, the read - maybe not so much.
Maybe 3.5?
I loved An Anonymous Girl and that's why I decided to read this. Without ruining the mystery, this book started well by making the reader guess whether he is reading a protagonist's or an antagonist's perspective. The story builds up nicely in the second act, it's the third act where it fails to deliver. The loose ends are tied up well in the end, but by that time, it has lost its steam and all I could care was finishing the story.
The book is bundled with researched stats. It discusses and diagnoses the 2011 reactor explosion in great detail The writing style is quite straightforward where Mr Smyth introduces the Japanese culture, the technological advancement Japan has made in seismological study and the ways it has devised to curb the impacts. The book revolves around two focal points - the Fukushima & a pending Tokyo earthquake and the impacts of nuclear reactor explosions that can be triggered by these earthquakes.
Mr Smyth discusses the severe drawbacks of harnessing nuclear energy - not just in terms of catastrophes that it can trigger (or has triggered in case of Fukushima) during uncontrollable chain reaction when all cooling systems fail, but also in terms of actual ROI when compared to actual investment required for its construction & uranium enrichment and how much energy it finally ends up producing. Fukushima acts as a prime example of all that can go wrong with nuclear reactors. Fukushima, by Mr Smyth's estimation', is world's most expensive natural disaster.
Tokyo is probably world's densest metropolitan city in the world and is also home to good chunk of Fortune 500 company headquarters. Since, Japan's economy and political environment is quite hierarchical and bureaucratic, an economic crash in Tokyo can trigger a world-wide slowdown as Japan, (specifically Tokyo) controls a huge chunk of supply chain management. The pending, possibly the most disastrous, earthquake in Tokyo can send the world economy to a wild spin with its impact leading to huge amounts of debts incurred by affected governments.
There is a subtle undertone of global warming and climate change throughout the book. The book voices the general sentiment that we need to be very cautious about how we produce and use the energy with the least amount of environmental impact and how some of the big corporations are forgetting that what are they doing to the environment to make some short-term gains, instead of thinking for the long-term solutions.
Overall, with the amount of information the book reflects upon would be a good candidate for a 2 hour documentary with visual presentations, which would make the points the book ponders upon, more impactful.
This is probably the best book I will read this year. It is cleverly written with loads of factual knowledge. It starts slow and has a simplistic goal - make its reader, irrespective of their background, understand the history of evolution, which is a pretty complex topic in itself and might require several volumes instead of a 500 page essay. It isn't intended for archaeological scholars and historians, it is meant for everyone else.
For the readers, this book is more about Harari's perspective towards humanity and the evolution. He outright calls the Agricultural Revolution as something that didn't help humankind, but something (i.e., wheat) that humankind helped flourish. This book is more about sparking discussions on coffee tables and discussing ideas that it posits and for sure, it raises some really good points (and then some, which might make sense to Harari himself and maybe to some others but not to you, including me). But it definitely presents viewpoints which require a healthy discussion among your friends, colleagues and/or relatives.
The book ends on a footnote where it pretty much calls Homo Sapiens gods. We have advanced way too much in the last 200 years than we ever had in the remainder of the human evolution. It cautions us on the future ahead as we are trying to change the world, but to what end, is something we have no idea about. Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?
It's not a bad book. I just had different expectations. There were stories, references and learnings about the preconceived notions I had for this book, but the book overall was more about Barack Obama himself than just about her.
To each his own, my review for this book might feel like a let down. Being an Obama family fan, I wanted to read Michelle Obama's journey and life experiences, considering that I am reading her autobiography. “I was not bossy, I was just confident” - for a reader, this line automatically set an expectation that we are going to get an overhaulish account from the ex-FLOTUS. But the book losses track and then what we get from almost next half of the book is actually Mr. Obama - the President's journey. By the time, we get back to Michelle Obama's experiences and contributions, the book is more than 3/4th done. Maybe, the expectations were set accordingly through various post-release book tours, that this is more like a family journey - a political change that came across with Obama presidency. But with a title like Becoming, a reader feels misled that what he ended up reading was not what the book tried to deliver (through its title and its cover).
Sure, it was an okay book about a girl who falls in love with a teacher and goes out to save him and even expresses her love to him. To me, that's a fantasy in itself. But then again, that's not my cup of tea (and is a little creepy) and neither was this story in itself. I had high hopes with this book with so many rave reviews about how imaginative it becomes with paper magic, but it falls completely short. Though, it did make me fall in love with origami once again.
Almost a good story
This was my first book in the Memory Man series. It was a little campy and fun weekend read. I liked reading it almost till the end where it fails to tie up all the loose ends in a way where it is all coherent. The story had a lot of moving parts - random murders, life insurance scam, drug cartel rings, and the ending feels a little too rushed and forced where everything was forcefully glued together.
I'm not really a fan of epistolary. In fact, I hate epistolaries. And because of that very reason, this was a little put off for me at the start.
But the twists in the story kept me bringing back to it. A perfect psychological thriller for a weekend read, I would recommend it to anyone, whether he likes diary entry format or not.
Altered Carbon is a great start to a cyberpunk series. Being a huge Matrix fan, I had been craving for something that builds a new cyberpunk world as huge and rich, as was the case with Matrix. I had put the Netflix adaptation on my backlog as I wanted to read the original first.
Not exactly as humble and grounded as Neo, Takeshi Kovacs is no less a superhero (well at least one of the superheroes in this world, as we are introduced to only one such Envoys). Altered Carbon, which starts as a murder mystery, takes Mr Kovacs through lots of twists and turns. A great noir, the book is a very twisted reality to wrap your head around, especially when you consider that this was written in 2002! Something happening every third page or so, this is a really fast-paced read. With a really complicated plot, the finish of the book ties up everything beautifully in the end, leaving you with a feeling that you need to pick up Mr Kovacs' next adventure as soon as you can.
Definitely a must read!
James Comey, former Attorney General, and more famously known as the fired FBI director, writes this memoir/autobiography where he talks about all the decisions that he took and why he took them. You may or may not agree with his decisions (though I really hope you do), Mr Comey makes convincing arguments for his decisions and emphasizes that if he had to do it again, he would still do the same things that he did (given the amount of information that he had during that time).
This book also acts a lesson on being a good leader who lives by principles and ethics. There are two incidents from his life which act as torch-bearer for all his actions. You would easily identify this when you read the book. The first incident teaches him to be a leader who is forgiving and commands respect instead of being the one who demands loyalty and allegiance through authority. The second incident teaches the most important lesson of them all - never be a bully.
With lots of references from personal life, A Higher Loyalty is a great and fast read which should probably be considered as a mandatory read for anyone who aspires to be a great and ethical leader.
While the book can be considered a good conclusion to the series, I would still call it a mediocre read on its own. We kept jumping between characters and storylines without settling on anyone of them. There was a good story about Dorian and Aries, hidden somewhere in the book. But we kept on jumping between characters and their stories who didn't add much to the story. Had we just seen the story unfold through Aries and Dorian's eyes, we would have still reached the same conclusion without losing any essence of the story. But, whenever we reached a point in the book, where we would start to empathise with Aries/Dorian's viewpoint, we jumped the gun and switched to a viewpoint that, in the end, was pointless. Why not focus on the one who is the orchestrator of all this. The scale of the book is enormous (think millions and/or billions of spaceships). It makes sense, considering this in mind, that the victor has to be someone who has planned everything for at the least 14 thousand years. In fact, after watching, Avengers: Infinity War, I think there is a lot to draw parallels between the scale and story-arch being developed among the two stories. The scale is enormous, the antagonist, when viewed from their viewpoints, are not that bad. They actually are determined to go that extra mile with the same grit and determination to achieve what they want for the greater good. The only difference is, Infinity War does something which this book couldn't achieve - empathise with Thanos.Overall, read this if you have read Book 1 & 2 and want to know what happens in the end. But, if you don't, you probably wouldn't miss a lot.
This was one disturbing and fun read. The story starts blandly with a pretense that Amy Elliott Dunne, the wife of the protagonist, might be dead and it holds on to that premise until half way through the book and then the book overturns everything upon its reader. With so many twists and turns, the book is way too dark. Both the Dunne's are characterised as psychopaths and it ends with an ending that might even leave you with a feeling of depression, if you try to overthink about what you just read. One of the best thrillers I have read. Definitely recommend it, if you prefer a darker take on human psychology.
It was an okay follow up to the book 1 of the Origin Mysteries. Though it was a good read, the story dragged a bit in patches. While book 1 was a joy to read and had all likable characters, book 2 kills pretty much all of them, save 3. The main antagonist (if we want to call him the main antagonist?) almost gets to a point of being unbearable by the end. As the book progressed, I stopped caring about what is happening with Dorian or his story arc. That can be called valid even for the main protagonists, if not equally. The characters started becoming know-it-alls, where someone in the group always knew the next puzzle, howsoever convoluted, in front of them. The only thing good about the book was a satisfying end. I am not sure, if I would call this book a must read. I would still probably read the end to this trilogy, obviously not because of the characters as I have almost stopped caring about them, but because of the grand climax, as the author has hinted that there is more to the story than just the plague.
Not worth it. Why such a craze for this?
The writing style is as horrible as it would have been if a fifteen year old were writing a diary. The style was such a turn off that I actually had to struggle to read this through. Storywise, it was okay. Wouldn't recommend it. It's mostly irritating except for the time when the forgery process is being described.
Not sure why I hated it the first time I tried to read this.
Maybe this is more of a children's book than an adult book, and that's probably why I couldn't go through this book the first time I tried it. In my defense, however, I actually loved The Hobbit and that too is a children's book, by any measure. After watching all the movies and seeing all the people around me, who all happen to be great Harry Potter book fans, I tried to give it another try. And boy, I liked it this time. A lot, actually.