Harley

This was absolutely wonderful. As a developer, it was nice to see concepts explained in a way that makes sense to the layman, but also humorous to someone who understands the concepts.

Quite honestly, I just keep telling people that it's Brave New World but modernized and with Hitchhiker humor. I don't feel like I can say much more than that in fear of ruining the story.

This books has been on my mind pretty constantly since starting it. It's extremely relevant and makes some news seem like satire itself.

I did not finish this book. I read up to page 73 and had to stop.

The cover and description are beautiful. There is so much excitement and intrigue in both. However, it feels like Meryle and her marketing team have two different agendas. The book is written in a very dry tone and discusses politics and architecture quite a bit. And while these both have a part in the main story, I felt as if I were reading through a bunch of Wikipedia articles.

I wanted to keep reading, but increasingly found myself dreading reading more of this book.

The Good:
I absolutely loved Jacobs' writing style and characters. He has a way with words, and can easily create an atmosphere of madness. The main characters in both stories were well developed and believable strengths and weaknesses. I felt like I knew them and were rooting for them.

Jacobs is somewhat of a chameleon when it comes to settings. Both stories felt completely different, and I really liked that. The first story felt a bit like If On a Winters Night feel to it, which I love. The second story is inspired by Alan Lomax's journal and recordings. I particularly enjoyed reading this one as I am a music nerd. It seems Jacobs really knows his stuff too.

The Bad:
Both endings. The ending of The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky came too quickly. The story grew in intensity, but about 3/4 of the way through, it rushed to the finish line. My Heart Struck Sorrow lilted along towards the end properly, but the end itself felt a bit undramatic.

In both stories there were characters that had amazing development, and then there were others that I wanted to learn more about but were quickly whisked away.

Finally, I felt like there was quite a bit of unnecessary cult-like sexual abuse in both stories. Some people are probably ok with this kind of content. I'm particularly sensitive to some of this content, however some of it is glossed over. I think some of it is necessary for plot development, but some of it just felt unecessary.

Conclusion:
I was pretty disappointed with both stories. They have amazing potential, but fell flat in their endings. I really loved the writing, and because of that I expected quite a bit from the stories. Unfortunately the endings in both stories didn't deliver their full potential.

Rating: 4.5

This was a nearly perfect book.

The Good:

The magic system was delightful. About a third of the way through the book I started to realize that it seems influenced by computer programming. I'm a developer to this really had me gripped.

The world building was fantastic. Even though the book happens in one city, it seems as if there is more to explore as the series continues.

The characters were so varied. Each had their own touch and I grew to love them.

There were so many twists and turns. I still don't know which way is up and I'm excited to read the second book.


The Bad:

I wasn't fully invested until about a quarter of the way through the book. It starts off with a bang, and then fizzles for awhile until it picks back up. About half through it felt felt like we were finally up to feel speed again.

There was some trope-y dialogue that sometimes pulled me out of the story. Mostly movie-type scenes that I don't think work as well in book format. Also some more young adult type dialogue. I was able to gloss over most of that since the story and world were so good.

The Audiobook was not great. I'm a busy guy. For longer books like this one, I try to get the audiobook from the library so that I can keep reading when I'm driving or doing work around the house. The woman who read the book chose pretty cliche voices for most of the characters that sounded more juvenile than what I heard when I was reading it.

Conclusion:

This was a great book marred by some bad dialogue that can be glossed over. I'm preordering the second book.

I am now a Ben Lerner fan. This reminded me a lot of some of Dave Evers earlier work, but with it's own feel. I loved hearing each persons versions of the stories. I know absolutely nothing about competitive debating, and it doesn't seem like a very exciting topic, but Lerner has a way of making those parts of the book interesting. Like other reviewers have said, this seems like a semi-autobiographical novel. That's probably why it remind me of early Eggers. Regardless, this is a great book that stands on it's own.

Rating: 3.5

I really really enjoyed the first half of this book. I have a few quibbles when it comes to the tension between Alice and Ellery. Some of it wasn't all that believable. Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book.

SPOILERS AHEAD

As for the second half, I struggled to keep attention. I felt like things moved way too quickly. The ending didn't feel like it needed a sequel and at the same time left a lot of loose ends. The Red-Haired Man feels like a bit of a throw away character, we still don't know all that much about Althea or Vanella, and the scene where Alice is saved from her story feels extremely confusing.

All in all, I enjoyed it and will be reading the second one. I feel as though the second half of the book could've been done much better.

This one took me a bit to get through purely because of life circumstance. However, when I did get to sit down to read, this book kept me absolutely glued.

Turton did an absolutely wonderful job of keeping things flowing. Instead of leaving it up to the user to map out on their wall with string, pins and cue cards, he reiterates the hints in an easy to consume way. This made coming back to it easy and very enjoyable. Every piece of the puzzle is important and somehow Turton keeps it all together despite the puzzle seemingly always widening throughout the book.

This has become one of my favorite books and I'll be recommending it to many fellow readers.

THIS MADE ME CRY. This is probably my favorite volume in the BH universe so far, and I feel like it could be read completely on it's own without any knowledge of the rest of the series. It was beautifully written, beautifully drawn/colored and I'll probably recommend this one to many people.

Rating: 3.5

This is why I have trouble rating books. This is a good book, but it's just not my kind of book.

I literally can't complain about anything. The premise of this series and the mysteries are a lot of fun, however I would rather watch this on TV than read it as a book.

Wow.

I'm a fan of clipping and of the song that this novella is derived from, but I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. Even you have never heard of the band or song, this is a book worth reading for everyone. It's semi-fantasy, definitely afrofuturist, but I now I can still give this to people not interested in those genres and they can enjoy it.

The amount of emotion inside the 155 pages that makes up this book is thick. The underlying dialogue about what history means and what we should do with it is obvious, but at the same time feels naturally a part of the story. Even if Solomons wasn't trying to make that a major point in this book, it's still such a wonderful dynamic for a society.

I really enjoy what Solomons has done here and I will be looking for more work from her. I'm also looking forward to hearing the music that releases with this book in November.

A story about the treacherous path of fame dressed up as a Sci-Fi novel.

I was hoping for something with more of a focus on sci-fi, but unfortunately I found that this book was about something completely different. I tried to enjoy it, and the sci-fi parts were interesting, but I ended up feeling that sci-fi parts were way too fantastic and really slinky lended themselves time the real story - the rise and fall of fame of the main character.

I received a free copy through Goodreads Giveaways.

This collection of ten stories is awesome. Each story is marked as “easy” (yellow), “less easy” (green) and “not so easy” (red). These are marked in the table of contents and at the beginning of the story, even the pages are the color of the difficulty. Between stories you'll read inspiring quotes from authors and beautiful pictures from this issue's author. At the end of the book is a short bio of each author, and a snippet about why they wrote their story. Than after that they explain their favorite childhood books.

This is a beautiful book. The cover and art inside is captivating and conjures up stories in your mind just on their own.

The age range is pretty accurate. My oldest is 6 and maybe one or two of the stories would be good for her to hear. The rest have words or concepts that would need explaining. However, as an adult, I loved each and every story.

This is the kind of book I'm always looking for. It's literary, but modern. It's intense, yet very human. Absolutely zero characters are perfect or heroic in this book. People die, the journey is rough and the ending isn't complete, but there's some semblance of hope for the future beyond the ending.

I'm amazed that this is Montag's first book, and I'll be looking out for more books by her.

Alright Neuvel, you got me. I really didn't like Sleeping Giants (I gave it 1 star), but with such a high rating, and the novella format, I figured this was worth trying out.

It was definitely worth trying out. This was basically a Black Mirror episode in novella format. And I really enjoyed every minute of it.

That was quite simply one of the best contemporary lit books I've read in a very long time. I know it's considered Young Adult” fiction, but I think every person should read this book.

I don't really feel I can say much more as it would spoil it. It's just such a timely novel for our times.

Rating: 3.5

Not Eggers strongest novel, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the dynamic between the main characters. 9 kind of reminds me of a chill surfer dude who just wants to enjoy life, while 4 just wants to do his job. Their friendship(? Acquaintance maybe?) develops in an interesting way. And despite the reviews. I was ok with the ending. I would say me reason for not giving it a higher score is that I'm not sure what I learned from it. Maybe I missed the point, but it could have been a shorter story.

Rating: 3.5

I was actually a bit disappointed by the last third of this book. Because the computer technology aspects were well researched and accurate, I expected more of it to be integral to the storyline. That's my fault, really, and I'm really glad that it's well researched in a book where it isn't integral.

However, the story went a bit too far Spoilerwhen Will can basically can do anything he wants and acts God-like. It felt a little too action-movie to me. SpoilerSoule also never really explains where the predictions came from. This bothered me probably more than it should. The ending was well wrapped up, but left some things out there that I wish were explained.

I loved the ideas, the characters, and the explanation of computer security. I did not love the one-man-against-the-world style story and the ending. That being said, it was enjoyable read that had me flipping pages.

Rating: 3.5

I've read some other reviews here and feel similarly. This book differs quite a bit from the first two books of stories. It's understandable why, as it's not meant to be a compilation of short stories, but a five-part series. However, the main thing that drew me in during the first two books was Geralt weighing the idea of good and evil. And there was much more action in the short stories.

Within in this novel is a lot of setting up. There is a lot of politics and training. There is actually very little of Geralt, who the book series is named after.

I did, however, really enjoy the female leads and the different aspects they brought to the novel. I feel as though most popular fantasy novels are more geared towards male readers and don't give much thought to powerful females in their worlds. This book does quite the opposite and is better for it.

I didn't hate it, but I am hoping the next books get better.

50-page review:
I don't think I'm the target audience of this book. I feel like I'm reading a blog chronicling Downs' life as she tries to find spousal love in her life. It actually makes me a bit uncomfortable when reading it. There's extremely little in the first 50 pages that I can relate to personally.

Another problem I have is her absolute need to get married. She seems to balance her faith on this need. This is probably what actually made me uncomfortable. It doesn't feel healthy.

This book is a must read for almost anyone that has a job that interacts with customers or involves problem-solving. It teaches you how to ask the right questions to get valuable answers to help guide you what you need to be doing.

As a full-time web developer it gives me better questions to ask internal and external customers to make better solutions on the sites I work on.

As someone who runs a small web application, it gives me better questions and better indicators for good ideas and bad ideas.

This is a book I'll be reviewing occasionally.

I'm a fan of Daniel Suarez' books Daemon and it's sequel Freedom. I'm a sucker for near-future science fiction books, and this one delivers. Suarez is really good at presenting a good story along with solid ideas of what the near future could look like based on science that's being developed right now. This book is no different.

What's good
- Lots of cool science. Some is a bit far-fetched, but it pushes the story along and allows Suarez to dig into more believable ideas.
- Great character development. There's some tough emotional changes they undergo and it adds a nice depth to the story.
- Non-stop page turner

What's bad
- I'm not terribly thrilled by Hollywood action style books, which is what this feels like. I found myself mildly skimming some of these parts.

Rating: 3.5

A good primer on organizing your work and life in order to do more of each.

It felt like more of a refresher to me as I have read most of the content in various places on blogs or in other books. It made this book feel more like a series of blog posts combined together to make a book.

However, I do struggle a lot with organizing and prioritizing my time (hence why I picked up this book) and it did give me several great tips on how to do this.

Rating - 3.5

I have this love/hate relationship with Doctorow's work. I loved Big Brother (4 stars), however, I really didn't care for it's sequel, Homeland (2 stars). For The Win sits somewhere in the middle. The idea of the story is great and the lessons about economics he conveys is interesting.

The reason I couldn't give it a 4 is because this book desperately needs edited. There were several times where I noticed similar feelings or actions by different characters. For instance, in one scene, a character is running across roofs and suddenly finds himself on the street without really remembering descending any stairs. Several pages later, another character leaves his work and arrives at his house without remembering driving at all. It's seems like a trivial matter, but this repetition of actions and feelings happen several times throughout the book. There were also a few spelling and grammar errors throughout. I tend to notice this maybe once or twice in a book and I can be ok with that, but more than twice and it starts to feel like it wasn't edited all that well.

The other issue I had was some of the completely unnecessarily crass descriptions occasionally that made me cringe. Here are a couple examples:

A momentary feeling of worry arced from his throat to his balls, like a streak of lightning...

Wei-Dong felt sweat run down his butt-crack and over his thighs.

balls

Raw and painfully honest adventures from a startup founder. I'm always coming up with ideas for a side business and have entertained them greatly. This book is like having a mentor just dump their brain on you. I learned quite a bit from his writings, and feel more equipped for if/when I start my own business.

It also feels like this book is Rand's way of finding closure of the Moz chapter so he can fully focus on SparkToro.

Rating: 2.5

I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways. Below is my personal and honest review

A crime thriller that explores father-son relationships with some paranormal aspects. I really enjoyed the idea but some parts seemed to really drag on. I didn't really feel attached to the story until almost half way through. I felt like the paranormal aspects weren't fleshed out enough and should have just been left out. The paranormal events are left hanging without any explanation. It feels like it was written to be a movie, which I'm not a fan of this writing style.

It's being made into a movie by the people who did Captain America and The Avengers, so I would suggest watching it instead of reading it.

Edited for clarity and proofreading. Added disclaimer.