George Pollard

The first half was going okay until we got to the part about the Maid whomst is lov'd and yet to be whipt for she fain be naughty.

This was terribly Lovecraftian for a children's book.

One of those books that makes you want to Clockwork Orange people and shout at them: “Look! ... Look!”

This should have won book of the year, or at least book of the year (auckland), it's great. I finished it at 1am eating cottage cheese with laoganma on the couch and I think they have stopped putting msg in it?Edit: I don't understand some reviews which are claiming there's no plot. There's a lot of things that happen and change, this isn't [b:To the Lighthouse 59716 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639106809l/59716.SY75.jpg 1323448]

loved it and wonderfully funny as well

wow that's a lot of book

Didn't enjoy the framing of this much compared to the earlier works

The translations here are nice, more poetic and readable than the Copenhaver versions.

If you have a child — or, perhaps, are an enjoyer of the graphic novel format — you owe it to yourself to get a copy of “Detective Beans: The Case of the Missing Hat”, there's not a single book-that-kids-can-read that I'd recommend more highly (and there's a sequel, too!)

wow

Very readable but downgraded my rating because it is now unfortunately a bit out of date

Probably the only book I will ever read that mentions VNV Nation

What an odd yet poignant book

mycological Māori magic

a refreshing change after the 6 Eisenhorn/Ravenor books

Drønes!

Should be compulsory reading for anyone in software. The chapter on MOOCs (“Programming for the Millions”) is especially good.

This felt more like “Structuralists and Poststructuralists For Beginners”

This is great, really snappy (sorry but that's what came to mind) for such academic writing. I can only lament that the sequel is not yet published!

It's incredibly depressing reading this 20+ years later, when all her criticisms of the interactions between computers and people's lives are still valid (if not even more applicable!).

faves: I was a self-loathing poet, Fast track, Release

This is (by far!) the best book of the series so far.

So firstly the book is very long and tedious, and the content doesn't justify the length. (It's also misogynistic and homophobic, so take that as a warning.) The summary of Gurdjieff's work by [a:Ouspensky 19080380 Ouspensky PD https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] ([b:In Search of the Miraculous 530903 In Search of the Miraculous Fragments of an Unknown Teaching P.D. Ouspensky https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328876338l/530903.SY75.jpg 1921110]) is a much clearer and shorter version.Here's an example of the kind of verbiage in this book, in one sentence: “And so, my boy, this totality of their first being-food which results from the evolution in these beings-apparatuses, corresponds with its vibrations to the last Stopinder of the being-Heptaparaparshinokh, and according to the particularity of this Stopinder, it enters the ‘higher-intentionally-actualizing-Mdnel-In' of the law of Heptaparaparshinokh; and in order to transform completedly into new higher substances and in order to acquire vibrations corresponding to the vibrations of the next higher vivifyingness, namely, corresponding to the fifth Stopinder of the fundamental process of the common-cosmic Sacred Heptaparaparshinokh, it inevitably requires just that foreign help which is actualized only in the presences of the three-brained beings exclusively owing to those factors mentioned by me more than once and which are manifested in the ‘being-Partkdolg-duty,' that is, owing to just those factors which our COMMON FATHER CREATOR ENDLESSNESS consented to foreordain to be the means by which certain of the Tetartocosmoses—as a final result of their serving the purposes of the common-cosmic Iraniranumange—might become helpers in the ruling of the enlarged World, and which factors also until now serve as the sole possible means for the assimilation of the cosmic substances required for the coating and perfecting of the higher being-bodies and which we at the present time call ‘conscious labors' and ‘intentional suffering.'That said it is still interesting as kind of early/weird sci-fi. The introduction is funny and enjoyable to read, as is the epilogue where he states he's off to drink 15 bottles of calvados. (The bits about Americans eating too much canned food are also enjoyable

Leans heavily on https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6080046-the-flowers-of-japan-and-the-art-of-floral-arrangement

This was a bit drier & more academic than I expected. The chapter about “disproving” the rope trick was probably the most fun.

I would have enjoyed the early chapters with descriptions of truly supernatural tricks if they dug into how such rumors came about; as it is, they are more like a catalogue.