Ravi Warrier

TBH I stopped reading after the first chapter and my review is based on a partial reading of the book. It might have gotten better, but I wouldn't know.

Now, the reason why this book didn't work for me was that the authors seem to have confused marketing with advertising. Most of the concepts written and suggested changes for/on are marketing concepts and not particularly those of advertising.

Now, it could be that the definition of advertising may have changed since I last read it, but I seriously doubt it.

Plus, the advice is so generic. It's like the authors wrote a book because they had to write one without consideration of what happens on the ground.

Was looking forward to this book and I kinda liked it. But for most parts, I couldn't be interested.

The book is 14-17 hours longer than it could have been. I normally listened through the previous books in one sitting, but it took me four days, multiple naps and breaks to finish this one. Just got bored with the extra drama that didn't have anything to do with the main story.

4 stars for Carl and Donut, but -3 for making me go through stuff that didn't really matter or could have been hastened past, and putting me to sleep every few hours.

[Spoiler, sort of] Brad, why couldn't they just wait for Beth to leave the hotel and follow her to the cottage? That was the dumbest thing you wrote against a great series so far.
PS: I'm glad Amena is alive too. :)

Natalie is a great story teller, but this book was 40-50% longer for my liking. Nevertheless, for someone who loves chronological narration of scientific discoveries or progress, you'll like this book.

I'm not sure if this is a series of Isabella Rose or Michael Pope. Almost 80-90% of the narrative has Pope as the main character while Isabella seems to be a side character with intermittent cameos every few chapters.

The book is thrilling, but loses points just for the reason mentioned above.

At the end of this book, I still can't articulate why socialism is bad.

The author makes a few fallacies (or at least I felt he did):

1. Attributing the ills of authoritarianism and dictatorship to socialism.
2. Not acknowledging that policy-making of stupid politicians has nothing to do with what economic model a country adopts.
3. Ignoring similar problems in a capitalistic society - for example, the author describes the destruction of the Aral Sea by socialist Russians, but fails to state the other similar and numerous ecological problems caused by capitalistic states and companies driven by the need to profit.
4. Ignoring the fact that advocates of capitalism twist and bastardize the principles of capitalism as much as those of socialism; that the original definition of either is no longer used as intended.

As I kept reading the book, I kept thinking to myself: but that is because of the dictator in question, but that happens in capitalism as well, but is this a democracy/authoritarian problem or capitalism/socialism problem, etc.

It just feels like a poorly constructed just-for-the-sake-of-doing-so arguments. I'm no economist, but even to a lay person like me, the points seemed half-baked.

I think it's a wonderfully written book, but it felt biased or one-sided. There's so much that the author could have conveyed about life had it been a complementary conversation instead of competitive.

Also, it seems that Zacharias either didn't understand the precepts of Buddhism, or met the wrong monks, or just plainly chose to ignore concepts that would counter those made by this fictional Jesus.

The wonder of the book is imagining both these revered characters actually sharing a conversation. I just wish it turned out differently.

4 stars for imagination, -2 for the lopsided argument.

Okay, I guess Zacharias is just another Christian evangelist. And while there's nothing wrong with that, what's upsetting is the selective pickings from Hinduism to (once again, no surprise) favor Christianity.

One can only surmise that the author wasn't really interested in joining people of different faiths together, but divide them by showing one favorably over the other.

Once again, just like the other book I read of a conversation with the Buddha, the author missed a chance to imagine the possible wonder of crafting a complementary conversation between two great, wise, mythical characters.

3 for the premise, -2 for the shallow, narrow-minded attempt at evangelism.

I'm sure that the author's heart was in the right place when they wrote the book, but I dread to imagine how their words can be used as excuses by the nimble and weak.

Some of their ideas were good, but some of the other concepts are downright patronizing to snowflakes.

Most of the places mentioned in the book are interesting and do pique one's curiosity or wonder, but the reason why I couldn't enjoy the (audio) book at all was because of the terrible narration style of the author. It was just too unbearable (at any speeds from 1x-2.6x).

My only request to the author of they write another book is to refrain from being the narrator of the audiobook.

Content-wise, the book was 2.5.

I do believe that Amy's method may have worked for the people she's helped in person through her workshops and sessions, but this book, for me, didn't help in any way to find a better way to solve problems. Different way, yes, but better (for me), no.

My failure to enjoy (and even perhaps learn from) this book may also stem from the fact that I'm very analytical and can't appreciate art as much as I'd like to. For the more open-minded, this book and its methods might work.

Sometimes you can make out when authors write a book purely to have it made into a movie/series. This is one of those books. But:

1. The plot was interesting but made dull by the writing.
2. Couldn't have had any more selfish/self-centred and irrational protagonists. I kept head-smacking myself at their lack of reasoning, stupid questions and disregard for anything else but their own interests. Especially, when they know the world is probably going to end in the next few hours.
3. The characters (including the protagonists) are so poorly built that feeling anything for or of them is difficult. Heroes are not inspiring enough, villains are not scary/vile enough, events are not devestating enough, personal moments are not heartfelt enough.

This book has everything that a sci-fi nerd could want in a novel - earth-ending calamities, Cortana type AI, singularity, tense action etc., but none of it was put together to make an interesting, page-turning story.

I would have rated the book 3 or 3.5 in 2016, but in 2022, the contents of the book are a bit dated and that's the only reason I didn't enjoy it as much.

Too many anecdotes that say almost the same things over and over again. Would have enjoyed it a bit more had it been 33% shorter.

For me this was just another book chronicling the history of quantum mechanics and only for that reason its got a 2-star rating.

For others who may not have read much on the subject, this can be an interesting book with lots of insights into the story of quantum physics/mechanics.

Extremely poor character introduction and development. I can't even say there was an attempt to do so.

This leaves the reader without any investment in the story and fates of those characters.

The story might have been good but I wouldn't be able to comment since none of it seemed interesting because I spent most of the book just trying to strain to care about anything that happened to anyone.

The book can be considered as a sales brochure for implementation data analytics and technology behind it as the author seems really keen that everyone of us should really see the benefits of DA.

I don't disagree, but I picked this book thinking it will help me understand the subject and not to be sold on the subject.

One may have appreciated the author's enthusiasm for the technology had it not been for the obvious sales pitch in every chapter.

Some topics and narratives don't age well. This includes “how the internet will change how we work together” (the premise of this book). And this is no fault of the author and had I read this book along with others like Macrowikinomics, I would have enjoyed it; but it's 7 years since this book was written and the examples provided already seem like ancient history and that's the only reason I didn't enjoy the book as much as I would have wanted.

I could not finish more than 10% of the book. Just seemed like a whiny rant till the point in the book where I gave up. At this point American politics and American mindset is just the antithesis of a rational thought and books covering that can get boring really quickly.

Splinter Cell is one of my favourite games and when younger, Sam was my favourite character. The game and character are amazing, but this book is boring as hell. Maybe I read this with a lot of expectation or maybe it really is boring. I'll go with both.

Possibly this book wasn't that entertaining to me because I am not an angler nor am I interested in fishing; and the low score has nothing to do with the quality of writing or the stories + lessons presented in the book. If I was an angler, I would have given it a 3-star.

Ignoring that this book is 6 years old and almost obsolete with regards to a few tactics mentioned, this is a good book tying the basics under one book. -0.5 point only for obsolescence (not the author's fault).

This book is for beginners and if you are one, please consider this a 4-star book. I rated this low for two reasons:
1. I expected this book to be more “psychological” in nature. I started reading the book thinking it would uncover psychological underpinnings of investment, but it turned out to be a book on investment with a self-help theme of controlling one's own emotion while making investment or trading decisions. In itself, that's important, but that's not “psychology” in my view.
2. Nevertheless, I continued reading and, to be honest, didn't find anything new that was said because I heard it or practiced it before.

This book and the revelations it brings to light makes it a 4-star book. However, it's, in my opinion, 20-25% longer than it should be just because the author repeats the key premise of the book so many times and so frequently that it borders on being annoying.

Nevertheless, if you are more patient than I, you'll enjoy the book. If you aren't, you'll still learn something interesting and important.

There's a lot to learn from the book and ideally I would have rated it 3 or even 4 stars, but for some reason the author felt the need to reiterate himself multiple times over the book resulting in an unnecessarily lengthy book. Almost every section has the same premise/lesson/conclusion - VaR, idiotic; people who use VaR, idiots; people who support VaR, bigger idiots.

And for this reason (it's length) the book nestles into the “it was ok” category.