Scott
Holding off judgement of this series, cause this does feel like a very long intro chapter. A lot happened, but only feel like I got to kinda know one or maybe two characters, and mostly still in shock at the amount of magic in this world, and no hint as to how the magic skills are honed or acquired beyond latent talents.
Interesting quick read, mostly the pros recommend getting a coach and watching videos for upping your skills, get staked if you can't meet your 100 ABI / level, get used to variance to avoid tilt, study study study, review you tough hands, read/watch/discuss hand analysis by those who know better then you, and don't get sucked into -EV degenerate life sucks.
Fit the need I was looking for to fill out my understanding the basic options strategies after getting brief intros to options via tastytrade. Was a bit light on the greeks and straddle/strangle/spread plays, but was not expecting much from an intro book in this regard. Moving on to a more advanced book now. Was not aware that a 2nd edition was available for this book, so might be a bit more coverage of higher tier plays in the new edition.
Coming from a “buy and hold (and hope you guessed right)” kind of investing for the past 10+ years, this book was a good wake-up call. I wanted to learn more about “trading”, and this book gave me a great overview of day & swing trading. This book covered a lot of ground, and I think a second re-read will be in order. It sets out from the start about divorcing yourself from your trades, make logical decisions, limit your risk with stops, good trades tend to have good patterns in multiple timeframes, make good trades and $ will follow, don't fight trends, fade the false break-outs, set a plan, follow it, track all the important data for each trade, keep a record of how you performed for each trade, review those records. The services (website) the author runs were mentioned about every other chapter, but for the most part did not seem too hard of a sell. I enjoyed the book, and plan to review it again to get more from the various indicators and oscillators it covered early in the book.
Kinda of the opposite of the book by the founder of Lagunitas. The Lagunitas book, was a historical narrative with a sprinkling of lessons learned while starting a brewery. While this book was more of small business philosophy course, with a sprinkling of historical context wrapped around the founding of the brewpub and brewery.
Quick read, fun, made me want to go out and get some Lagunitas beer, which I did.
Was kinda expecting a bit more of a “howto start your own brewery” type book, but that's what I get for just diving in and not reading the description of the book. From the book I did get a general fuzzy understanding of how the company got started technically; funding (or lack of) equipment, location, distribution, permits etc. However the book mostly is a series of stories revolving around the initial start and various growing pains He ran into, and a lot of the personal relations and fun things that happened around the brewery. A couple of shots were taken at folks, but nothing too mean, mostly just tongue in cheek.
I like the conversational style, a few of the stories are repeated with a little variation of perspective or more depth of coverage, but nothing ad nauseum.
This volume was tougher to dive into, than the first in the series. To be honest this was my 3rd or 4th attempt at finishing this book, I even re-read the first in the series last year after re-reading “Cryptonomicon”, in in prep to push on through to the third book in the series. I found the adventures of Jack to be less compelling than those of Eliza, Daniel and Bob. I am hoping to get as entrenched with Jack on the last in the Series as I was in the first book.
Twilight Zone indeed(well before there was a TZ to compare to). Still have to let it simmer in my head a bit.
It was a quick read, I was just slow in reading. The pacing was good, but the characters were a little thin for my taste. Having been on a bit of a classic SF kick as of late, I guess I should not be surprised by the lack of depth in the characters. The themes and ideas put forward by the story is where I should be looking for depth, and PKD does not disappoint in this regard.
I think the entire side plot with his wife could have been ignored, or at least better addressed. I was a little put off by how easily Ted and his Wife leave each other, upon the slightest whim.I will defiantly have to re-read the playground scene, with my new imagery of gods playing around in the dirt intact.
It was a quick D&D book. I did not hate it, and found some fun parts, lots of battles and interesting adventures, but for the relative length not a lot of character development or world building. What I mean is that I did not get a feel for any history of this world or what had caused these events to occur. I found it hard to root for the main character, and felt the revolving door of secondary characters pulled me through the book more so than any of the main group.
There are parts in the book which just don't make logical sense (send a stable boy/page next time), and a particular sentence really “rocketed” me out the story.
Otherwise an okay intro to a massive world. I am going to try and read most of the FR novels in the publication order, will see if I can do so in a reasonable length of time.
I can't tell if I would have liked this book more if I was not exposed to the TV series. I find it hard to remember what I visualized the characters to look like in my head when I was first reading this series. I am sure I will finish off the series, but this entry was my least favorite so far. I appreciate the slow buildup of other worldly and mystical power, I wonder if there will ever be any head to head duels between the potentially waring Gods.
— Newer review in 2021 —
Man.... what will become of this series. Was fun revisiting it anew after “kinda” knowing what lays ahead, but still looking for a better close from the written word over what the TV series had to offer.
