Swapnil
This book I picked up because I wanted to read something light (after reading very heavy GRRM books) and boy, this book delivered. Its light and funny and along the way tell you a lot about world history, in its own style, mind you. I am not saying this is history book, but author intertwines the story of Allan (the protagonist) with centuries worth of significant events spanning from Second world war, Chinease Civil War, Manhattan Project, Cold war (and subsequent nuclear non-proliferation treaties), to Korean war. I have to look up Wikipedia articles to see which events are real and which one are made up. But overall, book sets up a good background for story and you always get rooted for Allan, to see what he is going to screw up next.
Its translated book, and I think its good translation as I saw myself laughing many a time, especially for Allan's social inaptitude and for his general carelessness.
Book has complex character play and interesting plot and twists. There is nothing science fiction-y about this book. Had it been the political drama instead of sci-fi book, author still able to keep the same story. But that doesn't make it a bad book, I just had different expectations. Its more of ‘dune' type of science fiction book than ‘foundation' type. Sometimes author unnecessarily tries to make situation science fiction-y by using technobabble and falls flat on face. But nevertheless, it's interesting read.
After watching Alain de Botton's insightful ‘School of life' videos on YouTube, I was very excited to read this book, and I must say I enjoyed it a lot. The book is quotation factory, in good sense. It flips back and forth between novel and self-help book, but you don't feel annoyed by it. If you have cherished view of romantic love then you need to read this book to keep yourself grounded on earth so that you don't hurt yourself when love loses its wings.
Wow! It feels like ages since I picked up this book for reading. I was reading it on-and-off for almost a year (may be more). It is difficult book to grasp and author does not make easy to grasp it either. He talks in long and difficult prose. I don't mean to say he didn't try to explain thing very well, it just that this book is not targeted for laymen users. In shorts author does not talk in pigs-and-bunnies. Sometimes some concept just blows your mind and then sometimes it feels like author is explaining same thing again and again and not going anywhere. This books is more about philosophy (given that author is philosopher) than hard science.
I must say, never I have enjoyed a history book as this one. Bill Bryson explains the earth's history succinctly but at the same thoroughly. He has knack of storyteller and interweaves the stories of historian (which almost ends with historian dying unhappy life) that you feel like you are reading novel and not history (and in good sense). It covers everything from Big Bang, formation of environment, to evolution of life, the repeated cycle of evolution and extinction, purpose of life, from subjects ranging from (apart from history) geology, biology, palaeontology, to cosmology, anthropology and genetics etc.
I took me 1 month to read this book; and I must say this book does not deserve this much time to be taken from your life. I started reading this book after reading just one quote from it - “Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. ... and I thought the book would be good read. Oh boy, never in my life I was so wrong about any book. It starts with interesting plot, but then slips into monotonous routines of each character. The book is filled with so many of writers own wild sexist fantasies. I didn't see the point of exploring in detail certain character such as Ushikawa and not explaining at all the other characters such as Little People. So many important things are left to the readers imagination.
I never thought I will finish this book. It's so dense, not necessarily due to its content but inability of mine to comprehend the ideas that were presented. I don't know why I started reading this book, may be because I wanted to see how great philosophers think. I am not at all convinced whether it will bring practical value to me either in personal, social or professional life (apart from bragging right, whatever that worth). May be its wrong to have such expectations from such Platonic book. Most of the ideas were idealistic photograph of reality.
Tolstoy has famous quote saying – All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I think it's apt quote but in reverse direction when we apply it to current state of Nations. When I talk with friends we often talk about how media is biased towards former ruling party and not portraying the correct picture of the current ruling party in India. They say if somehow they show the correct picture then people will appreciate what government is doing (or what they are not doing, for that matter). And exactly same problem Chomsky talks about in detail and he present it so eloquently that you starts to wonder whether there is any hope of expecting for media to behave sanely. I mean, one of the most powerful country has this flaw, then what chance India has. The problem is that with America its media working for government and for India is media working against it. Not to mention how horrific situation of world is due to this power-play. Again you have to take every opinion of every activist with grain of salt and don't fall for the trap that the activist itself is promoting to solve. One thing for sure though, I starting to see pessimistic but somewhat clear picture of the problems in the world and now pondering whether there will ever be any solution to such problems.
A side note: I picked up this book after reading Aaron Swartz's review of this book in his blog post and I think you too should read his opinion of this book in his blog post
I was trying to read this book since 1.5 years, but couldn't get through it (or may be had found some other interesting books to read). This book started out great. I thought I will learn something new, may be some memory tricks which will be useful (I have trouble remembering names of people, sometimes even my close friends, so I thought this book will give me some tricks to remember names and places). But this is more like authors own journey to win Americas Memory Championship and how his mentor helped him get though it. Sprinkled very sparsely are the trips and ticks and history of the competitions. Author (unnecessarily) picks on one of the memory savant (Daniel), as if there is some personal vendetta against him. Although I learnt some memory tricks like Major System, Memory Palace and PAO system, but overall Signal-To-Noise ratio of the book is very less. May be I picked this book with wrong expectation.
I read this book after watching the video by John Green in his CrashCourse channel. I wanted to read this book critically as the JG pointed out. I wanted to feel what characters are feeling and get the essence of the book. But I think I couldn't empathize with any character in this book. I hated the Victor for his cowardice and lack of taking responsibility of his own acts. He should been sympathetic to his own creation, like mom loves her child however ugly s/he is. I hated the monster for killing so many innocent and Walton for helping Victor. I couldn't understand the meaning of this book; what author wanted to say. If it is that human should not play with nature then this message comes only in passing. In the end I felt nothing. Just happy that it was ended.