Wes Baker

I don't like superheroes, but I love a good story and this book tells a great story full of twists and turns, even if I wasn't the biggest fan of the ending. I really appreciated how fragile and human Batman was through this book, going so far as suffering a life-threatening injury (even if we all knew he'd make it out with only scars). There were also a lot of gray areas with very little white or black, his relationships with his sidekicks, allies, and nemeses being the most obvious.

I don't think this book will strongly change my opinion on superheroes—I'm ambivalent to most superheroes and despise any that don't have a set of rules, limitations, or weaknesses governing them—but I'd be willing to read a few more if someone suggested them to me.

This was an incredibly fast read, maybe 30 minutes or so long. It's full of beautiful imagery, simple dialog, and surprises aplenty. Being something written for young adults, there's a lot of archetypes to be found: the chosen one, unknown and dangerous magics, and the deceased parent, however they all tie together very neatly and the story makes you care despite the genre-standard tropes.

If I had to pick one thing that this book does incredibly well, it's the action panels and how they create a fantastic sense of motion.

We join Royce and Hadrian again, but this time they're far deeper in Averyn politics than before. Additionally, we start to see Royce's hard facade crack a bit and he's a bit more human (something that has me worried for the fifth and sixth books). Of the two books in this omnibus, I definitely enjoyed the fourth book, The Emerald Storm, more because I'm a sucker for a nautical setting in fantasy books. Royce and Hadrian flounder onboard the ship for the first few days and eventually get better, with Royce using his accumulated talents for the good of the ship, while Hadrian enjoys a rather sedate job as cook. Meanwhile, we continue to see the New Empire grow, shift, and change as they work on binding everyone to their rule with the Essendons (in particular Arista) and Degan being some of the few willing to challenge them.

The fourth book leaves you without a clear ending, a gray area much like most of the characters, and it has me frothing at the mouth to start the third, and final, omnibus.

Our protagonist keeps painting a picture that he doesn't care about humanity or what he does, that he only cares about himself. Yet we see more of his rules being broken and connections being made: his girlfriend is still his girlfriend and he's far more protective, and he finds friends in the godson of a Columbian drug lord and a former cop who has been setup to take a fall. His jobs are also getting increasingly (intentionally) messy. He's needing to make examples of people instead of them dying in a way that looks accidental and the stakes are being raised as a result. What makes matters worse is he seems to be getting closer and closer to the Columbian drug lord, yet another string he'll have to worry about later. This is one of the best comics I've read lately and I'm really looking forward to where the series is going.

If I could only read one comic series, I would have to choose Atomic Robo, the wisecracking robot created by Nikola Tesla who crosses time and space to perform science and fight Dr. Dinosaur and other baddies. This volume was weaker than some of the others (I wonder if that has something to do with reading it serially), but I'm happy to devour it all the same.

In this volume, we get to see a lot more of Dr. Dinosaur than usual and that makes me happy as he's absolutely absurd and it makes for great dry humor. Meanwhile Jenkins is back at the base and dealing with a very angry—though misguided—US Department of Defense. Well worth the read, and a re-read.

I'm a glutton for a story about an assassin, but then add in his partner who's a mercenary with a heart of gold and you've got me hooked. Now, paint a slightly askew picture as compared to your bog standard medieval fantasy and you're two for two. Then add in a layer of political intrigue and some heists and I'm all in.

On some levels, this story feels like a buddy cop movie, except instead of cops we have a pair of fixers (men for hire who can steal, kill, implicate, and solve ‘problems'). From the first book on, they're involved in more than what they ever intended, being hired to do a too-easy job for far too much money, which goes bad very quickly. From there, we see them help a kingdom and then a small village.

I think what makes this book so great is the interaction between Royce and Hadrian (our assassin and mercenary, respectively). The roles are pretty standard with the assassin being angst and short-fused, and the mercenary having his own code of honor and wanting to what's right. Yet, it just feels so good to watch them do what they do and in the way that makes sense to their character. I love that Royce thinks of himself first and maybe everyone else later, and that Hadrian is looking to do what's right for others and be honorable, despite his association with a thief and assassin.

I highly recommend this book.

Still worth reading, but I think they're muddying up the series a bit. Hook and his hunters play a much bigger role in this volume, but Hook is still held back a bit, keeping some of the mystery behind him. I'm hoping they redeem themselves in the next volume.

Way too much dude. The author starts with the assumption that you, as the father, only care about the end product, not the whole pregnancy. Also, a lot of the information is redundant if you're taking a Bradley Method class.

More than 50% of the stories were worth reading, but there were a few duds among them. I also believe that I should probably avoid collections of short stories in the future—I prefer the depth that comes from an entire novel or series.

I'm happy I listened to this on audiobook as I would be a little frustrated after reading something that felt like a lot of fluff.

The first part of the book is dedicated to myelin and it's relationship to how we build skills. However, the way you build myelin is through deep practice, which he covers in the second part of the book. So all that discussion of myelin is simply just interesting, but not actionable at all. The parts on deep practice are interesting though and worth the listen, but again, I'm not sure if it's worth spending the time to read it, it felt a bit fluffy.

The last part of the book was about coaching, which is something i'm becoming more and more interested in for multiple reasons. I liked seeing how some of the best coaches get what they need out of their charges. At the same time, I was even happier to see that the author pointed out that one approach does not work for all skills, let alone all people learning the same skill. You have to adapt your coaching both for the person and the skill being taught (e.g. the futbol de salad coaches let their players just play, but the Suzuki violin teachers were constantly picking and correcting).

All in all, I'm glad I listened to it, but I'm not rushing back for a second read.

A well told story, a bit of fantasy, a love story or two, and a war. This series just keeps getting better and they completely skipped the sophomore slump. In this volume you learn a bit more about Peter's demons and why he fights, and you see the lost boys get further entrenched in the French resistance. Now I just have to wait for the next volume.

Some of these are beautifully illustrated. However, I apparently can't stand H.P. Lovecraft.

Good as a list of activities for retrospectives, but very little in here applies to a distributed team. It might be more useful to a non-distributed team.

It's funny that a short story can offer things that full novels can't due to the shorter time frame. This one is no exception and Scalzi's writing is as engrossing as ever as he tells us about a future space-traveling theocracy that worships a god who has conquered and trapped other gods to be used as the engine (and other duties) of his fleet of ships. There's an interesting slant to the book: it feels as if Scalzi accepts that there is/are a god/gods, but can't stand the idea of religion because what it makes us do, but maybe that's not the case—so lower your pitchforks. Overall a fun read and worth the short time it takes to read it.

I'm rating this based on the quality of the writing, but not it's applicability to me. This is a handy little guidebook that'll teach you some OS X tricks that maybe you didn't know. I found one or two in here that I had never heard of and found useful. However, if you're a nerd like me and on your Mac all day long, you probably won't get a ton out of this.

Let's start with what I didn't like: Dahlia. Dahlia is a hard character to process. She's raw, she's aggressive, and she runs counter to Drizzt, the character who I know and love. She is frustrating because she represents the emotions and impulses that Drizzt fights against in others, yet she flaunts them and enjoys seeing Drizzt squirm.

With that out of the way, how was the rest of the book? In one word: excellent. The entire book is a spring with tension constantly building as Drizzt, Dahlia and Artemis work their way to Gauntlgrym to destroy Charon's Claw, both freeing and killing Artemis from his enslavement to the sword. The whole time everyone knows he's going to die, yet the trudge forward, remaining quiet about Artemis's impending death. If this alone was the story, it would be good, but the way Salvatore then twists in the fates of the dark elves and finally reveals the relationship between Alegni, Dahlia, and Effron, was absolutely fantastic.

If you're a fan of the series, then you've either already read this book or your planning on it. If you haven't read this series, then this is not the best place to start, but know that the series is a long haul and one worth the time.

I'll echo what's already been said about this: it felt wishy-washy and a bit heads-in-the-cloud and never really said a lot. There are some good bits and pieces here, but overall it felt like a waste of time. Not so bad I had to stop reading it, just bad enough to not recommend it to anyone I know, and to go so far as to recommend not reading it. I expected a lot more from Mr. Chimero.

Very very strange. This is the story of a top secret weapons research project disguised as a top secret weapons research project, with only Franklin D Roosevelt knowing the true nature of it. This takes place during WWII and involves the countries involved in that war, it also includes people truly involved in the original Manhattan Project, but from there, it takes on a heavy science fiction bent.

First off, there's an Oppenheimer, but it's not Robert, it's Joseph who can only be described as Robert's evil identical twin since he killed and ate Robert and took his place in the Manhattan Projects. Einstein is here as well, but he's also not completely who he says he is. Richard Feynman is a brilliant, young, and troubled, man in the program who seems to be the most level headed. Beyond that, there's a cast of other scientists involved, including Harry Dahglian who (in real life) irradiated himself, but (in the book) is (somewhat) alive and is still helpful to the Manhattan Projects. However, he needs to be irradiated and is a floating skull somehow attached to a body. When others are exposed to him, they too are irradiated and die. Mid-way through the story Roosevelt dies, only to be brought back as an artificial intelligence thanks to the scientists of the Manhattan Projects (a very gruesome process). It's at about that point that the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima by General Leslie Groves, the man in charge of the Manhattan Projects.So as you can see, this comic book is clearly bonkers, but there is a bit of a yin-yang to it all. Part of the book is about Einstein's portal of sorts. Before that, we are told the story between Joseph and Robert Oppenheimer. In both there is a duality between our normal world and a much harsher world and those panels are always shown in opposing colors: blue for the normal world and red for the harsher world. For example, Robert Oppenheimer was always shown as blue and Joseph was shown as red. Near the end of the fourth issue, we see Einstein asking for help from Feynman to crack open this "gate" he obsesses over in his private (and previously locked) laboratory. Feynman eventually figures out the key to opening it (pi, not fibonacci) and it's then revealed that we have the "harsh" Einstein (red one) and not the "normal" one.

I'm not sure what's left to say other than the book was very interesting and I'm awaiting the next volume (I can't stand episodic content). The art style is not my cup of tea, but it's consistent and it works. The writing can wrap around itself in a few places, but was rare enough that it wasn't a big deal.

Not necessarily a book I'd pick up to just read, but well worth having around if you plan on sticking with The Legend of Drizzt for the long haul. The maps alone are worth the purchase, they're beautiful and give you a great idea of the scope of Faerun and where different cities sit in relation to the other cities.

One of the best books I've read since [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora 127455 The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) Scott Lynch http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg 2116675]. An excellent story, wonderful character development, and an incredibly captivating world. Well worth a read if not several.

A very hard book to get into, but the last hundred pages almost made up for it. I might have to continue the series, but I hope the writing gets better.

This is the book on creativity that I've been waiting for. It covers so many topics so quickly, and yet each topic feels complete and not rushed. This is a book that will sit on my shelf and be read multiple times. Highly recommended.

As someone that grew up with parents who let me roam and get into some trouble, I can't tolerate the current trend of protecting children from any thing that could potentially hurt them in any way, form, or fashion. This ‘book' (more of a pamphlet) was a quick read and a good argument for letting your children earn their share of scars and bruises. This is something I'll need to re-read when I actually have children.

Tiny book with a disproportionate price, but well worth the (very quick) read. I'd recommend picking up Harvard Business Review's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself which includes this article and a few others. I haven't read those, but the price is so close, you might as well.

This book was worth reading, but I'm not sure the whole thing was worth reading. At times, it seemed that the author had a quota to fill and at other times that she truly cared about a subject and just let the ideas flow. It's this strange mix of loquaciousness and clarity that makes this book both hard to finish and hard to recommend. If you have the time and truly care about the subject, it's worth a read. If you're just starting, it might be worth holding off for a while.