yacoob

Okay, the story has hit rock bottom, and doesn't seem to even try to recover.

Well, this is going downhill fast.

Time to drop this on the floor.The whole series is one giant exploitation story, with seemingly deep characters. Sadly, the characters are as bland as British food - and if the characters are unrelatable, no amount of personal drama is going to be believable. I think I understand what author has tried to say, and what's the hook of this setup - it's just not presented in a manner that keeps me interested. Eden: It's an Endless World shows a similar set of problems (how cruel/selfish people are) in a way more palatable manner. Elfen Lied starts on a good note, and then wastes a good setup flailing around without any tangible purpose.

Co tu dużo mówić - książka która niejako zastartowała moją miłość do SF. Taki “Sposób na Alcybiadesa” w kosmicznym sztafażu. Pewnie nic specjalnego w dzisiejszych czasach, ale moja nostalgia mówi że wyśmienite. :D

Eh, it's a very hit&miss collection. “Has some Japanese stuff” isn't really a sufficient criteria for putting a set of short stories together. There were some good pieces here , but I'm not sure whether I can recommend the whole set just on the virtue of having those. Some of the stories were really pretentious (Mono no aware) or just poorly written (The sound of breaking up or Autogenic dreaming). Couple of them (like Golden bread) tried hard to achieve this nonchalant whimsiness - and got some way there. Overall, there was nothing remarkable in that antology, and that's why the score is low. It's not bad, it's just not good enough.

tl;dr: Read that book if you're riding a bike and you're not a professional racer.

I don't agree with everything author says, but there's plenty of a very sensible advice in there. It's definitely worth reading, and integrating into your own cycling viewpoint.

Delightful read, for me as a person that didn't know much about Turkey. The political thread kind of dwindled down over the course of the story - or at least, in my perception. I wonder how many subtle hints I haven't picked up on. :)

Interesting setup, mediocre build up, lousy resolution.

If you don't have a cat or a dog that you'd call a friend, don't bother reading this. Most of this books' value will pass right over your head.

If you strip all cat advice call-outs from this book, it doesn't really lose anything. Sure, the advice is useful, but it's not really revolutionary. The story of Ben and Jackson is remarkable, well written and quite gripping. It touched on so many points close and dear to me that I don't hesitate to give it 5 stars.

Everything from Hyperion came together into a coherent story. :3

EDIT: on a second thought, there's at least one deus ex machina there - the use of a deathwand bomb to sterilize the Core. Awfully convenient - and shouldn't it only kill humans, not AIs?

Very whimsical, and balancing on the verge of losing its narrative coherence. Manages to preserve the puns to story ratio though.

Finally, I'm done!

The book changes its focus in a dramatic manner roughly half way in. From world building and character development, it makes a great leap into inner dialogue of a particular character, and pretty much never comes back. It's not a bad thing per se, it's just that the change is jarring and quite confusing.

Oh, and it looks like the SF decor is important for me right now: once the story switched to the “retro” mode, an interesting character alone was no longer sufficient to keep my attention.

Delightful book for any MGS fan. I had fun reading the story of two kids who had had similar experience with MGS1 as I had. While I don't agree with all of the expressed opinions, a lot of them were spot on. The only nitpick I have is the fact that this book doesn't really talk as much about later games as it could.

I've decided to read this one, not in search of REALLY CHEAP SUSHI but hoping to discover some places that are off the beaten path. I've found some recommendations, but overall the guide was iterating through some of the obvious points you can find easily otherwise. Probably a good book for someone who doesn't know anything about Tokyo yet.

This is not a new story or a new angle, but it's served really well. I hope it gets more interesting further on.

Very useful book, but primarily by the virtue of the fact that the camera's manual is really terse and kind of useless. Bit too verbose at the time, and dry, but will do as a reference material for the hardware.

What a brilliant book!

Facts first: this book consists of short to medium articles about different gotchas of Japanese language. Good chunk of those were above my level, and I could only vaguely judge their value - but the ones that I was familiar with were brilliant. Really good explanation of difference between は and が, very illustrative description “giving/receiving” verbs, and an awesome story about translations of passive forms to/from English. I can see myself re-reading this book again when I learn more Japanese, but I think I already benefited from it.

Highly recommended to anyone learning Japanese past beginner's level!

As a person that enjoyed Ringworld as a kid, I really liked this one. It ties nicely into established timeline, shows known characters in new contexts and unfurls an interesting plot on its own. There's plenty of questions at the end of it, and I'm very curious to see if they're addressed by the end of the Worlds cycle.Looking forward to reading the next one :)

It's just not good enough. I've seen the formula before (children tale in an adult-like setting), and this particular rendering of it is just not that attractive. Seven year younger Wroniec by Jacek Dukaj does the same thing with much greater success. Unfortunately - for Neil Gaiman - I've read Wroniec first.

All of the shtick from Accelerando in a much lighter rendition a'la Laundry series, with just a dash of Contact (the movie, not the book). I think it'll be next to impossible to enjoy this book without having at least a warm fuzzy feeling about the whole set of transhuman concepts. In that sense it is a joyride to Heaven for nerds. Rather inconsequential, nicely written, with some interesting tapdancing around some meta topics. Good fun.

This is not a book I can really recommend. As much as I agree with the author about collecting experiences instead of things, the way this message is conveyed is annoying and muddled. Sure, following those rules to the letter might even bring you lots of happiness - but more likely, this book will annoy you and make you smirk about some of the proposed practices.

In other words: you can probably summarise this book in a short article, without unnecessary fluff and the crazy sauce (greeting a house, thanking the items, etc.). Some good ideas, but horrible execution.

Very good, no-nonsense Ansible introduction. I'd probably rearrange the sections a bit - the debugging chapter tucked at the very end would be more useful to me with my hands-on approach if it'd appear somewhere past the initial concepts. I could probably also shave some of the additional explanations (“here's how to make script executable”) - at few points they seemed really out of place, and unnecessary. This way or the other, it was a very informative book. Recommended to anyone who's considering using Ansible.

Oh dear, my love, my angel, what a book.

In movie terms: Perfect Blue meets Requiem for a Dream, with just a dash of Kurt Vonnegut styling. I've really enjoyed this book - while reading it was a bit stressful, it never crossed into the realm of being distasteful. It's not a positive story, and it has influenced my mood a little bit. I still think it was a worthy read.

Well, this was less thrilling than I've expected. The story was fun, but it lacked coherence and convincing characters. As it stands, it's a lightweight version of The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan. Quite predictable past some point, plus it looked like author has run out of ideas (X-Drugs? Really? :). The protagonist was a bit hard to empathise with - perhaps this was done on purpose. If it wasn't, she ended up being quite a nihilist.It wasn't a bad read. It just wasn't that good.

I always liked Eve Online - perhaps not the game itself, but the atmosphere and the visuals. This book is a collection of very early designs that contributed to the game at its birth. I had a lot of fun peering through it, but I don't think I'd be as interested if I'd just grab this book without experiencing the game first.