Reviews and Comments

Thinking about thinking is a subject that I often find interesting. With The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef does a good job of both summarising what we know and providing a framework for looking at how we think, and how we can improve our thinking.

This is a very solid book and one that is well worth reading.

A promising, if ultimately disappointing, slice of folk horror. There is a lot to like in this book but it lets itself down somewhat with a very homogeneous collection of characters that remain very difficult to care about.

I suspect that I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I'd read it 30 years ago. Reading it now, the cyberpunk stylings all feel incredibly dated and are unable to paper over the many problems with this novel. Starting with the characters, who amount to a collection of one-dimensional stereotypes about which it is impossible to care.

The plot doesn't feel like it's going anywhere for much of the time and when Stephenson starts talking about technology, everything starts to become increasingly ludicrous. This book really hasn't aged well.

We've all encountered bullshit and with this book, Petrocelli provides a very readable overview of what it his, why we tolerate far too much of it, some of the effects it can have and how we can counter it.

In doing so, he also provides a much needed reminder of the importance of critical thinking.

Even the appendix is worth a read.

There are a lot of ideas in this novel that do bear thinking about but the narrative, heavily reliant on a series of vignettes from the future, feels disjointed to the point that it keeps stumbling over itself. I do like the eventual optimism of the novel, but did find it a bit too reliant on hand-waving and buzzwords for me to really buy into it.

As a novel, The Ministry for the Future felt a lot like an exercise in wasted potential.

Reading this feels a lot like watching a soap opera. It's very much a character driven story with the plot serving merely to prod the story along as and when needed. And the characters are an entertaining and likeable bunch of misfits, doing their job and surviving as best they can.

It's also worth noting that this is a really nice story. The characters have spent years learning to get along with each other and... they get along with each other. What tensions there are are relatively minor and never distract from the fact that these people are looking out for each other.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a very easy read and a solid debut from Becky Chambers.

Walled Culture can be a bit heavy going at times, but Moody does do an excellent job of highlighting the many areas in which copyright as it's currently implemented does more harm than good.

It's certainly true that this is something for which much reform is badly needed. I remain unconvinced, however, that Moody's preference to completely abolish copyright would prove to be quite the panacea he suggests.

Written in 1882, The Fixed Period does show it's age a bit. Not so much in the writing, but in the pace of the novel and some of the attitudes expressed. That said, the dialogue-heavy style does make for a very easy read.

What really makes the novel so readable, though, is the central idea: The attempt to build a dystopia from the point of view of the utopian trying to build it.

In this, Trollope very effectively, captures the core point that one person's utopia is a dystopia for many others.

The cover of this book claims that the novel predicted the rise of Corbyn, which it doesn't. What it does do is speculate about a very left-wing Labour government coming to power and the reaction of the establishment.

It's all a bit conspiracy laden, but the plot moves along at a fair old clip, which is both good and bad. On one hand, the pacing makes for a very readable story but the downside is that neither the themes nor the characters are really developed.

That was superb. There is so much going on in this novel that I am still taking it in -- I'm sorely tempted to go back and read it again... But I also really want to know what happens in the next book

That was disappointing. Too dense, too random and K is such an annoyingly obnoxious character that, by the second chapter, I was wishing they'd just lock him up and throw away the key.

The story can be read as a warning against the banal bureaucracy ot totalitarianism, but these themes have been much better handled by subsequent writers.