Joshua

This was a pretty great book. The protagonists: Rik and the Townman were not my favourite characters but I really enjoyed the antagonists: the Great Squires and their conflict with the Trantorian, Abel. The high politics was a lot more pronounced in this book which I loved. The twist that the Townman was X all along was not my favourite one, it makes sense considering his radical ideology to fight Sark and Trantor but I think it could have been more interesting if it really was Fife all along. Nonetheless I greatly enjoyed this story!

I thought it was alright. I didn't particularly like Joseph Schwarz as a character and felt Arvadan was more compelling. Balkis wasn't a good villain as we never got to understand his motivations as we did for Aratap and Fife who were way better villains and I preferred seeing them. Balkis is given a whole section in which he uses good logic but totally misunderstands the plot making him feel idiotic which is what you don't want in a villain. The Empire was cool and had an interesting presence but I think I preferred the dynamics of the Tyranni or Sark. The radioactivity of Earth was interesting. I feel like they didn't explore the time travel element enough but rather focused on Schwartz's telepathy instead of Schwartz bringing a new Renaissance of old knowledge. For instance, the US Constitution is rumoured to have helped create the Trantorian Empire, thus, wouldn't Schwartz's knowledge be immensely valuable? I think a story in which Schwartz's renaissance conflicts with the traditionalists of Earth could be interesting. It was alright nonetheless and I think might be my least favourite of the trilogy since there's no interesting villain which I like most in a novel.

This was a great introduction to Romanian history. Despite being a Romanian, I had not known much of my own history, only bits and pieces from my parents.

Hitchins does a good job at looking at history overall and connecting the past and present together.

I recommend this book if you wish to understand more about Romanian history from a neutral standpoint.

I enjoyed it!

The Irish education system did a good job at looking at all of these periods but some naturally got a bigger spotlight like the 1798 Revolution and 1916 Rising. The areas I did not know about prior to reading were certainly the Vikings and Northern Ireland. I found both to be super interesting!

The main flaw of the book is that if you know the information before reading, you'll lose a lot of the charm of the book because you know what was simplified and left out. However, if you basically know bits and pieces left over from the Irish education system or just general knowledge, you'll find this book to be intriguing and great. It also has pictures on every page which is always nice to see. More maps would've been great though!

Miklós Bánffy did not write a simple story here; he wrote something so genuine that pulled at my heartstrings. You see these characters constantly over the many hours it took to read these books and you hope for a good ending. Bánffy does not give anyone a good ending. Countess Roza dies from a stroke, Laszlo Gyeroffy dies bankrupt and ruined, Pal Uzdy dies from a mantic episode, Margit Miloth likely loses Adam in WWI and most sad of all, Adrienne does not marry Balint after all these years because he wants to take care of her dying child, essentially choosing Pal Uzdy over Balint. Balint having no joy left in his life decides to commit suicide by joining WWI instead of taking an office job. These last hundred pages really pack in death and misery and I cried quite heavily the moment I finished the book. Truly a brilliant piece of literature.

There are some criticisms I can point out however. The biggest gripe I have is that Balint does not particularly grow as a character; his moods are mostly based on how his relationship with Adrienne is; if it's good then he is happy, if it is bad then he is sad. The book does not really go beyond that. He is ultimately a character that views the world around him and changes very little. The book is also rather shy about talking about his downsides; the only instance of a criticism of Balint is that he is too generous regarding the Co-operative. There is also the instance where Balint is trying to justify to himself that he is still a Christian despite committing adultery with the argument that his love is pure and God will accept that; this shows a rather poor understanding of the faith. It is likely that Bánffy was not much of a Christian in that the only other religious character is Father Timbus, a corrupt Orthodox priest.

It has been a long journey and I am finally finished with my first foray into Hungarian literature. I genuinely enjoyed it and I might explore the genre further in the future. I have come out stronger from this book knowing that my life is so precious to not be bogged down in gambling, alcoholism, infatuation of women, adultery and pointless discussions. This book dealt with every one of these themes heavily and thus, I have come out all the better.

It wasn't terrible, just mediocre.

I found myself kind of bored, especially when the first half of the book talks about the heralds themselves rather than the heraldry I aimed to learn about.

When discussing heraldry, coat of arms, and such, it was of great interest to me. However, I feel like it could have been done better. There was definitely a focus on English heraldry and you mainly hear of other countries' heraldry as side notes.

For most of it, I just wanted to be done with the book and move onto other things.

Perhaps the short length of 123 pages meant that he had to cram in a lot of history into few words. Perhaps if it were around 300 pages, it could have been more detailed and would have allowed to walk beginners to heraldry a lot more gently.

‘The Dead Past', ‘Living Space', ‘Profession', ‘The Last Trump', ‘The Last Question' and ‘Jokester' were all fantastic stories that really left you with something to think about long after you've read it.

I would give this book 4 stars but as it's more of a collection of stories rather than a one story, it doesn't seem fit to re-read the entire book again. I would definitely re-read certain stories but I would skip over others like ‘The Dying Night' which I didn't really care too much for. Probably because it was more of a murder mystery, but it is good that the book included a wide variety of genres than just sci-fi.

There were a good few religious references in the collection as well. I found it interesting how religion and sci-fi could be melded together to create a solid story. My favourite story of this theme was the ‘Last Trump' primarily because it was funny how angels and gods were apart of a bureaucracy.

I would recommend this to basically everyone unless you have some hatred of sci-fi.

This is a great introduction to Irish history as a whole. While it cannot be considered the definitive history of Northern Ireland, Hegarty does spend a good amount of time discussing Northern Ireland, especially in the final chapter where the Troubles is given significant attention, albeit at the cost of a more detailed post-WW2 Republic of Ireland.

I very much enjoyed the early Irish history such as the Vikings since I wasn't taught too much about it in school. However, only the first hundred pages are pre-1600s history. Meaning the next 200+ pages discuss only 400 years of history. Of course it makes sense, there is a lot more ‘relevant' information to give about Charles Stuart Parnell or the 1916 Rising than the 1500s.

As a result, this book is great as a general primer to Irish history with a focus on more early modern to modern history. This does not mean the pre-1600s content is lacking, it's very good and I learned a lot.

I found it to be okay. It's worthwhile reading to get information on the HRE and a general introduction to it. Although I still find myself questioning on what legacy the HRE left behind and I think the author failed to properly show this through the text. Perhaps it was not meant to be a study on the legacy of the HRE but rather an introduction. As a result, you most likely won't get much deep analysis or lasting ideas but mainly a decent introduction to basic history like who the Franks were, how the empire became German and the rise of Prussia.

The writing isn't too captivating but it is not dreadfully boring. The chapters and sub-chapters are short enough. Sure with 160 pages you could probably read it in a week or if you're being slow, two weeks.

I think its great. There's a lot of wisdom to unpack in Confucius. It's also bite-sized wisdom. There's no major concepts to understand beyond ‘virtue'. Confucius is pretty simple in his philosophy. It's mainly improving oneself and constantly growing. As a result, he makes a clear difference between a higher and a lower person, i.e. one that is dedicated to learning and growth versus someone who is not.

From my understanding, the philosophy of Confucius can be considered generally a good one. It evokes constant self-growth and to be good around others. It's main weakness however could be in how strict and limiting it is. It's very much fighting against your base instincts and doing what is ‘right'. There's also the issue of Confucius' emphasis on religious law which could challenge secular philosophy.

Nonetheless, the Analects is a classic piece of Eastern Philosophy and I encourage others to read it if they have any interest in philosophy.

This book is long and complicated! I was not ready for this book!

Joachim Whaley covers a numerous amount of topics and genres in this book: at one point its a biography of certain individuals such as Martin Luther and later it could be a case study on some niche court case. A general theme of the book is reassessment however. He's constantly mentioning historians from the 19th and 20th century who's opinions of the Holy Roman Empire are seen as outdated nowadays. As a result, if you don't know anything about the Peasants Revolt, you might be a bit confused. Although he explains topics in detail, it's important to understand the big broad picture first.

As a result, while this is an excellent book, currently it's only a 3/5 stars because, perhaps, I don't appreciate it enough. Maybe in the future when I'm more knowledgeable and wiser, I'll give it a higher rating. A word of caution is to read something more broad first! The Holy Roman Empire is complicated and Whaley explains everything, therefore, keeping the topic a complicated one.

I read this book because my friend idolised Switzerland for its political system. As a result I was going in to see if his preconceptions were accurate and to argue under better knowledge.

This book is well written. It is not particularly dry or boring but keeps your interest despite the boring topics like old age pensions. It actually made me appreciate the boring aspects of politics more and made me think less about grand political theory and the actual realities of a political system. It does a good job at showing that Switzerland is unique and possibly more democratic but it is not a utopia and still runs into the same issues of religious and political division.

If a book brings more nuance to a conversation I always welcome it. A good read.

It was a march indeed. One through military life and all its inadequacies (Carl Joseph drank miserably in the military but did not even need a cup in his civilian life) arguing that the military as an institution is devoid of anything good; the Kaiser was saved thanks to the military but to what end? Even the Kaiser recognised that war is a sin! Why must people acknowledge their sins on their deathbed when they can contemplate on it while alive? The march also shows the futility of pointless relationships with women already married; Old Trotta was instructed to avoid women and his life was all the better, Carl Joseph did not listen and he ruined the life of two people. This march shows us the beauty in an emotional father and son relationship that only came about due to mistakes in the son's life. Why can't people just think life through before acting on their impulses?

Ravenhill has shown himself to be quite the strong author with writing in such a way that you want to immediately follow his advice. I have found my prayer life to be quite poor recently and this book gave me a good push towards rectifying this.

I rather like his style of personal anecdotes and referencing great figures of the faith. It shows him as a learned and experienced individual rather than a textbook preacher.

This pairs nicely with his most famous book, Why Revival Tarries, and compliments one another with this book mentioning and elaborating the role of prayer from the individual to the preacher.

I read about half of it. The writing itself is pretty mediocre. I was mostly interested in the medieval history stuff which is only ~50 pages out of a 330-page book. Half of this book is set after the French Revolution which I do not particularly care about, thus I decided to finish just before the French Revolution started.

It was a strange book at times. It attempted to argue that modern ideas of capitalism, identity and nation could be present in the 1500s which I disagree with. These are modern terms for modern concepts; attempting to graft these modern concepts onto the past is just anachronistic. It feels that most of the interest was placed in modern history and not in medieval history.

Do I recommend it? Not really. I read it to see if I was interested in medieval French history and I am so I suppose I got that but I do not think I needed to read half a book for that, I could have been fine if I read a Wikipedia article most likely. It is not bad, just not a great use of time.

I though it was okay. The first 150 pages are history before 1911. As a result, some parts were rushed a bit such as the Yuan Dynasty which I looked forward to reading the most but only got 10 pages.

The general pattern to the pre-1911 chapters was to introduce how the new Dynasty came in power, some fun facts about it and some facts about an emperor of interest, afterwards its mostly just social history such as looking at important inventions or relevant poets, women or philosophers. As a result, this book mostly uses political history to frame social history rather than political history and social history being co-partners.

This pattern breaks with the 1911 Revolution and feels very different to the rest of the book. Before reading this book I took a module on Chinese politics so I had some background knowledge. There were definitely instances where I was raising eyebrows in how she sometimes seemed to side with the CCP, at least to me. I doubt this book would be CCP approved but there's definitely some aspects that leave me suspicious.

Overall, this book is fine/okay/decent. But it's just too short to get any meaningful analysis and generally social history doesn't interest me currently so perhaps my bias impacted my appreciation of this book.

A rather brilliant book for how short it is. Boia shows his ability to analyse historians and the various themes that arise while also writing in an engaging (and often humorous way!). What I came for was a debunking of nationalist myths and left with an immense contextualisation on why my nation would act in such a way. It is rather infuriating to live with nationalists and be shown that others have the same gripes: Boia and the Junimea group. It is particularly coincidental that he wrote this book during the 1996 elections and I'm reading it during the 2024 elections. Yet despite two decades apart the issues remain constant; Romania wants an authoritarian saviour which panders to an autochthonous glorious past that never existed. Is there hope for Romania? Perhaps in the slow work of serious historians who do not acknowledge the role of contemporary politics as necessary in their work.

As of 2021, being an English speaker and wanting to learn about general Bavarian history, your options are heavily limited. You can either read about it on Wikipedia or read this book...that was written in 1906. There are books on specific cases of Bavarian history such as a history book on Ludwig II or Merovingian Bavaria but other than that you're out of luck if you do not speak German.

As of now, I don't speak German so I decided to read this book. Ultimately, it was alright. Gertrude Norman doesn't really cite her sources so who knows where she's getting this from. Perhaps she spoke German and read a Bavarian history book in German. But nonetheless, from following along with Wikipedia, she appeared to be accurate. It was nice learning about these dukes and monarchs in chronology.

However, after around 140 pages which is how long it takes her to catch up to 1906, she shifts gear and starts to discuss art, architecture and cities. While there was some history involved such as the history of Munich, Regensburg, Wurzburg, Augsburg, etc it was mainly talking about the architecture of these cities. As a result, I spent a good amount of the book ultra-skimming which I why I was able to finish around 60 pages of this book in just one day (I usually read 10 pages a day).

Until more Bavarian history books are translated from German into English, I'm afraid this is all we have for now. I'd recommend it if you're really interested in Bavarian history and sure it's only 214 pages, most people could get it done it a week or two (whereas it took me 3 weeks!).

Also, she's not a historian from what I know about Gertrude Norman. From my guess she could be some countess in England who lived in Bavaria for a number of years and is just repeating what she learned in this book. As a result, she doesn't write like a history would but rather a fiction writer. This means when she isn't talking hard dates, it's gonna be pretty flowery language.

The main focus of the book was twofold: the elaboration of Gaia and the search for Earth. Asimov managed to combined these two in a pretty masterful way by showing the results of humanity abandoning nature and nature having to become primitive and beastly: Aurora's dogs, Solaria's cancerous hermaphroditic society and Melpomenia's bareness & resistive moss. All of these shows that when human community dies, something worse takes its place. It was nice how the book showed this and even when we thought there was an exception through Alpha, they try to pull a Pebble in the Sky extermination of non-Earthians. The relationship between Bliss and Trevise is also developed nicely and my fears for Pelorat being left behind are not quite there for his role in translation but it did feel it was Bliss & Trevise travelling with Pelorat as a side character but a lovable one at that (once again offering to sacrifice himself for the greater good as he did in Foundation's Edge!).

I thought it was interesting how Asimov wrote these very different planets and really goes to show that the Spatian way of life is so limited and ultimately a dead end.

Daneel's reveal was pretty awesome. It's a shame we never get to see him merge with Fallom and what story that could bring. I'm happy that he's still around and that he did ultimately lead the galaxy into a better future, one that he won't be a part of for much longer. He must be quite tired seeing the rise of galactic civilization and ultimately leading it into Galaxia against a possible extra-
galactic threat.

I don't think it was quite as strong as Foundation's Edge in terms of interesting ideas explored but it did get me interested in biology, ecology, astronomy and plantelogy more than anything else could have.

Pretty good book regardless and it'll be interesting seeing Daneel's handiwork throughout the series of I ever re-read the books.

Pettit argues that he wants a republic that brings the best of the old republican tradition and interpret it with a radical theory of freedom as non-domination. His theory is alright but falls flat when he tries to bring the theory into a practical framework. He has suggestions for how a republic that espouses non-domination but nothing concrete. Perhaps my reading of political philosophy is too limited and this is a flaw of the literature but it did not feel as he was initiating a plan of action but rather an ideal theory. When he tries to talk practically it seems that his suggestions were not all that radical indeed but rather a retelling of any republican system we have today.

There is also something to be said in that he avoids the question of economic dominance. He covers it briefly when he tries to absorb socialists into his worldview but he focuses more so on the employers rather than the role of capitalism upon society which I would argue is a greater threat to republicanism than he gives credit for.

Ultimately he does not give much practical room for his theory and when he enters the practical realm he falters.

4.5.

I really enjoyed this book! It's more familiar of the first book in which we see more of Thrawn's character and personality. For instance, knowing now that Thrawn sees people as assets is a really good bit in how he interprets the world. Thrawn's failure of understanding politics is also well noted here which makes for good stakes politically. The military battles also felt great because there was stakes - we don't know whether Yiv would succeed or not, it's good storytelling!

The use of flashbacks is really good and develops Thrawn and Ar'lani well and adds that their relationship is really close and by the time of Treason we can assume they had a falling out. I also love how this book crossovers with Alliances, that's a really good scene.

Thalias and Che'ri are secondary characters but are rather good. It shows how being around Thrawn can change you in an interesting way.

I don't really have any criticisms of this book, it's really well made.

4.5.

A great book. I don't believe that by judging the book for its outdated language and understanding of the world is useful. Conrad I argue sympathises with the African people - Marlow is told they are barbaric, it is not something he concludes himself, rather he concludes that in the seeming barbarity there is human connection that is very possible to be deciphered.

Kurtz is the most interesting character here. He's certainly a villain for his high likelihood of crimes in the region (he threatened the Russian for his ivory) and the only praises he really receives are from strange people - the Russian adores him but it can be inferred that it's a kind of Nightingale Syndrome where he essentially fell in love with his patient, that being Kurtz. The fiancé is also deeply in love with him but she is obviously biased as he believes to know him extremely well despite spending years abroad and nobody knowing what he really does for a living.

The book as a result does two things: a critique on colonialism and a ambiguous critique on the hunter-explorer. I think it does it well in great prose as well. I certainly look forward to my re-read.

3.5.

This book is alright. It's better than Alliances but way worse than the first book in the series. Thrawn essentially has to share his story here with Eli Vanto. Vanto is a great character and I'm happy to see him return but his lack of interaction with Thrawn is disappointing. Vanto's relationship with the Chiss borders on interesting but I feel like the Chiss are being hyped up with very little tangible information given about them. There's a lot of setup but little pay off.

The overall plot of Thrawn being played by Tarkin and Krennic is interesting and shows how intelligent Thrawn is through his utter dedication to detail and data. However Ronan is a terrible character and mostly acts as the audience who constantly challenges Thrawn for no reason beyond ‘that's not what I would do!”

The space battles are fine but the stakes are so low I feel it doesn't really matter. I don't really care about Chiss girls being enslaved so why should I care about these minor skirmishes? Thrawn versus Savit was a cool battle but ultimately it was inevitable nobody was going to die so the stakes were low and inconsequential.

Zahn wrote a story here that doesn't really matter. So the book as a whole while decently written is irrelevant.

This was my first audiobook. I had never listened to an audiobook before and I enjoyed listening to it when I didn't want to read.

Overall, I found the first half of the books to be good. When he actually talks about personal growth and how myelin is the scientific way of how we actually get better at things. I also enjoyed how he deconstructs talent to basically just be practice and ignition (which I understood to be motivation and willpower).

The book kinda drops off when he shifts in talking about coaches and teachers. While they're interesting stories and show how hard work is actually the reason behind successful people, it feels a bit tangential and could've been a chapter or two.

Nonetheless, it was enjoyable and has made me a bit of a crusader for hard work rather than preordained ‘talent'.

It's a nice story, it feels a bit too old school but I'm glad I read it. I prefer the first part over the second part and if I were to re-read it (not an impossibility) I'd probably only read the first part.

I don't exactly understand how Beulah Land is supposed to work. It's supposed to be a temporary place until you're called for Heaven but it implies there's no problems there, so isn't Beulah Land essentially Heaven? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a sense of living amongst the sinners or having missions to convert them rather than living in pre-Heaven? I know it's a story but I don't think this aspect really captures the late game of Christianity. It does a great job at describing the early and mid game of Christianity but falls short at the late game, perhaps because the author hadn't reached the late game?

This was also my first Christian book I think and it was enjoyable enough. I'm not sure how many more Christian books I'd read as I have plenty of history books I'd love to read and one should be strategic about what you are reading.