Joshua

I thought it was great. I found myself reading a chapter straight which is generally rare for me considering I get tired reading like 20 pages. It reads less of a linear story and more short stories that involves the same themes and characters that sometimes references previous stories. I definitely look forward to the next books and I plan to re-read this book sometime in the future!

I usually give history books 4 stars because I'm pretty easy to please most of the time. I had to give this 3 stars because Jenkins as a writer is very dry. He doesn't really try to motivate you to read more, it's purely on you if you want to read more. As a result, it feels like a bit of a chore to get through the book. Nonetheless, it's a very solid introduction to English history although after 1714, it can start getting a bit messy with parliamentary politics and the numerous names given at once. I can say I know Chatham, Walpole, Disraeli, Gladstone and Lloyd George are important figures but I probably can't remember what they did very much.

The main theme Jenkins is trying to convey is that parliament was very much a check to the power of the king. Jenkins' writing style as a result reinforces this argument because you feel like he's talking from a place of authority.

Basically, it's informative but dry and lacks charm.

This was pretty enjoyable! This book was less about Human-Robot relations like Caves of Steel. This book is more about Earthman-Alien relations (despite the Solarians being human, their way of life is basically alien. While robots are an important aspect, they are not the focus which I do like. Asimov built an interesting world so I do like that he's exploring other themes instead of just pure Human-Robot relations.

I'm not exactly sure whether this was better or worse than Caves of Steel. They're both equally good I think.

This is a so-so book. It has some good ideas and discusses issues in politics clearly and step-by-step with plenty of contemporary examples. One thing I found is how relevant many of his ideas are today such as the army being mainly defensive force and how civilization ought to think of peace and leisure which has really only come to fruition in the last decades.

The parts I didn't like are just rather boring technical discussions such as the last couple chapters talking about musical education in children which is tangentially related to the topic. Furthermore it's hard to agree with his stances on abortion, marriage, slavery and Greek supremacy.

Having read the Analects by Confucius recently, I was mentally comparing these two works.

I much preferred the Analects. It had more to say and I feel like I could better understand what Confucius was arguing. It was also a much more simpler and perhaps secular philosophy? Confucius argues to be good to others and that there should be a good government. One should be constantly learning and set yourself towards virtue.

Lao Tzu is not so easy. Firstly, it's written as poetry which makes it much harder to understand the true meanings without going to an external analysis. As a result, my experience was one of confusion and trying to decipher what he was arguing. Lao Tzu has a lot of vague terms like Tao, Ado and so on. You're kind of expected to understand what they are. Lao Tzu recognises this criticism himself when he mentions that his message is simple to understand and practice yet the world does not understand him.

I think the philosophy was one of opposites. To be the best, you have to not try to be the best. The weak will overcome the strong.

There was some interesting insights for sure. Just currently I didn't really get it and perhaps I'll give it a re-read after I read more Eastern Philosophy.

Foundation and Empire was a bit disappointing. Riose was cool but the protagonists in that story were mid. I didn't really like the Mule storyline either, I thought it was going to be a big plot twist that the Mule was Daneel gone rogue and used his mental powers to conquer the galaxy for the benefit of humanity: the zeroth law. I also didn't particularly care for Bayta and Toran though their relationship was cute and reveals how important love can be in stories, it can teach us a lot about a character in some ways. I also found the book a bit samey and nothing too original from the original Foundation. The biggest twist is that Seldon could be wrong if his assumptions were wrong so it was a great scene of him talking about the wrong Seldon Crisis. I felt the Mule/Magnifico reveal a bit amateurish and nothing compared to the Giskard reveal which was more subtle. Hopefully the next book is better.

A great introduction to the history of Germany. Very simple to understand and lacks significant bias. Would definitely recommend to those interested in German history but unsure on what areas to approach in detail.

Pretty good book! It's definitely a great change of pace to talk about things from the Imperial point of view and I think that generally makes a good story - discussing both the protagonists and antagonists.

Truly a great source of information on what type of world we're living in now. This book was very simple to understand and I felt like I needed no background knowledge on any topics the book covers. Heavily recommend.

Brilliance! The opening with Telemachus is great mystery to what happened to Odysseus. The middle of what happened to Odysseus as flashbacks while he's on his travels to Ithaca is brilliant writing. The ending of dealing with the suitors is great and very familiar of the Iliad. Overall the characters of Odysseus, Telemachus, Penelope and Athena were very well written and acts as a superb sequel to the Iliad. I cannot be happier I read this book.

This book is just wow. I love how everything from the previous books forms together to make this amazing story and even introduces new concepts such as collective consciousness of the Gaians.

I liked all the characters in this book. I even liked the protagonist, Golan Trevize, which is a surprise because protagonists rarely tend to get any interest (of course Elijah Baley is an exception!). The antagonist was also great. So many great things to say about the characters.

I also loved how the robots were re-introduced to be relevant again! I love robots so this was a huge surprise, but a welcome one.

The only minor criticism I have is on the approach to Gaia. The book makes the point that Golan is taking his time to get to Gaia and I really felt it. It's good character development but it was just a little too slow for me. But other than it was perfect.

The First and Second Foundation were both brilliant in this and the Gaians were mindblowing and their connections to robots was just awesome.

I also liked how the Mule is a Gaian and that really adds to his backstory and explains why nobody knows where he's from.

Such a great book.

Pretty great book. It's not very dense and pretty easy to read. He does a good job in establishing the ground work and then builds up into religion and then eventually Christianity. I think this book is not so useful for evangelising but rather building up the faith of someone who already believes. Maybe the first couple chapters are useful for evangelising but the aspect on practical Christian living is maybe not necessary for someone who does believe yet. As a Christian it helped me a good bit.

While reading I feel it was a 3/5 but the ending rephrased everything that I had to bump it to a 4/5. The fact that Hummin was Demerzel AND Daneel was crazy and changed the way you read the book. Further on, it's even crazier that Dors is a robot as well! It also explores the idea of robot-human romantic relationships and I hope Forward the Foundation continues on their relationship as well as Daneel. It's really interesting to finally get more story on what Daneel has been up to; it seems that the Zeroth Law is really hard to work with. His inability to intervene constantly and his limitations still allow for human agency in this world. Even if Trevize was guided by Daneel in the previous books, Daneel is not omnipotent and can not predict everything. It seems that the establishment of psychohistory and Gaia by Daneel were contingency plans to give him options rather than making sense out of chaos. Perhaps the idea is that the Foundation would go on to establish the Second Empire 500 years after Foundation and Earth but in the far far future Galaxia would be established. Trevize's choice was not about denouncing psychohistory but rather maintaining it as Seldon would have wanted.

Seldon was alright in this book. He was unconfident and scared throughout most of it and nothing like he was in the beginning of Foundation #1. He starts to become like that throughout the book and gets more confident, especially with the Mycogenian Aerie plan and eventually deducing that Hummin/Demerzel is Daneel, which supposedly nobody was able to figure out in 20k years. I guess it shows how smart he is.

It was interesting exploring different sectors within Trantor. It felt similar to Foundation and Earth by exploring different societies. Asimov really does a great job in exploring different cultures without having to bring in aliens; he makes very different societies out of just humans. The most interesting thing to me of course, were the Mycogenians who were the descendants of the Aurorans! So we ultimately found out what happened to the Aurorans and Solarians (from Foundation and Earth). Asimov's contention seems to be that regardless of how old a civilisation might be or how strong it is, it will eventually form a new civilisation. This might tie in with my idea that a culture is formed from both the positives and negatives of what happens to a people; losing a war is just as influential to a people as winning a war.

I hope Forward the Foundation will be a great book ending these 15 books that took me 2 or so years to get through.

The Mule to me is more interesting when discussed historically rather than seeing his actions directly. The Second Foundation storyline in the latter half was much stronger and I liked the character of Arkady though she didn't really do a whole lot after Preem left. The talk between the Speakers was really cool and elaborated further on the universe and the Plan. The twist that the Second Foundation was on Trantor was pretty cool. Preem being the First Speaker was also totally unexpected!

I wonder if the idea that humans could always communicate telepathically is why Schwarz got the ability in Pebble in the Sky, it could be trying to connect these ideas together.

If you know nothing on the Mongol Empire, after you read this book, you'll understand a lot more about it. I'd say it's an intermediate difficult book as the author does not oversimplify complicated issues.

The book can be mostly divided between conquest, administration, civil wars and religion. Most of the time, the author is talking about one of those topics. I found the conquest and administration themes to be the best written because I find those topics to be the most interesting but the author does give each theme equal love and attention.

Amazing introduction to Ancient Greece. Taught me so much.

Pretty solid story! The idea was most certainly to do a detective story (since the protagonist was himself a detective) and it worked well. The protagonist, Elijah or Ljie was pretty good. He made sense and was well written. My favourite part of the book was the interactions between Ljie and Daneel. I especially loved the part where Ljie recounted John 8:1-11 of the Bible. I really liked how Ljie mentioned the Bible; it's really interesting to think how Christianity and Sci-Fi would interact. I wonder if the future books will mention it, especially Ljie's remark that half of Earth's population are Christian. I also hope that we'll see the beginnings of galactic colonisation in the future books and the consequences of it in the future franchises. Overall I like the one story over the multiple short stories of I, Robot.

This is a very pro-postivity book, perhaps too positive at times. Nonetheless I kinda found it pretty simple, nothing too revolutionary in 200 pages.

I did like the chapter on what you say affects your mindset. Like saying you're tired makes you tired.

Overall, it wasn't very useful to someone who is generally considered a positive person but it could be better to someone more negative perhaps.

I am finally finished! I've been wanting to read this book for awhile and I'm glad I did.

The book is relatively broad in scope. It is not the history of the Hohenzollern family but rather what was happening in Prussia from 1600 to 1947. So you obviously see a lot of monarchial history (such as the biographies of the various Electors of Brandenburg, Kings in Prussia and Kings of Prussia) but also religious history, social history and some military history. For a book on Prussia you would think military history would be a bigger topic but he seemed more interested in social history such as talking about the Jewish community of Prussia. I noticed (perhaps due to my personal biases) that after the Napoleonic Wars monarchial history tends to take backstage to the affairs of Minister-Presidents and Chancellors. As a result information on Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II is a lot shorter than what Friedrich Wilhelm, Friedrich Wilhelm I and Friedrich II got. I wasn't a huge fan of his post-WW1 writing and it definitely seems that his higher quality writing was before WW1. Nonetheless every chapter was good and worthy of reading. There was also a lack of historiography and I really only noticed a couple overt mentions to other historians in the field. Nonetheless, I would recommend to anyone with an interest in German or European history.

This is a great book! I was not expecting to be so pro-Christianity but I suppose it makes sense for 1860s Russia. However it is not a Christian book outright; the book deals with suffering, whether it be self-inflicted or not. Christianity is viewed as a solution to suffering; but paradoxically will lead to suffering. Raskolinov was given the choice to hold the suffering within by committing suicide or running off to America (which might be Savidrigaliov for committing suicide) or embrace eight years of suffering in Siberia to which Christianity supports what is just by confessing one's sins.

There were so many emotional moments from Raskolinov's discussion with Marmeldov and his whole miserable life story to Raskolinov's final meeting with his mother. The characters were very well developed and even antagonists like Luzhin were given time to explore their mentality and why they are doing it. Raskolinov can be considered the antagonist but those around him do not want him to suffer without God but to suffer with God as Porfidry suggests. This shows that suffering does not have to be in isolation.

Dostoevsky likely experienced much suffering in his life to speak of it in such raw and illogical methods.

Lewis makes the argument that the Devil's work is never truly over, they can always find something to use against us to make us reject God as he intends. He focuses on a lot of different aspects but relationships tend to be one. He notes how humans interact can lead to conflict and this conflict is what the Devil exploits. Thus it seems Lewis is directing us towards not a worldly ideal human relationship but towards what the Bible views as the ideal relationship between people.

There are also some great ideas such as selfishness of time and unselfishness differing between the genders.

I will likely revisit this.

It is an interesting short read. It is not exhaustive and I fail to see how this would motivate the Chinese into being better revolutionaries. It reads more of Mao wanting everyone to own the book for the sake of political uniformity rather than wanting people to understand communist theory.

What I got from it was an understanding of radicalism. The Chinese who would have seen the Party as good would certainly find this book as motivating in their ever increasing radicalism. If the communists can find such radicalism in a theory, why do Christians stay so lukewarm in the absolute truth? A communist can stop being a communist once he no longer believes the theory but a Christian cannot stop being a Christian unless they renounce the faith entirely. Why is it so easy for a theory to find radicalism but Christianity, a truly radical belief sees such little radicalism? Perhaps we should learn something from Mao in how he talks about poverty; in poverty you seek change. Christians thus are too comfortable when the early CCP were being persecuted by the authorities or starving from no food. It is comfort that is antithetic to radicalism. I would argue that this book does a good job at showing this radicalism but certainly not in the more eloquent or groundbreaking way Marx did in the Communist Manifesto.

I previously watched the TV show when it released in ~2015 and I enjoyed it quite a bit! Reading the book a couple years later I expected it to be different but not this different. The TV show leans more into sci-fi with alternative realities. The book suggests and maybe implies it with Tagomi's spiritual experience. As a result, I cannot call this book sci-fi. For alt-history though it's pretty great! I rather enjoyed the characters of Childan, Frank, Juliana, Tagomi, Wegener and Joe. I found them to be well written and interesting to see their insights. I really liked Wegener's conversation with Lotze on the rocket ultimately revealing himself to be Jewish (but maybe he was joking as he's Abwehr or maybe not). I also liked the whole in universe anxiety about who succeeds Bormann. The Japanese occupation was pretty good. I loved the whole idea of the British commandos going berserk and starting to get more violent as the war was nearing the end for the Allies. I really liked it for it's alt-history and pretty good characters. It's unfortunate it's marketed as sci-fi when it's alt-history with spiritualist influences.

There is two possibilities; either I am bored of the productivity genre or this book is not great. Ultimately it could be both; perhaps I have gotten all the productivity advice I needed and now the step forward is actually working instead of trying to hack my work process that usually does not exist. I'm a big fan of Deep Work by Newport and that was a big step in my career in thinking deeply about my work process, unfortunately this book has failed to reach the same bar.

He posits a theory that knowledge workers have been treated poorly; too much work and an emphasis on busyness & quantity of work. As a result, workers have been overloaded, on the edge of burnout and the noticeable lack of quality content. As a result, he argues workers ought to take more breaks, do less work and focus on the quality of work. He proceeds to spend about six to seven hours to argue this when it could have been done in about three or less. That is my issue with the productivity genre, too long is spent on unnecessary details and examples when more time ought to be spent dealing with the philosophical logic; explain to me why I ought to be listening to you instead of a strawman evil manager who wants me to work twelve hour shifts or my academic rival who works constantly and produces more work. He tries to argue his point by using the examples of others, from writers to musicians but it feels so irrelevant I'm bored throughout most of this book. The work feels too easy and not challenging enough - I would hope that Cal Newport would evolve as a writer; away from the middle ground of Stephen Covey and Malcolm Gladwell and into a writer befitting a philosopher of productivity. It seems that Newport is basically just rehashing the same couple ideas he has and writing more books unnecessarily. I read Deep Work, why read anything else from Newport if it's just more of the same?

It was good for sure. There are some really intriguing aspects such as more lore on Tarkin (obviously!) but also on Vader-Tarkin relations, Vader-Palpatine relations and also more about Palpatine himself which was surprising. I also really liked the rebellion; Teller, Anora, Hask mainly. They were enjoyable characters to read and I found their dialogue to be better than the relatively dry and confusing dialogue of the Military and Naval Intelligence (I basically forgot who Rancit was by the time they revealed to him to be the Imperial traitor helping the rebels).

What lets me down on this book is the writing style. It's obvious that Luceno is a good writer but I just didn't like the way he wrote this story. It's also not the most engaging story; the most engaging aspects of the story for me was not the present day stuff but his flashbacks to the Carrion Plateau and his life before and during the Clone Wars. The whole story he told Vader about the Carrion Spike was really intriguing and interesting. I think if there was two books; one on his upbringing, the Carrion, the Clone Wars, etc and another book on the current affairs of the Empire it would be a better treatment.

Overall I'm happy I read it for lore reasons and for intriguing ideas (such as the idea of the Imperials being a far-right group within the Republic, of course never mentioned in the book but rather an idea that came to me while reading it).