Jonathan

I found this difficult to follow - all the characters introduced, similar names, so many deaths, and a convoluted conclusion that takes several chapters to convey. The last bit of the book is full of exposition too - Dexter falls in to the trap of telling, not showing.

Also very much a novel of its time with references to homosexuality that you could excuses as being the prevailing attitude amongst many, more misogyny (especially from Morse who is not a likeable character), and a reference to the colour brown early on that is quite shocking. That is how people referred to it at the time, but you'd think a light bit of editing might be called for...

Loved this book - can't think why it took me so long to get around to it. Maybe because I was reading all of Pratchett's... (the two collaborated on the brilliant Good Omens - read that if you haven't)

If I had to sum this up I'd say an adult ‘His Dark Materials' except far better, much less preachy (i.e. not at all) and very funny. It's not laugh out loud funny, like Pratchett or Douglas Adams (I'd say Gaiman is self-consciously writing in an Adamsian style) but wry chuckles all through.

I listened to the author reading this on my commute and I really recommend it - he delivers a dry, well acted performance and, being the author, knows exactly how he wants things to sound.

Good book, and now I'm going to have a bit of a Gaiman binge, I think...

This is an excellent book, and so much better than the ‘Design Sprint' book I reviewed recently, which suffered from being full of pictures, but none of them relating to the content of the book...
This volume, conversely, is sparsely illustrated but each one is directly relevant.

I teach design, and I use methods like this in curriculum development. I'm actually doing my PhD on the use of methods like this as a way of promoting creative approaches to teaching and learning in Higher Education. So it's quite timely. All the methods are familiar to me from design research, service design etc. What makes a sprint interesting is that it makes clear what a lot of us have known for a long time: you don't need months and endless committees to make decisions. In fact that's a great way not to make decisions. What you need is a short burst of focused time, and a plan.

Although the book says otherwise, you can use these techniques in much shorter timeframes, depending on what you need. I used a two-hour sprint to get from nothing to a coherent School strategy that everyone has signed up to - I spent three years trying to do the same thing at my last university!

The Design Sprint book is focused on interaction design. This book looks mainly at services and products. That's better. But... I'm using it to design a course and as the week progresses the process requires more and more customisation until the Friday just doesn't work for our purposes. The principle does and this is the book's weakest point that just at the point where the readership is likely to diverge, the content becomes the most prescriptive and most likely to lose people. Next iteration, I'd suggest the authors look at this section so it covers a larger range of problems being tackled. But that's really a minor criticism - if you're reading this book you're hopefully quite a creative type anyway, able to adapt to suit.

Another point might be that the examples cited in the book tend to be ones where participants were ‘on board' with the whole idea. In my experience there is usually at least one recalcitrant. Some tips on dealing with negativity would be useful.

My other recommendation would be that the supporting website collect readers' case studies - it would be a fascinating resource and help people find examples similar to their own needs. I can't be the only person using sprints to design degree programmes, can I?

But all that aside, this is a really good book, easy and quick to read and one that will make you keen to give it a go. Start with something simple, if you can. But given the situation in my own country at the moment, I wish some of our politicians would read it and realise that maybe they don't need six years to figure out what the UK will look like post-Brexit. Maybe they just need a week.

I not know why I like these books. They're not particularly well written, overly complex, and none of the characters are that likeable. They rely heavily on exposition with two characters telling each other major bits of backstory, often second hand so it's not even the character concerned who's revealing something of importance. Often I found myself wondering how someone knew such detail about events they didn't even witness.
The author writes similarly to Larsson but manages to avoid some of his more irritating traits - no long passages describing which processor powers anyone's laptop here. There are some oddities: our main character is told to ditch his iPhone for an Android phone to avoid NSA hacking it - the book came out just as Apple were fighting the FBI over the right to prevent them having a back door and I can't help feeling Larsson would have devoted a few thousand words to a topic like that. Instead it feels like the author did a quick read of Wikipedia and grabbed some terms he doesn't entirely understand. There is a long exposition on autism which does read like a first year undergraduate literature review and the child's savant status is worryingly convenient.
As with the other books I found it difficult to keep track of who was who, or indeed to care who was who - there's an old Jewish detective who's lost his faith but finds love at the end (not really a spoiler) and it's difficult to care.
The story is a lot simpler than other books and maybe too simple. I was surprised that the whole thing seemed to end with a lot of book still to go - I was expecting a third act that didn't happen.
But in the end, and I think this is why I like these books (even if I don't love them), it was a good distraction and an interlude between ‘heavier' books.

Funny and honest memoir of a life lived with depression. Some of the advice isn't stuff I'd recommend, and her aversion to medicine and counselling bothered me (particularly the drawing therapy where she blamed the therapist rather unfairly, I felt) - but she's clear that what works for her isn't what might work for others, and vice versa.

There's an early diversion in to being gay which seems like it might belong to another book - it was interesting and revealing, but stuck out a bit given that it wasn't hinted at in the title. Perhaps it sticks out because it gets a bit like you're being told off for other people's attitudes, and if it isn't what you came to the book for, you might find it jarring. Having said that, there are also diversions in to being Glaswegian, short, a comedian, and a cat owner, only the latter of which I can identify with so perhaps I'm being unfair.

It's a book that made me laugh about a subject that doesn't normally have a lot to laugh about. If your understanding of depression isn't great, it's well worth buying with the caveat that her experience is not everyone's experience - as she takes great pains to remind us.

God, what a depressing book. None of the characters are likeable, I couldn't find myself caring about anyone and the end was just... nothing.
I really can't see why this has been the hit it has been - maybe I'm missing something?
The central character isn't redeemed, her flaws aren't overcome, she doesn't make a discovery through intelligence, just by, well, I don't want to give it away.
It's dull. That's the best I can say about it.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest the book wasn't even proofed before it was published. There are spelling mistakes all over it and even an entire paragraph repeated on pages 158 and 162. 

It's a short book padded out with irrelevant or uselessly vague anecdotes and photos that don't relate to the topic under discussion. 
For example page 168 discusses how to use a 2x2 matrix. The text says ‘draw a Cartesian coordinate “+” on a board. A what? How big? Frustratingly there's a large image on the opposite page... But it's not a 2x2 matrix. I don't know what it is, it seems to be random scribbling. It has nothing to do with the text and anyone who has never seen a 2x2 matrix or knows what a Cartesian coordinate + is, will not be enlightened. Opportunity missed. 

It could have been much better - ‘show don't tell' is one of the key lessons we get drummed into us at school and if the authors had followed that advice this would have been a fantastic book. As it is it's frustrating. The ideas are good. The suggested agendas are useful. The execution is poor. 

A particular issue is that the book is clearly focused on digital design. But that clarity is only apparent when you start reading it. This makes it even more frustrating for anyone designing communications, services or other things - there's a lot of translation needed to make it useful. 
I want to recommend this book as it's potentially beneficial. But it's a good example of what's missing in the literature on design sprints than a long-lasting contribution to it. 

Some useful insights but goes all over the place and mixes prototyping and simulation. The chapter on metrics seems to undermine the whole concept of serious play.
Rather outdated now, of course, and the examples didn't all stand the test of time.