Kavinay
When you think of Scott's work, it's easy to focus on Windblade. But what's amazing is her ability to write Starscream with deviousness and pathos at the same time.
More of the same. I would honestly rather Thrawn outsmarted a big bad with art like Seth's from Superbad.
- Profalactic coups
2. Mass murder and dissapearence of anyone who could be labeled communist.
3. American hegemony.
Just a heartbreaking book.
Good grief, an alternate title could very well be “2020: all the ways the world will quantitatively fall apart.”
Starts off strong–Captain WORF!–but gets a bit bogged down with the limitations of not being able to extend too far out of the confines of the TV show continuity. A big+1 for Trek with swearing though :)
This isn't a celebration of the self-help genre. In fact, if anything, Greenberg and Meinzer run something akin to a meta-analysis of the genre and found much of it frankly to be fraudulent. The most surprising thing is how many of the self-help idols rely on self-flagellation (obvious) rather than acknowledge how issues beyond your control (less obvious: power structure, gender, race, class) are often deeply intertwined with our concerns about anxiety, health, wealth and more.
Most self-help books are, indeed as we might cynically suspect, a predatory author's (usually white, hetero, cis-gender men) attempt to exploit peoples' fears for idolatry and expensive post-book training.
In a way, this is a brutally tough read. But that's because Gawande does an excellent job of making you comprehend the helpless sense of imprisonment that besets the elderly and terminally ill.
The concept of the patient's conditions for treatment, “I want to be able to watch football and eat chocolate ice cream,” is a profoundly simple but effective way to diminish the burden on your loved ones. There's so much in this book along these lines and while the subject matter is grim, it fills a massive void in end of life wisdom that I doubt many of us would otherwise encounter until it's too late for our loved ones.
You can see the turn of the screw coming but that doesn't make this story any less satisfying. I'm both dreading and anticipating the next book concluding the series. Hopefully, they still find time to publish these wonderful little glimpses at post-earth/post-solar humans struggling to deal with each other.
“Always pay extra attention to laws that contain the word safe and ask who's safety is being addressed.”
Feels like The Prisoner but really more of a reimagining of the I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
Sid Meier is a genius. Pirates! remains a masterpiece and I've lost chunks of my life to his strategy games and even his flight sims. All that being said, Meier's Memoir is a bit like the common of experience of Civ:
- enthralling early game with nostalgia inducing looks at the other side of the games that shaped your youth and the industry.
- bit of lost momentum in the middle where you start wondering if Meier will expand more on conflict in his career given what you know about things coming to a head at Microprose, etc. (he doesn't)
- a slog of an endgame where you realize even his attempt at answering critiques of the genre he defined (the whig history baked into Civ) is completely unsatisfying.
Sid Meier's games remain great. His perspective on his career and any meaningful conflict in his field is surprisingly shallow. For someone who acknowledges his own myth as being built around creating interesting decisions, his retrospective doesn't touch on any issue being within his control. Reflections on momentous decisions like splitting with Bill Stealey or consideration of the effects of “the crunch” on developers' lives just float by like a cloud on the Spanish Main. This book is just such a disturbingly uncritical look at Meier's “Greatest Hits” that you're left wondering why a mind capable of such great and creative analysis couldn't apply the same scrutiny to his own career?
Attention as a commodity. Even if you've never created online ad buys, Hwang points out the key reasons why a financialized approach to the business model of the internet is wide open to exploitation and crash. If you have run internet campaigns, oh boy are all your misgivings well-founded.
There's probably a perfect age to read this book and find it fun and novel. My guess is around 16. Otherwise... it just gets a bit dull. The Drow are a neat idea, but Menzoberranzan comes across more as a module setting with the constant exposition. Drizzt's treatment as a Saturday morning cartoon hero doesn't really help much either.
Hopefully it gets better. The Underdark is such a well-loved setting that it would be nice to discover what makes it so popular.
I knew Kierkegaard was odd but never realized how committed he was with to the emo-turned-edgelord life.
It's not what you think. A brilliant concept, fantastic art and a very smart and funny read throughout.
There's a lot to like in Shinick's writing but I don't get why he was forced to build a firewall around characters he developed. Turns it into a “clip-show” when the book could have been much more interesting with the present day teenagers.
I never quite realized that Dooku was his first name. Sure, it makes sense, he's Dooku of Serrano... but that also means the entire Clone Wars revolve around guy using a honorific that's basically “Count Bob.”
I don't really read or enjoy much fantasy anymore. With the exception of Discworld, the worldbuilding and perspectives are basically variations on a century of white men defining the field.
N.K. Jemisin's not just telling a good story with depth and layers here. She's doing it with tons of style and craft. The use of second person? That takes guts. What an amazing work.
“I looked back to see a team of cops lay into her with batons. “I'm white, you bastards!” she yelled, until one of them shot her with a Taser.”
Warren Ellis make you squirm and laugh at the same time with prose as delightful as his work in comics.
Thrawn is very interesting. Unfortunately, it seems hard to place him in a story where he's challenged or forced to develop. Instead, everyone around him is a bit of an idiot or an eventual follower who comes to appreciate his deductive genius. It gets boring, especially the third time around.
There is a moment early in the book, Thrawn's Imperials encountering the Chiss, when it looks like Zahn is setting up a genuinely engaging conflict. Instead, both sides are just following the same forgettable third-party threat.
It's a waste. This could easily have setup up a true crucible for Thrawn by placing him opposite a Chiss threat to the Death Star. A plot actually worthy of the book's title. Surprisingly little of note happens despite this being the third novel attempting to develop Thrawn in the new EU. What's weird is that Zahn is capable of a more engaging plot. Perhaps this area of canon is still too constrained by new movies and TV to allow for a more meaningful story?
Books like this are tough to read. Not because Dalrymple's writing is hard to follow or the history suspect, but rather the opposite: it's just such a clear and depressing march towards atrocity.
The running theme is Dalrymple's comparison of EIC era looting with modern sums of wealth. It helps wrap the mind around just what a tantalizing target India was for corporate looting. The tactics and escalating scale of the EIC are scrutinized in the own words of British politicians and powerbrokers and care is taken to depict the Mughal leaders whose collaboration and conflict with a corporation would decapacitate their own empire.
The only major fault would be Dalrymple's treatment of EIC Governor-general William Hastings and Shah Alam is relatively sympathetic to their openly rapacious brethren. No matter how kind their sentiment to the Indian population was compared to the likes of Clive, rampant exploitation with a kind hand is hardly redemptive. There are no heros in charge during the anarchy.