Travis West

I wish all the nonfiction books I read approached their subjects with the same level of scientific rigor, which is surprising for a book about curse words.

Bruce can write! Though I've heard many of the anecdotes before, it's good to get them straight from the Boss's mouth. Bruce's struggles with his father and, later, with depression humanize the man who (for me) is the last rock god.

Not nearly as fun or engaging as Paddle Your Own Canoe. Feels like it was thrown together by a publisher and the people in the Offerman Woodshop.

I love a story with an unreliable narrator. Ishiguro's command of language is heartbreaking.

The big data equivalent of Freakonomics. Some interesting tidbits about conclusions reached through analyzing large data sets. Pretty good audiobook to listen to on the treadmill.

Fascinating history of the trade-offs we make when we trade our attention for advertising, from the literal snake oil salesmen of the 19th century to the television admen of the 20th, and on to the skeevy clickbait and ad tracking practices of the present. Highly recommended!

I tried to like this book, but it is not a good treadmill audiobook. So many lists of inconsequential information. In gamer terms, I felt like I was grinding but never getting to the next level. After 5 hours of justification for the SuperBetter system, but never actually making to what SB is, I gave up.

Fun, lightweight read on a snowy weekend. Definitely not great literature. I'm sure I'll have forgotten all about it in a couple of weeks.

I began reading this before the election, when I was more optimistic about American progress. After 11/8/16, I couldn't pick it up for awhile. I finished it today, much less enthusiastically.

For a guy who claims to dislike time-travel books, I sure seem to be reading a lot of them. Wrong Todays was a fun airplane book. Short chapters and innovative SF.

I've always liked Kevin Kelly's writing, going back to the first issues of Wired, but he has always been way too optimistic about how technology will be employed. I wonder what he'd say about the two years since this book was published. All in all though, I'm a sucker for wild-ass tech prognosticators. Have been since I read Future Shock in the 80's.

Fun tidbits and behind the scenes stuff. Amazing how hard so many people worked to make the show feel effortless.

Interesting premise, but despite spreading himself thin, ranging from science to rock music, politics to television, he doesn't have much more to say beyond what's encapsulated in the title: we might be wrong in our current thinking.

Made me want to read Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.

Both a gripping page-turner and a commentary on modern media and money.

I marked this book TBR almost 6 years ago. In the intervening time, I think Gladwell's revolutionary idea became the conventional wisdom. Still, I always enjoy listening to him speak. I enthusiastically recommend his podcast, Revisionist History. I just wish he released more than a handful of episodes per year.

Fun read. Kind of a cross between a Dean Koontz book and a Lifetime movie. It's not literature. More of an airport book.

The literary equivalent of a Lifetime “woman in peril” movie.

Not at all what I presupposed it was going to be. I imagined from the title and the that it was about a crazy arsonist. Falls more into the category of The Stand or The Walking Dead.

While I loved Duhigg's earlier book, The Power of Habit, it took me two years to finish this one, because none of the studies and anecdotes felt relevant or compelling.

At first, I felt like this book couldn't decide whether to be a literary domestic drama or a hard science depiction of how time travel would work. By the middle of the book, the two forms melded into something original and satisfying.

This book can't figure out what it wants to be: American Gothic ghost story? Homocide procedural? Mind of a killer? Multigenerational history of a house? Commentary on marriage? Academic pastoral? All of the above and none of them well done. The author writes very well, but loses control of the plot(s).

Brutal.

The first half of this book, Lotto's story was a 3-star read. Lotto is so pretentious and entitled. Well, that turns out to be the point, because the second half, Mathilde's 5-star story, changes everything and makes the entire book worthwhile.

Beautiful photos and well-written copy. Interesting mix of design and beer lore without just retelling the same old craft beer myths.