Dave

The joys of having little kids are listening to tons of Goosebumps books. This one is better than most, and the twist isn't something bizarre like they were all aliens or robots in the end. It's a straightforward story, a girl wants to scare some kids who continually scare and tease her. She goes to a mask shop and gets hold of a creepy and realistic mask. When she takes it home and tries it on, she finds that it is taking control of her and changing her personality. It's got a twist that is ignored in the sequel that I thought was predictable, but my littles thought it was great.

It does a great job outlining how the GOP hypocrisy and outright lunacy seem to be completely shameless. Many examples of things that would sink anyone else are cited, and they aren't wrong. The book is fairly light on details about how we can battle to save our democracy, so I deduct one star. It's on the tin; it should do that.

This has great world building, a pretty good story, and a lot of overwrought thinking that you get to listen to. I especially thought the escape from eros is really overdrawn. Tighter editing and this is a five star

It wouldn't make sense to the story but I'd love to understand the interaction between corporate power and government. I'll try the next one and see how that goes

Not only have I not read the first book, but I also am not a Christian so this wasn't a great fit for me. I thought it was interesting to weave a tale of court intrigue into a story of Jesus. But not that interesting.

Not only have I not read the first book, but I also am not a Christian so this wasn't a great fit for me. I thought it was interesting to weave a tale of court intrigue into a story of Jesus. But not that interesting.

Not only have I not read the first book, but I also am not a Christian so this wasn't a great fit for me. I thought it was interesting to weave a tale of court intrigue into a story of Jesus. But not that interesting.

Not only have I not read the first book, but I also am not a Christian so this wasn't a great fit for me. I thought it was interesting to weave a tale of court intrigue into a story of Jesus. But not that interesting.

It's fairly conservative in how it encourages you to save and where to direct your savings. At the end it has a call to action for ways to vote to stabilize social security as well as a quickly laid out plan to build a national pension plan. Looking at the published date of 2015 tells me how the author could be so optimistic about us coming together and working out a government solution to a problem.

The advice here on how to calculate what is enough for retirement and a focus on holistic plans for living in retirement make this a decent book to read especially if you are an average income earner.

This reads like an old story; the characters are simple, and there aren't many surprises. I read these as a tween and wondered if they held up. I say maybe, but really I think it's a tween book solidly. The main character wrestles with how to be an adult and man in the world, and everyone else around is a caricature of the people you meet. This set of stories got me interested in D&D, role-playing, and reading other fantasy stories, but I read them at the perfect moment in my life.

I've read a few of Christie's books, and I don't care much about the Poirot books. They have a lot of nonsense in them. They follow a pattern where a dude shows up, more people start to die, and then there's a lot of clucking of the tongue about how tragic it all is.

If you want to hear people moan about the hippies, I guess this book is for you. It wasn't for me.

Probably because it came from AAR and maybe award citations, I found the different sections to be a bit repetitive and use unusual phrasing to convey the feeling of the combat experience that sucked me out of it. I liked the part where it described the transition between WWII infantry experiences and, say, modern-day infantry, especially mech infantry. But I really feel the thesis that the spirit and will of the infantryman dictate the course of a battle is still not true to this day. Yes, you have to have someone on the ground to take the spot you blew up, but the grit of WWII, especially in the Pacific theatre, is really not found in the stories of today.

It's an ok read. Wouldn't recommend it for a lot of people. meh rating.

A long and detailed list of grievances about how the people in the United States are racist and terrible. Written during Trump's time in office, I have heard many of these complaints before so I found it a bit dull. Since it was a disparate set of essays, there is not a united theme that carries them through other than people are racist.

I guess there's a lot in here about how Jewish people might see Trump's actions and how he relates to Israel, which was sorta new to me but seems not as relevant given the recent terror attacks and genocidal response. This was a fresh perspective though, and gets the stars I award.

I also got into an argument with the author on Blue Sky where he misconstrued a comment I made, then dove deep on an irrelevant link in a paper and tried to gaslight me about what the paper said. Then he said I was wrong and he was right and that's that. So I don't know if I believe the research in these essays too much given that interaction.

I've heard countless tales of teenagers reading atlas shrugged and the fountainhead and it twisting them to be selfish assholes and call themselves libertarians for a while. This book was like that for me but instead I was inspired to go on a many drug fueled adventures as possible and collect crazy memories.

Aside from that, this book and f&l on the campaign trail are incredible snapshots into the counterculture view of Nixonland and just how horrible it was. It also made me really sad at the complete lack of interesting drugs available to me when I was young.

This is a big collection of short stories from Bradbury, I could swear there were a few from the Martian chronicles that I remember from being a kid. I think he does a great job telling stories about simple people with a big feeling and getting you to think about how you'd feel there too. There's two separate stories in there that think about the first rocket trip and how you would feel (or your parents would feel) being the first one to rocket to somewhere. The ones I liked the best were the one about the suit that 6 guys bought to share and feel fancy (I think it's called the ice cream suit) and there is one in there about a guy who gets off a train at random at a tiny quiet town and has a unique encounter. *SPOILER* it turns out that at the station there's a guy that says he's been waiting for someone unknown to the community to get off the train so he could kill them. But the encounter doesn't go as expected *END SPOILER*

That last one was a bit creepy and quite good.

This is my second read of this book, I first read it probably like 20 years ago when I was trying to read everything Crichton had written. I think it's a decent story and I like the technical details, kind of future tripping on how awesome just a few years from now will be. It's like going to tomorrowland at Disneyland and seeing the old exhibits like Mission to Mars or whatever.

It's got a bit of a manly man of science kind of lens on what's happening and it has a Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of ending that spoil it a bit for me.