Dave

This has cultural callbacks and geekery similar to ready player one, but the story is much better. Makes you think about things like what does it mean to be human and how much religious zealotry sucks.

Its a little dry and starts with some remedial math that I skipped over. It covers lots of the math and concepts that I use to evaluate deals and how different properties are doing. Other than going over the future value of money formulas, I didn't find much new material for me but that doesn't mean it's not useful.

This has lots of good practical advice on how to change your habits to be healthier and thinner. However, it is a *lot* of change in a relatively short amount of time and ramps you up quickly. It sprinkles in to start a 5 minute daily meditation practice with adding an hour workout 3x a week and no carbs after 6pm (no matter what you're daily schedule is). The uneven nature of the asks made me stop applying the changes in order (as suggested in the book) and then just read through the suggestions. So it didn't motivate me to change unfortunately.

A fair bit of exposition, but that's kind of par for the course with Crichton. Still, it's an interesting book, and it really fleshes out the simple idea of what if we used science to bring back dinosaurs. What would that be like for humanity, and what happens when 'Life finds a way'?

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.