Dave

Picked it up for the Steven King story, and that was really not great. It's a literal re-wording of the Tell-Tale Heart by Poe with 70s phrases and I'm just surprised that King tried that out. Woof.

But the rest of it was decent enough, so I'm glad I went past that.

This was an interesting idea, and fairly well told. I thought it really dragged out a lot in parts, especially as the detective folks were catching up to what was going on. I found this especially funny as there is a quote in the book that says when writing stories you need to trim out unnecessary fluff. I still think King excels at the short story format, he has great ideas and writes well but this was full of extra baggage that I didn't think needed to be in there at all.

This is a very long slog of describing how things were technologically and economically and how two competing ideas have shaped major idealogical forces in the twentieth century. The major take away I had from this one was brought up near the beginning. You have two economic ideas:

1) The market is perfect and man serves the market to drive the most efficient outcome in all cases. If there are troubles with the market, it is because someone hampered the market from being completely free. (Hyak)

2) People feel that they have rights and want things to be fair. Since these are both subjective concepts it is difficult for me to think about this being factual based, especially in this post-truth age. People will resist politically policies that they feel are violating their status quo or rights and/or result in things not being fairly allocated.

This book walked through the long century of economic growth with these as the filter with which to view events. I went through it once, but if you really wanted to absorb the details you'd have to revisit it. It's very long and a little detailed.

I shouldn't maybe have checked this one out, it's aimed towards young readers, but then again the writing implies like a young teen reader and they talk about getting loans that you wouldn't be able to do until 18. Idk, very basic walkthrough about how starting a business is going to be, very high level.

This lacks a lot of hard information about what are your definitive next steps and more like a persuasive pamphlet on why it might be a good idea to become an appraiser and at a very, very high level what you might expect from that decision. So take the title as 'Why it might be good to become an appraiser" instead of "How to become a real estate appraiser"

Clive Barker writes stories on a really grand scale when he's going for a novel. There is an enormous amount of world building that goes into it and it's fantasy at scale hard to conceive of. This isn't an exception, detailing the pursuit of mystical power by a lone man unsuited for it. The arc of his rise and fall is pretty great.

I don't like the coda setting it up for the ongoing saga of Trello battling evil, so I dock it a star.

This is a tour of what democracy means to people past and present. Focuses a lot on American ideas of democracy and promised not fulfilled in this area but also touches on other kinds of democracy tried in the past. It features an examination in detail of some contrasts that are experienced in democracy.

When we say democracy is government of the people, who are the people? In the US, it has gone from white male land-owners to somewhat universal suffrage for any adult. This book looks at not only this idea of changing who the people are but also looks at tricks that are played to make it so that one person's vote isn't equal to other people's votes and how layers of friction are added to make it so that people in power try to keep power.

Another major contrast that is examined in detail is how the people's vote may be overridden with the systems we have in place, both by different layers of government and also by financial coercion by foreign holders of capital and debt.

There is little suggestion of how to form a more perfect union. I do remember proportional representation by party as seen in some parliamentary western nations being held up as solving some of the problems seen by gerrymandering, but really I don't recall other gleam's of hope. It is a long catalog of horrors.

I thought was a easy read, (well, I listened but still) but I found the arguments to be a little too pat in some places. Liberalism in a classic sense has got some troubles as a philosophy, and as described I've heard about it from both sides. I used to consider myself fairly in the camp but it's embrace of technocratic solutions for political problems and siding with corporate interests over human ones has made me rethink it.

Interesting, and I would like to read some of the earlier books about liberalism due to this book, but I'll be honest it's probably going to slide off my brain pretty quick. Nothing brought up here is new or thought provoking to me.

I thought was a easy read, (well, I listened but still) but I found the arguments to be a little too pat in some places. Liberalism in a classic sense has got some troubles as a philosophy, and as described I've heard about it from both sides. I used to consider myself fairly in the camp but it's embrace of technocratic solutions for political problems and siding with corporate interests over human ones has made me rethink it.

Interesting, and I would like to read some of the earlier books about liberalism due to this book, but I'll be honest it's probably going to slide off my brain pretty quick. Nothing brought up here is new or thought provoking to me.

I thought was a easy read, (well, I listened but still) but I found the arguments to be a little too pat in some places. Liberalism in a classic sense has got some troubles as a philosophy, and as described I've heard about it from both sides. I used to consider myself fairly in the camp but it's embrace of technocratic solutions for political problems and siding with corporate interests over human ones has made me rethink it.

Interesting, and I would like to read some of the earlier books about liberalism due to this book, but I'll be honest it's probably going to slide off my brain pretty quick. Nothing brought up here is new or thought provoking to me.