john holst

This reminded me a lot of Life As We Know It. Also about a world changing /ending told from a young girls perspective. It's very well written and it kind of pulls you along.

Like most financial books I've read, I wish I had read them earlier in life. This book was really good. It was very “our studies show”, followed by charts and percentages. But the information was interested regardless of the 1996 original publish date.

I think the amounts of millionaires have changed and maybe the businesses they are in but the core concept of the book (Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth vs Under Accumulators of Wealth) still has value.

I had fun. Not as much fun as Ready Player One. It has a few too many deus ex machinas. The references seemed maybe too forced in some situations.

Overall it was a fun read. I would read a sequel.

I enjoyed the premise and universe implied in this sapphic story. The Garden reminds me of Hank Green's second book A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor where its explained that there is an organic computer that spans the worlds lifeforms, the Garden's space at the end reminded me of fluidic space from species 8472 from star trek voyager. The agency reminded me of the Diaspora by Greg Egan, where some humans put their consciousnesses into floating computer ships to travel the universe.
The whole plot concept reminded me of The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum where people subtly influence time and events.

All that to say, it 100% helps to have the framework to think about things before reading this book. Its very flowery and poem-esque. Details are light and far between. A lot of reviews talk about being confused about whats going on but enjoying the letter they write eachother. I think it helps to have experience in the concepts behind the letters in this book.

I would say 3.5 stars if good reads let me.

I read this thick boy over two long borrows from the library. It's very detailed. I enjoy obamas writing cadence but tended to skim through parts describing less than important people to get through to the more exciting or nostalgic descriptions of his first term. The foreshadowing and the hindsight really hit home knowing what came after obama. Can't wait for his next book. 

This book is incredibly interesting. As a forewarning the beginning and ends of this book do address the current administration but the majority of this book is looking at other democracies and how they failed or continue to thrive. It was interesting to see that even democracies that literally copied our constitution, government, courts and politics have fallen into authoritarianism and demagoguery. We are not unique in that our democracy is unique but in that our “soft guardrails” remained mostly intact for so long, until recently.

One of the things they found that eventually led to most failed democracies was their guardrails stopped working. Guardrails being:
Mutual toleration: The idea that all political rivals treat each other with civility and worthy of the positions. Not criminals or anti-patriots.
Institutional forbearance: The idea that those in power do not use the full power of their position to inhibit rivals from coming to power or pass legislation. They do not tilt the playing field unfairly in their favor. Basically, playing political hard-ball.

The book talks about reasons that these soft guardrails are failing, most notably the polarization of the parties, the enfranchising of diverse minority groups, declining middle-class and income inequality.

The egg hunting middle portion of this book lags hard. Maybe I've fallen out of favor with the hyper references that made ready player one a fun read for the first time. But this time it just feels like too much.

The actual details of the plot and technology are what really shines here. Not the references and meta references. 

The first chapter I knew this was going to be 5 stars. This book caught me from the jump. It is extremely well written and takes you on a journey and you can't put it down. It's so near future that I can't recommend reading it quickly enough. If you catch this in 10 years and the world isn't like the book you'll probably be disappointed. Space hotels and astroid minning!

The conclusion to this series was unexpected and I think I liked that. There were parts that genuinely caught me off guard.