Frank McGeough
Best of the apocalyptic detective genre. Wait...is that a genre now? In any case a fun read.
Boring, obtuse, endlessly parenthetical. An awful book that also feels very full of itself. Best avoided.
Neither funny or inspirational although people have definitely gotten that out of this book based on the rave reviews. Not for me. Barely got through it. Kept waiting for something even vaguely amusing based on the glowing reviews. Didn't happen.
So-so collection of Sedaris' stories. Most of which have been heard before in one form or another. I listened on CD - the best way to encounter a David Sedaris story. There are a few good laughs in there but long series of passages that are not as funny as previous material.
interesting stories. lot of information about New Guinea. crosses a lot of subject areas : war, diet, language. In each area there is some insight that I think is worthwhile. I picked this up because I saw it was on Bill Gates summer reading list (from 2012 I think).
beautiful pictures and interesting stories of the providers used by the restaurant and how important every detail is in providing an awesome dining experience. Not a lot of recipes that I thought - “I'll do that myself”. However, there were some tips and techniques on smaller things like sauces that I thought were helpful.
A bit dated (2006) review of state of collaboration at a point in time. I was hoping for more analysis of what makes for successful collaborations. Like most business books a set of case studies are presented and cheerleading of how wonderful collaboration is and how it made the companies wildly successful. But as with all other business techniques, some people do it well and some poorly and most muddle through in the middle ground and I didn't find enough meat in the author's opinion on what distinguishes one from another in this book.
Spent about 3 months listening to the audio version of Moby Dick done by the Moby Dick Big Read group. Lots of English actors/artists read the chapters, some well-done, some somewhat less-so. But certainly this was the only way I was going to get through the classic novel. The language is difficult to get around. Lots of terms that require consulting the Internet. I'm glad I read it but I'm happy that I'm now through with it.
good cookbook. well organized. I did two recipes out of this book - Korean short ribs and turkey chili. Both excellent. The idea of cooking a chicken for 7 hours is a bit much but most likely excellent and doable on a winter day when there is 2 foot of snow outside. Still have several recipes that I'm going to give a try.
Great Detroit-based Elmore Leonard story with assortment of fast-talking, confident but incompetent criminals trying to pull off a murder-for-hire.
A thorough Javascript book. Good book to learn Javascript if used in concert with the http://www.codecademy.com lessons. The number of examples is a bit overwhelming since they are made up of literally hundreds of small samples. You can download these but I'm not sure how useful they are as a whole. I suppose if there was one or two particular things that you wanted to dig into then it might be useful.
Great recipes and beautiful pictures. It may be a bit difficult to make some of the recipes depending on where you live. You'll need to find a good source of Middle Eastern spices and supplies locally or shop online (most of the ingredients are available online). There are a variety of online groups that share their experience making recipes from this book. I've made 4-5 recipes from this book so far. They were all delicious.
A new edition is promises soonish but this is still an amazing technical book. Practical and clear and wise. If you aren't going to read the first edition then you should definitely read the second if you are a programmer. Its Ruby-centric but the concepts are easy to apply to a slew of O-O languages.
A page turner of a post-apocalyptic story with, thankfully, no zombies, vampires, or werewolves. Well-written. Interesting characters.
Its not that any part of this book is that bad. I think the research is actually pretty interesting. However, most of the parts of this book I had read elsewhere so I was a bit disappointed.
A sweet story of a man's relationship with his amazing Mother, her terminal illness from pancreatic cancer and their shared love of reading.
just OK Reacher novel. I'm working my way through these randomly and this one was probably the weakest one that I've read so far.
A page-turning formulaic young adult novel featuring a lead young female protagonist that has been extremely successful. They are making it into a movie and the novel leaves plenty of room to imagine what each and every character might actually be like so I suppose that made the writers and director happy. The dystopian future is a world divided up into factions based on general traits (the really smart faction, the truth-telling faction, the brave faction, the selfless faction). Kids chose factions when they are 16. This first book spends all its time in the long initiation rites for the main character's chosen faction. No old people in these worlds. I guess they are all dead or extremely quiet and inconsequential.
Second edition of one of the very good books on web usability. Should be required reading for web designers. And, a bonus, its actual easily readable and well written.