Josh Finnie
I was actually really upset at this book. I am not sure if it was due to being stuck in traffic while listening to it or just the overall message of this book did not resonate with me. We can all agree that if you had the ability to focus on your work you'd get better results, sure. But after listening to this book with overall generalizations that fit the mold of either journalism or tenor track professorship, I could not see a path to adopt anything more than the basic understanding that one could benefit from some focused time.
And then the few examples in this book where the author found success were periods of time that were outlandish and abusive. Bill Gates sleeping on his keyboard because he was in “deep work”, the author himself thinking of mathematical equations while hanging out with his child. The whole premise of this book was that you could succeed with creating time for deep work, but then example after example were people pushing themselves beyond normal deep work to succeed.
Maybe I missed the point, but I was very upset with the examples of what I would classify as the 10x engineering mentality which I am not sure is something I am willing to promote.
What a super interesting sci-fi. This book had a lot of twists and turns I did not expect, yet almost every character introduced in this book was likable. I would highly recommend this book if you are looking for something of a twist on space science fiction!
The story was pretty good, and I really like the idea of time travel, but I think this is the first time an audiobook ruined a good book for me... maybe I will try and read it myself in paper form.
Right off the bat, I am leaning more towards a 3.5 star rating, but I am willing to give the start of this series a bit of a pass. This is one of the first real new-aged science fiction book that I have read and it really took a while to get use to the pop references and the speech patterns of the main character. But after that and I was able to get to the heart of the story it certainly was a fun one. I'd recommend this book if you want a bit of a lighter science fiction read.
I really enjoyed this book. It was really interesting on how Herbert played the reader as part of the future giving us glimpses of the future at the beginning of each chapter. I am interested to see where this series goes from here!
This was a delightful followup to The Three-Body Problem entering yet another depth I was not ready for in a science fiction book. There were parts of this book, however, that I felt were a little forced to get a point across or move the narrative along... there were also some mysteries left up in the air that I felt should have been answered. Definitely give this a read if you liked the first book in this trilogy!
What a fun little read. I can see why everyone enjoys Philip K. Dick, this story was imaginative, fun, and entertaining. I highly recommend it!
I am really not sure about this book. I came into it wanting to absolutely love it, but I left it with mixed emotions. I think William Gibson is an amazing wordsmith, but feel that the overall plot was just too dense and somewhat confusing at parts. This could have been due to listening to it in audiobook format...
Oh my goodness, glad to have finished this book. It was sad that I continued listening hoping for some sort of reason to have sat through this book, but it never came. The trials CJ went through in the second half of the book were almost silly and completely predictable with how zany they were. This was such a let-down. I feel the book was overly violent for no real reason, there were moments where I had to step away from it due to the description of some of the attacks. Wow...
I would probably give this book a 3.5 stars if possible. I really enjoyed the mystery of this story, but there were times that I had to roll my eyes at events that needed to happen to keep this story moving. Overall, it was entertaining which I am happy for.
Pretty good book. There were parts that were a bit childish to me, but overall the story line kept me engaged.
I really enjoyed this book. It's not every science fiction that gets really into the weeds of science and still makes it approachable. I would certainly give this book a 4.5 star rating if I could.
This was a surprisingly entertaining book. Sure it was a bit of a light read, but the story is fully engaging. I highly recommend it. Wish I could give half stars, totally a 4.5 star.
After the first book ended, I needed to start this one immediately. And by the end, I started to be amazed on how this one was even better than the first!
What an ending to a wonderful trilogy. These three books have to be the best books I have read in such a long time. I will highly recommend them to anyone!
I really enjoyed this book. Sure there were some awkward teen angst and sexual innuendos, but overall I thought the story was strong and the character development well done. I am excited for part 2 of this story!
Probably more like a 3.5 star book. But for a car ride north with my wife, this was exactly what I was looking for. Note, if you are not already a fan of Veronica Mars, this book is probably not for you, but if you are, then it's a really nice Veronica Mars story.
I feel like this was written as a direct call-out to a lot of my actions throughout my life. I am definitely going to take some lessons learned here and implement them in my daily life. I would highly recommend reading this book!
The first half of the book was great. Had a lot of good insights and made sense for someone in the startup world to read... The second half of the book was a train-wreck. It lost sight of the goal of the book and ended up only tangentially on point. This would have made an amazing two-part blog post where I forgot about Part 2 and didn't have to pay to read. Oh well.
Maybe I should go read the first few chapters again and feel better about this book.
I really enjoyed the technical writing of Andy Weir, but he is no character writer. By the end of the book, I didn't care if Watney lived or died, I just wanted him to stop narrating.
This was an interesting read. I really wish it wasn't so long as there was some parts that could definitely be shortened or cut out completely.
I am really liking this! Volume 2 was just as good as Volume 1 and now I need to go get the third volume!!
I really solid story that I ended up enjoying much more than I thought. This is such a divergent style from my normal reads, but I would still highly recommend it.