Montgomery Webster
Story: 2 / 10
Characters: 5
Setting: 7
Prose: 7
“Tell me a story.” That's my reading philosophy. I pick up a book, either because it was recommended or won an annual genre award, but I don't read the description. I simply trust the author to reveal the story to me. I've gone years without reading the back of the book. After this book, that era is over.
Daniel Martin was the second book I've read by John Fowles. A work colleague recommended The Magus and I absolutely loved it. He then went on to recommend to Daniel Martin. Both books have fairly loose plots. While the latter does have significant events that result from the character relationships, the former doesn't. Basically nothing happens in Daniel Martin. Nothing in 700 pages. Unforgivable.
This was a long book to hate. Frankly, I'm scarred, afraid of returning to another John Fowles book in the future. Worse than that, I'm also going to have to start reading book descriptions. I would have known not to approach Daniel Martin if I had read the lacklustre description. Live and learn.
My first Scottish book. Sadly, not good. The setting and characters definitely worked. However, the entire story is dull and worthless. Another one of those “waiting” stories. The main character does a bunch of similar random tasks all day, but nothing happens. The last third of the book clarifies that the only thing that is really important is that the brother is coming. Is that sufficient for the story? Absolutely not. I would recommend someone abridging the book down to a very short, 20-page story. It still would not be very good, but short stories generally do not have that requirement.
Will still read an Iain Banks science-fiction book, because they are highly recommend.
An interesting book my boss bought me.
This whole strengths-based approach to self improvement is definitely worth investigating. Nevertheless, there is a bit of a problem with “focusing on your strengths and seeking help / avoiding your weaknesses”. This book does not help you find your weaknesses, so how will you know what to seek help for? Maybe the author intends for the reader to have already identified their weaknesses, but I still need more help finding mine.
There is another problem: The book only gives your Top 5 strengths. This is largely insufficient. It ignores that fact that you may be in the top percentile for 100s of intelligences compared to your peers. As such, I would have liked to have known all that information. For example, assume that your Top 10 intelligences are all very close in number but your real passions are strengths 6-10. You will miss out by only having a subset of the information. The approach the book takes ignores that we are competing with other agents (people). After reading, I am left with more questions than answers.
Post script: Ignore all the online materials. They are not extra reading, only digital versions of the book.
Not sure what the purpose of this book was. Maybe a bit of insight into new children in Battle School? How religious students coped? Anyway, I am very ready to be done with this long series.
Captivating concept, but poorly executed. Still ends up being a good book, but the secret agent characters and event order detract from the insightful evolution the Hive represents.
Finding this book in the library revealed to me that Herbert has a lot more books to read: I was under the mistaken impression that he only wrote the Dune series. Hopefully, the rest are better than this.
7/10 Have always loved HG Wells' writing and liked this book all the way through. The strongest part is probably the unusual ending: It takes a sharp turn and is filled with interesting detail.
Looking forward to more of the same.
My first survival scifi book. Definitely not a fan of survival films, but this book worked wonders for me. Prose was strong and the structure sound. Definitely deserves its spot on the Top 100 Scifi books list: http://scifilists.sffjazz.com/lists_books_rank1.html.
Story: 8 / 10
Characters: 10
Setting: 10
Prose: 7
Star Maker is the most ambitious book I have read. Unlike what the description suggests, it is a profound and fictional, anthropological history of the universe. The unexpected religious ending is endearing. The only weak points are the unnatural and loose direction of the plot, as well as the contradictory epilogue. Nevertheless, the story structures works. It starts a bit slow, as you would expect from a book that mirrors scientific texts.
Recommended for everyone, but scifi fans should endure.
As with most other tutorials, this book dedicates 25% of each page to white space. Otherwise, a fast introduction to conversion optimization. Definitely taught me what I wanted to know about designing landing pages.
Story: 9.0 / 10
Characters: 10
Setting: 8.5
Prose: 8
BEST novel I've read since 2019 (42 months) and one of the most impressionable books of MY LIFETIME.
With a breathtaking, complex plot, Onda's masterpiece intertwines memories with the traumatic events of our lives. Forewarning though: The book is written in one-sided first person. The reader only hears the spoken voice of the each chapter's lead character.
Story: 5 / 10
Characters: 8
Setting: 10
Prose: 8
Very strange story structure. It isn't until the 4th character that we encounter, that we ultimately reach what seems to be the protagonist.
Story: 5 / 10
Characters: 7
Setting: 3
Prose: 5
Probably a good book, if you are into mysteries. Sadly, I am not. Only read it because my house-mate had it lying around and I had been wanting to read more Japanese books. Nevertheless, the author introduced me to a lot of Japanese mythology. That was extremely interesting. Otherwise, the mystery itself was quite obscure. The final explanation was completely out of nowhere. I'll have to be more selective about which Japanese books I read in the future...
I'm not really into non-fiction, but had to try this for book club. There is no real narrative in the book, instead it is broken into a bunch of biodiversity topics.
Not recommended.
Very similar to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. However, Ringworld is not terribly worthwhile and probably not the 13th best science fiction book of all time. The ending is weak and relates little to the motivation for the conflict. In addition, the prose is rather dry.
Great start and a great end. Lots of surprises in the diary.
Still, there was a lot of repeated content and a significant amount of trivialities.
Maybe all diaries are like this.
Overall, I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend the book. In fact, I wonder if there isn't a less famous, but more insightful book about the Jewish experience of the second world war.
5.5/10: Did not like it or hate it. Felt rather short, but it is probably that not enough happened in the story. Cannot even figure out how to describe the story to others.
The prose was good, but would not recommend it and will forget about it faster than any other book I have ever read. This brief story makes it a good candidate for a movie though, so would like to see both versions now.
An incredible book, compelling from the start. Though the book commits a very serious taboo, focusing not only on an author, but also the writing of a book, it does not estrange the reader. Instead, the main character tells the story of his dead friend before the authorities can figure out what happened and broadcast their own findings. In the process, everything about the main character is revealed.
Similar to other absurd books like Murakami, but works so much better...