The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Started out quite good, ended up a jumbled, mildly racist mess.
Hcmc
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones
It’s like reading wikipedia in fictional form, which is what I was doing for Song of Ice and Fire anyways.
Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy
Lots of hand waving and overuse of the word ‘increasingly’. The facts are scattershot trivia, nothing unified or edifying here. I’m out.
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
Not sure how to rate this book. It wasn’t fun to read. It starts with a deaf child being molested by her father and rarely gets more cheery. I teared up reading some of the passages, and put down the book multiple times because I just couldn’t handle it. The scope is massive, and the book is the opposite of focused. However, this is the first book I can think of that probably made me a better person. It helped me relate to people that I would otherwise dismiss and gives a broader vantage for those of us who grew up normal. ...
Wool Omnibus (Silo, #1)
Wow. Some great twists, an appealing narrative structure, and a realistic antagonist. Great scifi.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Biased? Probably. Interesting? Yes. Lots of cool info about the intersection of tech and retail.
Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
The robotic obsession with references to 80’s pop culture was tiresome, and the world itself seemed devoid of forward looking creativity. I didn’t find the antagonists believable, thought the egghunt was dumb, and disliked every protagonist except Shoto and Daito. The VR facets of the plot were engaging, and I’m always down for a book about video games. But really, am I the only one that thinks watching Monty Python and the Holy grail 153 times is not something to admire?
All You Need Is Kill
I enjoyed it as an opportunity to ponder the value of experience, routine, and what it means to become an expert. This book felt very similar to [b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)|Joe Haldeman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386852511s/21611.jpg|423], another military sci-fi using time manipulation as a device to examine the development of personality through war. Although it shares a premise with Edge of Tomorrow the movie, the character development and conclusion are completely different, similar to the difference between [b:The Children of Men|41913|The Children of Men|P.D. James|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388271989s/41913.jpg|1142] the book and Children of Men the movie. ...
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Great history, best book I’ve read on the tech industry so far.
Viral Loop: The Power of Pass-it-on
I would recommend this book to somebody in the government (or in the developing world) trying to understand how Silicon Valley works. It does well as an entertaining history of why companies like Facebook have grown so fast, but tends towards over-exuberant and over-generalized proclamations about what leads to success in technology. As another reviewer stated, this book doesn’t provide much beyond typical Fast Company articles.