Tag archives for book review - Page 19
Book Review – Silesian Station by David Downing
Silesian Station by David Downing My rating: 4 of 5 stars Second in the series, and it ends where I expected the first to end. It starts a few weeks on from where the previous book left off. In late July 1939 John Russell is returning to Germany from America by boat with his son. Definitely an interesting read, Downing has clearly done his research well. There is a fantastic period feel to it. Especially the embuggerance around the travelling to and from Poland. The places and the people are very well described, and the latter are well observed and seem real. The danger in the air from unguarded comments is real for these characters, and they are mainly circumspect with strangers. I was also pleased to see how Russell's film star girlfriend develops too. She starts the story with a…
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Book Review – Shakespeare on Toast by Ben Crystal
Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this. It definitely lives up to the title and shows Shakespeare in context as something to be performed and watched rather than read in a classroom. The language is laid bare and clearly explained in a way that I found easy to absorb. I particularly like the explanation of how Shakespeare used metre to give stage directions and show emotion. It probably helps that I've only recently finished an undergraduate creative writing course a few months ago. So now I get poetry in a way I didn't a year ago. That said this book explains it much better than my dry academic texts did, which is really the whole premise. Ignore the academics, snobs and critics. Instead listen to…
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Book Review – The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I picked this one up, in paperback, some time ago because I had enjoyed The Men Who Stare at Goats. It sat on the shelf for ages, a victim of the ease of the kindle. I started reading it as my at home book in late 2014 but only finished it earlier today. I'm not sure what to make of Jon Ronson. He's a sort of gonzo journalist, although perhaps a less extremist version. He seems to have a knack of making people tell him stuff that is ridiculous and that anyone sensible wouldn't say in front of another person, let alone a journalist who was going to publish it. Perhaps it's just my prejudice against journalists and media handling training coming out. It's car crash stuff. You…
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Book Review – Cronix by James Hider
Cronix by James Hider My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is near future post human science fiction. The premise is that humanity works out how to upload consciousness to virtual worlds and this results in amazing breakthroughs of scientific knowledge and an effective end to death. Almost everyone chooses to join the exodus from fleshy existence to living eternally in the comfort of virtual worlds. The story is set several hundred years after the break through. Told from multiple points of view, including flashbacks to the pre uploading memories of one of the protagonists. It takes a while to build to sound engagement because you need to get engaged with each of the viewpoints, but when you get there you really are engaged. There is a clear sense of a believable future world, it sort of makes sense given…
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Book Review – Marketing Essentials by Sally Dibb & Lyndon Simkin
Marketing Essentials by Sally Dibb My rating: 1 of 5 stars This was the main course book for the marketing component of an undergraduate business module (B203). As a course book this was functionally useless. For example the introduction of the extended marketing mix on pg319 is simply a bulleted list. The very next section, where normally one would expect referenced explanation of the concept is about Service Quality. This is somewhat a non-sequitor. This made it very trying to engage with the course material. There are nuggets of useful information in there, and an interesting section on how public and charitable organisations differ from for profit companies. However it is very badly structured, not everything is properly explained or referenced. If the author had written this as an undergrad assignment then they would have failed. What it needs is…