I like books.
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"In It Takes a Genome, Greg Gibson posits a revolutionary new hypothesis: Our genome is …
It's a fun read, but doesn't tell you anything that you won't already know if you've read Genome.
It's half short stories, and half essays and anecdotes.
There are some real problems with this book. The first is that it just hasn't aged well. It's from 1986, and most of the futuristic stories that he's tried to impart are not only known, but almost beaten into the ground.
This would be okay if there were something else holding the book together. Unfortunately, Hogan does not have any literary flair, and he doesn't do characterization very well. That leaves the story hanging by its science, and that only goes so far.
There's a version of Slider (the movie) in here, there's a story about transporter style which spells out the implications, and there's a even a story about how killing Hitler has unanticipated consequences. I felt almost embarrassed at some point -- it's like finding a story about two space travellers on a distant uninhabited planet "and they turn …
It's half short stories, and half essays and anecdotes.
There are some real problems with this book. The first is that it just hasn't aged well. It's from 1986, and most of the futuristic stories that he's tried to impart are not only known, but almost beaten into the ground.
This would be okay if there were something else holding the book together. Unfortunately, Hogan does not have any literary flair, and he doesn't do characterization very well. That leaves the story hanging by its science, and that only goes so far.
There's a version of Slider (the movie) in here, there's a story about transporter style which spells out the implications, and there's a even a story about how killing Hitler has unanticipated consequences. I felt almost embarrassed at some point -- it's like finding a story about two space travellers on a distant uninhabited planet "and they turn out to be Adam and Eve."
So yeah. Very much a product of its era. Two stars because it's at least good for what it is, but I wouldn't recommend to others.
![John Layman: Chew, Vol. 3 (Paperback, 2010, Image Comics, Diamond [distributor])](https://boundcovers.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/thumbnails/covers/0010a3c3-c4c4-4cfd-a47e-a2b09902f717/98247b0f6072236234693294c4d37434.webp)
Things are looking up for Tony Chu, the cibopathic federal agent with the ability to …
It's both funny and disturbing. If this were a "completely realistic" book then it would be horrifying, but the comedy and the extremeness of the art goes to push it toward comedy.
If I had to point to a weakness, I'd say that the comedy doesn't mesh well with Tony's more quiet, personal troubles. But that's a minor point over all.
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why …
Very good book that picks out what environment is, and how humans work to preserve or destroy it.
Makes an excellent companion to The Logic of Failure, which talks about much the same problem form a different angle.
It's good reading if you're new to programming. If you've worked for any length of time as a programmer, you'll either be thinking "my god this is obvious" or you'll be asleep.
Too vague. The architecture essays here are tantalizing, but there's very few code samples and meaty technical chunks. No UML diagrams, no careful dissection of parts.
What went wrong with the design? How did it get to the point it did? What doesn't the current design do well? Too many times, the essay only talks about the positives of the architecture, too often sounding like an infomercial or a pitch to a client.
I would have been happier with something like TCP/IP: The Implementation or TEX: The Program... this is a good book for what it is, but it just doesn't do the details to my satisfaction.
It's okay. It's clearly a first time book though.
The most influential book of the past seventy-five years: a groundbreaking exploration of everything we …
A very good book, but Taleb has an ego. He'd actually make his point far better if he took himself out of his writing more.
Hailed by Bruce Sterling as a “political activist, gizmo freak, junk collector, programmer, entrepreneur, and …
It's okay, but some of it seems a little obvious from the 2010 vantage point -- this can be seen as a measure of its success, of course.
A feel good, thrill a minute ride that will leave you breathless and wanting more!
Or an idea of what Hollywood is like, and how it tries to sort out good ideas from bad ones. It's funny.
The interesting thing is that Bendis is a damn good writer who has gone on to do some really amazing work since, and you could argue that Spiderman wouldn't have happened without Bendis's Ultimate Spiderman work. So in a way, he has made a big budget movie, and comic book movies are now "credible" in a way that they weren't at the time this was written.
"The year is 2021, and the human race is - quite literally - coming to …
Surprisingly, the movie is better than the book.
Eeesh. It's rather embarrassing to even admit having read this. But I feel better, because at least I'm not in the position of having written this book. Having to read about Bronson's bald fantasies about being a writer and sleeping four hours a day so he could write more... I am in awe at the object lesson that Bronson provides. He has become a writer and fulfilled his dream, but only so he can write about himself. The people he writes about are backdrop, filler, to the quest that Bronson provides for himself. And it's also obvious that the people who Bronson writes about are those most like himself. All in all, a fairly nauseating experience.
In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news …
