Book Reviews Blog

This page only shows books that have a review. By default in date order of reading with newest at top

Monday 29th May 2023

Original Language: Polish mins

The Rabbit Factor

Author : Antti Tuomainen

Summary :
Mathematician looses job in insurance and inherits an amusement park
Book Tags

Rated by Roger CO, on 29 May 2023

Review Summary :
Comedy and gangsters with a bemused statistician


Monday 22nd May 2023

Moving Pictures

Discworld 10

Author : Terry Pratchett

Summary :
Riffing on Holywood and celebrity culture
Book Tags

Rated by Roger CO, on 22 May 2023



Saturday 29th April 2023

2021

The Dawn of Everything

A new view of the history of humanity

Authors : David Graeber, David Wengrow

Summary :
An interpretation of the latest thinkingin human deep history and archaeology. It is not all an inevitable story of progress from cave to today - different ways were possible and can still be achieved.
Book Tags

Reviewed by rogerco, on 29 Apr 2023

Review Summary :
1. Freedom to Move 2. Freedom to Refuse an Order 3. Freedom to Create New Forms of Social Reality

Simple Rules Create Complex Social Systems

Societies and Civilisations differ in the ways in which they constrain the three basic human freedoms - freedom of movement (eg away from oppression), freedom of choice (eg choice to refuse to obey any order), and freedom to create any form of new social order that one can imagine.



Sunday 16th April 2023

2018

Original Language: English mins

The Silence of the Girls

Author : Pat Barker

Summary :
Troy. Captured Trojan queen recounts her life as Achilles's prize in the Greek camp besieging Troy.
Book Tags

Reviewed by rogerco, on 16 Apr 2023

Review Summary :
First class writing.

The prize is in the reading

A familiar story told from a different viewpoint (that ought to be a distinct genre of works). Very well written, and an interesting narrative idea in itself well executed. We certainly come to a different understand of what war means from behind the scenes.

Particulaltly like the way she mixes in modern cultural elements (eg the drinking songs, and soldiers banter) to provide cross-cultural reference points for the reader - of course the greek army in camp after a victory is like a bunch of rubgy or football players cellebrating a victory. 



Monday 20th March 2023

1997

Original Language: Italian mins

A Fortune-Teller Told Me

Author : Tiziano Terzani

Summary :
A journalist discovers the joys of not flying for a year
Book Tags

Reviewed by rogerco, on 20 Mar 2023

Review Summary :
The year of not flying certainly seems to have changed him for the better, from the hard boiled journo to someone a lot more aware of the darker side of the rising tide of capitalism.

A Life in Transistion

A good read, interesting and entertaining. I guess it only gets 5 stars because I didn't really feel any empathy with him as a person to start with, although I warmed to him a bit as the year progressed.

As a travel book/commentary on SE Asia it is excellent. The benefits of slow travel are there to be seen in the pages. His personal development through the year is interesting, although he never fully loses his journalistic cynicism. Sometimes this is merited - some of the fortune tellers he tries are obvious fakes - but he does seem to exist in a bit of a western bubble of privilege. That might be an unfair comment as it is hard to see how he could be what he was without that.



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