James rated Mockingjay: 5 stars

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games, #3)
Katniss Everdeen's having survived the Hunger Games twice makes her a target of the Capitol and President Snow, as well …
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Katniss Everdeen's having survived the Hunger Games twice makes her a target of the Capitol and President Snow, as well …
This book is a great tour of the intelligence problem we face.
It is quite opinionated and as a first book in this space you may be lead to believe too much of what Nick Bostrom says as being consensus opinion. Regardless he introduces and summaries the main points to give one an understanding of the space quite well.
The subtitle is quite an apt description of the book, what is and how we will get superintelligence, the problems and pitfalls of superintelligence and thoughts and ideas on what we can do to try and avoid it.
The book also in some ways makes the implied argument that it is one moral imperative to work on this problem first!
A good read.
Sparks are igniting. Flames are spreading. And the Capitol wants revenge.
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. …
Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book in the five-volume Hitchhiker's Guide to …
Now I am not quick sure if something was wrong with my audiobook as this book felt even more disjointed and jumpy than before.
One minute where here, nex minute there. So much so that the aduio file could of been skipping accidently or something like this.
Regardless it still got me to chuckle and was a bit of fun to read.
However after three of these books in quick sucession I think I need something a little more substanial.
As much of the first book is funny, witty and a bt silly this book is simply more of it.
The storyline and chracters are much the same the first book. They are very muchfloudnering around from one situation to the next.
Worth a read if you enjoyed the first one. Nothing ugely important if you werent so keen on the first.
A great book, lightly and humorously touches some very important ideas.
A really fun book which breaths life into scifi fantasies in a way no others do.
The style of Douglas Adams is unique with it having just the right level of deadpan devliery to make it quite comedic for myself.
I was reading thisbook with the goal of hearing a modern scientific apologetic view on the matter.
It was adequetly scientifically rigous albeit a bit winding and long. I felt as if his argument could be summed up as it seems implausible that we can explain life and universe without God, and with God the universe makes even more sense.
I find this argument somewhat unconvincing as well as stunting. Particulary about his reasoning that believing in God wont stop our curoisity.
Stephen Meyer is cleary a sophisticated debater and he is familiar with various techniques and counter techniques. It makes some of his arguments feel technique but hollow.
Lastly as I expected it mentions nothing as to why the Christian god makes any more sense than any other theist god one can come up with.
Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see …
A great book covering what is one of the most pressing issues of our time.
Brian Christian does a great job of dicsussing the high level and the lower level details of the problem we face with intelligent machines. The book does not get caught up in either a fatalistic or opportunistic outlook. But simly tells the problem as it is.
Also surpisingly alot of time talking about reinforcement learning which was very pleasent.
Fundamentlly this is a book about Geographic Determinism and how it shaped the course of human history.
This a good book for someone who has never really read or learnt much about the pre history and evolutions of our societies. It is more dense and detailed than Yuval Noah Hararis bookson this topic (Sapiens, Home Deus).
Jared Diamond goal of this book is to answers the question that he was asked "Why do Gunian people not have guns germs and steel yet the whites do". It covers how we evolved to humans, how we ended up geographically where we are and then how we evoled from caveman to "civilised people". Most of the book however is set on answering why societies developed at different paces in different directions.
I feel that Jared diamond devoted a little too much time debunking the racists idea of inherent superiority. As well as repeating …
Fundamentlly this is a book about Geographic Determinism and how it shaped the course of human history.
This a good book for someone who has never really read or learnt much about the pre history and evolutions of our societies. It is more dense and detailed than Yuval Noah Hararis bookson this topic (Sapiens, Home Deus).
Jared Diamond goal of this book is to answers the question that he was asked "Why do Gunian people not have guns germs and steel yet the whites do". It covers how we evolved to humans, how we ended up geographically where we are and then how we evoled from caveman to "civilised people". Most of the book however is set on answering why societies developed at different paces in different directions.
I feel that Jared diamond devoted a little too much time debunking the racists idea of inherent superiority. As well as repeating himself with the same ideas and similiar examples. He focuses on Guinea and the Americas mostly while giving little treatment to central Eurasia (middle east - India).
Regardless you will elarn alot about the development of early humans, where agriculture came from and why it was the European whites who conquered the Americas and Ocenaia in the modern world.
Great book about the universe. It does a good job on giving you a tour of what we currently know about the universe and also usefully how we figured out alot of this. It has a common theme throughout of trying to get at the question of a fundamental theory of everything. I really enjoyed this book getting at what is in some ways the ultimate question.
Overall lots of fun topics that were quite exciting. It has got me searching up on universities open courseware looking for courses to take.
Simple book that takes you not only of a tour of the universe from earch out to the entire obserervable universe. But Jo Dunkley also talks about what astronmers have done recently and are trying to do on and around Earth with their various telescopes and projects.
An interesting read albeit not as aweinspiring as some other Astronomy/Physics books.
Great book covering almost equally the history of everything along with the history of science.
My library only had the abrdiged addition which was a shame as I would love to hear the full book.
A great book that really adds much depth and colour to Middle earth. Even with the audiobook and its constant forward pace it was a tough dense read. As this books is really a compilation of various shorter novels the tone and style does change throughout. What starts very hand wavy and spacey get more and more grounded and with a style inline with that of the LOTR trilogy.
On completion of this book I felt so much more excited about middle earth and had greater appreciation of Tolkiens work.