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I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this world in which everyone is aware of pending doom, but processing that in different ways. Some people are basically continuing on unaffected whilst others are throwing caution to the wind and completing their bucket lists, whilst still others are giving up entirely. I'm surprised there isn't a little more crime going on, with obvious lack of police resources, and the potential punishment being at most a few months in prison. But that's what makes the book so interesting, the fact that it raises all of these questions. Each time a person does something the reader is invited to ask "would anyone really do that in that situation?"

The actual mystery is a little humdrum to be honest, but I suppose that's not the main distinguishing feature of the book, it's more the genre combination. Still I frequently, particularly in the first 2/3rds of the book, found myself wondering "when is the narrative going to be pressed forward?" Because of this I couldn't quite allow myself to rate this 4 stars, but I would have given it 3.5 if possible.

Some interesting passages and quite a lot to agree with in the book. However, it contorts itself many times to attempt to fit to the narrative of A.I. companies as empires of old. Sometimes you're not quite sure what the point is. At one point the book is angry at a data company for offering work to poor Kenyans at low wages as exploitative, but then also angry when those jobs are taken away.

Although I disagreed with the book in many places, there is much to agree with in the pages. A.I. companies are becoming rather powerful, and whenever power concentrates it is well worth us asking what we should do about that. I think we flunked that exam in the 2010s with the new social media companies, let's not flunk it again, when the stakes are probably higher, social media companies may have frayed society but they were never an existential threat, artificial super intelligence certainly is.

I do think there is quite a bit wrong with the book though, it's economically illiterate and sees the A.I. companies as villains above all else, and so contorts itself to make that the case.

This book is a great read, I really enjoyed the vast majority of it. It depicts two factions of society, what is nice is that they are not separated by political leanings, although the 'Village' skews heavily left. The River on the other hand is less dogmatic, more rational minded, by that I mean more likely to search for convincing logic or facts to support each position. The River is of course different in other ways. I'd like to review a bit more the three sections of the River to see their differences a little more.

Anyway, I guess the one thing lacking here is a good narrative thread throughout the book, it feels a bit more like a collection of case studies of River occupants that could each be read entirely independent of one another, rather than each building upon the other. Though I suppose it's possible one can see a building of risk taking as we travel down the River, the upper occupants essentially gamble with their own lives and finances, then SBF is gambling a multi-billion dollar business, and finally the A.I. firms are gambling with humanity's existence. I guess, but I see SBF as being more risk taking than A.I. firms, who, possibly just do not recognise the risk, that than see it and think it worth it.

Overall, well worth reading.

I'm sorry, perhaps the original Russian is much better, but I just couldn't finish this. I kept not understanding what was going on. The writing was just too abstract for me. I've read a summary of the plot and it seems an interesting book, if you can understand what is going on.

I learnt a lot, in particular about Extreme-Ultra-Violet lithography. More generally reading this gives a great overview of just how global the chip industry is. Different firms in very different parts of the world all contribute. It's easy to see how the chip industry is an important player in global geopolitical machinations.

I'm not quite as gushing as the praise that has been heaped on this book. It is very pleasant to read, but it is, for me, somewhat forgettable. It is to be praised for its brevity, many authors would have felt compelled to make this longer, but it doesn't need to be.

There is no plot as such, it's mostly the thoughts of the astronauts co-mingled with the orbits of the ISS around earth.

I wouldn't heartily recommend this as a must read, but at the same time I wouldn't caution someone not to bother, if it appeals to you, then it's probably worth it for you.

This is, obviously, a good book, a fun read, and informative. The main take-away is that space is cool and all, and obviously at some point if we want the human race to continue indefinitely then we probably need to be a space-faring species, but, well, it's harder than it looks in the movies. There are complications.

I found the book a little lacking in the technical, for example, the picture on the cover depicts a city on Mars, underground, but at no point is this really described. There is some suggestion as to why it would be underground, mostly radiation, but I was expecting a bunch of facts about what would be needed, for example waste-removal/recycling?

The book's third part is then an exploration of legal issues. This is interesting, but I found it a little unconvincing, whereas the earlier more technical parts are very convincing, such as the discussion of exploiting lunar resources such as Helium-3, the legal parts just seem like less of an insurmountable barrier. Discussion of similar situations on earth, such as the high-seas and Antarctica are interesting.

I would have liked a bit more of a delve into the history of company towns. For example it's mentioned that in one such company town, the antogonism between the company and the workers' union was so bad it involved "bombs being dropped", but we're never quite told the story of how/why/when this happened. So it's hard to relate the relevance of this to anything, let alone to space exploration.

Overall a great book, which was quite the book I wanted.

Sorry, but I hated almost every page of this. I'm not a big fan of poetry in general, and this was a Christmas gift. I thought the vast majority of the poems were simply childish, and I was generally just hoping to get it over with. Many were based on a single pun, quite often changing the lyrics of a song. These poems went on for several verses despite the whole thing just being a very mild pun on the title. Other times the humour just didn't hit. I think maybe twice in the whole 365 days, I maybe had a little giggle or thought something was genuinely clever, one poem can be read from top to bottom but has the opposite meaning if read bottom to top, which was kind of cool.

In fairness, I think I'm just the wrong audience for this kind of thing. I'm sure others would like this. I thought it was a complete waste of my time.

There is quite a lot of personal stuff in here, and quite a bit of (contemporary) history. Personally I was here mostly for the contemporary history, but I didn't quite feel I got enough of that. Pockets of information about a few African states. I thought we would get to know all of the African states, the current status they have, the outlook for their future, perhaps a bit about how they came to be a country etc. The general point is taken, that Africa has many countries and there are significant differences between those countries.

A lot of Bill Bryson book reviews, at least by me, are kind of similar. Basically, you know what you're getting with Bill Bryson, his writing is very good, he will almost certainly make you laugh, and you probably learn a bit of trivia at the same time. I wouldn't say this book particularly stands out as one of his best, but it's at least average. So the advice is, as usual, if you've read more than 1 Bill Bryson book you will know what you're going to get, if you like them, read this, if you don't this isn't any different so give this a pass. And as always, if you haven't read any Bill Bryson books, this is a reasonable place to start, though probably not the best. For that, I would like at a list of Bryson books and see which topic takes your fancy the most, he's an excellent travel writer, but also good with other factual books such as "A short history of nearly everything".

A good read is of course not why you're here, but that's what you get anyway. I cannot say much about the science or legitimacy of the author's claims, but they seem very plausible to me.

The basic premise is that there are a bunch of "Ultra-processed foods" which are behind the rise in obesity levels (along with other health complications). These foods are not only addictive but mess with the body's appetite mechanism, there by shutting down the message that we have eaten enough.

There isn't really a discussion of how exactly these foods do this. Though the argument is partly based on trials, and partly a discussion of Darwinian evolution of foods. In order to survive in the gladitorial supermarket shelves a foodstuff must sell, and sell often. This evolutionary struggle has driven companies to optimise foods, not only for cost, shelf-life, but also for addictiveness. Part of being addictive is cancelling the body's natural system to signal satiety.

On the one hand, this all sounds quite plausible, on the other hand society has been through cycles of 'bad food', before, health alerts over fats, sugars, carbohydrates etc. have all pointed the blame for increasing obesity at different targets. This book argues that ironically those health drives may have made the problem worse by incentivising food companies to work around those natural food stuffs with more synthetic or processed alternatives, such as synthetic sweeteners.

Again, I'm not in a position to judge the claims of the book well, but I can tell you that the information is presented in a very accessible and enjoyable to read manner.

I suspect others will like this a lot more than I did. I thought there were three books in one. The first was a very rom-comesque opening, down to the two eventual lovers hating each other to begin with. I had almost no time for this and almost stopped reading. After that there is the second part of the book which details the single mother's struggles to achieve what she wants, with those struggles mostly being misogyny. I liked that some of the misogyny was perpetrated by other women which makes it all the more realistic. The final part is a kind of mystery, which is enjoyable but not quite gripping.

I can understand why this book is more popular with female readers than male ones. However accurate it may be, it's just not that enjoyable to read 200 pages about how terrible your own gender is.

I really struggled through this. The narrative style flips between verbose description and stream-of-consciousness. Which meant that I was basically often a bit lost as to what was actually happening. There are many paragraphs that aren't punctuated, some of which are conversations which I had to read several times to figure out who said what. I found it challenging.

At times frustrating, I just wished for the narrative to just tell me what was happening. All that said, I'm sure that many people will find this a beautifully written book, and the story itself is quite interesting.

I got really into this. I don't think it's at all ground breaking, you won't be massively surprised by anything that happens and I suspect I will forget all about this relatively soon. However, the main point here is it was just really enjoyable to read, and I did do rather quickly which is usually a good sign. Recommend.