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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.

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.

I enjoyed reading this book, full of interesting information. I fear that many of the book's intended/actual readers will probably know most of the content, but still it's always good to get a recap. The author takes pains to be pretty politically neutral throughout the book, and because of this doesn't stray too far into economics, when that is not really the book's bailiwick.

I'm not 100% convinced by the book's structure, nor, given that structure, the ordering of the chapters, but that's probably a very personal complaint that wouldn't be shared by many/most others.

This is quite easy reading, each topic is not delved into particularly deeply, it's pretty shallow. The sort of person who would read this, could probably have written 90% of each chapter without doing any research, so you're not going to learn much new, but it's still quite pleasant to read.

Except for the attempted humour, I haven't heard their podcast, so it's possibly a case that their brand of humour doesn't translate well to the written word. Still it grates on you pretty quickly. I feel like a decent editor should have been taking most of the attempted jokes out. If you can get past the attempted humour (which is easy to sample because it's mostly in either speech bubbles or footnotes) this is a pleasant read, but also pretty skippable.

This is a pleasant dive through what science has to say about many of life's more philosophical questions. It's very pleasant to read, but most of the questions are approached in a pretty broad manner, meaning that each question has mostly only the surface scratched. In that sense the book is rather shallow. That's not necessarily a bad thing, each question in the book could be the topic of an entire book in itself, and I'd probably rather read these intros rather than a set of nice books, or even, say, the most appealing three.

It does mean though, that you're not going to learn much new here, unless, well unless you're the sort of person who wouldn't read this book anyway.

A very readable book. I enjoyed it more or less from cover-to-cover. I like that the stories are mostly pretty independent of each other but interlaced just a little a bit. I also like that we get to see the interlaced parts from two or multiple points of view, from that aspect it's a little like Bret Easton Ellis's Rules of Attraction. You hear one protagonists feeling of a relationship/interaction and then later hear the other side's perception of it, this is most obvious in the after party between a former pupil and teacher. Overall, well worth reading.

I expected to be glued to this, but didn't really find that to be the case. The best parts are really just the stories of the cons, of which there simply aren't enough. There is quite a lot of description as to what has gone wrong in each case, some psychological biases, and human frailties which allow for these cons to be successful, but ultimately I found myself a bit lost during the book.

I pretty much loved this from start to finish. I am a slow reader, but found myself frequently picking this book up whenever I had a spare ten minutes.

He also uses a trick, that John Irving uses, which really hooks me. At the end of several chapters, he gives a spoiler about the current topic, but then the next chapter is on a different topic. The spoiler just teases you enough to want to keep reading now to get closer to when the teaser is fully expunged.

His voice and style is the same as with pretty much all Bill Bryson books, if you love Bill Bryson, there is no good reason not to read this one. That said, if you aren't a fan this will likely be a long slog. If you've never read any Bill Bryson, perhaps start with a shorter one as a taster.