User Profile

Captivating story, fantastic exercise in world building.

Great sequel. If you liked The Name of the Wind, you will like this one.

On the negative side,

- things that were announced in the first book still haven't happened, and it can feel a little drawn out
- the last part in the series has been in the works for almost ten years, and nobody knows when, or if, it will be finished.

Lots of spelling errors and such, but a fantastic read.

This is essentially the log book of two people on a small boat sailing from Japan to Vancouver, supplemented with additional information. But the narrative structure is very much still "this is happening right now", over and over again. Sounds boring? It isn't. The nature of the trip makes for a great story arch in itself.

Can absolutely recommend to anyone who's interested in learning about the meaning of life, blue water sailing, or japanese food.

This is a family history, but also a history of humanity's relationship to trees and forests over ~130 years.

It gave me a new, interesting perspective on the nature of trees, the way we treat our planet, but also, the trials of life as a human, and the meaning of family.

It's a very well written book, with an unconventional structure - following the age rings of a tree: Starting in the future, stepping back in time until some sort of beginning, then stepping back forward again to continue the future.

I couldn't put this book down, it's that engaging. It also contains a lot of tragedy, to the point where it took me a few days after finishing the book to process its contents. So maybe don't read it if you're in a negative state of mind already.

I was looking for a book to help me understand how black people experience racism, and this one delivered.

The Book has an autobiographical style and wholistic approach that makes it easy to take Assata‘s perspective. It is a story of slow radicalization of a kind, intelligent woman - and a document of a long list of different manifestations of racism.

Parts of the book are hard to read because of the sheer brutality - sometimes physical, sometimes social - of the events described. But parts of it are beautiful, too.

This book was everything I hoped - it kept me engaged all the way, and opened my eyes to a different perspective on the world we all live in. It also gave me new appreciation for the people who dedicate their life to a fight against injustice.

Like the first book in the series, this is a really good exercise in speculative long term thinking - which, in my opinion, is really science fiction at its best.

Its story is not quite as gripping and original as the first one though.

A book that reads like an action movie. It is really no surprise that it was turned into one.

It works well as a book, has just enough facts and background to keep you from questioning the story too much during quieter phases.

The overall story arc is very predictable, but scene by scene it is very well written and quite interesting.

It is a very entertaining book, great if you need something that doesn‘t make you think too hard, and are OK with relatively explicit descriptions of violence (mostly people being eaten by dinosaurs).

Good overview of the Domain Driven Design paradigm.

This book is available as a free ebook online, and it shows. The quality of the editing is pretty bad, with spelling mistakes, missing or extraneous words, and in one case missing the whole second half of a sentence.

It also fails to explain why the ideas are good; it explains some of the tradeoffs, but often it also just explains a concept in isolation.

But you can get all of those details from other sources, and I haven't found a faster way to grasp the whole paradigm than by reading this book.

I was a little sceptical after seeing the title, expecting a loose collection of super niche factoids.

That was mostly unwarranted. While the book has sections that just list facts, it also manages to paint a good picture of life in Ontario in different phases of its history.

At times it is really entertaining, for example when quoting contemporary documents; my all time favourite has to be the brewer arguing before a court that lager beers are not intoxicating, no matter how much you drink.

While of course all of the history of the area before the introduction of beers by european settlers is omitted, as a recent immigrant I learned lots about the history of settlement, socializing, transportation and laws around alcohol from the book.

Essentially, it is a history of Ontario from the perspective of brewers and beer drinkers, and it greatly improves my understanding of today's Ontario.