Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

December 14, 2020

Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy with Dr. David K. Johnson

Filed under: Philosophy — Tags: — Randolph @ 5:14 pm

This is a lecture series by The Great Courses. It uses science fiction, specifically science fiction movies, to illustrate philosophical concepts. In 24 lectures, he discusses science fiction movies and how the relate to ideas in philosophy.

In each lecture, Dr. Johnson asks you to watch a movie. Then in the next lecture he discusses the movie and ties it in to philosophy.

The movies selected are enjoyable for the most part and offer interesting ideas to consider. These include Inception, The Matrix, The Adjustment Bureau, Arrival and such. He also covers Star Trek and Doctor Who. He ends with 2001 and a discussion of Nietzche, comparing the star child at the end to the idea of the übermensch.

December 4, 2020

Composition by David Friend

Filed under: Art — Tags: — Randolph @ 11:59 am
Composition by David Friend

Composition discusses some of the finer points of painting composition not well understood by casual artists. Most sections consist of two parts. The first is a light introduction to the section’s topic and includes exercises. The second section (usually) takes a famous painting and compares it to an initial sketch. The pair demonstrate the section’s topic and the artist’s solution to the problem.

The book is well done and very informative. My only issues is that some of the exercises can take several days and makes the book more of a workshop than just a read. I wasn’t prepared for that and ended up skipping or rushing the exercises. If you go in with the time and preparation, the book would probably be a good workshop. Even without taking the exercises as seriously as I should, I found the book very informative and useful.

October 13, 2020

Hashi: The Bridges Puzzle by Alastair Chisholm

Filed under: Games and Puzzles — Tags: , — Randolph @ 3:54 pm

Hashi are puzzles where you need to form connections between all the bubbles on a page. Each bubble shows the total number of connections to that bubble and no two bubbles can share more than two connections. Then, all connections are simple orthogonal.

I found the puzzles a lot of fun. It is engaging enough to keep you occupied and the complexity seems right. Except for the simple introductory puzzles, they can be solved in less than about 20 minutes.

The one problem I felt, was they did not get more complex. The puzzles are rated delicious (fairly trivial), pernicious, malicious and vicious. But other than the delicious puzzles being trivial, the others did not get more difficult. They increased in size which provided more places to make an error, but they did not require more thought or problem solving.

They are fun. Now that I’ve solved the book, I don’t feel I need more of them, unless they can truly become more difficult.

September 26, 2020

No Plot? No Problem! by Christ Baty

Filed under: Art,Writing — Tags: — Randolph @ 8:31 am

This book walks a writer through the process of participating in the National Novel Writing Month each November. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel during the month.

The book does deliver on its promise. It discusses the process of getting started, strategies and psychology of each week, and a winding-down process when done. Each chapter includes a key take-away recap.

The book has a lot of good points and uses her style of humor to help drive them home. She uses stories of several past participants to illustrate her points, and adds inspirational quotes from a number of participants in the key chapters. However, the humor is used to excess, even getting a bit old at times, and the points are few. With fewer than 200 pages, there isn’t a lot of content in the book.

The book is an easy read, it is enjoyable and the points it makes are good. I believe it should make more points and fewer jokes.

August 11, 2020

Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics by Jonathan Wilson

Filed under: History,Sports — Tags: , , — Randolph @ 4:58 pm

This book discusses the history of football (Am. soccer) through different cultures, following major figures and how they affected the game’s strategies. To that end, it certainly delivered what it promised, but I found it a bit lacking.

There are a lot of people discussed that I found it difficult to keep track of. Maybe in the U.S., we aren’t exposed to these people. At each evolutionary phase of the game, you have one or two significant people as the proponent of change, one or more opposing it, and any number of players on both sides of the pitch. For me, this made it a bit difficult to follow.

The book has a lot of images of the pitch of various games, identifying the players on both sides. Some of them are even diagramed suggesting strategies or tactics involved. This was a big selling point of the book for me, but the discussion never references the diagrams. It discusses the players, and you can figure out which image is involved, but it does not use the diagrams to further the discussion and understanding. Second, the diagrams are often a few pages removed from the discussion, so it requires flipping back and forth a lot. The diagrams on the different images are never referenced, so they only raise questions that are never answered.

I did not find the book particularly bad, just disappointing. If you have an interesting in football’s history, you will probably enjoy the book. Otherwise, I’m sure there are better available.

July 10, 2020

Creating Celtic Animal Designs by Cari Buziak

Filed under: Art — Tags: , — Randolph @ 7:40 am

This book give basic instruction on the design of Celtic knots containing animals. It describes a few of the traditional animals, the symbols used and how the elements are put together. Then it discusses new animal designs using the same style.

Overall, the book is nice and has clear instructions. I felt that there was a lot of wasted space and duplicate material. The book is small, 122 pages, so it feels like they were just trying to fill it out.

For each animal discussed, the book contains a section on creating the animal, then a section on including that in a full pattern. The second part varies very little from animal to animal and could have been a more general section in itself.

Overall, I am happy with the book. It has some very nice pictures of the author’s knots. I did get it well-discounted and might have been frustrated paying the $16.95 cover price.

May 17, 2020

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

Filed under: Science Fiction — Tags: — Randolph @ 12:29 pm

Red Moon is an adventure story of two people thrown together and running for their freedom.

Fred Fredericks is an American businessman who sells secure quantum communications equipment. He flew to the Moon to meet with a Chinese gentleman who is poisoned during the meeting. The Chinese man was killed during the meeting and Fred detained by Chinese authorities.

The other is Chan Qi, the pregnant daughter of a rich and influential Chinese politician that leads the finance ministry. She is also taken by the authorities for her ideals about returning power in Chine to the people from the Communist party.

From here, it turns into an adventure story taking the two from the Moon to Hong Kong and back to the Moon. They survive by their wits, Qi’s friends and some unknown influences.

I found the book enjoyable up to the end where several plot points didn’t sit well with me.

First, the whole situation was explained by a US government agent who appeared and, after enabling their rescue, felt the need to explain what was going on.

Second, a woman who didn’t know the aforementioned agent, listened to an explanation of how the two (Fred and Qi) were to be extradited, they were rescued, someone is trying to kill them and then accepted the story and agree to cooperate without asking any questions or worrying about her own life.

Third, the story ended too soon. They escaped the Moon a second time in a programmed ship with no idea where they were heading. It felt like little was resolved, although there is plenty of information to find your own resolution.

I enjoyed the book, it is told well, the writing is enjoyable, but the end felt weak.

April 13, 2020

Successful Business Analysis Consulting: Strategies and Tips for Going It… by Karl Wiegers

Filed under: Technical — Tags: — Randolph @ 5:51 pm

Karl is an excellent author, making things easy to understand and follow. When you read his work, you can hear him speaking to you, he writes very much the way he speaks.

I only read selective chapters of this book, but I got from it what I expected to learn. In those sections he addressed issues relative to writing. Everything form organization, topic selection, editing and publishing. The rest of the book may yet be beconing to me.

April 9, 2020

Transformation by Carol Berg

Filed under: Fantasy,Series — Tags: , — Randolph @ 1:48 pm

Transformation is a fantasy novel about the relationship between a contemptuous and overbearing prince, Aleksander, on his way to becoming emperor, and his slave, Seyonne. The story is told from the Seyonne’s point of view.

Carol slowly builds the character of Seyonne. At the start of the book, he lives solely in the present, his past repressed or forgotten, the future irrelevant. It becomes apparent that he has some special abilities to recognize or see things others cannot. His magic was taken from him in a ritual when he was captured. He had been a Warden, a man with some magical abilities skilled at fighting demons.

The early story of the slave is very graphic and, for me, difficult to read. It deals with punishment, his attitude on survival and his slave past. At the same time, Aleksander sees him only as property and a tool. He things nothing of withholding food or punishing Seyonne.

Once he starts seeing things, his tie to Aleksander become stronger and their relationship really starts to develop. At this point I found the book quite compelling and easy to read.

The characters are very interesting and the story is well-told. Carol Berg has created an interesting world with full cultures that interact with the characters to help make this a fascinating story.

April 6, 2020

Solo: A Star Wars Story: by Mur Lafferty

Filed under: Adventure,Science Fiction — Tags: , — Randolph @ 11:13 am

This is the story of Han Solo prior to the movie saga. It start with his life on Corellia. It goes through his first encounters with Chewbacca and Lando, getting into his smuggling career and his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon.

The book is an action story. Han goes from one event to another. Parts of the book really bothered me, character actions didn’t seem quite right, some events seemed to be just plot points. Some of Han’s schemes didn’t seem quite reasonable, even if they failed, it seems he could come up with a better bluff or idea. It wasn’t particularly bad, it just should have been a lot more.

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