Wot I Read

An interesting book about intelligence activities in Norway during WW2, but it did feel like a rather dry book overall.

Boy, I really didn't like this book. A lot of it has to do with the style of writing where dialogue and general text is just mashed together with no separation, it makes for a really frustrating reading experience. I heard that's the point of it to represent the grinding down and frustration of the world the book inhabits, but it just felt annoying. I can look past quirky presentation if I feel the book ultimately delivers by the end and while I do think the book gets better the more it goes on, I didn't walk away from it feeling it was particularly worth it.

The Troubles as a period of history is something that's a bit of a blind spot for me that I have been looking to remedy recently. I have quite a few books on the subject that are currently in my backlog, but this one came about as I was recovering at my parents from Glandular Fever. They bought some books for me, so I could read while I recovered, and I ended up grabbing this one. Fantastically written, and I think gets quite deep in the details with some fantastic interviews of people on both sides of the conflict. The book feels like a slow rumble towards disaster, and I absolutely ploughed my way through it.

Love it! Might be my favourite of the Karla trilogy, while I enjoyed The Honourable Schoolboy, I thought it was a step-down from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy even if I really enjoyed the backdrop of British Hong Kong. It felt like a fitting ending to the whole Karla plot line, now I just need to look at Le Carre's other works.

Very readable, I could easily pick it up for 10 minutes then put back down again with the way it's structured. I saw that it came up on a list along with Down And Out In Paris by Orwell, which I have wanted to read for some time, so I decided to give it a shot. The author is a captivating author, and I should see about picking up some more of his books. Highly recommend!

Loved the movie, so I decided to give the book a shot. Overall I enjoyed it, and I always enjoy to get a much wider perspective on conflicts that movies through the requirement of needing to streamline things can often leave out.

I tried to read this once before and bounced off for some reason, second time around though I had a lot more fun with it. Possibly because of Marvel fatigue I have been experiencing recently, but this really felt like a breath of fresh air.

Fun shortish science fiction book, recommended from a friend and really rather enjoyed. Will probably look through the authors back catalogue in the future.

Excellent book on submarine warfare, it is a bit like A Waiter In Paris in the sense that the stories are easily digestible chunks that jump around in time. That all being said, these guys were absolute maniacs, and it's incredible more people weren't killed during the cold war.

Christ, how depressing. I was hoping we had learned something from the AIDs epidemic that we would have used in our communication going forward around health issues, but as it turns out we seem to learn nothing and repeat the same mistakes again and again. Overall I enjoyed the book, but it did take some time to work my way through as I didn't find it as engaging as a lot of the other books. I think the way it is presented is interesting, but as someone who struggles to keep track of people when things are jumping around time and locations it felt like it required a greater degree of thinking. I heard that this book is a bit outdated, especially in regard to whom it pins the epidemic on as being the case zero, but I think it's probably still a pretty insightful book overall.

What a fantastic Science Communicator, funny, engaging stories told magnificently. Some parts of the books are, perhaps... a little dated, but overall I think this is an incredible read. Having seen Feynman lectures, you can really hear his voice throughout this book.