Incredibly interesting, entertaining, and thoroughly enjoyable book
349837
I loved the way this story was told; from the subject's perspective and mind. Loved the period and place of the setting and all the details from that time and place. I would recommend this book especially to young teenagers and up.
2198983
The author skillfully makes a career few of us can imagine not only comprehensible, but truly interesting.  Richly detailed, and painstakingly researched, The Pilot moves seamlessly through the history of aerial warfare, vividly bringing to life the sights, sounds, and perhaps most importantly the emotions beneath the canopy of fighter aircraft through the ages.  This, in and of itself, makes The Pilot a truly fascinating read.  But the timeless allure of Paris that holds together each vignette of the pilot's memory gives the novel an added level of international intrigue and romance.  Add to this the authors appreciation of the humor found in even the most unlikely of circumstances, and you have a broadly appealing novel that is both educational and entertaining.  Even though I am a personal acquaintance of the author, I have been a teacher of English literature for over two decades, and recognize a great read when I see it.
3639650
This is an immensely readable and enjoyable book.  Richard Wiseman has wisely eschewed the idea of writing a book debunking the paranormal (of which there are plenty already) and instead opted to focus on letting us know HOW it's done, and even how to do it ourselves for the entertainment of family and friends.  Wiseman tells his story by focusing on people in history - specific people who have either developed some kind of reputation for being able to achieve paranormal phenomena, or of debunking and exposing them.  In this way he gives a book of real substance, which really gets to the nitty-gritty.  It's also very entertaining, and included many elements with which I was not familiar (despite have quite a collection of books on this topic and of Wiseman's previous work).  An excellent read and very educational.
1741181
This is a wonderfully entertaining and educational book. The book is meant for 13-16 year old readers, but I am a 56 year old biologist and I really enjoyed it. As a matter of fact it was hard to put down. I do think teenagers would love this book, and many will be able to relate to it. I could see this book being used for a Netflix series, and it would be a great book for high school teachers to use in an integrated English/Science unit. There is a lot of interesting topics to discuss with teenagers including genetics, DNA, dealing with difficult parents and much more. I highly recommend this book as a great read anytime of the year!
2889774
This is simply an amazing book, but it will not amuse those who don't naturally study people; those types will understandably--based upon their preferences--give the book few stars. I give it five stars.

The work is unique in that it does something I've never seen done before: it records the encounters between famous people, and in that sense it is biographical, however, it is biographical only in the abbreviated sense that it captures, usually at some event, each person's "reaction" to the other person.  The amusing thing is that many, if not most, of these reactions are ambiguous, often containing both heightened negative and hightened postive feelings about the other person.  This approach to examining and describing interpersonal encounters is hilarious because it resonates with the experience most "regular" people have when they encounter other regular but very interesting people: we tend to admire the new interesting person while simultaneously finding faults in them; we like them and don't like them.  This book accentuates that phenomenon, throwing it onto stark relief, because every person in it is both extremely talented (and/or famous, and/or rich) and extremely idiosyncratic, the parties consequently have a lot of material to work with. The reactions are priceless, e.g., you wouldn't necessarily think that the composer Tchaikoavsky would have had a particularly vexing problem with Leo Tolstoy, or Elvis Presely one with Paul McCartney, or Charlie Chaplin one with Groucho Marx, but they all did, and they're amusing problems.

On the other hand, in contrast to the absurdities of life, there are more than a handful of very touching encounters in the book where both people walked away with lingering, life-long senses of mutual regard and warmth, e.g., that between Mark Twain and Helen Keller. Consequently, the book provides an activation of my fascination with both the nastier, judgemental sides of human nature, and the warmer, fuzzier sides of it.

The icing on top of this cake is that all these encounters are linked, namely, one of the parties in every  given encounter is a party in the next encounter, so there is a sense of a conversational wave, or more a tide, moving  back and forth between the 1876 shore of Tolstoy/Tchaikovsky to the 2007 shore of Dominick Dune/Phil Spector, with the issues in one conversation sometimes foreshadowing  issues in another conversation decades away.

Finally, read the book close to Google, as you will want to familiarize (re-famaliarize) yourself with many of these fascinating people.

Anyway, that's what  I think.
3647025
(Dear reader, please note: this is a review for the audiobook, not the printed version :))

I bought this audiobook yesterday, motivated by my unadulterated admiration for the inimitable Michael Emerson, who narrates the story.  The reviews for the book itself were a mixed bag but I figured "12 straight hours of Emerson's voice? Yes, please!" and went ahead and bought it.

As it was late in the evening when I got around to starting it, I initially intended to listen to it an hour or two before going to sleep.  Six hours later I was still wide awake, unable to tear myself away from the intoxicating world I had walked into.

Passionate though I am about the past, the history of the United States was never a topic that interested me much, and thus 'The Amalgamation Polka' is not the sort of book I would normally go for; but from the beginning I found myself genuinely absorbed by the author's ability to create such a thoroughly believable and interesting world of yesteryear's Haves and Have Nots; characters so realistic, so un-contrived, that one instantly forgets they are fictional.

The brilliant narrator's extensive range of accents-- perfectly breathing life into each and every one, from the aging slave to the Cockney pirate to the posh English rose-- contributed enormously to the experience and had me thoroughly hooked throughout.  The heavy scenes are read with solemn gravity, making you feel like an invisible witness to the goings on.  But there is plenty of humour to be found throughout, and if you're as tickled by cantankerous curmudgeons drawling old-timey expressions as I am, you will no doubt find yourself laughing out loud in parts.

The attention to detail, both on the part of the author and the narrator, are what make this audiobook such a gem.  The use of language and the dialogues are just delicious and make this work so effortlessly captivating to the listener.  This is without a doubt a fascinating slice of the past I will be enjoying again and again.
2484803
This book tells a truly fascinating story in an engaging and captivating way.  I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, spies, defeating Nazis, badass women, codebreaking, eccentric millionaires, romance, the military ... Okay, everybody. I recommend this book for everybody.
4424805
Incredibly enjoyable book with believable, flawed but very likeable, and unpredictable characters. The story line will keep you guessing, too. Historically accurate, well-written, and fully entertaining. I am definitely looking forward to reading more books by this author!
2442095
A comprehensive, informative and entertaining read, very well done.
2929045
One of the smartest, best researched and most remarkably entertaining books I've read in years. The only thing more impressive than the exhaustive scope of Ms. Price's research is the masterful way she presents this unlikely story. Simply put, it's a page-turner, and her wit and ever-present humor leaven the narrative and make it an absolute must-read. Watch out, Michael Pollan! This is an important book about food, health, and our society. I highly recommend that you read it!
2552118
There are already several very detailed reviews here about this book, so I'll avoid repeating what they said. I'll just add my four-star rating by saying that this is a surprisingly interesting and easy to read book, given the fact that the main topic is not something one might expect to be particularly captivating. But Turner's excellent writing style, combined with an amazing amount of research spanning several topics from history to religion, makes this a thoroughly enjoyable book from front to back. The only reason I didn't give it a full five stars was that, if anything, it's a bit too long and spends too much time going into excrutiating detail on minor points. I think the author could have shortened this book by nearly a hundred pages and still achieved the full effect he intended. However, he certainly does present an exhaustive discussion of this topic and I am amazed at how much I learned. One final note: Perusing through the bibliography after I finished, I was utterly astonished at the volume of research the author did for this book. I cannot imagine how much time he spent putting together this delightful book, though I'm certainly thankful for his efforts.
4926668
This was an absolutely unique and wonderful book. The writing style is certainly different, but while the fact that it was all over the place would normally bother me, this was pulled together so brilliantly that I loved it. It's funny, blunt, entertaining, and completely enthralling. Amazing book.
4920823
There really is something for everyone in this remarkable book.  As a development practitioner and educator, I would not hesitate to recommend this book to my colleagues and students, as it brings to life the roles of different stakeholders in international commerce, the media, and law and diplomacy, amongst many other fields, while highlighting the absolutely essential (but often overlooked) role of translators and interpreters in just about every aspect of globalized life as we know it.  This is not just an "academic" book, however - the many anecdotes, stories, and interviews are in turns interesting, heart-rending, inspiring, and hilarious (or often all of those at once!), and the writing style is very fast-paced and enjoyable to read.  This is an entertaining and thought-provoking book with what I believe is a very broad appeal.
4809170
This is one of the funnest books to read, ever.

The 'ten hundred words' limit does not get stale or ever truly 'limit' Munroe - he still manages to write some seriously interesting and educational stuff while keeping it entertaining. The whole way through you'll be making connections between what the simplified words mean and what you know from real life, but you'll also be learning a lot of new things. It's especially great when, through such simple terminology, you find out the answer to a question you never would've considered asking, like how Everest is not the furthest point from the center of earth, and that one of Uranus' moons once orbited the sun.

And that terminology gives way not only to humour but also to an insane amount of charm and sentiment. The introduction reads out like a child trying to explain why they've written a book. I personally love the section at the bottom of the page on "Tall Roads" (bridges) where Munroe writes with a child's voice about how bridges are so physically useful and well constructed, that life on other planets might use very similar models, and that somewhere, an alien might be looking at a bridge just like the one Munroe was looking at, and thinking about Munroe, too.

That kind of sentimentality is, I think, the central staple of Munroe's XKCD, and it only shines brighter in Thing Explainer due to the childlike wonder in the writing. Thing Explainer writes without expectation of understanding, prior knowledge of language, or any prior knowledge; it is one of the closest things to a window into someones thoughts.

I hope to clarify for many potential buyers that saw the early "Up Goes Five": this book is more focused on explaining things in paragraphs rather than the pure labelling style of that early prototype. This lends to a lot more explanations for the reasons behind things, rather than the one-dimensional humor of a pure 'translation' of the names of things. The book still has a large focus on drawings and writing about the drawings - certainly more than What If? had - but it also takes its time to go into depth about the function of things beyond their names.

I'd also like to clarify that this book is BIG! My expectation was a novel-sized book but it is in fact very large. Each page is very detailed, the book has fold out pages and a free poster, and the amount of individual topics is huge and will keep you entertained for a long time. INSANELY worth it for such a low amount of money! (I still cannot believe it was so cheap.)

This book is great for me and my family to make connections between what we already know and the book, but I believe it will also be great for kids to easily learn new things, and get a grasp of complex ideas.

A Thought: I'd love to see this style of writing carried across to genres beyond science, because I think it has the potential to make generally interesting yet charm-less writing far more fun; history books, biopics, even short stories. Perhaps someone will develop a system for 'translating' Wikipedia articles.
1011218
This is truly a GREAT book that I could not put down. Thomas Dolby is an absolutely gifted writer/storyteller. The book is extremely enjoyable even if you are not associated with the music or technology industries (as I am not). It feels like he is sitting next to you, recounting stories in great detail. He has a way of describing things so well that you feel like you were there. Each story that he tells throughout the book, while very entertaining in isolation, actually has a purpose; it helps explain his fascinating musical and technological journey (and what he learned along the way), to better understand what drives him and how he got to where he is today. It was also very eye-opening to learn about these industries and to see what a powerful impact he has had on them and vice-versa. In summary, it is a wonderful,  informative, and well-written book. There is also an audio version that I'm sure would be great to listen to!
1025708
Perhaps this is not a true mystery in the general sense of the genre, but there truly are several fascinating mysteries that unfold in this story. And given that it has been weeks, no, months, since I wrote a Mystery Mondays post I felt this book was worthy of one.

Several people more familiar with Koontz's works recommended that I read this one first, and I can't say that I blame them. I thoroughly enjoyed this book--so much that I finished all 500+ pages in less than two days. Not only is it an exciting, suspenseful read, this book is often humorous and sharp throughout. I honestly cannot write about any aspects of the plot, nor would I want to, but while absolutely far-fetched, it is 100% entertaining. Koontz's dialogues between the characters are spot-on if you enjoy witty banter and have a sense of the ironic. In the midst of terrifying events these exchanges provide a welcome comic relief while not taking away from the matters at hand.

While I did find myself able to predict some aspects of the story (and I have to say I was impressed with myself at times, as I frequently don't pick up on subtle clues), there were other twists that I wasn't able to see coming. I think anyone who enjoys a good suspenseful read with a healthy dose of wit would enjoy this book.
3783281
I had the great fortune to find this book just before leaving for Pittsburgh to caddie for a competitor in the 2010 U.S. Women's Open at Oakmont last week.

As a page-turner, it's a wonderful read, and some will find it enjoyable and entertaining on that level.  The personalities involved in the story and the background Lazarus and Schlossman provide as to those personalities' characters, motivations, and perhaps of most interest, fears and frustrations are fascinating.  Who could've guessed from afar, for example, that Lee Trevino craved privacy?  I would think that writing of that nature would be interesting not only for golf devotees such as me, but also those fascinated by the relationship between human nature and competitive sports.  What other sport is so conducive to prompting a competitor to speak as openly, as Johnny Miller apparently did at the time, about "choking" and being afraid to shank a critical shot?  What other singular athletic endeavor is played out so openly in front of fans and now millions watching on television or over the intenet?  It was not so true in the 70s when these events unfolded - no one who wasn't there ever saw Johnny Miller making birdie on the first four holes.  The authors here do a terrific job in giving us the flavor of those moments.

The story itself, though known to just about every golf fan over the past 20 or more years, still sparkles in their retelling.

However, more than being a good story populated by fascinating characters, I think the authors set a very intriguing backdrop, one about which I wish, frankly, to have had even more.  The tournament story is a great one, but it could only have come to life on a golf course like Oakmont.  Oakmont is a one-of-a-kind experience for the player, the caddie and even the spectators.  What Johnny Miller accomplished, against the backdrop of that course, under the pressure of the players surrounding him and the nature of the event itself (perhaps the toughest test in all of tournament golf), is only enhanced by the fact that it took place at Oakmont.

I think Lazarus and Schlossman were thoughtful, appropriately skeptical when necessary and sensitive to every aspect of the story and its characters.

Compelling stuff.  Well researched, contemplated, judged and written about.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone.