Rodero's Color of Evil: Difficult to follow the explanation ...
340787
Rodero's Color of Evil:  Difficult to follow the explanation of different police ranks.  However, clever weaving in of Greek/Roman myths concerning stars, constellations and mythological figures, Herakles and characters in his labors.  The author is very  knowledgeable, and that is a job well done.  Sometimes the presentation is confusing.  The book is overall carefully well woven, but gory.
4414822
Maybe we just couldn't figure it out (The directions weren't great), but the most we could see was a light shadow reflection. Very hard to see and trace anything with detail. Not to mention, it was hard to get and stay in a position to see the reflection.
1028659
It looks like a jigsaw puzzle. Because author disregard the sequence of narration, we have to recover it in our brain. It belomgs perhaps to one of most difficult novels.
4652662
The writing is becoming increasingly darker and darker from a phychlogically point of view.  This ones has a great deal of converging action with respect to the character's own thoughts and activity my multiple characters all at the same time.  Thus sometimes it is hard to follow who is thinking what and what is the action context the thoughts are imbedded into.
2791672
People are being found dead all over Gotham... but how?  Why?

Well, Batman: Book of Shadows TRIES to explain it... but it's barely comprehensible.  And it doesn't appear to be the fault of the writing, the story is good, but the art... Duke Mighten is the artist, and what he drew is... you can't follow it.  I'm thinking it's because he did both the pencils and inks, and he has a style that definitely needs a better inker to clarify what's happening.  It's too... wavy?  Is that a way to describe it?  I think so, you'd have to see it to understand.

If they ever re-release this book with a new inker (and that will never happen) it might be worth picking up, but as it is, it's just a missed opportunity.
4570748
As a practicing Buddhist, I purchased this book in Spanish for my housekeeper who reads and speaks mostly Spanish. She tells me that the book is interesting, however, some of the concepts are hard to understand. I don't know if it's the way that the book is written or just the fact that she cannot readily understand the information as Buddhism is more of a philosophy and way of thought than it is a "religion".
2760624
This is what happens when you read this book: A simulation of Hostadter is installed on your brain, and the world never looks the same again. I wish he spent more time exploring the morality though. Why should the higher representational capacity necessarily lead to more ethical behavior? One can name many monsters who were superbly capable of understanding their victims.
4453376
Much too dark. OK, we get the point, people-companies-intitutions can be taken over. For me though, two things annoy me: the depiction of unrelenting evil and since I am not a computer gamer, after a while reading about other dimensions etc... was not 'real enough' (meaning I could not relate or imagine it or visualize it), I stopped reading..
4916321
I'm sorry, but after repeated attempts to wrap my head around this story, I just couldn't do it. If I were more versed in Mid-Eastern names, maybe I would've been more successful. The only advice I can give on this one is that one needs to be prepared for some serious mental energy when diving in......this doesn't come easy, and I was just too tired to make much sense of it.
2948008
To balance out the previous reviewer...  Yes the story is a bit hard to comprehend at first.  This is both deliberate and necessary at first, since  we view the world pretty much thru the eyes of the protaganist Yushiro.  Unfortunately, many things are hidden from his view, thus we don't get to  know them as well.  The story does picked up near episode 4.
765012
I gather that many readers are perplexed by this book because it is so stylistically difficult to understand and therefore at times the reader may feel that he is being left out of the joke resulting in hurt feelings or a sense of insecurity.  Detective mystery, allegory, philosophical musings or theological ruminations, it is a bit of all of these.  It is satisfying that although written in 1908, it does not seem dated even though the master evil-doer does seem to be anarchist but Holmes must have his Moriarity and Bond his Specter.

There is plenty to comment about concerning the purpose of the book, but let it suffice to say that as an Edwardian gentleman, Chesterton manages to dabble in giving his opinion on a variety of subjects from the purpose of faith to other mundane but rewarding pursuits.

Written 40 years before Animal Farm, it in many ways points the way for that work.  Yet in my opinion Animal Farm yields very little on a second reading, G.K.'s work does offer more on a second reading.  This isn't Father Brown but it does illustrate why that series is so popular.  The chase after "Sunday" alone is worth reading for any would- be action writers.

Slightly altered by time, although if this were a painting we would be discussing patina, this piece requires a little patience but is well worth the effort.
2023757
Hard to follow...maybe, it would make more sense if the other books were read first?
2798326
Aurobindo is first of all a mystic qualified by Alexandra David-Neel "a reasonable mystic". and I quite agree. The translation, by modern habits is difficult to read and may for certain look grammatically incorrect, and they may be therefore disturbed. Getting a comment from a field I know much better than Hinduism, I am tempted to say of that translation what Sir Alan Gardiner, a foremost egyptologist said once of the "The Chapters of coming forth by day" also known as "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" -- a misleading title --: "[A]ll translation (of this texts) must be considered as wrong". I do pretend that the same can be said of many if not all very old religious texts, i.e. also of the Upanishads. But the commentary is really interesting, and brings in my mind as "a simple reader interested but no mystic" more than other such comments. Aurobindo make a comment from the inside, and feeling himself what currents pass through the texts. And this is why I do read and reread that translation. Not to find a text of modern English poetry.
2534107
NEARLY EVERY verse needs a explanation???? Think about it! We DON'T question the heart of the producer of this product, we only question the method and pattern it was created in. In Genesis we are given the Creation of the Human race along with a DETAILED PROCESS of DECEPTION, the serpent began to dialog, MERGE his words/concepts INTO Eves PERCEPTIONS of Gods word, when Eve and the Devil stopped talking to each other the Human race was cast into spiritual death. In other words Eve WASN'T satisfied with God's word >>AS IT WAS<< HOLY aka separate, SHE wanted MORE, and the serpent led her to believe there was a SOURCE OF TRUTH >>>>OTHER<<< than God's HOLY/SEPARATE Word. It the temptation/fall story we have histories FIRST "paraphrase" "commentary" "expositors bible". Eve was created to be Adams "HELPER" but the serpent went FOR the "helper", then the serpent DECEIVED the "helper". Eve then became Adams FALLEN "helper". Eve after beginning conversation WITH the UNholy one added TO an took AWAY from God's word. Many a Protestant rightfully slams the RCC for putting it's tradition on the same level as the Holy Word of God, BUT many a Protestant does the SAME by exalting their commentaries of favorite preachers written/audio works ABOVE the word of God, DON'T be deceived, ALL you need IS the Word of God alone.
2189012
Trinitarian theology is a difficult subject. Scriptural references are few and their meaning is not obvious - indeed, they can easily be read as contradictory. In fact, there is no explicit description of the Trinity in the scriptures at all - the orthodox view of the Trinity (three persons in one God) is an inferential conclusion from scripture that took generations to piece together. Having arrived at that conclusion, the next problem was to understand exactly what it meant - a problem difficult enough that many argued that it was simply a mystery the answer to which we might know in the next life but not this.
This famously difficult problem is the subject of Augustine's "The Trinity". In addressing it, he has two motives. His first motive is to combat non-Trinitarian heresy by showing the scriptural support for the concept and by showing that it is not inherently contradictory. His second motive is to attempt to understand the Trinity more deeply, to satisfy the scriptural directive to "seek His face evermore".
"The Trinity" is a long book, the second longest work in the Augustinian corpus, and one that he worked on, intermittently, for sixteen years. He might not have finished it had not the unauthorized publication of the first twelve "books", led him to write the final three in order to avoid having the work available only in an incomplete form.
"The Trinity" begins with a consideration of the Scriptural references to the Trinity, with the aim of reconciling them and explaining them through the supposition of three equal persons in one God. Augustine is at particular pains to maintain the equality of the persons: that the Son is equal to the Father, and the Holy Spirit equal to both. Of particular concern to Augustine are the references to the Son and Holy Spirit being sent, with the implication that the Father who sends must be superior to them. This presentation takes up the first eight books.
From there Augustine aims to develop some deeper understanding of the nature of the Trinity. His approach is to use the fact that the Man was created in the image of God. Given this, Augustine reasons, there should be some image of the Trinity in man. This leads to the consideration of a succession of trinities - the lover, beloved, and love; memory, understanding, and will; the objects of sense, the will to attend to them, and the sense impressions of them; etc. This presentation, which take up the next four books, is interesting, but often perplexing. It is easy for the reader to see that the trinities he names are not analogues of the divine Trinity, and it can be perplexing to attempt to understand how Augustine intends to bring this discussion of the trinities in man together.
It is in the last few books, written after the premature publication of the earlier books, that Augustine works to reverse the centrifugal tendencies of his discussion of the trinities in man and unify them into a whole. The trinities in man are held up not as exact analogues to that in God, but as a ladder, starting with the most carnal and rising towards the most spiritual; we do not find a single Trinity like that of God within ourselves, but we do find a series of them that we can ascend, and in ascending it we approach the divine Trinity and a deeper understanding of God.
3910984
Overall I liked the book due the intriguing speculation about cyclic universes. It starts gently, even spending almost two pages to describe logarithm and its additive property (!!!), but as you advance it becomes more and more complicated, and there are parts that are very hard to grasp, even by mathematically trained persons, as myself. For instance, he mentions coupling but does not explain it. It is not an easy book to read but the main idea is provocative. It gave me the impression that, as Penrose was writing the book, started to become impatient and glossed over many definitions. Conformal geometry diagrams are not explained properly. Seems that during the writing he started to assume that his readers would have the necessary training to understand all he describes, which is not reflected at the first chapters.
2217199
As for a "problem" with the story of the man of Gadara the scripture say's they were in the "country" of the Gadarenes not in Gadara. Had the author actually read the scripture he might have seen there is no problem with this. Another huge issue I have is with this statement: "Perhaps this is one more clue in our contention that, despite parasites and scary cryptids, the ultimate message of the paranormal is one of unity and love" I almost fell out of my chair when I read that statement! It shows just how ignorant and out of touch the authors are if they really believe that! We are witnessing the greatest deception in the history of mankind at this moment. It is a deception that has been planned for thousands of year and is about to be sprung on a spiritually ignorant populace. This book in my opinion helps to confuse the ignorant just that much more. The author call's unbelievably  powerful and extremely intelligent fallen angels "parasites" These angels have an agenda and the authors (wittingly or not) are helping to push their agenda. There is an evil world system coming, these paranormal manifestations are bursting forth for the specific purpose of deceiving. Jesus said that deception would be the main sign of  the end of the world and just about everyone will be deceived...if possible, even the very elect! This book is just another piece of that deception. It's a very poor time in history to be spiritually ignorant!