Seemed more like a non-fiction newspaper or magazine story
354083
I really wanted to like this book, interesting premise, I love these types of time travel books, but it read like a newspaper or weekly magazine account of the events, which was unappealing, so, I had to give it up at about 5%. Phrases like "The captain is seated at the far end of the table. Ashley Patterson runs a tight meeting" seems more like a non-fiction explanation.
2843665
I admit I have not taken the time to sit and read page by page. I preused the book since the author and I both worked for a time at the Florida Times-Union in the begining of our journalistic careers. The tone seemed a bit arrogant and bragging and overly dramatic. It turned me off and I pictured him as one of those types you find in some newsrooms who rush in all excited and full of exagerated tales of adventure and triumph over evil. I'll get around to reading it once I  run through the other books I have for this summer.
2138164
The story is really interesting; a twenty-four year old man goes into the wilderness in Alaska and tries to survive on hunting and eating berries. But ultimately he dies of starvation. THAT's the story I wanted to read. Not the similar stories of other men who have done the same in earlier times. And I definitely was not interested in reading about the author's mountain climbing trip when he was young. Why would I care? It just seemed self-indulgent.

Jon Krakauer is a good writer. But this book seemed simply like a magazine article flushed out with other stories to make it long enough so that it could be sold as a book. Boo.
2341820
I should have read more details?? This is not what 3 of us thought it would be
a fact/photo/informational book but rather it is an anecdotal writing about life
or a slice of life from each state. While the stories can be entertaining and interesting  it is not what we expected .I do think those who want to get a few facts(each state has a 1 page facts list) and 1 author picked photo from each state(and the photos usually are NOT of the state but
of many different things)and a short story may love this work, This is  a book that is a slice of Americana written from 50 individual viewpoints and styles. Pics range from salmon hanging on hooks for Alaska to boys standing in front of a sign "Welcome to New York from the 60's. Only 50 pics on about 10 pages however.
No real history or geography or photos that show the states etc.
But it was my fault ,I think,for not reading description thoroughly enough.
So, it is a literary piece rather than an historical or solely educational book.
I personally, would not buy it, but I do think many will who like short stories and Americana will enjoy reading this.
4337411
It wasn't a bad story, just seemed more like an elaborate outline for a bigger story.
1567016
Unfortunately I had been under the impression their would be a more cohesive flow to this book as a whole. I was a bit surprised at how this book was written and found it difficult to really feel an emotional attachment other than sympathy. I think I had been expecting the stories to be longer and to be written in a way that was a case report as opposed to dozens written from various points of view that never had anything more than an occasional statement of what happened to the person if that. Interesting and depressing, but I greatly feel this book could have been put together old written in a way that wasn't as if some person was telling how their day at work went.
3145932
The story is nice, actually a marvel, however the storytelling is little more than the quality of a not so astutely written newspaper column.

That the two animals bonded is nice, but we see that in nature videos. The photographs are nice but they're nothing to rave about.
2191531
I did not realize I was buying a compilation of news clips during that period.
I recall the acvtual news articles at the time.
I thought there was a story
4101145
This book was not quite what I was expecting.  Rather than scholarly scientific peer-reviewed articles, or even articles chosen from journals such as Nature or Science, most of these pieces are from places such as The New Yorker, Slate, and the majority coming from the publication Orion.  These articles are written from the perspective of reporting or journalism.  Perhaps a more appropriate title might have been Writing About Science and Nature, if you take the difference.

There really is a wide range of stories and writing styles as well.  I almost put the book down after the first piece.  Waiting for Light read completely like an advertisement for OMC, where it almost seemed like I was reading a company pamphlet that would to be given to potential investors.  Fortunately the next article, In Deep, about subterranean cavern explorers, was such a gripping read that I stayed with the book.  The stories really did cover a vast range.  A handful actually scientific and educational, but most came across as like I was listening to the transcript of an NPR story following the standard formula of: This is Jane.  Shes really interested in X.  Heres a little bit about X.  People agree and disagree with Jane.  Janes o.k. with that.  The end.  Thus, many of the articles also have the current journalist problem of not having a point of view.  The free seed people say this, Monsanto says that; but not really digging much deeper.

I found the nature articles to be a bit more interesting, such as attempts to protect right wales from fishing line or the conflict between turtle egg poachers and conservationists in Costa Rica.  All in all, I suppose this book is good to have as a quick read.  All the articles are 10-20 pages so for a quick, and sometimes educational, read while on the subway or before I went to bed, I did enjoy it for that.  I just wish it had been a little heavier on the science, a felt less like glossy magazine style of writing.
4389599
An interesting story that probably made a great magazine article (Saturday Evening Post).  Unfortunately, the book contains an abundance of details that are only marginally related to the story.  I found the last two-thirds to three-fourths of the book to be pretty tedious reading.
704882
It seemed to be more oriented to career writer's, those wishing to write for a living, such as Journalists or simple story writers. It seemed to place too much emphasis on building a public "platform", rather than quality book content. "Sell the author, not the book."
4232968
First off, this not a book, it's more like a magazine article. Most things mentioned here I knew them already and some of them we can do by using common sense. There are few good advice which I appreciate, but I was expecting to learn more.
352237
I bought this book based on a review which really intrigued me. It's about customer contact centers: their history, how they've evolved, and juicy horror stories that go farther than the frustration most of us have felt. While accurately reported, the book is ultimately disappointing because it reads like a magazine article -- several articles, in fact. It relies too heavily on long, under- or even un-edited quotes which dip into the arcane. It wanders into in-crowd musings on how to fix a company's customer service from the company's point of view, as if written for a trade magazine. It drills down too far into mechanics that would interest only a professional. It's reported, not considered; when the author muses over the effect of contact centers on our lives, it's a rare and refreshing cool drink of water -- this is what I wanted the whole book to be. With regret, I have to say it's not essential, and it ultimately doesn't deliver on the latter part of its subtitle.
1300799
While I've seen the movie Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, I had never read a Hunter S Thompson book before.  I wasn't super impressed, just not my style.  Was interesting enough overall, but at time i got a bit bored when it was bogged down in more journalistic reporting of stats. Almost like an extremely long newspaper article at times.
412446
I saw the author interviewed on TV and it looked like an interesting book. I read pretty much nothing but non-fiction and when the author mentioned that he usually wrote novels it should have sent up a red flag. Got a chapter or two into the book and realized that it was written in novel form, with a very wordy narrative. Not for me!
4684782
Some spots were quite amusing. The mistakes at live news were very revealing. The characters were interesting but I just couldn't connect strongly. It's think the prose of the live news was very distracting and unnecessary.
3899377
For the money, I was suprised to see it was just a thin 'book' thinner than a magazine. Not really worth the $