Author likes to show off his intelligence and his useless large vocabulary
584010
Author likes to show off his intelligence and his useless large vocabulary.
Its not interesting for common folk like me. 200 pages to long.
771014
If an author repeats descriptive info about characters every time they appear in the text, she believes reader is not smart enough to remember important characters
2601860
This book has been enlightening in at least one respect - I thought one had to be an upper-class English twit to be this pretentious.  Gopnik, of course, is not the former, but he is most certainly the latter.

To be fair, occasionally Gopnik does present a humorous nugget or a unique insight into Parisian life (though not French life; he is only a Parisophile, not a Francophile.) It's the other 95% of the book's self-indulgent prattle that is so annoying.  I swear that if Gopnik thought that too many readers understood the massive amounts of French in the book, he would switch to Latin or Greek.  He is not merely a name dropper, he's a word dropper.

While it starts out well enough, no more than 1/2 way through the book the reader is reduced to skimming page after page of discussions about food, reports of haute couture fashion shows, and an endless series of boring reflections on his young son.  Toward the end of the book Gopnik even mentions taking his 4-year old on a trip back to New York in order for the boy to be interviewed for admission to a good pre-school!  What a turkey this Gopnik character is.  How is he ever going to explain all this pomposity to the boy when he grows up?
1866161
Author digresses too much, too confusing to follow, and the author likes to show off his $10.00 vocabulary.  I'm not impressed.
2447784
I read the reviews, the bulk of which were negative, but I  purchased the book anyway. Mistake. Unless you are a super intellect like the author, this book will relentlessly degenerate into an incomprehensible collection of words and acronyms.
3578980
The author needs to study syntax and the no-use of adjectives. On the other hand I suggest a ghost writer.
2384293
Mr Brunton is obscure to the point of vanishing. His "wisdom" is based on the reader being unable to figure out what he's talking about.
2474365
A book that would have been better titled as something along the lines of 'I'm Jeanine Pirro, And This Is Why I'm The Best'.
The title, subject and jacket description were intriguing enough that I purchased the book. The first warning sign that I failed to notice was the fact that the photo section had 4 pictures of the subject, 4 pictures of the subject's victims, and 6 pictures of the author - seven, if you count the jacket. Reading the book, which is written in casual, conversational, unsophisticated style, it becomes increasingly clear that the author considers herself a gift to humanity, and everyone who disagrees with her is an idiot. The original investigator is 'incompetent', 'corrupt', and/or 'stupid'. The judge on the first trial is just not as good as the author would have been on the same bench. The jurors on the first trial (that returned a not guilty verdict), were 'morons', 'idiots', 'enamored', 'publicity seeking', or corrupt. On, and on, and on. The meat on the subject matter would have filled 2 chapters, the rest is icing on the author's cake. Every chapter has a reference to a television program that involved the author.  As for the writing and editing: A good author can weave suspense even when writing about a tale with a known outcome. Not here- this volume is plodding prose, with nary a page without self promotion. I suspect a lot of the promotional material is inflated or fabricated. But I am neither interested nor intrigued enough to investigate. I stopped reading after chapter 11, and returned the book.
There are much better ways to read up on a contemporary murder investigation. If you want to read up on a contemporary celebrity, then by all means pick up this book.
625100
The author is somewhat of a nut job. That said he has been successful at writing books to keep his lifestyle afloat.
3164911
The book contains a high amount of verbal fluff with limited academic substance.
942302
The author is pretty sharp when he talks about how oral traditions helped develop some Indo-European languages. For example, discussions about Veda (the ancient holy scripture of India) is quite smart. But he was lost when he discusses oriental languages, especially Chinese.
  In China, evidences of writing 4,000 years BCE (i.e., nearly 1,000 years earlier than any signs of writing appeared in Egypt or Mesopotamia.) have been found, while he claimed the earliest evidences dated around 1,500 BCE. And he almost made himself fantastic when he sympathetically cited a claim that the Indo-Europeans, in a twisted way, helped inspire China's writing system. Indeed, nobody is sure whether or not Indo-Europeans existed when writing first appeared in China, or even in Egypt or Mesopotamia.
  One more thing that reveals the author's ignorance is the claim that Chinese (only) uses some 8,000 characters, and that somehow proves that Chinese is the most conservative language. Though what he meant is not entirely clear, there is an obvious misunderstanding here. He must have thought that those "characters" are equivalent with "words" in English. Isn't that true?
  Well, while some of them are, they are much more than that. Those 8,000 charaters, when they come into use, form at least ... 40,000 words, sometimes in single characters, more often in pairs, and occsionally in triplets and quadruples. It is such words which are more "equivalent" to Indo-European words. For example, Fang, one character, is similar to House; Tian, to Heaven; Shi-jie, two charaters, to World; Qi-che, to Automobile; so on and so forth.
  A modestly educated Chinese knows (either reads or writes) about 13,000 characters and thus 65,000 words, which, in terms vocabulary, makes him more than an equivalent of William Shakespere , who used a little more than 35,000 words, in all his plays and sonnets and other poems.
  The author should know that he is not a pastor of any Indo-European gods. When a scholar addresses a broad audience, he should know that making insane claims doesn't help to advance his cause, because many in the audience might know something he doesn't.
  An old Confucius saying might sober him up: One shouldn't brag about things he doesn't know well enough.
325810
I'm quite well educated and have a large vocabulary, but this guy's writing style is way too much for me.  The reading is quite difficult due to the writer's self aware use of words.  There are laughs here, but these short chapters using voluminous vocabulary distracts and nearly destroys a reader's ability to enjoy this.  If this had been written using a high school grad's vocabulary, it would have been much more readable.
3533356
If you like your humor juvenile and idiotic, read on. Im pretty sure the author doesnt just condone the use of drugs in the books. It appears he partakes too often as his maturity level indicates a stunted growth.
1067451
Tendentious argumentation, tedious, name dropping, arrogant, and better than anything he's published since.
1510910
I got through maybe 10 pages because of the poor language skills of the author.  Have to learn how to delete books off my kindle now.
1760914
Writer insults the reader with constant repetitions, poor articulation, obvious revelations.  His heroes are fellow Minnesota writers John Sandford and Vince Flynn;  he's nowhere near their caliber.  Maybe he gets better with later books...
2752079
This  book  is  a  rambling  bunch  of  run  on  sentences  with  no  punctuation  and ranting  about some  kind  of  craziness  going  on  the  the  author's  head. If  you  want  to  get  a  headache  fast,read  this  book. It  appears  like  the  writer  is  trying  to  impress  you  with  a  vocabulary  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  prose  but  is  included in  the  writing  to  make  it  look  like  he  is  intelligent. This  book  is  a  waste  of  time  and  was  a  struggle  to  get  through.