blairconrad's reviews
1124 reviews

A charming graphic novel with simple and expressive black-and-white illustrations. The narrative is convincingly childlike, and the combination of this with the illustration is at times amusing and disturbing. I don’t have much information about the changes that happened in Iran during the time of the story, so I was glad to learn a little more about them, especially in such an entertaining manner.

Tremendously informative and fun. Gilbert does a great job of guiding us on a tour of our brain – how it deals with what it remembers, what it experiences, and what it fabricates. We learn how those factors combine to influence our ability to predict our future happiness, and with this knowledge, see why our predictions often go astray.
The concepts flow smoothly, in logical progression, and are well-illustrated, with examples of studies performed to derive the theories being discussed.
Oh, and it’s funny – Gilbert’s tossed my idea, formed when reading [b:Freakonomics A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything|1202|Freakonomics A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Revised and Expanded Edition)|Steven D. Levitt|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1157833345s/1202.jpg|5397], that researchers should be paired with professional writers, on its head.

A must-read for those of you who have brains.

A followup to The Elegant Universe. Once again Greene does an amazing job of presenting involved physical concepts to the layperson. This time he focuses on cosmology – the origin and possible demise of the universe. As before, his prose is clean and entertaining and his illustrations engaging. Definitely worth reading.

Nice. Chabon has a tremendous way with words, and many of his sentences are a joy to read. The individual stories from his life are nearly almost interesting and informative. The good ones are very very good, but for one or two of them I found myself drifting away - those ones just didn't resonate with me. Still, overall a great read, and it was a privilege to be invited into Mr. Chabon's life and to see how he views himself as a husband, father, and son.

I wasn’t so sure at first – the opening didn’t really grab me, but after a few chapters, I was hooked. Interesting, if somewhat one-sided, characters were used to explore specific examples of how we relate to one another and to our past – like I’d expect to find in a good collection of interrelated short stories, like [b:Turning|985392|Turning|Tim Winton|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180014051s/985392.jpg|856423]. Also, it’s a very easy read, so once you get in, the pages just fly by.

A very good book, balancing the need to present useful refactorings against the risk of alienating readers with too-complicated refactorings. The constant references to [a:Martin Fowler|25215|Martin Fowler|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]’s work were justified, and if you really want to get the most out of this book, you should have [b:Refactoring|44936|Refactoring Improving the Design of Existing Code|Martin Fowler|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170271761s/44936.jpg|44258] and [b:Design Patterns|85009|Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software|Erich Gamma|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171058709s/85009.jpg|1432171] with you.
I didn’t, though, and still found it very interesting. By the end, the “mechanism” section of each refactoring was a little tough slogging, but the examples were very followable. A must-have for work, and I was considering shelling out my own money for a copy, until my wife bought me a copy for my birthday, because she loves me even though I'm a geek.
Oh, and there are two integrated bookmarks!

Not terrible, but not great. As has been said before, much like a long long episode of the Report, but without the dynamism that an actual Colbert brings to the table. Likewise no guests. I found that the sidebars were occasionally amusing, but didn’t have the same impact that the Word does, as one has to actually interrupt the reading of the main text to get the full effect of the sidebars, whereas the word just seeps into your head as Colbert talks. Still, there are a number of funny bits, and I did chuckle aloud in places. If you like the show, it’s probably worthwhile at least borrowing the book from someone.

An entertaining prequel, with a little bit of information to fill in the gaps surrounding the founding of Neopolis and its unusual police force. Doesn’t hold a candle to the actual series, though.

A very cute book. I like hippos (yeah, big shock), so my friend Steve gave me this for my birthday. I actually learned a few things about the Owen-Mzee relationship that I didn’t know, and the pictures are so darn cute!

Book of the year so far (keep in mind, it’s the beginning of March). I really enjoyed Pollan’s writing style – the book was fairly conversational, which made it easy to read, but was very informative throughout. I also liked the way he organized the content into the 3.5 different families of food and further broke down each section – the repetition and order made it very easy to read and to relate the sections one to the other.
I really enjoyed the first two sections – industrial and organic/”local sustainable”. They both opened my eyes up quite a bit – I didn’t fully realize the extent to which corn had pervaded our food chain, and the problems and modifications that that’s caused. I was also unaware of exactly how little the “organic” designation bought us on food (although I did know that I enjoy calling non-organic food as “inorganic” – the absurdity!), and I really enjoyed the description of the differences between industrial organic and smaller, sustainable, grass-based farming.
The last section – hunting and gathering – didn’t thrill me quite as much, although it was still well worth reading. I think I was turned off by the discussion of the ethics of eating animals, partly because (like most people, I suspect) I sometimes feel guilty about eating animals, especially animals that probably didn’t have very enjoyable lives, and thinking about that isn’t a lot of fun for me. Also, I found that the discussion veered more and more toward Pollan relating other writers’ and philosophers’ views on these matters, leaving behind some of the fact-based format of the previous sections (although we did get a fair bit of Salatin’s opinions in the middle section). Finally, I think that the hunter/gatherer section just didn’t apply to me, in that I know I’m not going to run out and become a hunter or gatherer, but I might (do) eat industrially produced food and might (do, but less so) eat more organic and/or sustainably and locally grown foods.
Read the book, it’s kind of like a [b:Guns, Germs, and Steel|1842|Guns, Germs, and Steel|Jared Diamond|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1158959888s/1842.jpg|2138852] that deals with present-day food issues, instead of food issues from 11,000 years ago.