Book reviews for July 2013

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017
Doctor Who: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds

Doctor Who: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds

5/5

I don't normally do SciFi series books... but this is Alastair Reynolds doing Doctor Who. Jon Pertwee era with UNIT and The Master. If the BBC had a 300 million Pound budget for a Doctor Who story line in the 70's this is what they would have made.

 

Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson

Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson

4/5

I always enjoy Po Bronson and he's typically on form here with fascinating research and anecdotes around the topic of competition. There is a lot of new evidence on how hormones work that I'd never seen before and an interesting theory that competitive sports are a precursor to democracy. Much of this book is about how competition brings out creativity and drive. I wonder it it's missing a trick here and that the real factor is operating under constraint with competition being just one of many possible forms of constraint. In addition to the studies showing that art was better when a competition was involved I'd like to see how this worked out when one set of artists was limited to using just brown and silver... I'd bet the results would look pretty similar.

 

Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4) by Dan Brown

Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4) by Dan Brown

2/5

By the numbers. OK, but not great.

 

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Reviews and links for September 2010

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson

4/5

I'm a big fan of Bronson and I became a father last Thursday, finishing this book the day after. NurtureShock is packed full of the latest research on child development from infants (I can't believe how happy I am that Baby Einstein doesn't work) to teenagers. If you're unwilling to vaccinate you can probably skip this, otherwise I'd say a must read for parents. But do check back - will update this review in eighteen years or so...

 

WAR by Sebastian Junger

3/5

WAR consists of Junger embedding with infantry trying to hold a valley in Afghanistan. He visits several times over the course of their deployment and gets caught up in a frightening amount of action. It's as much a book about dealing with this personally as it is about the soldiers he's there to cover. There's very little context about why the valley might be important, or about the war in general, just an account of the hard pointy end of warfare and the psychology of the troops before, during and after.

 

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

3/5

It's a passionate manifesto for focusing on new media for marketing and PR, and a reasonable guide as to how to go about it. I found repeated chapters on the same topic to be a bit grating but if you're completely new to blogging I guess it could be helpful. Readers would be better served by including more on SEO basics and less on Second Life. Worth a read if you're not even blogging yet, probably a pass otherwise.

 

Links

- Star Trek pizza cutter from Boing Boing (Need this!).

- The coming BlackBerry row from BBC - American Frei (Those who don't remember the Clipper Chip are doomed to repeat it...).

- David Miliband: This is Ed's day from BBC News - Home (And it will probably make for a really crappy Miliband Christmas.).

- Timelapse Footage of San Francisco and its Fog at Night from Spots Unknown (Often the fog here looks like a time lapse.).

- Ewan McGregor in a Spitfire from BBC News - Home (A Spitfire 'jet', really?).

- Pope aide in 'Third World' jibe from BBC News - Home (Criticizing Heathrow and BA is hardly the same as criticizing the UK. Also, he's right.).

- Clinton endorses Jerry Brown for Calif. governor from SFGate: Top News Stories (Wow. Probably says more about Meg than Brown.).

- Young 'exposed to unsuitable TV' from BBC News - Home (Right, so send them to bed early so they can watch porn on their laptops...).

- Turtles Eating Things from Boing Boing (Except... they're tortoises! One might expect Blade Runner savvy BB to spot the difference. Sigh.).

- Why patent lawsuits and hot tubs don't mix from All Salon (From the headlines you never thought you'd read department...).

- WTF stamp from Boing Boing (Want).

- Top Gear's 'The Stig': Revealed? from BBC News - Home (It's all a decoy to prevent the real identity from leaking out (Julian Assange)).

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