Reviews and Comments

I thought this audiobook was fine. The copy I have is from the National archive for the library from the blind. So it is all one very long MP3. Thankfully my listening didn't get interrupted otherwise that could have been a pain. returnreturnHaving been a Sci-Fi fan since I first saw Star Trek on reading Rainbow, and a member of the class of 2001 I had heard of this story for a long time, but never actually read it or watched the movie till now. (Though I did see the movie sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact because that's what our video store had). returnreturnThis story was certainly better than that one. returnreturnLike much "hard" science fiction it is too slow and has very little action, as the adventure isn't the point its the exploring of science. returnreturnIt starting with a time pre-garden of Eden is pretty hard to believe, claiming that God didn't make man, but rather we are the result of an experiment by a superior race that gave us the ability to make tools. returnreturnIn the introduction the author claims their goal here was to make believable science fiction that didn't suck. Set less than 40 years in their future what might space travel look like. Well they certainly are doing more of it than we are, so that's ahead of where humanity is 60 years after it was written, but it seems all other technology is significantly behind. returnreturnFor example the greatest consumer device ever invented seems to be basically an iPad that can only access news websites. Even as long ago as 2001 our BlackBerries where better than that. returnreturnIt seems the cold war still continues but rather than the USA vs. the Soviets of the 1960s it has changed into the USA AND the USSR together against the Chinese. returnreturnI really enjoyed Clarke's description of Saturn, even if he indicated in the intro that everything about Saturn is actually wrong, and that's a good reason that they went to Jupiter in the movie. returnreturn2001 is interesting in that neither did the book come first and then a movie was made based on it, nor was their a movie made that had a novelization after the fact, but the screenplay and the novel where developed simultaneously. It probably would have worked better if the book came out 6 months before the movie rather than 6 months after it. returnreturnThe computer HAL had less influence on the story line than I had expected from the often quoted lines of the movie such as "I can't let you do that Dave" All in all an important part of American Sci-Fi history and probably worth reading for that, but nothing to get too excited about storywise.

This audio book was emotionally draining. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Its not comfortable, but I guess that Means Finkel did a good job. returnreturnThis is the story of Chris Knight a man who decided life wasn't' for him and went to live in the woods and was found 27 years later. I first heard of Mr. Knight and this book during a segment on Public Radio. I feel like that segment gave me the same info as this 8 hour book, but of course this was deepr and more emotional. returnreturnPartly I was distraught because I see how many of my friends/family could have ended up like Chris.

I listened to this audio book because I work with so many Indians in my line of work that I had wanted to read more Indian literature to get a greater cultural understanding of my fellow workers. From that perspective the biggest thing I gained here was learning that at least part of the reason that the Indian caste system continues to this day is a feeling that the caste one is born into is part of their just rewards for actions in a previous life. So if you are born to a lower caste it may because you were a real asshole in your previous life, so it is correct to treat them lower. returnreturnI give this book only 2.5 stars primarily because from an audio perspective it was very difficult to follow. The story is told from at least 4 different 1st person perspectives (which isn't normally a problem lots of my Star Trek books do that) but on the audiobook it isn't always clear when the transitions occur, especially as it doesn't always change just at the Chapter break. I suspect that it is easier to follow in the dead tree form, like a double line break or something. returnreturnThis is basically the life story of an orphan we know mostly as "the judge" his rise from poverty to study to become a member of the ICS when Britain was Indianizing their regime. His daughter, her math tutuor, their cook, and the cook's son. Immigration back and forth to India, the judge to England for education, the cook's son to the US to try to make ends meet. The math tutor and the daughter fall in love, only for the tutor to turn on her because of political upheaval and his acceptance of a new nationalism. It bounces back and forth from India to the EU to the US. It bounces around time lines until it finally all falls into place. If that sounds interesting to you I recommend reading it rather than listening to it.

I thought it was a fine book, though not as great as its fans think it is. I found some of it quite fascinating, particularly relationships between the Fed and the bank of England. However I find Griffin's nationalism disgusting. It seems to shroud much of his understanding of history, economics, and politics. He also repeatedly talks about problems of capitalism, yet for some reason calls its socialism. (Like bankers and big corporations controlling entire economizes and political structures). My other concern is that this book was frist published in the 1990s, and although having been updated several time since then it is extremely out of date. Checks are near non-existent in 2021 in the US and have been for decades in much of the rest of the world. Younger audiences will have trouble following at all. returnreturnThe story line of war and its preparatory was also interesting and a different look. He makes a decent argument that environmentalism is the "socialists" new substitute for war, but I think he under estimates the number of "Americans" who would totally believe an alien invasion.

This audio book has a good premise. Professional economist takes a break from trying to convince the Eurobank to bail out Greece because reasons, and tries to teach his young daughter what the economy actually is. returnreturnLater editions give it the subitle "How Capitalism Works and how it doesn't" returnreturnThis was originally written in Greek, so maybe something is lost in translation, however basd on the forward written in English by the author I don't think so. He usually writes in English and specifically worked with the translator of his original work. Some of the lessons on Greek roots of economic words may have made more sense but that's it. I suspect I have read and studied as much economies as anyone without an Ecnomics degree and this seems really really too deep and technical for a child. returnreturnHe goes on basically to say that capitalism is working just fine, and the problem with it is when people don't want to give the banks all the control. And everyone should forgive Greece because Greece is special. He REALLY hates Bitcoin for some reason.

I picked up this audiobook from the library because the title revived me of the situation we are going through now being sober together with quarantine and 'Rona. W hike I knew this want coordinating with the current situation, but with technology. However it was very different than I expected, mainly because i misread the sub title "We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other" as I thought it was about why WE SHOULD expect more from technology and less from each other. So while I was expecting an uplifting tale about how things aren't that bad and technology is already saving us. Instead I get a boomertastic Tome about how awful reddit is. "Oh my gorsh! The Japs are f'n robots! Oh my gorsh everyone has a BlackBerry! Ohhhhh no body writes let's anymore!returnreturnShe starts out with an introduction saying that she's not talking about robots but the internet, then goes on for half the book to talk about robots. It's so different especially when I just finished "I, robot" a week a go.returnreturnThe most interesting part b was being revived of how much social media has changed in the 10 years since this book was when. The Facebook she speaks of is almost unrecognizable compared with the 2020 incarnation. Oh and don't forget "oh my gorsh! I just made a MySpace page, why didn't need Facebook?"returnreturnNow it's just for old peoplereturnreturnreturnHow someone has made a career studying the interaction between man and technology and hates tech so much, I have n no clue.returnreturnPractically no redeeming qualities at all.

This audio book was OK. Like so many audio books it could be improved by having the author read it. That is almost always better, and particularly when the author is someone who is known outside the literary world, like Steve Harvey, it just doesn't seem right with some other random black guy reading it. Also like many non-fiction audio books I recommend that if you are interested, get the dead tree version. Not only does it make referencing later easier he has many "write this" exercises throughout here that are difficult in audio format. Granted they really tried by including an enhanced PDF version of these portions on disk for of the Book-on-CD, but even after printing the 29 pages out, I don't feel it is a substitute. returnreturnAs far as the quality of the work itself, it mostly feels like regurgitated standard self-help malarkey with a few personal stories thrown in for color. I'm not sure what to make of that. I'm not sure if that's because this self-help stuff is all BS that is too difficult to follow up with so everyone can say do it and no one can prove it doesn't work; however it could also be that this stuff really does work and that's why everyone says it. Maybe Harvey's words will be enough to let me follow through and see. We'll have to wait and find out. returnreturnThere was a lot more Jesus in this book than I expected. I appreciated that, others might not.

I felt this audiobook was okay. I learned some interesting things, like DX came into existence because Vince knew HHH didn't drink and thought that would help Shawn. Also I didn't realize that HBK was old enough to have been in World Class Wrestling. I hadn't realized this was a Christian book when I picked it up. I should have but the Zondervan label was covered by the library barcode. That's okay I'm a Christian and I appreciate it. Near the beginning I almost through it out as it seemed like Evangelical anti-Catholic trash. But I such with it telling myself that it wasn't supposed to be anti-Catholic and I should take it as a perspective on how to behave as a Catholic to help avoid others getting such negative opinions. Later, however, when I looked up Cornerstone Church that he attends online, I learned his Pastor very much is an anti-Catholic Evangelical.returnreturnI would have preferred if it was read by the author. That's airways better and the guy here was so poor he misprouncrd several famous names, like John Cena, and Ted DiBiasse. Lastly, they were inconsistent as always referring to it as WWE as they do on TV and referring to it as the WWF when referring to the earlier years, like most fans do.

So this was an interesting book. I had only heard of the recent movie with Will Smith. I was surprised to find this was actually an early 50s sci-fi tale. There isn't much they got right, from 90s children who are unwieldy without their robots to entertain them, to 5 giant super computers ruling the whole miss 21st century world. Then again if it's an Android (r) instead of robot, my kid would probably rather it than a dog or friends too. And we might not have super computers running everything but we are using the internet to run everything. It was almost more of a collection of short stories than a novel with one plot. I am looking forward to the movie now to see if I'm right that they only cover the story were the mayor is actually a robot, or what. Might do another if it crosses my path, but probably won't seek it out.

I liked this book fairly well. I really appreciated how they did the updated edition. Originally Holt wrote this in the early 80s. For the 21st century update they kept Holt's words exactly as they were with the secondary author addi g his own in snippets clearly shown what was new. Some chapters included mostly new, like that on legal aspects of homeschooling, and some where completely untouched. Most had a paragraph or do of new material.returnreturnMy only complaint was that I didn't feel live I learned a lot more than I had just having out with unschooled individuals. I was a little taken back by Holt's arguments about there not being learning disabilities, the update only slightly before in saying that things aren't exactly that there aren't but they don't have to be as dibilitating as the public school makes them out to be. Everything else seemed on point so it might just be a matter of semantics.returnreturnProbably very good fit those not yet familiar with unschoing/homeschooling with child directed education. Almost 20 years have passed since this update and a new update may be helpful, particularly I would like to see since input on how screen time effects unschooling.

I liked this book. It wasn't as good as the first in the series. Last day on Mars found a way to get an interesting story out of only one day, while this one too over 30 years. It was a little disheartening that it felt like the whole first book was taken out of effect by the actions in the first chapter being told from Phoebe's perspective.returnreturnOtherwise as a stand alone story it's good. An entire alien population is eliminate by human society bombs in hopes of making their planet inhabitable for human lifereturn The remnant of that population attempts to destroy the human race to make up for it. A third rent may be the real cause trying to destroy many stars. A little wonky time travel has minimal impay on the story line.

I highly recommend reading this before you read Zero Sum Game If you can, I think it would improve it greatly. returnreturnThis one was hard to rank. The middle was very good but the beginning and the end where not. returnreturnI was so mad at George, who usually does such a good job at keeping story lines straight that it felt like he was having Commander Vaugn well and serving when in the previous book in the series had him on his death bad with no explanation.It ended up being OK but one of the issues with the whole book here was the explanation, a number of flash backs that where not clearly communicated to the reader they were flash backs. I'm not sure how to fix it because the jumping with no explanation in Star Trek novels I usually like, having to figure it out just like a scene change on TV, but this took chapters to figure it out. returnreturnWe really have 3-4 different story lines through out. The most interesting is the very elderly Spock leading a Vulcan-Romulan reunification movement inside the empire. We also have Sisko abandonig his wife and daughter because he feels the profits have abondended him and he thinks they need him to abandon his precuil life to go it alone. Returning to Captain a starship on the neutreal zone. We have two different Romulan empires after a quo split the empire. One has joined the Typhon pact while the other has been recognized by Starfleet and its allies as an independent nation. This story line is the other I have an issue with because part of the issue is based on a story that the new Imperile State has access to all of the agriculturally rich worlds of the empire and now the Star Empire's people are starving. This would be a good story if not for the fact that the mere existence of replicators make this a post-scarcity society and it becomes a lazy line for George. returnreturnThe attempt at reuniting these two Romuluan empires is the "4th" story that wraps the others altogether in prefect Star Trek faction. However the story just kind of ends unsatisfactorily, not even making you feel like you have to read the next one to find out what happens.

It wasn't really what I expected. I expected the protagonist to be a devout Catholic who will stop at nothing to remain true to the Church as he understands it. I'm not sure how devout he actually is, and he is willing to stop at nothing, including digging into the occult, seeking assistance of wizards and magic potions, to see that he is on the path to restore he holy religion. returnreturnAdd to that the female lead Viviana, who has a THIRSTY boy running after her, even though she wants to leave England and go to Belgium to be a nun. At every turn even the priest tries to stop her and get her to marry Courtland instead. returnreturnMakes me thing Ainswroth is just some Protestant who wants to make the Catholic Conspirators look bad.

This audiobook was very good. So many different story lines and genres crossed, romance, mystery, cultural clashes, and even a little erotica. However unlike most stories I have read that include sex scenes these were both tasteful and necessary for the development of the story. I primarily wanted to read this book to get a better understanding of Indian culture, particularly since on my line of work most of my colleagues are Indian. I was disappointed, howeve, to learn the author is not Indian, as such I'm not sure how much was actually insightful and how much was regurgitation of prejudice. Regardless I liked the story. The audiobook recording I also thought was well done. The narrator had an Indian accent and had a mastery of the English language. I could ask for little more.