Reviews and Comments

Freedom! is certainly a product of its time utilizing all of the jargon and clichés that were in vouge during the time of its writing, particularly including the author's use of "non-violent communication" throughout.

There are several better books about the philosophy of libertarianism. In particular I would recommend Healing our World by Mary Ruwart.

I have liked all of Doctorow's books I have read but I felt Pirate Cinema was even better than his more will known works.

In a near future Britian a teenage boy gets his family cut off from the internet for one year for torrenting classic movies. He was using them to remix his own movies.

In hope of running away from his problems he runs away to London and ends up in a homeless shelter, where he meets some pretty dodgy characters who teach him how to squat and pan handle and he ends up with more time to download more movies and make more movies.

He meets a beautiful girl and falls in love and accidentally becomes the leader of a pro-piracy movement.

It just felt so realistic, I cried, I laughed, I hoped he'd get laid. If I had anything negative it would be that the love interest Twenty-Six, nor her family, felt Indian at all. I've had dozens of friends from dozens of different Indian states, and they felt nothing like them to the point I honestly wonder if Doctorow knows any Indians.

I normally love alternative history fiction, but this one just didn't scratch the itch for me. The difference in history here is Churchill losing support among the upper class for the war effort and the "farthing set" negotiates a peace deal with Hitler where he will stay on the continent and leave them alone. But really that's not even the point of the book. Its just a standard "who done it" for a murder in the home of a rich conservative Brit whose kids are PMs. They blame it on the Jew because reasons.

I'm not going to bother reading the rest of the series

I really liked The Great Brain. Feels like something I would hand loved in school.

A Catholic family, with very Lutheran names, living in a very Mormon town has various childhood experiences like getting the first indoor bathroom, a new immigrant moves to town, the Jewish peddler settles down and starts a shop, kids get lost in a cave, and they frame the new one-room-schoolhouse teacher for drinking on the job because he uses too much corprul punishment.

The Great Brain in the title refers to the he middle child always screming a way to make money.

It definitely feels like something they would not allow to be read in public schools now a days, between discussing faith, stereotypes and going through a number of ways for a kid to commit suicide I don't think it will make a required reading list.

I liked this book. It was kind of hokey, but if you go in knowing that its fine for what it is. It was supposed to the be first book in a series that never got a sequel, so apparently not too many others liked it. It's the first work I'm aware of DeCandido did of his own, rather than the media-tie-in fiction is more well known. He's one of my favorites Start Trek authors.

The book revolves around the Super city Police Department. The city is so called because they have more superheroes than any one town in the D.C. universe ever did. Unlike Commissioner Gordon, the cops of the SCPD hate the superheroes, or "the costumes" a derogatory term they use. The cops get stuck trying to prove that Super villains are actually guilty of the crime that the superheroes have stopped them from doing, but of course all the evidence has been vaporized, and the heroes refuse to testify as it might damage their brand, or worse yet reveal their secret identify.

On top of that they get stuck uber nerds who think they can become their own superheroes, or super villains, and more often than not get themselves hurt.

The Claw is a serial murder who seems to show up ever 2 years or so and kill many people and then go into hiding. He seems to slice open his victims using a giant eagle talon, and since all the victims have the same DNA it would appear they are not copycat crimes.

A long and winding tale, complete with abusive husbands, cranky neighbors, and the like, we end up learning the criminal is an unlikely member of the community, but looking back on it a few days later, it actually should have been pretty obvious that is who it would have been.

Marvel has done many similar stories over the years of how the courts and insurance and the like deal with the aftermath of superheroes, if you want a previously unlicensed version, this one is for you.

,, i liked armada, but not nearly as good as clients other works that I have read including Ready Player one and Ready Player two. It really put me on a roller coaster of emotion, but not the good kind. At the beginning I had a strong Ready Player One feeling, which just happens to be in my opinion one of the best books ever written which just happens to be in my opinion one of the best books ever written. However is the story progressed I found that I really kind of got lost there the characters pointing out how dumb the antagonists were didn't help much either. Eventually I thought it could be better if the ending was good and then I thought of a way that the ending could have been awesome. The ending ended up being very different from what I thought and I was incredibly disappointed though I'm thought that I had a hold of it and was disappointed that I was wrong.

,, i liked armada, but not nearly as good as clients other works that I have read including Ready Player one and Ready Player two. It really put me on a roller coaster of emotion, but not the good kind. At the beginning I had a strong Ready Player One feeling, which just happens to be in my opinion one of the best books ever written which just happens to be in my opinion one of the best books ever written. However is the story progressed I found that I really kind of got lost there the characters pointing out how dumb the antagonists were didn't help much either. Eventually I thought it could be better if the ending was good and then I thought of a way that the ending could have been awesome. The ending ended up being very different from what I thought and I was incredibly disappointed though I'm thought that I had a hold of it and was disappointed that I was wrong.

I Hate You—Don't Leave Me first jumped out at me in the bookstore. I have said that exact phrase to my wife more times than I'd like to admit. Whilst I bought it that day, it was over 10 years later before I actually read it.

I felt the book was written at a very understandable level, unlike many works related to medical issues, without making me feel like the author was speaking down to me, unlike many other medical works. The first half resonated with me very much, whilst they kind of lost me a bit in the second half. Granted its audience appears to primarily be the friends and family of a BPD rather than for the BPD himself. When communicating they recommend using SET (Support, Empathy, Truth) communication. From a high level it makes sense, but my brain couldn't really wrap around most of the examples they used.

It is eerie how much Dr. Kreisman describes me in his writing of Border Line Personality (BPD) disorder. Much of what has been diagnosed by my doctors as Bipolar and Depresion, may actually have been deeper BPD. But I'm pretty sure my ADHD i still ADHD. What really got me was their listing of the medical definition indicating a patient needed to have 5 of 8 given criteria, and I'm pretty sure I got all 8.

This book was written in 1989 so I'm not sure how much of its contents is now out-of-date. One example was linking BPD to homosexuality and sexual deviations. No modern doctor would speak like that, while I wasn't offended, some others may be.

I want to get a copy of the 3rd edition released in 2021 to see what has been updated, though from the reviews I've seen on LibraryThing there still may be gaps for the 21st century.

I'm not sure how much I will be able to adjust my life having this more information; my wife read it too, I don't ever recall reading a book with two bookmarks in it before. 🙂 At the very least if I ever seek professional mental health again I'll bring this copy with me.

If I wasn't already a loyal Discount Tire customer I would be pretty upset that I just spent a week reading a 200 page ad for Discount Tire™. It was still mostly an ad, but I'm not very upset about it.

Bruce Halle probably isn't the absolute saint that his biographer claims, having not raised his voice since his 20s, and always putting his employees first.

I have first hand seen many of the company practices that are mentioned in the book, including free flat repair for everyone and free tires given to folks down on their luck.

At times I found the Stories of his practices of sending money to store employees who had sick family members and of the organizing team member hardship funds incredibly enduring, but then I'd think about it again and thought that if they had a union they wouldn't need hand-outs and could just get paid enough to cover stuff.

15-20 years ago when I thought "true capitalism" was the savior of us all, before capitalism ate me alive, I probably would have absolutely loved this book. Now its all-in-all something I didn't NOT enjoy, but I did see more of the "skill" of the author who frequently would say the same thing he did a chapter or two earlier "Mr. Halle continues to give $1,000 to every employee who gets married" for example.