Category: Goodreads Reviews

author: Kay Kenyon
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/18
date added: 2015/01/20
shelves: fiction, sci-fi
review:
The story keeps building! Really enjoyed it.

author: Kelly Coyne
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2011/04/01
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: environmentalism, gardening, home-improvement, non-fiction, didnt-finish, wishlist, urban-studies
review:

author: Kelly Coyne
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2011/04/01
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: environmentalism, gardening, home-improvement, non-fiction, didnt-finish, urban-studies
review:

author: Kelly Coyne
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2011/04/01
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: environmentalism, gardening, home-improvement, non-fiction, didnt-finish, urban-studies
review:

author: Marilyn Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2011/04/04
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: didnt-finish, non-fiction
review:
I started this during a bout of insomnia, which may have a little bit to do with why it didn’t really click for me. And of course now I can’t remember the particular things that I didn’t like. But it just seemed really superficial somehow, with the curious exception of the chapter about the librarians who sued over the Patriot Act.

author: Marilyn Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2011/04/04
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: non-fiction, didnt-finish
review:
I started this during a bout of insomnia, which may have a little bit to do with why it didn’t really click for me. And of course now I can’t remember the particular things that I didn’t like. But it just seemed really superficial somehow, with the curious exception of the chapter about the librarians who sued over the Patriot Act.

author: Marilyn Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2011/04/04
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: non-fiction, didnt-finish
review:
I started this during a bout of insomnia, which may have a little bit to do with why it didn’t really click for me. And of course now I can’t remember the particular things that I didn’t like. But it just seemed really superficial somehow, with the curious exception of the chapter about the librarians who sued over the Patriot Act.

author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/26
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: fantasy, fiction
review:
So yeah, I’m 36 years old, have read LoTR a couple of times, seen the movies a bunch, played lots of D&D, and somehow never got around to reading The Hobbit. I did see the movie once, at the library when I was a little kid, and I think one more time in the last decade or so.

It’s a damn clever story; the locales are quite vivid, and I’m intrigued by the characters who weren’t in LoTR. (Beorn in particular.)

I do wish I hadn’t gotten the annotated version, though. Fascinating stuff, some of it, but also terribly distracting. And I’m still not so much for Tolkien’s poetry.

All in all, I’m glad I finally got around to it.

author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/26
date added: 2016/08/31
shelves: fantasy, fiction
review:
So yeah, I’m 36 years old, have read LoTR a couple of times, seen the movies a bunch, played lots of D&D, and somehow never got around to reading The Hobbit. I did see the movie once, at the library when I was a little kid, and I think one more time in the last decade or so.

It’s a damn clever story; the locales are quite vivid, and I’m intrigued by the characters who weren’t in LoTR. (Beorn in particular.)

I do wish I hadn’t gotten the annotated version, though. Fascinating stuff, some of it, but also terribly distracting. And I’m still not so much for Tolkien’s poetry.

All in all, I’m glad I finally got around to it.

author: Tim Wu
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2011/04/06
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: economics, history, non-fiction, politics, wishlist
review:
As with Nothing to Envy, I should have written this review right after reading the book. It was fantastic, and I’d like to read it again. Great history of the "Information Empires" of the 20th and early 21st century, the continuing tension between openness and control. The history of television seemed particularly instructive: there was no early era of openness; instead Sarnoff (RCA/NBC) manipulated everything he could to make sure that it came out under the exact same control as radio at the time. Found myself kinda wishing for some discussion of Facebook in the closing chapters, in which there was a lot of focus on Apple & Google. It seemed to me that Facebook (or its moral equivalents) are the elephant in the room in that discussion. Very highly recommended.