Category: Goodreads Reviews

author: Barbara Demick
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/04/08
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: biography, ebook, history, non-fiction, politics, travel
review:
Utterly fascinating/horrifying story of ordinary people living in North Korea. Wish I’d written this review earlier when the details were still vivid, but I can say that I found it almost impossible to put down. Finished it off very late at night, reading on my phone in bed.

author: Barbara Demick
name: Elaine
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/04/08
date added: 2011/04/29
shelves: biography, ebook, history, non-fiction, politics, travel
review:
Utterly fascinating/horrifying story of ordinary people living in North Korea. Wish I’d written this review earlier when the details were still vivid, but I can say that I found it almost impossible to put down. Finished it off very late at night, reading on my phone in bed.

author: Atul Gawande
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/03/19
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: business, home-improvement, non-fiction, psychology, read-again, self-help, wishlist
review:
Fascinating. Gawande is just a great writer, to start with, connects practice and theory really well. Walks through the problem of medical errors, especially in surgery, and then connects it to other fields handling complex decision-making: flying and construction in particular. I want to put this stuff to work in my professional and personal life.

[ed, 4/2/2011: I realized on Friday that I already do some of this. I was updating Drupal on my work site, and I have a very clear checklist that I’ve refined over the last year, so that I don’t leave out any crucial steps. I often find that I would have forgotten something, either in back up or in the actual order of updating, too! Checklists FTW.]

author: Atul Gawande
name: Elaine
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/03/19
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: business, home-improvement, psychology, self-help, non-fiction, read-again, wishlist
review:
Fascinating. Gawande is just a great writer, to start with, connects practice and theory really well. Walks through the problem of medical errors, especially in surgery, and then connects it to other fields handling complex decision-making: flying and construction in particular. I want to put this stuff to work in my professional and personal life.

[ed, 4/2/2011: I realized on Friday that I already do some of this. I was updating Drupal on my work site, and I have a very clear checklist that I’ve refined over the last year, so that I don’t leave out any crucial steps. I often find that I would have forgotten something, either in back up or in the actual order of updating, too! Checklists FTW.]

author: Robert B. Reich
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/02
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: ebook, economics, history, politics
review:
"To summarize: the fundamental problem is that Americans no longer have the purchasing power to buy what the US economy is capable of producing. The reason is that a larger and larger portion of total income has been going to the top. What’s broken is the basic bargain linking pay to production. The solution is to remake the bargain." (Ch 11)

That’s the whole book in a single paragraph. The first part is all about how the hell we got here, from before the Great Depression to the current day. The second gives some speculation about how people might freak out (basically) and give in to bad impulses. And the third part is a brief and fairly specific set of policy proposals for avoiding that.

Nothing here, outside of the specific proposals, that was completely new to me, but it was very clearly written and engaging. One aspect that was particularly good was starting with Marriner Eccles, chair of the Federal Reserve Board from 1934 to 1948. (No, I hadn’t heard of him either.) The process by which he came to proto-Keynesian ideas forms the first chapter, and coming from a Scottish-American Mormon banker, it’s fascinating:

"It became apparent to me, as a capitalist, that if I lent myself to this sort of action and resisted any change designed to benefit all the people, I could be consumed by the poisons of social lag I had helped created."

Definitely recommended. (Now, what to do about it?!)

author: Robert B. Reich
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/02
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: ebook, economics, history, politics
review:
“To summarize: the fundamental problem is that Americans no longer have the purchasing power to buy what the US economy is capable of producing. The reason is that a larger and larger portion of total income has been going to the top. What’s broken is the basic bargain linking pay to production. The solution is to remake the bargain.” (Ch 11)

That’s the whole book in a single paragraph. The first part is all about how the hell we got here, from before the Great Depression to the current day. The second gives some speculation about how people might freak out (basically) and give in to bad impulses. And the third part is a brief and fairly specific set of policy proposals for avoiding that.

Nothing here, outside of the specific proposals, that was completely new to me, but it was very clearly written and engaging. One aspect that was particularly good was starting with Marriner Eccles, chair of the Federal Reserve Board from 1934 to 1948. (No, I hadn’t heard of him either.) The process by which he came to proto-Keynesian ideas forms the first chapter, and coming from a Scottish-American Mormon banker, it’s fascinating:

“It became apparent to me, as a capitalist, that if I lent myself to this sort of action and resisted any change designed to benefit all the people, I could be consumed by the poisons of social lag I had helped created.”

Definitely recommended. (Now, what to do about it?!)

author: Kay Kenyon
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/23
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: ebook, fiction, sci-fi
review:
Not going to be able to give a great review, since I mostly read it while I was sick, but damn enjoyable. Weird vivid setting and complex characters. Definitely looking forward to reading more.

author: Kay Kenyon
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/23
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: fiction, ebook, sci-fi
review:
Not going to be able to give a great review, since I mostly read it while I was sick, but damn enjoyable. Weird vivid setting and complex characters. Definitely looking forward to reading more.

author: Kay Kenyon
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/23
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: fiction, ebook, sci-fi
review:
Not going to be able to give a great review, since I mostly read it while I was sick, but damn enjoyable. Weird vivid setting and complex characters. Definitely looking forward to reading more.

author: Karen Essex
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2011/03/26
date added: 2011/04/02
shelves: fiction, history, horror
review:
An interesting concept for sure: the Dracula story as told by Mina, and of course everything is quite different from what one’s been led to expect. And some good sequences of writing. But holy cow melodrama & Mary Sue-ism! It was actually a pretty decent read for laying sick in bed, but I can think of better.