Courtney

Timely perspective on the current state of tech

Revisado: 02-08-21

Gavet does an incredible job of gathering together various ideas from industry leaders and sharing her own perspective, shaped by the state of the world in 2020 and how tech bears a great deal of responsibility for where we've found ourselves. While empathy within engineering and decision making isn't a new concept, it's refreshing to see someone layout the blueprint from ideation to adaptation to mutation for the not-so-good that we've seen platforms facilitate. While many industry leaders dance around the idea of what got us to this point and how we could have prevented it, Gavet faces these topics head on in a mindful way that makes you think more deeply about the lines of code you're writing and challenges you to build for the good of your users or the world rather than to simply see an idea come to fruition.

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Not for me, I guess

Revisado: 02-20-18

This has got to be one of the most unlikable main characters I've ever read. I understand that this is supposed to be a stream of conscience style, but I'm only just over half and I don't think I can handle much more of the self grandiose, blow hard, listickles of actions. Nor can I deal with the author's style of depositing random facts that add nothing to the story other than filler. There's so much focus on prose here that the story and plot suffer. While MC drones on about five different ways to describe the degree of darkness within a closet, more important plot details are glossed over. I'm not sure if this is to draw awareness to the main character's drinking and over medication but Lord help me, I'm so over it. By the way, when we're in a specific time, can we just pick a tense and stick to it? And what did conjunctions ever do to you? Somehow this is a best seller, but I don't get it.

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Well this has been disappointing

Revisado: 01-04-17

I held out for the next book in the series after reading reviews that said that it was the most underwhelming in the series, but I've got to say, this installment reads like poor fanfiction of the first book.

Another hangup I couldn't get passed was the change in narrator. The first book's narrator did a pretty good job with the accents and even the male voices, despite her higher voice. Frostbite's narrator sounds like a baby that's sucked helium and has completely ignored all of the Russian accents from the first book.

If you like listening to someone whine for eight hours and complain about how her older instructor isn't into her (hmm, I wonder why), then this is the book for you!

The only reason this doesn't have one star is because this series does seem like it could have promise. I'm going to suffer through this narrator for one more book and home that when the fourth book's new narrator takes over, I don't want to put pencils through my eardrums.

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Main Character is only missing a fedora

Revisado: 07-30-15

Jim Butcher basically creates a supernatural world with Dresden who sees himself as chivalrous, wonderful underdog.

Unfortunately, this character is about two steps away from tipping his metaphorical fedora and calling women (who he believes it is his job to save and lack any sort of dimension beyond their breast size) "m'lady".

The author shows a lot of great promise and imagination, but I got a couple books into this, hoping it would improve, rather than rely on typical tropes, similar to Rachel Caine's development with the Glass House series. Unfortunately, it took far too long and I never saw anything beyond women portrayed as objects for Dresden to drool over and see as things that need to be saved, never mind the fact that they are painted as untrusting, emotional psychos.

I wanted to love this series, especially after so many excellent reviews, but it was just more of the same. My demographic was clearly not Butcher's target.

If you're looking for strong female characters or even respectable male characters, this isn't the series for you. If you want to read several pages about what a "chivalrous" man thinks about as he stares at a female friend/police officer's breasts through her uniform in just about every scene in which she appears and imagine how he could save her from his angsty world of male wizardry, then by all means, please download.

The performance by James Marsters is the only reason I stayed with this series as long as I did. It's so hard to find narrators that do justice and breath life into the characters and he did an excellent job. Wish the material would have lived up to his talent though.

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Turn back now.

Revisado: 11-26-13

I'll start off by saying that Cormac McCarthy is one of the most talented setter of scenes I've ever experienced. I feel that if he were to stick solely to poetry, I would like him more. Sadly, in reading Blood Meridian, this was not the case. I also enjoyed the way the author summed up each chapter in a McCammon manner, however, I feel that McCarthy was a little too straight forward about it, rather than trying to draw any complex foreshadowing.

About an hour into the book, I was reminded by a quote from a kids' movie I heard years ago: "Isn't it rather dangerous to use one's entire vocabulary in a single sentence?" But I immediately pushed this thought aside, assuming that perhaps I just wasn't on the author's level, linguistically speaking. That may very well be the case as to why this book was so difficult for me to connect with.

On another level, I read quite a bit, from those guilty pleasure young adult books to nightmarish horror novels but I consistently look for books that provide some sort of subtle foreshadowing that there is an end in sight. Personally, I love the thrill of connecting those tiny dots through the pages and conversation and upon completion, I can truly appreciate the story that has been painted by the author. Unfortunately, you never get to that point with McCarthy. Everything is simply happening in the moment. He does set you right into that scene, though sometimes in a long-winded fashion, but you never really get an insight into where this band of characters is going to end up.

One review that I read mentioned that if they were writing an eleventh grade book report, this book would be dripping in symbolism, and I 100% agree with that statement. If this were still high school, I could put on my best post modernistic facade and decisively tell you all who the Christ-like figure is, what the political views of the author were in relation to the decade that this novel was written, etc. But let's be honest, that's spreading the butter a little thin over the toast.

Additionally, the author makes it extremely hard to connect with any of his characters, whom he rarely calls by their names, if at all. This book feels like a vague, psychopathic dream, watching these violent events take place to these people that you feel absolutely nothing for. They are just things that were alive and now they're not, and then they ride on...

Cormac McCarthy also utilizes his rich, poetic vocabulary to describe the actions of these simple minded gunslingers. While some may appreciate the harsh contrast, it felt a little too much like God describing the actions of dust mites, making the void between actually getting into any of the characters' mindsets that much more difficult.

All in all, I feel as though I just spent thirteen hours reading the Bible set in the wild west, written in English and Spanish instead of Greek, Latin or Hebrew. Lots of violence for the sake of violence, meant to shock readers into thinking this was actually a complex story, when really, it was just a bleak, long-winded book about some unintelligent characters that you can't help but want to smack, take away their guns and send to bed without dinner until they learn to play nice.

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esto le resultó útil a 10 personas

Great Story, Iffy Performance

Revisado: 04-29-13

The reader makes a great narrator; however, her character voices are nasally, slow and annoying at times. It's unfortunate because this is one of my favorite book series out there.

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