Duc Laurent

You have better things to do with your time

Revisado: 02-25-24

Poorly written vignettes intended to end with a punchline at the end of every other paragraph, Punchlines at the expense of patients and their failings as human beings. He gives the impression of a boorish physician who’s lost the perspective of care and compassion early in his career. It grew tedious fairly quickly and I stopped listening after 45 minutes. I understand he quit at some point based on the opening paragraph. Did he have a life changing character arc that redeems his flaws? Based on his start, I didn’t care enough to find out. Glad he’s out of medicine (if indeed that is the case).

If you’d like a couple of extraordinary recommendations in the same genre that are well worth your time, skip this one and go find “When Breath Becomes Air” or “We Own the Sky”. The first is an autobiographical account by a surgeon and the second is a beautiful story about coping with loss.

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Sassy!

Revisado: 06-30-20

Remember that old Saturday Night Live skit where they turn to the camera and effeminately say “Sassy!!” That sums up the mood the author is going for. This book will appeal to a small audience that revels in that A-tti-tude. (Snap your fingers). It will probably wake up a handful of young girls to the importance of financial awareness. It might even get them to stay away from credit card debt .... for that alone, the book would be five stars. But once you catch the interest in the topic, please do not let this be the only book you read on finances. It is painfully shallow on all the topics it addresses, and even mistaken in some of its notions. Let it be the start of your awareness, it’s too limited to get you where you want to go.

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Not his best

Revisado: 06-29-20

I’m a fan of Malcom Gladwell and have read most of his books. This really isn’t his best. I think that’s because it started as a conglomeration of his previously published articles and perhaps these were crammed together to force an overall theme that wasn’t originally there. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what his overall theme was and what his main conclusion is... and I just finished it. I remember he specifically stated his theme in the opening chapter but somehow that got lost in all these meandering factoid stories. Skip this one until you’ve read all his other works, come back to it when you just want to reminisce about all the other great stuff Malcom has written.

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Okay not great

Revisado: 05-01-20

The trading principles are sound, but not exclusive to the author. You can find these in every book written by a career trader who doesn’t engage in hype. The weakness of this book was its decay into pseudoscience and new age whoo. His definition of Energy is based on fallacy. He uses an ambiguous spiritual definition to capture an audience that lacks a firm grasp on objectivity, realism, or science. Almost playing into “The Secret” genre. Who knows, maybe that’s the only way to reach those people. I almost expected him to start touting the benefits of Essential Oils. It wasn’t necessary to get to the importance of good self awareness, discipline, risk management, consistency, probabilities, finding an edge, back testing etc... all of which are spot on in the author’s depiction. So good and bad, got to weed through the fluff, but there’s some good things too .

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Not even worth ten bucks

Revisado: 03-26-20

Hastily written for a quick audiobook side hustle. Errors throughout. Doesn’t provide any information you can’t find by listening to a couple of free podcasts. To extend the time on the book and make it appear more substantial, the writer/production manager slowed down the audio track. As a result the reader’s voice is awkward and painfully slow. You have to speed up the audio track to get it closer to normal. It’s like buying a bag of chips and opening it up to find it’s mostly air. You feel ripped off. Don’t buy Robert Williams Swing Trade, it’s not worth it.

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Poor character development

Revisado: 04-13-19

Not worth your time to read. Author has poor character development and uses logical fallacies to back up her faith’s doctrines.

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Excellent

Revisado: 02-15-19

Excellent book all around. Good narrative with thoughtful insights backed up with solid science. Wish every read could be like this.

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Important Topic Mediocre Treatment

Revisado: 02-04-19

This is not a narrative that is engaging, jumps around to different time periods and doesn’t always give enough transitional information to understand why the author has moved from one place and time to another. I’m sure it made sense to the author as he wrote it, but he didn’t bring his readers along for the ride. You have to really be interested in the history of Indians to get through to the end of this book. I think 80% of readers will give up at a third of the book. But there is a lot of good information in it. It’s an eye opening read if youre not familiar with American history through the eyes of the Indians. Its an important history and portions of this book should be required reading in schools.

The audible narrative is not very good. The reader makes audible gasps at the start of each sentence. As if he’s trying to catch his breath to speak. A couple of long pauses at times made me wonder if he might have just died in mid paragraph, but no, he was just catching his breath. Really this book needs to be narrated by someone from one of the cultural groups it is about; not from an European descendant.

Almost a good book.

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Real History with great narrative

Revisado: 03-05-18

What made the experience of listening to The Water Kingdom the most enjoyable?

Worthwhile read about the history of China. Very well thought out connections between the geography and landscape of the country and how this has influenced it as a nation over the centuries. The narrative is easy to follow and moves along at a fast pace without compromising accuracy. Highly recommend even if you’re casually interested in history; but especially recommend if you’re a student/enthusiast of history.

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Nostalgic Time Killer

Revisado: 02-24-18

We Are Legion is a fun, light hearted read. It has a clever plot that allows the storyline to put a wide range of characters from our favorite childhood shows back on the stage. The story is interesting and the narrative is fast paced. The downside is that the author doesn’t explore any of the interesting themes or ideas in any meaningful depth. Several ideas are introduced from science, philosophy, religion and politics, but none of these are explored beyond a cursory introduction. The political landscape of the future is not thought through very well and the author completely avoids any attempt to bridge the gap from today’s world to the world of tomorrow in the narrative by simply dropping nuclear bombs on any geopolitical region or cultural heritage that he (the author) doesn’t want to take the time to understand (or research). For example, right at the outset of the novel the Middle East is completely written off in a half hearted paragraph that explains the entire Muslim world blew itself up with nukes and now the entire region is completely uninhabitable. It reads like a lazy attempt to envision a future world. Likewise the antagonist is superficial. Just a Brazilian madman (in cyber duplicate form), whose sole motivation is to simply destroy everything, even his (their) own home. The enemy’s sole purpose in the story is to provide a straw man target for the hero to flex in front of. The interstellar battles are superficial because the enemy has no believable motivation to drive him against the protagonist and because the enemy never puts up a good fight. Bob casually defeats him every time with no real scars or wounds to show for it. The author underestimates his audience. Reading this book is like playing an old retro arcade game from the 80’s. It’s fun nostalgia to play original Donkey Kong for an hour, and it’s fun to see Riker and Homer on the stage together, but only for an hour. I won’t be buying any more in the series. There’s better reads out there to spend your money and time on.

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