This is the story of John Harrison, the inventor of modern accurate clocks. Its an interesting read, and very engaging for a non-fiction book. I think this is helped by the conversational style of the book, and the fact that its not terribly long. A good read. [isbn: 1857025717]
This is the memoir of a Jewish girl from New York who ends up working in the Harem of a Prince of Brunei. Its not so much a story about Harem life, although that's mentioned in places. Its more about Jillian's psychological journey, her troubled childhood, and working out who she is in the world. Worryingly, that final issue isn't really resolved in the book, which is frustrating. The book is surprisingly readable, and you genuinely start to care about Jillian along the way, even if a few of her decisions seem pretty suboptimal to me. A good read. [isbn: 0452296315]
I'd been looking for this book for ages, as it is quite rare, so it was exciting to find it at Gould's the other day. This is the memoir of the dude inside the rubber mask that Kryten wears in Red Dwarf. The book is an easy read, and entertaining, although I wouldn't call it funny. Most of the book focuses on how terribly horrible it is to be encased in rubber day after day while shooting a comedy in terrible locations. Oh, and Robert is slightly insecure which doesn't help. Overall I'm glad I found this book, and glad I read it again. [isbn: 0140235752]
Jeremy Clarkson isn't one of those people you can read hundreds of pages of at once. That's probably why he writes articles instead of books. This book is a collection of these articles, and it is an interesting and entertaining read. However, I couldn't read it front to back. Instead I read it over a series of take offs and landings during a trip, and that worked well. Apart from Jeremy's sense of humour, and the fact that he's mostly right, the other interesting aspect of this book is that you get to see his writing style develop over time. It helps explain how we ended up with Top Gear. [isbn: 9781856131001]
This is the second medical trivia book by The Leyner and Goldberg duo. The first was Why do men have nipples, which I read in June. This book suffers from the same flaws as the first -- its light weight and doesn't take itself very seriously. That means that often they avoid answering serious questions, and just make a twee joke instead. It also has those annoying IM transcripts, which appear to just be a way to fill up space. Then again, I did finish the book, so it can't have been the worst book I have ever read.
I seem to be on a bit of a trivia book kick, which is at least partially motivated by getting through all my Christmas presents so I can pack them into a box and move to a different country. This book was written as part of the production of the very excellent BBC quiz show Quite Interesting and is quite a contrast from the extremely average Why Do Men Have Nipples that I just finished reading. This book feels well researched, and is on par with Why Don't Penguin's Feet Freeze, although the style is quite different (the New Scientist book offers multiple answers for each question, and is written by real scientists in the fields discussed, this book flows as one manuscript). I suspect it helps here to have seen the quiz show, because many of the other reviews I have seen online complain about the style of the book, which reads in much the same manner as Stephen Fry's commentary during the program. If you're familiar with the format, then the book flows quite nicely (whereas if you haven't, you might end up why the book jumps around so much). I really liked this book. [isbn: 0307394913]
This book is pretty light weight. The font is big, and there is lots of "chrome" on the pages, which conspire to make a book which would probably be only 100 pages in a normal font more like 200 pages. The book also suffers from trying a little too hard to be funny, with numerous interruptions for the authors to tell you how terribly clever they are. Its annoying quite quickly. The answers also aren't as detailed and believable as those found to similar questions in "Why don't penguin's feet freeze? (and 114 other questions)", the New Scientist book I just finished reading. I'd say go with the New Scientist book if you're buying something, but read this if you're given it.
This book was really fun. Its a collection of 115 questions sent into New Scientist magazine, and the answers provided by other readers. Sometimes the answers and sarcastic or funny, and sometimes they are incredibly detailed. I found this book really interesting to read, and I certainly picked up some trivial to annoy my wife along the way. Excellent.
This is the second book I have got from the LibraryThing early reviewer program (the previous book was The Spy Within). I'm going to have to be honest with this book and say that I haven't read all of it yet. Its basically a dictionary and I don't tend to read those cover to cover. On the other hand, I have read about 10% of this book so far, and do intend to read it all. This book is great. The content is interesting, well laid out, and excellently written. That's probably made a lot easier by how interesting the content is -- the stories behind various works tend to be short and novel, which is fun. The book is also useful -- it's already ended an office debate over the origin of the word "hooker". [isbn: 9781846033001]
LibraryThing, of which I am a member runs a program where members are shipped early copies of books for free, with the preference for them writing a review when they're done reading the book. The books are shipped by the publisher directly to the reviewers. This isn't that uncommon in the publishing industry -- both of my books have experienced a similar process, although less formal. (In fact, any very early review of a book on a site light amazon.com should be viewed with a little bit of caution I suppose. These people probably got their review copies for free from the publisher.) LibraryThing's implementation is a little different though, mainly because of the scale at which they hand out books, and the fact that the publishers don't appear to get any direct say in who gets the books. That means that there is less incentive to write a positive review, and that more people get access to early copies of new books. You can see a list of the books LibraryThing is currently handing out here. The Spy Within is the true story of a senior CIA agent who turned out to also be a Chinese spy. Its the…