http://www.goodreads.com/review/list_rss/208829 en-US Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:41:01 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 15681194 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:41:01 -0700
Full review:

http://citingthetext.blogspot....]]>
author: William McDonough
name: Andy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 04/08
date added: 04/08/08
shelves:
review:
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is the kind of book that inclines the reader to write his own thoughts in the margins. I opted for a more electronic medium - which was good, considering that the book itself, in keeping with the authors' principles of durable, reusable (not 'recyclable', which they call 'downcyclable') materials, is printed on a kind of synthetic glossy paper that doesn't seem to lend itself to such scribblings. Ironic, perhaps, but who said notes had to be taken like that in the first place?

Full review:

http://citingthetext.blogspot....
]]> 17458341 Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:03:31 -0700
Full review is on my blog: http://citingthetext.blogspot....

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author: Atul Gawande
name: Andy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 04/08
date added: 04/04/08
shelves:
review:
Atul Gawande's most recent book uses several situations in medicine to highlight the keys to being successful and effective. In this way, while the book is ostensibly about medicine, its lessons can be applied to many more facets of life outside the operating room.

Full review is on my blog: http://citingthetext.blogspot....


]]> 16378604 Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:56:28 -0800
...full review on my blog at:

http://citingthetext.blogspot....]]>
author: Timothy Ferriss
name: Andy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 03/08
date added: 03/06/08
shelves:
review:
“The Four-Hour Workweek” is one part biography, one part self-help/advice book, and one part life philosophy. The personality and (admittedly cocky) attitude of Tim Ferriss drive and define the style of the writing; the writing itself conveys many useful and interesting ideas about how success is defined and achieved today.

...full review on my blog at:

http://citingthetext.blogspot....
]]> 15680711 Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:22:13 -0800 http://citingthetext.blogspot....

Michael Pollan summarizes his latest book, published January 2008, on the cover and in just seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He admits on the very first page that he has pretty much "given the game away" with that summary, but that he plans to complicate matters a bit in the interest of "keeping things going for a couple hundred more pages." Since I began the book at the start of a four hour bus ride, I chose to oblige him and see what could possibly so complicated about such simple commands.

I came to realize two things by the time I got about halfway through the book - which, ironically, was about the same time that the bus stopped at a Burger King. The first was that there was much more to the book than simple recommendations; the second was that those seven words were not so simple after all.

Take, for example, the first two words of Pollan's credo: Eat food. Not so hard, you say. False. By Pollan's definition, much of the offerings in an average grocery story are not in fact "food" but rather "edible food-like substances."

To understand this difference, Pollan sprinkles much of the first half of the book with discussions of the past hundred years of nutrition "science" and why it's really not so scientific. Anyone who pays attention to the constant and conflicting admonitions about the latest nutrients that are both good for you and could possibly kill you will already be convinced of many of Pollan's arguments here. He goes on to elaborate, however, citing the focus on individual nutrients as one major reason why these studies are so flawed. This is one area where reductionist science just seems to fail entirely. In many cases it is nearly impossible to separate the effects of a single nutrient on a person's well being from the rest of their diet and overall lifestyle.

Studies nevertheless attempt to drill down to this level, for two reasons: the prevalence of reductionist thinking in other academic fields and the fact that, politically, it's a lot easier to tell people to eat less or more of an individual nutrient or compound (trans fat, e.g) than it is to recommend that they eat less of a food, since the food has lobbyists on K Street in Washington. Nutrients, with the exception of sucrose, tend not to be so well represented.

Pollan then moves into his recommendations for what an average person can do to eat well without buying land and learning to farm for all of their needs. Many of these recommendations are easy to follow (I managed to resist the deep-fried mozzarella sticks at Burger King, but that wasn't just because Pollan would classify them as "food-like substances"), but some are a bit trickier. It takes some real discipline to devote more of your day to preparing and cleaning up after meals - I can almost guarantee that I won't be enacting this one, or doing much preparing of meals at all, as long as I am on this same project and without someone to cook with for three-four nights a week.

I will, however, be changing some choices when it comes to the meals that I do eat out - even eating out has a whole new feel to it after reading this book. My perspective now is that it's an opportunity to seize: here are people who are willing to prepare lots of delicious options for you, many of which contain loads and loads of fresh fruits and vegetables, all in a portion that is more or less perfectly suited to your needs without having to worry about buying too many veggies and watching them go bad.

The one negative that I identified in Pollan's recommendations was the fact that they seemed to be geared toward people who lived more or less inactive lifestyles. Many of the potential problems from diet go away if you just exercise a few times a week - if you're really concerned about your health but are not willing to take that simple next step - it seems as though you could pour endless hours into researching, purchasing, and preparing foods and are very healthful (Pollan mentions a word to describe this situation - "orthorexia," or an obsession with eating right, a disease still awaiting official confirmation) and only be fighting less than half of the battle.

]]>
author: Michael Pollan
name: Andy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 02/08
date added: 02/25/08
shelves:
review:
**My full review is posted on my blog at: http://citingthetext.blogspot....

Michael Pollan summarizes his latest book, published January 2008, on the cover and in just seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He admits on the very first page that he has pretty much "given the game away" with that summary, but that he plans to complicate matters a bit in the interest of "keeping things going for a couple hundred more pages." Since I began the book at the start of a four hour bus ride, I chose to oblige him and see what could possibly so complicated about such simple commands.

I came to realize two things by the time I got about halfway through the book - which, ironically, was about the same time that the bus stopped at a Burger King. The first was that there was much more to the book than simple recommendations; the second was that those seven words were not so simple after all.

Take, for example, the first two words of Pollan's credo: Eat food. Not so hard, you say. False. By Pollan's definition, much of the offerings in an average grocery story are not in fact "food" but rather "edible food-like substances."

To understand this difference, Pollan sprinkles much of the first half of the book with discussions of the past hundred years of nutrition "science" and why it's really not so scientific. Anyone who pays attention to the constant and conflicting admonitions about the latest nutrients that are both good for you and could possibly kill you will already be convinced of many of Pollan's arguments here. He goes on to elaborate, however, citing the focus on individual nutrients as one major reason why these studies are so flawed. This is one area where reductionist science just seems to fail entirely. In many cases it is nearly impossible to separate the effects of a single nutrient on a person's well being from the rest of their diet and overall lifestyle.

Studies nevertheless attempt to drill down to this level, for two reasons: the prevalence of reductionist thinking in other academic fields and the fact that, politically, it's a lot easier to tell people to eat less or more of an individual nutrient or compound (trans fat, e.g) than it is to recommend that they eat less of a food, since the food has lobbyists on K Street in Washington. Nutrients, with the exception of sucrose, tend not to be so well represented.

Pollan then moves into his recommendations for what an average person can do to eat well without buying land and learning to farm for all of their needs. Many of these recommendations are easy to follow (I managed to resist the deep-fried mozzarella sticks at Burger King, but that wasn't just because Pollan would classify them as "food-like substances"), but some are a bit trickier. It takes some real discipline to devote more of your day to preparing and cleaning up after meals - I can almost guarantee that I won't be enacting this one, or doing much preparing of meals at all, as long as I am on this same project and without someone to cook with for three-four nights a week.

I will, however, be changing some choices when it comes to the meals that I do eat out - even eating out has a whole new feel to it after reading this book. My perspective now is that it's an opportunity to seize: here are people who are willing to prepare lots of delicious options for you, many of which contain loads and loads of fresh fruits and vegetables, all in a portion that is more or less perfectly suited to your needs without having to worry about buying too many veggies and watching them go bad.

The one negative that I identified in Pollan's recommendations was the fact that they seemed to be geared toward people who lived more or less inactive lifestyles. Many of the potential problems from diet go away if you just exercise a few times a week - if you're really concerned about your health but are not willing to take that simple next step - it seems as though you could pour endless hours into researching, purchasing, and preparing foods and are very healthful (Pollan mentions a word to describe this situation - "orthorexia," or an obsession with eating right, a disease still awaiting official confirmation) and only be fighting less than half of the battle.


]]> 12234017 Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:07:41 -0800 The Unbearable Lightness of Being and list some of the things I liked in particular.

- The characters are very easy to identify with, particularly Tomas and Tereza, but truly all of them.

- The book has some very interesting philosophical undertones. In a way it reminded me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

- The writing style is easy to read (though I understand it was translated into English from the original).

Though the writing was easy to read, at the end of the book I felt that I could read it again (more slowly perhaps) and pick up on a whole new level of detail that I didn't before.

A related point: one thing I didn't like so much were the abstractions and tangents that the author would invoke from time to time. I would sometimes wind up lost and, like I said, not really feel that I had grasped the full level of detail. But in general the discussions of the abstractions are what make the book interesting.]]>
author: Milan Kundera
name: Andy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 02/08
date added: 02/21/08
shelves:
review:
I don't think I'll do a very good job writing a review for a novel, so I'll say that I liked The Unbearable Lightness of Being and list some of the things I liked in particular.

- The characters are very easy to identify with, particularly Tomas and Tereza, but truly all of them.

- The book has some very interesting philosophical undertones. In a way it reminded me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

- The writing style is easy to read (though I understand it was translated into English from the original).

Though the writing was easy to read, at the end of the book I felt that I could read it again (more slowly perhaps) and pick up on a whole new level of detail that I didn't before.

A related point: one thing I didn't like so much were the abstractions and tangents that the author would invoke from time to time. I would sometimes wind up lost and, like I said, not really feel that I had grasped the full level of detail. But in general the discussions of the abstractions are what make the book interesting.
]]> 3433761 Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:25:18 -0700
author: Thomas L. Friedman
name: Andy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/23/07
shelves:
review:

]]>