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April 08
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Patrick
marked as to-read:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Paperback)
by Richard Bach
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Patrick
gave
to:
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Paperback)
by Richard Buckminster Fuller
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in January, 2005
Patrick said:
"This guy is a freakin' genius. This book has pirates in it. Real pirates. And they are still around. Just. Man. History. Read it. That's all I can say right now.
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Patrick
is currently reading:
Critical Path (Paperback)
by Richard Buckminster Fuller
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Patrick
is currently reading:
Doug Welsh's Texas Garden Almanac (Month-by-Month Guide)
by Doug Welsh
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Patrick
gave
to:
Texas Organic Vegetable Gardening: The Total Guide to Growing Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, and Other Edible Plants the Natural Way (Paperback)
by J. Howard Garrett
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in March, 2008
Patrick said:
"Great book if you know nothing about organic gardening and just want to know what it is all about. Wonderful reference containing specific sections on a number of plants, pests, soil types... all kinds of junk...
I may be starting my garden too l...more
Great book if you know nothing about organic gardening and just want to know what it is all about. Wonderful reference containing specific sections on a number of plants, pests, soil types... all kinds of junk...
I may be starting my garden too late this year, and have to wait til the fall to really get it going, but I can tell this book will be a constant source of information in my gardening adventures......less
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Patrick
gave
to:
Brave New World Revisited (Broché)
by Aldous Huxley
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in April, 2008
Patrick said:
"What's wrong with the world today?
Aldous Huxley knew 50 years ago.
A non-fiction companion to his novel Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited was written over 25 years after Huxley's most famous novel and compares his book to the state of...more
What's wrong with the world today?
Aldous Huxley knew 50 years ago.
A non-fiction companion to his novel Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited was written over 25 years after Huxley's most famous novel and compares his book to the state of the world in 1958 and where the state of the world is headed. If you are a fan of Brave New World, 1984, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Zeitgeist (the movie), or this sort of thing, this is a must read.
The book is made up of a number of essays on topics as various as mass-hypnosis and birth-control.
There are a few little nuggets in here that are just simply priceless.
AKA: Loved the book....less
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March 10
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Patrick
marked as to-read:
Next One Hundred Years, The (Paperback)
by Jonathan Weiner
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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February 25
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Patrick
gave
to:
Hiroshima (Mass Market Paperback)
by John Hersey
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in February, 2008
Patrick said:
"Meh. I sort of wish I had read a different book about the bombing of Hiroshima. This book is a dramatized account of the experience of six survivors of the first use of an atom bomb.
The fact that it was dramatized really annoyed me. The auth...more
Meh. I sort of wish I had read a different book about the bombing of Hiroshima. This book is a dramatized account of the experience of six survivors of the first use of an atom bomb.
The fact that it was dramatized really annoyed me. The author supplied dramatic details such as the specific way in which a person walked down a street in japan a decade earlier, or dialog between the survivors and the people that were around them. I would much prefer a book that just told me what happened, rather than venture to guess precisely what had been said at certain moments or exactly how the survivors felt.
A lot of questions are left unanswered in regard to how the author even found this set of survivors that happened to all know and effect each other's lives from time to time.
On the positive tip, It did get the job done. I wanted to know exactly what it was like on the day that the bomb was dropped, and this book did that.
I just have no idea how the author of this book ever became a professor at Yale. It was awkwardly written, sometimes had seemingly made up words in it, and at one point was just plain inappropriate in my opinion.
at one point in the book, it reads something like this:
Soandso took a breath, closed his eyes, and died.
[line break and new paragraph]
Or so Soandoso thought, but he woke up the following morning still in the hospital.
First of all, that is a really cheap dramatic trick, like a joke from a bad sitcom. Second, this is a real person we are talking about, and a person who had suffered for decades from ailments resulting one of the most murderous atrocities ever recorded. If it were fiction, then I can see the need to drum up some intensity, or have some comic relief, whichever way you want to look at it. But I just thought that was a childish thing to write.
Overall, it was an alright book, but as I said above, if I hadn't gotten this book for free, I would have done a little research and found some non-dramatized firsthand accounts of the bombing.
...less
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February 23
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Patrick
gave
to:
Brave New World (Paperback)
by Aldous Huxley
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in February, 2008
Patrick said:
"So, I read Brave New World, probably at least a decade later than most people my age (most people my age who read). I simply found the book interesting. I wasn't really shocked or moved by it, and the characters were pretty boring, and a lot of the...more
So, I read Brave New World, probably at least a decade later than most people my age (most people my age who read). I simply found the book interesting. I wasn't really shocked or moved by it, and the characters were pretty boring, and a lot of the ideas in the book were ludicrous, but I guess that is to be expected when reading a book about the future 75 years after it was published. You can't blame the guy for thinking that music would be encoded on scrolls of paper, and that, 400 years from now, everyone would have their own helicopter. I mean, helicopters were all the rage in futuristic air travel in 1932. Anyway, I am not feeling very articulate right now, so I may end up rewriting this later.
I actually thought, at many points, that it might be nice to live in this new society, but then I heard about the islands that folks that didn't fit in could live in, and decided that that would be the best for me...hmmm...
So, The book itself wasn't that great, but the concept of this new society was very interesting, so I plan on reading Brave New World Revisited, a non-fiction book written by Aldous Huxley about 25 years later, commenting on his book, and whether he thinks society had moved closer to his vision of the future or not.
This review sucks.
Peace out....less
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History is not boring
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— last activity 1 day ago, 09:22AM
I'm becoming addicted to this site already!!
oh and it turns out that your name can be 
