Colin Marks's Blog, page 10

Review: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck

This book is praised everywhere – from Tim Ferriss, Derek Sivers, Seth Godin, the list goes on, so it’s frustrating that I found it a huge struggle. The first half is full of trite, one-paragraph case studies that go along the lines of, “Timmy struggles to adapt, he’s got a fixed mindset”, “Evie likes to learn, she’s got a growth mindset,”, rinse and repeat for a hundred or so pages. The cases shoehorn in the mindset terminology, and were for too repetitive without adding any value. Halfway...

Review: Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money by Carrie Gracie

This is an interesting book about Carrie Gracie’s battle to get pay equality at the BBC. I’m a strong believer in equality, whether that be religious, ethnicity, gender, or whatever, everyone should be paid on the merit of their output, and not by any other criteria. At the end of the book, Carrie lists some useful tactics that can be implemented by both employers and employees, and these certainly do have value.

My problem with this kind of book, hence the 4 stars and not 5, is that the...

Review: Body Tourists by Jane Rogers

Jane Rogers’ Body Tourists made me think of Kate Mascarenhas’s The Psychology of Time Travel. Both are traditionally male written genres, and the woman’s perspective gives it twists where a male author would be less likely to go. In Kate’s book, she dipped into what time travel would mean to relationships, how would you be paid, or copy with family deaths, interesting ideas. Body Tourists, likewise, explored relationships – what would you do if you could resolve that dispute you had with...

Review: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

I was torn between giving this 4 or 5 stars. I loved Station Eleven, Emily’s previous novel – and many of the same ingredients are used in this latest outing, The Glass Hotel. Multiple narratives twisted over numerous timelines, held together with beautifully poetic writing. Emily is expert at weaving threads and foreshadowing plot lines, while keeping the story moving forward. My only issue was that I felt some sections were bloated and could’ve done with a trim, but a minor gripe for an oth...

Review: Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why by Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks

We all think we’re a good judge of people and aren’t easily influenced, but numerous studies have shown this isn’t true. We’re likely to be less impatient if the car in front that doesn’t move when a traffic light turns green is executive, and we’re more likely to listen to Ian Botham tell us how to survive a nuclear attack than a scientist or someone from the military.

Messengers, by journalist Stephen Martin and psychologist Joseph Marks, discusses who influences us most, and why. The personal attri...

Review: The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde

The End of the Ocean is an interesting book – giving a glimpse of how the world could be after devastating droughts caused by climate change. I did struggle with this book for a couple of reasons. First, it was hugely over-written, especially anything involving sailing. I suspect Maja loves sailing and wanted to incorporate every single nautical reference possible – these sections were massively skimmable, whole pages adding nothing to the narrative. And secondly, I’m not convinced the futur...

Review: The Lessons of History by Will Durant, Ariel Durant

Fantastic. 5000 years of history condensed into a 100 pages – not the dates, the changing borders, or the winners and losers, but what history means and how societies evolve. Although written in the 60s, in many ways the topics and conclusions are very current (“Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization”) but others are dated, such as his concern that communism may spread westwards throughout Europe. A short book, but every word-perfect sentence o...

Review: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen

This is an impressive book. It’s flawed – many chapters could be significantly reduced without damaging the message, the message is often lost amidst rambling anecdotes – but by golly, this is a man who knows how to research. Facts, quotes, conclusions – it’s all here. Kurt Andersen is a journalist by trade, and the quality shows: the writing flows, the arguments are there, though bloated in places, but I’d rather have a skimmable well written book like this than something inferior.

The book...

Review: Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall

I’m a bit torn with this book. I read it to the end, and did enjoy it, but the second half was a struggle and I skimmed a fair bit towards the end. The problem is that this is a first person psychological thriller, so you’re close to the thoughts of the antagonist, and those thoughts became very repetitive and predictable very early on. Another down vote for me was the final third turned into a courtroom drama, something not mentioned at all in the blurb.

Still, some nice writing, better than...

Review: Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge, #2) by Elizabeth Strout

I wasn’t aware that “Olive, Again” was a sequel until I came to write this review – I thought the “, Again” was because Olive Kitteridge appears in each chapter of this connected collection of short-stories, sometimes the focus, other times just passing through. I didn’t feel I’d missed anything by not reading the first book, this sequel is perfect standalone. 

Elizabeth Strout comes from the Anne Tyler school of writing – small town America, every day characters, and perfect observations of...