Colin Marks's Blog, page 13
August 27, 2018
Review: The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
My first thought when reading Kate Mascarenhas’s The Psychology of Time Travel was I bet this is her first novel. Then, as this is a published work, why wasn’t the editor harsher? The amount of telling, not showing, became a real stinker for me. Likewise the jumps in PoV. Both mistakes are easily made, but they should also be mistakes easily corrected.
That said, this was a good book. Most time travel books have a predictable set of characters – predominately male with the odd women for a lov...
August 6, 2018
Review: Eat That Frog!: Get More of the Important Things Done – Today! by Brian Tracy
A lot of self-help books go into great depth on a specific topic – Steven Pressfield’s War of Art, for example, going into great length about how to beat procrastination – Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog takes a different approach. 21 topics are skimmed over (procrastination, task selection, planning, etc) in 4-5 page chapters (this isn’t a thick book, you can do the maths) – just giving common sense but worthwhile suggestions on how to be more effective and efficient. It’s a fast read, you can g...
August 4, 2018
Review: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
I couldn’t help thinking Lincoln in the Bardo was a mash-up of an adult version of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (the relationships between the ghosts), blended with Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo (ghosts not understanding why they’re there, or where there is!), with a traditional historical account of the death of Willie Lincoln (and how it affected Lincoln’s mood at a crucial point of the Civil War).
This is a wonderful, innovative novel, worthy of the Man Booker award. Sentimental, in an emo...
August 1, 2018
Review: Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks
An odd quirk of fiction centred around a historical researcher where the prose bounces about in time, is that it doesn’t feel like you’re reading fiction. The modern day aspect feels like a plot device, and with the historical, is it fiction or non-fiction – you end unsure of what you’re reading.
The writing is very Sebastian Faulks – clean, crisp, and a master of his craft – but I felt the plot was a little wobbly. There were some nice ideas, but it felt like everything was a heavy-handed me...
July 30, 2018
Review: F*** You Very Much (The surprising truth about why people are so rude) by Danny Wallace
Rudeness seems to be everywhere these days – from aggressive driving on our streets, to reality TV where producers intentionally generate antagonism to garner a response (and viewing figures), all the way to the White House. Obama led with thoughtfulness and inclusiveness, Trump took a different route, he’s given presidential support to rudeness. He’s taken a hostile path, showing that rudeness and intimidation is a viable way to get what you want; if the electorate thinks it’s fine for the l...
July 28, 2018
Review: If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura (translated by Eric Selland)
“If Cats Disappeared from the World” has sold millions of copies in Kawamura’s native Japan, and I can see why. It’s a charming story of a dying man who becomes embroiled in a wager between God and the Devil – what would the man sacrifice from this world for extra days of life? The Devil chooses cleverly – phones, movies, clocks – nostalgic things which urges the man to make amends or find closure for incidents in his past. A wonderful, magical, short story, readable in one session.
Book kind...
July 22, 2018
Review: Give People Money: How Universal Basic Income could change the Future — for the Rich, the Poor, and Everyone in Between by Annie Lowrey
Annie Lowrey fully supports UBIs (Universal Basic Income) – amongst other ideas, she poses convincing arguments on how it would end poverty, fight racism and gender inequality, make our society able to tackle the pending robotic workforce upheaval, and how it could prevent Trumps and other populist political disasters from reoccurring.
This book comes across like a life mission, it’s very well researched and very passionate about the benefits that UBIs could provide. I’m not convinced it had...
July 2, 2018
Review: Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss
‘Tribe of Mentors’ is an odd book – I’m not sure who it was aimed at. The book contains the verbatim transcripts of interviews from his podcast – if you’re a frequent listener, as I am, then you get nothing new. If you weren’t, and you hadn’t heard of Tim Ferriss, picking up this book would leave you confused – there’s no solid theme to the order of the interviews and no conclusion after each highlighting the takeaways. it just seems a jumble without direction. Tim has just relocated to Auste...
Review: An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
On paper, “An Ocean of Minutes” should have been right up my street. I like a bit of time travel, love a bit of romance, and dystopian fiction is generally worth a nose. However, Thea Lim’s first novel seems a bit lost and searching for an audience. The general premise (woman travels forward in time, will her man wait for her?) is a theme worthy of adult fiction, but the method of time travel and the implausible, simplistic environment is better suited to a YA audience.
The Time Travel elemen...
June 22, 2018
Review: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
I’ve had interesting chats with strangers on trains, plains, busses, etc., and learnt some neat origami skills as a result. Luckily, there wasn’t a psychopath who wanted to kill my ex… This was a good book, but it did seem dated – the concept has been copied and improved many times, and the prose clumsy by modern standards (for example very wordy and POV switching mid-paragraph). Still, a good read and a solid 4* rating.
See review on Goodreads.
