Jonathan

Something ironic about rating a book that argues persuasively against such things but there you go.
It's a good book that starts very well but peters out towards the end as it turns from analysis to manifesto with several of its demands being non sequiturs from the main thesis. And some of it is just wrong - lumping Apple in with the data driven organisations like Amazon and Google when Apple doesn't trade in user data. And interesting case studies fade away in favour of anecdotes that border on the sort of anti health and safety nonsense you see in local newspaper letters pages. A good editor would have kept the thesis on track.

The section on universities could have gone further with discussion of NSS and TEF which are far more relevant to most readers that REF and have a bigger impact on ‘real life'.

Those criticisms aside, I enjoyed the book and have been recommending it to others. As someone who is constantly battling against tick boxes in academia, it's a useful book to point people to, and save my blood pressure a little by not having to make the same points myself.

The author thinks he's Douglas Adams. He isn't.
This is stylistically all over the place and badly edited - there's a whole scene missing where Davros is supposed to learn about the Movellan virus. Instead one minute he's being defrosted and the next he's working on an antidote.
There's a sequence about the interior of the Tardis that gets in the way of the narrative. And being novelised brings out some of the story's less sensible ideas (the ‘bombs' in London 1984 to attract a bomb squad to protect them? The use of duplicates?)
It's a pretty straight retelling of the TV story but with an added coda that, er, well I'll let you read that for yourself.
Still, it helps complete the Target range and it's no worse than some of the lesser Terrance Dicks (praise be his name) efforts. I wasn't expecting Charles Dickens.

Not as hard hitting as a review suggested, and while the daily grind and attitudes of some of the cops are lamentable, there's nothing particularly surprising here. The end was disappointing - no reaction to his subterfuge, no fallout...
As another reviewer has said, the English language version has a lot of typos in it. Towards the end there are a couple of sentences that make no sense at all.
It's good, but it's no Down and Out in Paris and London,

Loved this book - can't think why it took me so long to get around to it. Maybe because I was reading all of Pratchett's... (the two collaborated on the brilliant Good Omens - read that if you haven't)

If I had to sum this up I'd say an adult ‘His Dark Materials' except far better, much less preachy (i.e. not at all) and very funny. It's not laugh out loud funny, like Pratchett or Douglas Adams (I'd say Gaiman is self-consciously writing in an Adamsian style) but wry chuckles all through.

I listened to the author reading this on my commute and I really recommend it - he delivers a dry, well acted performance and, being the author, knows exactly how he wants things to sound.

Good book, and now I'm going to have a bit of a Gaiman binge, I think...

I really enjoyed this book - I thought it was a murder mystery at the start but it soon wanders off in different directions with a cast of characters, who all have the kind of connections you can get in cities. An overheard conversation on a train sees us leaving the character we thought we were following as if we decided to leave them and wander after the stranger we just saw...
It's not a fun book - there's little humour here and the bleakness sets in. On occasion it wanders into fantasy (or does it? That's the question) and the conclusion of one character's story is disatisfyingly unreal.
The book ends where it started and I think I'd have preferred the central mystery unsolved, it risks becoming an info dump that doesn't add anything. There are times too when the dialogue is clunky (the opening chapter, for example) and I wonder (as I often do nowadays) where the editor was on this.
But despite the niggles, it was a book that kept me engaged and an introduction to an author I don't know.

I gave this only three stars because, while it's a great book, compared with what comes later it's nowhere near the heights the series reaches. If you're new to Discworld, I'd suggest not starting here (other reviewers offer their suggestions) but coming back to it later to see how it all started.
I reread it as I'm trying to reread the series in order, just as I did originally beginning in around 1990. I can't recommend the Discworld novels highly enough, even the least good (like this first entry) are very funny but the best are philosophical masterpieces and comically brilliant. The Colour of Magic suffers from trying to cram too many ideas into a short book - later efforts would have taken just one or two and developed them. It's also more a clear parody of a certain genre of novel, with gods and heroes at the periphery while minor-ish characters like Death would later go on to dominate.
Rereading it now, it feels odd that it was ever published but as you progress through the series you'll be glad it was.

A good summary of the process and main steps but very slight when it comes to detail. It isn't a ‘how to' so much as a primer. A good book to read before deciding this is something you want to do. The text makes many references to other sources of more detailed information on things like coding interviews or analysing quantitative data, but doesn't attempt to do anything more than say ‘this is something you'll need to do'.
I used it to get going again after a short break between phases. Very useful memory jogger!

The book does make doing an EdD achievable - so does exactly what it says on the cover. A good intro, a quick and easy read, but not the final word.

I found this difficult to follow - all the characters introduced, similar names, so many deaths, and a convoluted conclusion that takes several chapters to convey. The last bit of the book is full of exposition too - Dexter falls in to the trap of telling, not showing.

Also very much a novel of its time with references to homosexuality that you could excuses as being the prevailing attitude amongst many, more misogyny (especially from Morse who is not a likeable character), and a reference to the colour brown early on that is quite shocking. That is how people referred to it at the time, but you'd think a light bit of editing might be called for...

Some good tips but a lot of it is quite basic and even irrelevant (if you find the section on referencing styles insightful, how did you get to PhD stage?) There are some odd bits, like where we are confidently told that women think very differently from men (no endnotes to support that assertion).
The section on structure was the most useful, the rest was a bit low level for me and at times very algorithmic to the point of specifying how many chapters, how many sections in each chapter, and how many words in each section...
The main value of the book is to remind you that a PhD is a piece of writing, not a record of a research process. It should be engaging and readable.
Took most of a day to read it and it was a good reintroduction to my work after a short enforced break and subsequent ‘what the hell am I doing' crisis...

A slim volume, part of what looks like an impressive series from Penguin, well presented in hardback with an attractive slip cover. There is a good collection of colour illustrations in the middle of the book.

The book itself is brief but full of detail and Morris tells a compelling tale that includes a significant overlap with the life of Harold who (according to William) took the throne that had been promised to him, therefore initiating the chain of events that led to the invasion of 1066.

If you're a Game of Thrones fan, a lot of this will be familiar - the difference is this really happened. It's nice to see my home town of York getting a lot of mentions, though it seems to have been a bit of a football, being occupied by Vikings, Normans, English, Vikings and then Normans again (if I followed correctly).

The book is well researched and there's a full list of sources at the back of you want them. I read this in a couple of days and found it difficult to put down. I'll be looking at others in this series and updating my knowledge of English history.

Exciting, but of its time

I've been meaning to read this book for years, having sat through the film versions on several occasions and wondering what the original source was like. It turns out it's very different.
Stylistically, it's similar to several similar books I've read from the same period, most closely to Rogue Male which also deals with someone hiding from those hunting for him. Rogue Male is better - Steps is more at the pulpy end of the spectrum. The character of Hannay is not entirely likeable, possessing a view of Jews and foreigners that grates but is characteristic of the period. As with other books of this vintage the dialogue is a bit overblown, and there are some remarkable coincidences (he meets an old acquaintance in the wilds of Scotland and then again later in London).
But it's a ripping yarn, a quick read, and a taste of a period where these tales were lapped up.

Funny and honest memoir of a life lived with depression. Some of the advice isn't stuff I'd recommend, and her aversion to medicine and counselling bothered me (particularly the drawing therapy where she blamed the therapist rather unfairly, I felt) - but she's clear that what works for her isn't what might work for others, and vice versa.

There's an early diversion in to being gay which seems like it might belong to another book - it was interesting and revealing, but stuck out a bit given that it wasn't hinted at in the title. Perhaps it sticks out because it gets a bit like you're being told off for other people's attitudes, and if it isn't what you came to the book for, you might find it jarring. Having said that, there are also diversions in to being Glaswegian, short, a comedian, and a cat owner, only the latter of which I can identify with so perhaps I'm being unfair.

It's a book that made me laugh about a subject that doesn't normally have a lot to laugh about. If your understanding of depression isn't great, it's well worth buying with the caveat that her experience is not everyone's experience - as she takes great pains to remind us.

I enjoyed this book - but it would be difficult to write a book about Seinfeld that wasn't enjoyable. Difficult, but not impossible.
It's an entertaining read that collects interviews from many sources and adds in some (but not a lot, I don't think) original content to produce a highly readable history of the series.
The opening chapters are the best in which the genesis of the series is laid out, lots of which I didn't know (the stars' various pasts, for example), and subsequent chapters give us details of what it was like to write on the show.
But as the book progresses it loses focus and each chapter tends to wander off the point a bit.
It's not particularly insightful - for example the ‘curse of Seinfeld' chapter relies too heavily on snippets from interviews when this would have been a great opportunity to interview people about why some of the actors' subsequent efforts didn't work out, or more about Michael Richards' racist outburst.
There are some inaccuracies in the book (Seinfeld doesn't own all the cars in Comedians With Cars Getting Coffee, as anyone who watches it would know) and strange omissions - nothing on Seinfeld's short-lived series The Marriage Ref. A few things get repeated too - Terry Hatcher and Courtney Cox were in the show, we get told twice. Also, a few things get repeated too - Terry Hatcher and Courtney Cox were in the show, we get told twice...

The concept of “Seinfeldia' doesn't really hold up to scrutiny and apart from the first and last chapters it gets called up in ways that suggests it's a thesis without much solidity.

So, short on analysis but a good light history of the show. I'm being overly critical only because it's being pitched as something more than it is, but it is enjoyable and recommended to fans and students of TV/comedy history.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest the book wasn't even proofed before it was published. There are spelling mistakes all over it and even an entire paragraph repeated on pages 158 and 162. 

It's a short book padded out with irrelevant or uselessly vague anecdotes and photos that don't relate to the topic under discussion. 
For example page 168 discusses how to use a 2x2 matrix. The text says ‘draw a Cartesian coordinate “+” on a board. A what? How big? Frustratingly there's a large image on the opposite page... But it's not a 2x2 matrix. I don't know what it is, it seems to be random scribbling. It has nothing to do with the text and anyone who has never seen a 2x2 matrix or knows what a Cartesian coordinate + is, will not be enlightened. Opportunity missed. 

It could have been much better - ‘show don't tell' is one of the key lessons we get drummed into us at school and if the authors had followed that advice this would have been a fantastic book. As it is it's frustrating. The ideas are good. The suggested agendas are useful. The execution is poor. 

A particular issue is that the book is clearly focused on digital design. But that clarity is only apparent when you start reading it. This makes it even more frustrating for anyone designing communications, services or other things - there's a lot of translation needed to make it useful. 
I want to recommend this book as it's potentially beneficial. But it's a good example of what's missing in the literature on design sprints than a long-lasting contribution to it. 

Started off well but descended into generalisations based on anecdotes, with some pretty broad conclusions, all with the usual caveat of ‘of course this isn't true of all introverts'. The chapter on group working makes some dreadful errors of logic and it worries me that people will start quoting this as an excuse not to collaborate with others.

A very good overview of key theories about creativity and motivation, engagingly written.
My only real beef is that a significant section of the book is ‘filler' with suggestions for applying the book's lessons to the worlds of work and education - I didn't find these to be particularly insightful and a bit shallow in places.
But the substantial first two thirds of the book are very good and I've been recommending it to lots of colleagues as it addresses many of the issues that keep coming up in our teaching.

This is an excellent book, and so much better than the ‘Design Sprint' book I reviewed recently, which suffered from being full of pictures, but none of them relating to the content of the book...
This volume, conversely, is sparsely illustrated but each one is directly relevant.

I teach design, and I use methods like this in curriculum development. I'm actually doing my PhD on the use of methods like this as a way of promoting creative approaches to teaching and learning in Higher Education. So it's quite timely. All the methods are familiar to me from design research, service design etc. What makes a sprint interesting is that it makes clear what a lot of us have known for a long time: you don't need months and endless committees to make decisions. In fact that's a great way not to make decisions. What you need is a short burst of focused time, and a plan.

Although the book says otherwise, you can use these techniques in much shorter timeframes, depending on what you need. I used a two-hour sprint to get from nothing to a coherent School strategy that everyone has signed up to - I spent three years trying to do the same thing at my last university!

The Design Sprint book is focused on interaction design. This book looks mainly at services and products. That's better. But... I'm using it to design a course and as the week progresses the process requires more and more customisation until the Friday just doesn't work for our purposes. The principle does and this is the book's weakest point that just at the point where the readership is likely to diverge, the content becomes the most prescriptive and most likely to lose people. Next iteration, I'd suggest the authors look at this section so it covers a larger range of problems being tackled. But that's really a minor criticism - if you're reading this book you're hopefully quite a creative type anyway, able to adapt to suit.

Another point might be that the examples cited in the book tend to be ones where participants were ‘on board' with the whole idea. In my experience there is usually at least one recalcitrant. Some tips on dealing with negativity would be useful.

My other recommendation would be that the supporting website collect readers' case studies - it would be a fascinating resource and help people find examples similar to their own needs. I can't be the only person using sprints to design degree programmes, can I?

But all that aside, this is a really good book, easy and quick to read and one that will make you keen to give it a go. Start with something simple, if you can. But given the situation in my own country at the moment, I wish some of our politicians would read it and realise that maybe they don't need six years to figure out what the UK will look like post-Brexit. Maybe they just need a week.

Less confusing than the first book but there are still too many characters and, confusingly, they're referred to by their forename and surname at different times, meaning you have to remember who's who. Additionally the author sometimes refers to a character by their race, meaning you have to remember who's an ithorian, who's a Sullustan etc. if the author needed notes to keep track of who was who and what, so does the reader.
An editor needed to step in here.
All that said, the main sequence was compelling and unlike another reviewer, I found the switching between scenes to be cinematic and compelling.
But bring a notebook- you'll need it.