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I watched the Iron Lady this week and it got me thinking about growing up during the Thatcher years and how I was completely unaware of what was going on around me. I mean, I remember that the Falklands happened; I remember the poll tax riots and the miners' strike, but it was just ‘the news', when my dad would make us all be quiet so he could listen to it and I'd resent it and go and play Spectrum games in my room.

This is a whirlwind tour of a period spanning 20 years. There is very little depth at all - just the basic facts, can you show me where it hurts? But it has whetted my appetite to read Maggie's memoirs and try and understand just what was going on at the time. I've never really been very politically minded, even though in later years I have tried to be more so. This episode of the great Sceptred Isle series was very good at giving an overview of the time and was very easy to listen to. I should try more of them!

I don't really get what the complaints had to do with anything.

It literally took me years to get through this. I guess I have the COVID-19 lockdown to thank!

The concepts are explained very well and the exercises really work, but I do find the flippant style rather unfunny and annoying.

I'm a player of some 30 years and never bothered with theory. That has help me back in a big way and this book, along with volume 1, have helped me a lot. I love the ring bound format and the paper stock works well with a pencil and eraser.

I recommend this for all guitar players and I use a lot of it in my teaching now too.

It loses a star because the attempted humour annoyed me, although I admit that I did laugh at the ‘Starring Harrison Ford' chapter title!

Very useful and comprehensive primer on Markdown. This is a perfect example of what iBooks is best for!

This was great. It's a recommended book for August Bradley's Pillars, Pipelines and Vaults course for Notion. I'm part of the first cohort of that course and it's all about mindset and systems thinking, two concepts that I'm hoping I can use to get my health and wealth in better positions.

It's a little scientific, but not so scientific that I got lost. I did try listening to the audiobook first and found that that didn't really work for me, so I got the Kindle Edition and that made a lot more sense. I have made a lot of highlights and they have been sucked into my knowledge vault in Notion, so I may well come back to this and write a longer review with some quotes and thoughts that they triggered, or maybe even a YouTube video as that's another area where I see some growth for me. That's exactly the sort of area where I see systems helping me in a big way.

Very Helpful

I don't have the first idea about running ads online, or I didn't until I read this. I will return to it when I'm ready to start running ads for sure.
I would like to have had setting up pixels explained with more depth as I am still not sure how to do that, but I know I can go to the AdSkills YouTube channel to find that.

Poetry isn't something I read a lot of. I heard about this one through the podcast that Donna co-hosts with Iain Broome, Write for your Life.

And know what? I really enjoyed this collection. Some of it got through to me right away and some of it after a second reading. And yet more of it hasn't got through to me at all yet.

Something that stands out in this collection is how much of herself Donna puts into these poems. They make me wonder what inspired them, where she was, what age she was, that sort of thing.

Having read the collection and enjoyed it, I plan to read it again and mark favourites and underline words and passages. I believe poetry is like music and song and rewards repeated consumption!

I'm off to look up Staward on the map now.

Thanks Donna and Iain for pushing this collection on the podcast.

I served with Chris as an apprentice. He was a good soldier then and made the highest apprentice rank in our camp (Apprentice RSM). It was clear then that he'd go far. I've just discovered how far.

He was commissioned from Sandhurst at the age of 21 and went on to become a high-threat bomb disposal expert, working in the most dangerous areas of the world.

He's written two books, documenting his career and personal life. I just finished Extreme Risk, his second book and could not put it down. I was never particularly army barmy and have never really read any army books, but this one had me totally hooked.

This book reminds me a little of the professional musicians I've met. They're just ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I can say that I knew Chris as a teenager, so I think of him first and foremost as someone I know. Then I read about the things he's done and how he got there and it's utterly awe-inspiring. He's achieved some incredible results and lived and incredibly interesting life, but there was always that background of his personal life throwing up mental obstacles, frustration, resentment and a whole package of emotions, both good and bad. And despite all of that, he achieved. And he's not even 40!

This is an incredible story that I highly recommend.

This is the first Siracusa review I've read as I'm a relative newcomer to his podcast and peers. The first thing that strikes me is his style and clarity. Okay, so that's two things. Style, clarity and humour. The three things that strike me are his style, clarity, humour and knowledge of Apple OS history. Okay, four things. You get the picture.

It's so refreshing today to read such a well-punctuated piece of work, let alone well written. As I age, my level of intolerance for bad grammar seems to be lowering. I've just ditched a well-regarded tech blogfor that reason. So John's writing scores highly, very highly in fact. It's almost as enjoyable to read as say Stephen Fry or Douglas Adams.

In terms of content, it's jam packed with goodness. The links provided are extremely useful, particularly for newcomers to his OS X reviews who won't be so readily familiar with the history of the OS. I didn't know about Core Animation, for example. His explanation of display scaling had my eyes glazing over a bit; same with the Objective-C stuff, but that's not because he didn't explain them well enough.

And thank you for making it a book John, so I could get one step closer to reaching my 2012 goodreads goal!

This book might just change my life. I'm working a job I hate at the age of 46 and am unhappy. I started building an online brand years ago and didn't really know what to do with it. A few months ago I started trying to grow it with some new content and, again, felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. This book has brought me a light, and rather a bright one !

This stuff is gold. It's a shame that only geeks will read in for the most part. If only I could get my special lady friend to read it too.

Well written and thorough. I made notes of many passages. I'm at the right part of my life to have read this. I studied Russian language and literature many years ago and feel my passion's being rekindled. I learned a lot about Tolstoy that I either didn't know or did but learned too young. A prophetic author to be sure.

Written by a more accomplished version of the author than the original trilogy! I really enjoyed this one.

A decent wee read. The Arran details made it interesting for me, given that I live on the island. The prose was well written, but the characters were a little thin and the plot was reasonably predictable; but still not bad for all that.

This book had me mesmerised from start to finish. Some of the imagery is incredibly moving, particularly the war scenes. This is a fascinating collection of pictures and posters from an important period in European history. Stalin's rise to power was well covered and gave a real insight into his rise and paranoia. Anyone with even a passing interest in this region will find this book fascinating I'm quite sure. As it says in one of the testimonials, buy two—one for yourself and one to give away. I was going to give my copy to a friend when I was done, but I want to keep mine so I'll have to buy another for him.

An absolute trip down memory lane and a moving tale in so many ways. It has led me to question many aspects of my own life. If only I and my group of friends in the 80s had had a Yauch in our midst. I feel like we and the Beasties grew up together, though they were a little older than we. But they were there through our teenage years and further. I remember delivering the whole of Paul Revere in C Troop corridor during basic training when I was 16 under orders from my troop sergeant. The VW badge thing? Yep, we did that too.

And now I find myself tearing up at the What If question posed at the end of the book. Imagining what it must be like to lose a friend like that.

I shall not regret the past now with to shut the door on it, but I will think about it nostalgically, as I often do.

I might be a little dusted...

I watched the Iron Lady this week and it got me thinking about growing up during the Thatcher years and how I was completely unaware of what was going on around me. I mean, I remember that the Falklands happened; I remember the poll tax riots and the miners' strike, but it was just ‘the news', when my dad would make us all be quiet so he could listen to it and I'd resent it and go and play Spectrum games in my room.

This is a whirlwind tour of a period spanning 20 years. There is very little depth at all - just the basic facts, can you show me where it hurts? But it has whetted my appetite to read Maggie's memoirs and try and understand just what was going on at the time. I've never really been very politically minded, even though in later years I have tried to be more so. This episode of the great Sceptred Isle series was very good at giving an overview of the time and was very easy to listen to. I should try more of them!

It feels like Terry Brooks has been reading Stephen King, and that's no bad thing. Others ha e mentioned the withholding of info on the adults' parts, but that's no different from Allanon's behaviour I guess. It's in Terry's tool belt.

I could not more fundamentally disagree with the premise of a book than I do with this one. I tried to come into it with an open mind, really I did, but I think I am too far gone in my indoctrination into sober living. My life was fucked. Then I got into AA and got sober. What is wrong with that?

I have the humility to believe that I might be wrong, but all the evidence suggests that I am not. I haven't picked up since 2005 and attend AA intermittently.

I'd recommend Russell Brand's book Recovery. I'm reading it alongside this one. If this book is about chalk, Russell's is about cheese. I choose cheese.

I found this by accident and wound up reading the whole thing in a couple of days, as did my good lady. We both agree that the philosophy makes a lot of sense and we are going to apply it with our 14-month-old Bassett hound (Clover) and the Akita pup that's waiting for us. It was quite eye-opening to discover how wrong we were going about things with Clover. She has always been difficult to walk, partly because of her wanting to sniff everything. Now I have an idea how to fix that.

I've learned that the first thing to do is to try and get rid of my own negative energy. I know a bit about that from my 12 step programme, but I think Cesar's way will help me to put it into practice in all my affairs. It all makes so much sense.

As I was reading the book, I was thinking that yes, its all very good, but I'll get home from holidays and the dog will still be on the sofa. The one thing this book is not is an instruction manual. As I'm reading another of his books [How to Raise the Perfect Dog: through Puppyhood and Beyond], I'm learning more and more that it's about energy and animals. If I can get myself balanced and keep in mind that dogs are animals, should be at the right place to start.

So, from first day back from holidays, I'm setting the alarm for an hour earlier for walking the dogs. It should be a good time for me to centre myself too.

I'm just getting into cryptocurrency on Steemit.com and wanted to understand it. This went a long way to helping me do that.

Recommended by a good friend. This is potentially a life-changing book for me. It's the sort of book that really could use multiple reads.

It was an interesting way of learning some more about the bible story, but to be fair I think it was probably written for children and I found the chatty style rather annoying.

A gem of a book with some wonderful photography of Tim's sculptures in the back half of thee book.

I was born in 1971 so a lot of my formative years were spent under Maggie Thatcher's premiership. At the time I cared little about it, other than through the wonderful Spitting Image, which was food for playground banter.

Having recently moved back to the UK after a long spell abroad, I find myself becoming interested to learn about the period that I lived through but knew so little about. Though I cared little about politics until, well, until now really, Maggie stands firm in my mind like an icon.

John Sergeant's book is engaging and entertaining. It is interesting to hear the point of view of one who was so close to the action with the luxury of hindsight. For the layman (and I consider myself such), the book is easy to follow, although I did benefit from a few visits to Wikipedia and YouTube to learn more about the workings of British politics and see news reel footage from the time.

I have no other benchmarks against which to gauge John Sergeant's opinion of the events, but when he does give his opinion, it is always well backed up well. He does a great job of relating the key events, not only of Maggie's time as PM, but of her rise to become leader of the Conservative Party and her influence on her successors and her party; in a word, her legacy.

For those who do have a strong opinion of Margaret Thatcher, and I know that there are a lot of you out there, I think that this book will help to show the other side of the story, whatever side you happen to be on. But for those such as I without much of an opinion, you'll find this a highly informative book that gives a broad overview of Margaret Thatcher but it may leave you still wondering what to think. That's where I am anyway. I'm contemplating reading her memoirs, although I do like John Sergeant's book for its apparent lack of idealogical bias and I could really use some more books like this one.

In short, I enjoyed this a lot and could listen to it again quite easily.