Phil Denhoff

That ending was earth-shattering, but feels so right for the world.

This was a tough book to read at the start. I mean it's such a gross concept for a story — animal meat consumption is banned because of a suspected viral infection in non-human animals. And yet, consistently what I felt was that the book gave me an opportunity to look at modern industrial cattle & pig "farming" processes and think about how disgusting and inhumane they are. Yes, meat is more expensive if the cow is allowed to have a life. Is that such a bad thing? Do you need to eat meat at every meal? Of course not.

The writing was a bit hard to follow at times, and the translation is imperfect — for instance, manually translating the Spanish name for Soylent Green instead of, y'know, calling the movie "Soylent Green".

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Tender is the Flesh far more than I thought I would. So gross!

I didn't enjoy "Ministry For the Future" nearly as much as some of KSR's other works like Red, Green, and Blue Mars. The book felt underdeveloped with ideas that I felt ridiculous. Using cryptocurrency as some sort of cure-all monetary solution - the idea that anonymity in currency would be such a useful asset or make money a better investment seems foolish.

The engineering projects, the sci-fi part of the book, also didn't convince me. Red Mars had the decency of being overtly fantastical; "Ministry For the Future" fell into a sort of uncanny valley where hearing about the projects, they just don't seem feasible.

I was also disappointed with the characters. I thought that this, like Red Mars, would be more of a story of many different perspectives, and I felt the focus on Frank and Mary, and in particular their relationship, dominated a lot more of the story than I would have liked. While it did make sense to focus on Mary as she was the minister for the Ministry For the Future, I just didn't find it that interesting.

I thought dialogue was boring at times. In particular, there was a section of the book that was just listing countries and their different climate solution projects which was extremely boring, and I wish I could have skipped it, but I was listening to an audiobook. The sections about the children of Kali and news articles about things like the drones were quite interesting. But most of the divergent non-narrative sections that added to the world were just kind of unengaging.

In short, it’s not something I’d reread.

This book gains a lot from its predecessors. It’s an excellent book, but as the finale, it’s nearly perfect.

I loved entering this world and spending time in Tolkien’s creation. I’m not generally one for fantasy but this is masterful writing. And to keep me entertained while writing English as if it was formal and ancient shocks me. I’m glad I finally read it all!

That said, I would not say the Appendices were necessary to my enjoyment. They were, in fact, a deep slog and unless someone wanted a truck load of names and dates, I’d skip it all. If - and only if - you felt like Arwen deserved more time, read her story. Otherwise… eh. Skip em.

But the rest of the book is so good!!

While at times slow, Before the Coffee Gets Cold was a quick read in an interesting place. If this was a film, I'd have happily watched it. And so I'm trying to expand my book tastes and read new books as well. And I liked this one! There were quite a few moments where I wished people would stand up for themselves more, but that's a difference in culture I think. Nothing shocking.

One of my least favourite books. Constantly cringe inducing, Cline has tried to write something that Stands Above the Rest but is unfortunately utter dogshit.

About a third of the way into the book, I wanted to believe that the author could turn this around. Have the protagonist be an unreliable narrator, the nerds version of Lolita. But there's just not enough to really make that comparison — it's a bad book! With a garbage, morally corrupt main character who gets Everything He Wabts in the end because That's How Good Books Are. Nothing changes! He's as horrible at the end as at the beginning!

I felt like a locked in coma patient. I couldn't escape the hell hole that is this novel.

It sounds like I shouldn't become a founder, I need to be eccentric and also younger.

This book took a wicked turn at the end and just went off the rails.

I just don't know what the point of this book was. Whole chapters seemed designed only to pad the page count. Thiel's vision for a healthy startup is uninteresting to me as a workplace. It's just... maybe American love this, I don't know.

Really enjoyed the discussion of consciousness, and thought the whole thing was an interesting novel. Reading I actually wondered to myself how I would feel about undergoing the process of Mindscan. It's a very complex topic in regards to whether or not a copy of a person, when submitted to by the biological predecessor, should receive the name and rights of their former self.

Truly swashbuckling, it's a fun, somewhat steampunk somewhat fantasy romp. It's quick, it's fast, it's funny, and I was glad to get back into this book again. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it, to be honest.

The writing is a bit wonky — there's some stilted dialogue, things are fantastical or unrealistic, but it's a book that doesn't take itself too seriously and I appreciate it.

I enjoyed reading this after seeing Tarkovsky's STALKER. The film focuses on the Zone, and its unbearable pressure on the stalkers. But Roadside Picnic is focused much more on Redrick and his struggles outside of being a stalker. I wonder how much that comes down the refining a story — the authors wrote this over a year or so. And they came up with an excellent story, albeit a bit dry and slow. What if they'd waited a year and then rewrote it? Created a new story in the same vein? Would it be better? Different?

I've been thinking a lot about how people find niches to excel in. Sometimes that's their one world, or it's a certain kind of furniture, or some particular software. I liked the book but I enjoyed the movie more. Why?

Wow, John Jakes; you let me down.

I was expecting a fantastic novel about the struggle of the oppressed black man versus the oppressive white man and how through ingenious techniques and usage of time travel the black man would reduce the oppressive storm of white society to a small blustery wind on a cool summer's day.

Instead I got... I got a piece of shit novel. I mean, it wasn't bad but it wasn't any good either. I read pulp fiction. This could have been written by a ten year old, and I'm not sure I'd notice the difference.
If it was meant to be funny, well it sure as hell failed that one too.

Why did I even finish this book. What a waste of my time.

I really enjoyed this! It was assigned for a class but I read the whole thing a month ahead of schedule... Once I started I just couldn't stop! Pixar's history is incredible!

I found Part IV inspiring in a way I certainly wasn't expecting. I'm at a time where I want to read more, learn more, and see more and to hear of the author's wishes to do that after a fruitful career, and of Steve Jobs regrets at never doing that, encouraged me to keep on this track.

Boring. It comes across with all the worst character tropes, has a poorly driven plot, side-quests to meet the locals that come across as banal and seemingly provide no character motivation (Louis kills them all anyway! With hardly a second thought!) and−worst of all−has this weird affection for inter-species sex that provides absolutely no benefit in the book. For god's sake Niven, if you're gonna put sex into a book, don't be shy about it. It's your own damn book!

The message is simple: stop wasting time online doing non-intentional things. Time spent on YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit “browsing” is time that is wasted. Only use tools online that provide a benefit for your end-goal, and be conscious of what your end-goal of technology is.

My goals, for instance, are to help me learn new skills, to help me experience film, and to encourage quality time spent with people I like. So I use tools like AWS, Duolingo, Letterboxd, and Riot/Matrix regularly. OTOH, tools like Instagram or Twitter don't hit my end goals - so I actively avoid using those platforms. It's a matter of choosing your intentions and moulding your use of technology around what you want, instead of using technology “as it was designed”, which is rarely in your best interest.

More to the content, I didn't find the writing all that interesting, and the use of possibly-hypothetical personas always strikes me as odd in these kinds of books. If the person is real, use their full name to make your argument credible. Otherwise, be honest and tell the reader that the persona is made up! Even so, these sections are short and do provide valuable examples.

Overall I enjoyed it much more for the principles it describes about technology use over its craftsmanship.

It was fine. It's an interesting idea but I felt like the essay itself was a little too casual for my liking. For example, I noticed flagrant English grammar and syntax mistakes that, while I'd accept them in a blog post (or something similar) I don't expect to see in a printed argumentative essay, but to each their own.