This book didn’t have nearly as much action as the previous ones. It was a lot more of the plotting and talking. There were some exciting moments with Brienne, but all the waring and excitement on the wall was missing. I was hoping that there would be more of the ‘crows’ since it was A Feast of Crows, but alas, that did not pan out. I am going to keep going with book 5 and see if that makes up for it. I hope we get more action and movement. This book had a lot more of the magic coming into the world, and winter has come. However, the magic is mainly hints. I am very interested in Aria and John Snow’s stories. The other stories going on are OK, with Brienne’s being the best of the remainder. I did like what came about with Queen Cercei. She was in such a good place, but all it took was the one slip. Since no one liked her there was no safety net should a single thing go wrong.
This was a fantastic book, although it is full of cliff hangers. The stories are so numerous that I was always wanting more of any given one when he would switch to another. We talked about it some on Sunday, but it would be great to have a timeline map of the characters’ movements so that you can understand what is going on in the story overall. I’m guessing the timeline doesn’t correspond directly to the chapters, as the storylines in cities happen much faster than those of sailing and traveling along the road. I’m looking forward to continuing onto the next book and getting to know more. John Snow and Aria are the stories I’m most interested in right now. Especially John Snow as that is where the real battle is and not just the diplomacy and lies. While the manipulation and cunning is fun to listen to I grow tired of it quickly. It is not what I am particularly good at.
This was just as good as the first book, probably better. I really like the fullness of the story that is given from the books. I still think I’d be completely lost without the TV series. The number of names makes it pretty much impossible to keep track without some kind of mental reference. There are some small differences that are surprising. Also there are some places where the books goes farther than the series and some parts where it isn’t as far along. The pacing in the TV series and books are both good, but the differences are interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing the start of the 3rd season come sunday.
This is very closely followed by the TV series. It is a really descriptive book and I’m glad I have faces to put to each of the characters. It would be impossible to follow well without the face for each character. The extra tidbits are really nice as well, and of all the things that are going on the one that interests me the most is John Snow’s story at the wall. I’d love to just have that one continue further without hearing much of the other stories. I wonder if that would make an interesting and complete book. My guess is that each main character’s story would be a good book unto itself, but with some extra info filled in from the other sources.
This was a very dense book and I would need to listen to it several times in order to get a decent understanding of what was being said. A lot of it could be encompassed in venn diagrams when it came to the logic part. The if A then B, and if A then C stuff would have been much better to understand in the Venn space. I did like that part about the rhetoric and how things follow from each other. This has somewhat to do with game theory, but is a far precursor of it. Another statement that I like and is something that I tend to believe strongly is that wealth is not in the ownership of things but in the use of them. I hope to remember that owning nice things is completely worthless except to have them be used. And using nice things is the primary end of owning nice things, so if using the nice things can be accomplished without owning them you get about the same benefit overall. This certainly applies strongly to some of the hobbies I’ve taken up recently, like sailing and horseback riding. This also applies to having a car vs. using Zipcar or a similar sharing system for the car. I’d gladly pay Steph so that I don’t have to own a car, but it is not a significant burden on her that she be the one to own a car out of the two of us. The communal housing is another part of this idea that ownership is not wealth, but use is wealth. With communal housing i get the use of many things my roommates have and they get the use of things that I have, thereby increasing the wealth of all of us. I don’t think I’m going to be listening to something quite this dense for a good while, although once in a while listens to dense material is ok.
This book wasn’t what I expected. It was much more business focused. For me that isn’t such a bad thing, as it gave me a lot to think about when/if I end up starting my own company. I did enjoy the talks about partners, employees, nepotism, networking, and marketing. I have the tendency to try to do everything myself, which is good in startup phase, but quickly dies off. The beer festivals they got going sound like a lot of fun, and I’d love to go to more festivals around here.
The application of game theory supported by this book and used in practice is something I like. I would like to learn more about game theory and how to functionally apply it. It seems to me that this is naturally synergistic with Decision Analysis. Combining the two makes for a very powerful model of how people will make decisions and how I should make decisions. Since I have extra time today I will probably look up some additional material on game theory. Reading the Wikipedia article and the links from that is a good start, but I’d like it in the form of a lecture or class if that could be found.
This book was fantastic. The author uses a lot of anecdotal evidence to support good experimental data. Some of the conclusions drawn from the data i find suspect, especially those regarding the purpose of why people were doing what they were doing, but the general indicators of human behavior are fully believable. One of the things that the book talks at length about are biases. It talks about getting used to good and bad things, and how to avoid getting used to the good and make the bad not so bad. The book also says that we should avoid making decisions when emotional, as that will form an unintentional habit of choosing that decision or ones like it when dealing with people in the future. The emotional habit experiment is one that I don’t believe to be as thorough as most of the others, but it is still directionally true. I very much enjoyed this book.
This paints a scary picture of the future of the US economy and of many other world economies, particularly of the EU. The book talks about the monetary systems of many countries, before problems, after problems, and current states. From what I understand of the book the US economy is on the edge, due to too much debt being taken on by the public sector. The public sector debt then makes private sector investment more difficult. Private sector startups are then the source of net jobs in major economies. I think that the worst things they talk about in the book won’t happen to the US primarily because we are more likely to inflate away our debt, without hyperinflation, than any of the other scenarios that are presented in the book.
It's an Exciting World 