Tagged: book review
The Call
The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life by Os Guinness, 2/5
This book is the final nail in Os Guinness’ coffin, as far as I am concerned; I have now read three books by him, two of which I found extremely unimpressive, and I will avoid his work in the future. I found this book to be pointless and an almost complete waste of time. It offered no substance, practical information or advice. My main complaint against Guinness is his lack of originality – the one thing he is best at is quoting other people and telling their stories. Whenever he quoted C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton (which was frequently), I found myself wishing I was reading a book by them instead.
No Fear of Failure
No Fear of Failure: Real Stories of How Leaders Deal with Risk and Change by Gary Burnison, 3/5
There were some interesting and inspiring interviews in this book, but couched in lots of “manager speak” buzzwords and catchphrases.
The Eureka Method
The Eureka Method: How to Think Like an Inventor by John Hershey, 2/5
This is a poorly-written, largely unhelpful, book that spends too much time on the obvious, while glossing over the difficult. What it lacks in substance it makes up for in fluff, the diagrams/illustrations being the worst offenders. One of the most pointless is Figure 5-4, which takes up a third of the page to illustrate a “ten-button keypad lock” as ten circles, each containing a number from 0-9. There are other equally pointless illustrations throughout. The most useful part of the book is Appendix A, which explains patents and patent laws.
The Case for Civility
The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It by Os Guinness, 4/5
Guinness looks at how modern American views of tolerance and the idea of separation between church and state have moved away from the intent of the First Amendment with regards to religion: namely, to ensure freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. He argues that rather than attempting to remove religion from politics and public discussion, anti-religious, non-religious and religious philosophies should be accorded the same respect, consideration and civility in the public square. I admire and agree with many of Guinness’ points, but the fact remains that as long as there is money to be made and power to be grabbed from encouraging the illogical, impassioned, hate-filled polarization of people over topics of religion and politics, civil discussion will be impossible. In the light of modern culture, media and politics, Guinness’ book is a discouragingly small glimmer of reason and common sense.
Unspeakable
Unspeakable: Facing up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror by Os Guinness, 2/5
This book tells some touching stories and provides some good quotes, however it does not dive very deeply into the subject. Its unconvincing surface exploration of such a major issue would probably be most useful to already established Christians. It comes nowhere close to the apologetics of C.S. Lews, G.K. Chesterton and the like.
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, 2/5
After an extremely positive experience with War and Peace, I approached this other piece of famous Russian literature with enthusiasm. I was disappointed. There was only one likeable character in the book and even he was annoyingly sacharinne and preachy. I’m talking about 729 pages of really unlikeable characters: hysterical, screaming, dirty, secretive, malicious, crying, dramatic men and women, all of whom I found impossible to connect with. Dostoevsky’s use of foreshadowing was extremely clumsy and the narrator’s voice was distracting. The “main event” didn’t happen until page 415 and there was about enough storyline and events of interest to sustain a novel of half the length. However, reading other people’s reviews of the book, I found at least one criticizing the translation, so perhaps I would have enjoyed a different translation more.
The Renaissance Soul
The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, by Margaret Lobenstine, 2/5
Lobenstine’s positive attitude toward people who are unwilling to settle down to one career was refreshing and she told several inspiring success stories. However, the book failed to convince me that success as a multi-talented person relies on anything other than your standard hard work and good opportunities that can’t be planned for. The cynical side of me is quick to point out that any career and life coach who has had over 5,000 clients, as Lobenstine has, is bound to come up with enough success stories for a book. Also, it felt very circular to take career advice from someone whose career is giving out advice.
The Quotable Runner
The Quotable Runner: Great Moments of Wisdom, Inspiration, Wrongheadedness, and Humor, edited by Mark Will-Weber, 3/5
I like the format of this book – each section is prefaced by a well-written and interesting/inspirational running anecdote. To me, most of the value of this book comes from the fact that Weber did his own primary source research, instead of just gathering quotes from other compilations.
The Zombie Combat Manual
The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead, 3/5
I feel much better about the coming zombie apocalypse after reading this deadly serious, disturbingly authoritative survival guide.
A People’s History of the United States
A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present by Howard Zinn, 3/5
A People’s History looks at the U.S.A.’s track record of human rights and the less-than-admirable motivations behind many important government and corporate policies. This is the most admittedly biased and aggressively depressing book I have ever enjoyed. While I would prefer to read a logical, unbiased, rigourously truthful history book, I suspect that no such thing exists, in which case, I appreciate Zinn’s efforts to provide a counterweight to the highly sanitized, equally biased, and deceptively simplistic versions of history that are so prevalent.
I appreciated Zinn’s copious primary source quotations, however, the general lack of citation left me feeling unsettled, helpless and manipulated. In my opinion, the scholarly quality of the book dropped off noticeably in the last quarter of the book (starting at the 19th chapter), where the author started to make laughably illogical and inconsistent statements of political bias, taking a tone that is not apparent earlier in the book and creates a particularly depressing air. For example, he first calls traditional family structure “that most subtle and complex of prisons” (514), but later decries “family disarray” (563). While outspokenly anti-Capitalist, he fails to point out a single country that does socialism right, by his standards. Similarly, he is anti-Republican, but disapproves of all the major Democratic politicians he mentions (explaining their failures in a rather weasley way – by blaming their actions on them trying to please the Republicans). Despite these annoyances, I found much to agree with in the book and hopefully was able to use it to gain a more realistic and unbiased view of our history.
OmniRambles 