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A good breakdown of current user experience (UX) problems, with some examination into their likely causes. Eye-opening for those who haven't considered these issues.

This book is a snapshot of west-coast tech companies and current UX. I wanted to see it go further, with some history, or some coverage of other regions. It would have benefited from interviews with designers past and present, and a broader exposure. Instead, it can be described as a quick read :)

The best thing from this book are tips to change the conversation. Instead of thinking of changes for a minority of people as being "edge cases", referring to them as "stress cases" really makes the point. Another change was getting rid of some things (choosing Miss, Mr. or Mrs.) and just leaving an open text entry box - if you feel you really need one. This is the sort of UX thinking people should be doing.

Starts off as another adventure, continuing the previous one, but then evolves into a more character driven tale. Taran grows more in the last third of this book than all the rest. Disney's famed flop is "inspired" by the first two books of this series.

The first book ends with the defeat of the villain, but they still have the power to create more "cauldron born" zombies, so this book starts with a detailed plan to capture that particular loose end. Like all plans, it goes awry, and we focus on Taran's story for the remainder. The small band with him echo the larger story, including tension with a rival - the minor noble Ellidyr.

It is Adaon's brooch that turns the tale, lending Taran wisdom and foresight. Even with this advantage, the Cauldron (and its excellent guardians) stymies his group. Dealing with that challenge takes this book nearly to the last page.

Looking forward to reading and reviewing the other books in this series. I found this a better story than the first one - will it be the high point? 4 stars for now - I really liked it.

A long novella, this has some interesting characters and world building which are unfortunately buried by the interests of the main characters. Oh, it also ends abrupt

... though allegedly there is a second part coming soon. Released in 2018, this is the author's first novel. I nabbed it from the category of "time travel" on worldswithoutend for a challenge on that site, and there is time travel, exact method undefined. Changes in the past are (supposedly) to a pocket universe which collapses, according to scientists in the setting. I kinda think the author is going to flip that in the sequel.

Back to the novel - the world building is interesting, what there is of it. The characters live it and don't think or talk about it - so we don't get to see it. It seems to be post environmental catastrophe, or possibly post-apocalyptic also. Interestingly, the stated purpose for time travel is to measure the original state of something in order to get back to it, to reestablish nature as it were. Does that even make sense - can all the conditions be met? I'm probably overthinking this.

The characters are also distinguishable with their own personalities and quirks and... don't think or talk about themselves much. I get "show don't tell" but the reader needs at least one of these to keep up. I just wasn't invested in these characters.

So, confusing world, characters I don't especially like, and the main character very focused on procuring water samples. This makes for a book that is "just okay", and not the best use of my time. Overall recommendation - wait for the sequel to be available and then decide if you want to give your time.

This is a memoir of Jill Wine-Banks, focused mostly on her time as a prosecutor during Watergate. I have not watched her on MSNBC, but I do have an active interest in history. This book summarized the facts and feelings of that era in an excellent way.

The manipulation and maneuvering that Nixon and staff did to avoid prosecution is legendary. I for one would love to know what was on those 18½ minutes of tape, "accidentally" erased between 5 and 9 times. Even without that likely damning evidence, Nixon's casual disregard for the law is evident here, and reminiscent of a more recent president - touched on by the author in the epilogue.

I say memoir, because there is more than Watergate here. The author's marital troubles and affair are teased early on as a possible lever against her - but nothing came of it later in the book. An equally interesting history of this time could have left this part out. If those troubles behind the scenes colored her judgement, I didn't see it in the text. Later portions detail her pioneering work with the Army and then MSNBC - both very interesting.

Coming back to the point, this is a really good history of what happened, and how the checks and balances worked at that time. My hope (and the author's) is that they continue to work into the future. This book was also a fairly quick read. The audiobook has the introduction and epilogue read by the author herself.

I put this on my reading list shortly after hearing about it. Now that I've read it, I can review it - scathingly. My strongest words are for acknowledged editor Adam O'Brien, who did NOTHING.

Run-on sentences that take half a paragraph, repeated paragraphs only slightly reworded, and did I mention the repeated paragraphs? I blame the author for jumbling the timeline (Reagan's SDI came years after Missile Command was released), irrelevant chapters, and never mentioning Atari's preferred description of "Trak-ball". Further blame to the author for blatant misstatements of what arcade gamers thought at the time - I am guessing he was born more than a decade later. Finally, I blame myself for not returning this book to the library after the first chapter.

Can I find something good here? The foreword is good, though I wish Jeff Gerstmann had read the book first. I am glad that Alex Rubens tracked down Dave Theurer to get his story, assuming that's the way it really happened. I would have rather flipped through his raw notes than read this book.

If you are considering this book, don't bother.

This well-written work debunks negative stereotypes and psychological studies with excellent evidence, revealing that on the whole, humans are good. As a bonus, the author also explains the motivation of Nazis, terrorists, nationalists and racists. Believing in human generosity and kindness isn't merely optimistic, it's realistic.

Dig behind the fictional Lord of the Flies and you find a real incident which was far more hopeful. Behind the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram shock machine you find lies and coaching, designed to attract viewers the same way sensationalist news does today. The research and facts this author has put together provide both a debunking of the cynical view and a breath of fresh air. Speaking of the news, "turn it off" is one of the suggestions in the epilogue "Ten Rules to Live By".

This book is an excellent counterpart to [a:Hans Rosling|2790706|Hans Rosling|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1486521286p2/2790706.jpg]'s Factfulness, which tells how the world is better off than you might think. Neither of these glosses over the problems that occur, but both put them in context and suggest ways to deal with them. I plan to reread Humankind in the future, and also want to read more from this author - though not in the original Dutch.

Highly recommended - and a relatively quick read, despite being more than 450 pages.

After nearly two months of struggle, this book is at an end. Note to author - if you create software for a book, plan to support it as long as you would support the book, in multiple mediums. Not available for me - though I'm not sure it would have made the reading better.

Author Iain Pears reportedly laid this complex story out on a computer, with various characters interacting others in multiple stories. In short, a future dystopia, a fantasy setting, and a recent historical setting (contemporary with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien). If you consider each of these as separate stories, the first two are fairly weak. Mixing everything together with interspersed chapters weakens them further, and doesn't strengthen the recent history. In short, reading this book cover to cover was not fun.

The very full cast of characters have their own motivations, and strong females easily surpass the average males here. Unfortunately, the perspective shifts frequently, sometimes mid-chapter. Some are nods or name-alikes for other authors and stories, which fits in the fantasy world but nowhere else.

Perhaps the most interesting part is the theory of time travel demonstrated here. Characters can go back into the past and alter history - with a corresponding alteration of the future. The main character describes this as a balancing act. Not predestination, but a way of time encouraging the universe to fit a standard "pattern" of time. Stephen King's "obdurate" would be an appropriate description.

That said, there are flaws also. I can't go into them closely without spoilers, but some would be right at home on Star Trek, including a transporter malfunction. Unexpected and unwelcome, they leave me with more questions than answers. The thin plots are insufficient to help.

If the app were available (or replaced with a website), I might be able to give the stories of a selected character a better rating. The cover-to-cover story barely rates 2 stars, "it was okay" in Goodreads parlance. One thing is for certain - I am glad to be done.

Been flipping through this for months, thanks to a liberal renewal policy at the library. Collects the war comics of Bill Mauldin, popular among soldiers for both humor and accuracy (especially the weapon illustrations). An appropriate book to finish on Memorial Day weekend.

Roughly linear presentation over two hardcover volumes, starting with a biography of the author/illustrator. Endnotes mention the specific conditions for some of the comics, and give a glimpse into the publication process with notes to the editors.

Bill was in Italy for much of the late war offensive; some of the comics include the Mountain regiment and were reprinted in Isserman's [b:The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors|43261180|The Winter Army The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors|Maurice Isserman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545415677l/43261180.SY75.jpg|67138960] which I read earlier this year. Looking forward to reading more from Mauldin, if I can find it.

All the science and engineering of The Martian, all the tension of life threatening situations, and all of the humor - with the addition of first contact with alien life forms. No spoilers - this book is worth reading.

The main character wakes from a coma with some memory loss which recovers over time. This gives the author an excellent chance to tell two stories simultaneously - the present situation and the history of what led up to it. Our hero is just as much of a wisecracker as Watney, with less foul language (which is explained soon enough).

I started Saturday morning and finished Sunday night, with plenty of activities in between. It's an easy read, even at 476 pages. If the audio book is read by R.C. Bray (who originally read The Martian), I'll be back to reread this quite soon. Maybe on the reread I can find a small nit to pick somewhere - or maybe not.

Definitely worth reading.

Takes on the largely one-sided proposed solutions to climate change with many excellent analogies and a fair amount of facts. Makes excellent points that have yet to be refuted by those who believe elimination of fossil fuels is the ONLY way to solve this problem. Clear, concise, and recommended.

Lomborg tends to rile people up, and people who try to tear down his arguments mostly get things wrong. This book outlines a good approach to measuring and balancing costs vs benefits, and argues yet again that there are multiple solutions - we will end up using more than one. The facts he relies on (Nordhaus) have been questioned in the past, and this book doesn't answer those questions unfortunately. For that matter, the questions Lomborg has for the zero carbon emissions folks are not new either, and also haven't been answered.

The first book of his that I read (Cool It!) took Al Gore and others to task for knowingly exaggerating the problem - trying to scare people into a solution. This book continues to fight that trend, and thus the title. Everyone needs to stop telling people they'll be dead and the planet will be uninhabitable if we really want them to change. Seems obvious to me, but please read this book if that is somewhat less obvious for you. We aren't living the 1950s all over again - both science and economics are much improved.

Written 40 years ago, the strong female characters help it feel more recent. One of them may be a representation of the author, both graduate students of history. The first book of a series, with a larger story that is unresolved.

The story starts in the main characters dreams of a fantasy world in trouble. Dreams are reality, on the other side of a portal soon used by the main characters. During the late 70s and early 80s, there were many stories written with this theme. Another trope used often then was that the main characters can't go home again, at least not yet. Here the reason fits with the larger story of an evil Dark - nebulous creatures who can drain their victims mindless.

The characters are key here on both sides of the portal, and their reactions to this world are the story of this first book. Similar to Star Wars and Tolkien, a battle has been won against the enemy, but the war is far from over. The remaining two books in the trilogy were published the following year, so I have confidence the author has a good plan for the larger story.

Two additional books and a few short stories are available, all published more than 10 years after the initial trilogy. Not sure when I will tackle them, but I plan to read books 2 and 3 fairly soon.

Three separate stories that didn't really have a lot to do with Boston. Two of the three are tenuously connected by the title fourth story - the fever or "the grip", which isn't covered well either. 1½ stars.

Babe Ruth probably has the most accounts written; nearly all spend the first quarter on his Baltimore upbringing and pitching with the Red Sox. German-born Karl Muck probably has the least. His story felt incomplete, but was the most interesting - through him, the author dipped a toe into internment of enemy aliens and denying rights to Germans (and those with German names - but not Ruth).

Charles Whittlesey is the least Boston here, hailing from New York and leading a division of New Yorkers (the 77th, aka the Metropolitan) during the war. He attended college in Massachusetts, but his influence on Boston (or vice versa) is not proven in this book.

I agree completely with other reviewers that this book felt too long and didn't flow. The author failed to connect what are essentially three magazine articles. If he had a point, it never arrived.

This book was suggested for me, and a 4.x rating plus my own fandom of the Red Sox made this an easy selection. I chose the audio book, how a friend would also read this, and I have to say I will suggest he give this one a pass. Not just for the scattered and incomplete content, but in this case the reader made things worse with a slow and ponderous delivery. 140% speed made it barely tolerable.

This book is a complete history of what became Dungeons & Dragons, tracing the path from wargames to postal games and playing roles. Extensive references connect what was happening in Europe and America. Very interesting, but contains a LOT of material - not an easy read.

The author is described as a "Dungeons & Dragons historian" - how cool is that job title? While the subtitle is accurate - this book does delve into simulating wars and fantastic adventures, from chess to role-playing games, this book is more properly an ultra-complete history of what led up to the role-playing games we know today.

It is really interesting to consider how much the postal aspects of wargames led to emphasis of role over armies and territory. I've heard pieces of this story before, but never with the added focus on British and German games. As mentioned earlier, this book is dense with information - I had to check it out from the library twice to finish it. At some point I will buy one for my reference shelf, and I look forward to reading more from this author.