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iamleeg's reviews
319 reviews
The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment by Graham Greene
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I just picked this up from a charity shop while I was waiting to meet someone, having only read Brighton Rock by Greene before. It was a very easy book to get into and highly compelling, so I read the whole thing in a couple of sittings. We find out what's going on at the same rate as the protagonist, including the massive aside in the second section that pushes the understanding back, rather than forward.
Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wenger
4.0
Strongly thought-provoking ideas on the interplay between education, experience, identity, and practice, no wonder it’s a classic in the social sciences.
The Life of Saint Columba by Adomnan of Iona
4.0
The value in this translation is found in the detailed introduction and copious notes that discuss the (literary, geographical, and religious) context of the work and the translator’s choices in rendering into modern English.
Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings
3.0
Not too keen on the way everyone’s personality is summarised by their nationality, or the fact that nothing is resolved except “you need to get book 2”. But there are fun parts, and it’s well paced.
Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
Good fun. I’m early on a foray into fantasy literature (other than Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Poul Anderson) and this was one of the first books recommended to me. There’s a great amount of lore developed (and more left hidden), the main characters have depth and development. When it comes, the action has good pace and tension.
The Real Middle-Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages by Brian Bates
2.0
Bates's main thesis is that the "Real" Middle-Earth is the Britain (and, when it suits, other parts of north-west Europe) of the first millennium AD, when Celts and Anglo-Saxons practised their magical shamanism after the Romans left but before Christianity wiped it out.
And, to some extent, that's true. Tolkien was writing a legendarium for Western Europe, and took a lot from the mythology and language of that period. He wrote about that, and others have written about how he did that too. Middle-Earth is named for middangeard, the conception of our world as the liminality between the overworld of the Aesir and Vanir and the underworld of Hel. Bates's own endnotes offer a great amount of further reading materials. Despite this, the book comes across as contorting its evidence to fit its thesis in many places.
For example, cases from "Celtic" mythology on shape-shifting are used to illuminate Anglo-Saxon ideas of form, which Tolkien himself would have seen as an ill fit. Christianity is the big bad that wiped out this urwissenheit rich with ideas, stories and magic; but what of the evidence that the Germanic religions also took ideas from Christianity? Bates makes much of nine being a magic number in the Norse tales: nine is the "trinity of trinities"; is Odin hanging as if dead on Yggdrasil for nine days not a tripling of Christ's similar feat, centuries earlier?
And lastly, "the real Middle-Earth" takes a much wider influence than merely first-millennium folklore, and the book's narrow focus excludes that even while its title promises more. The tower of Orthanc (unmentioned in this book) takes its name from the "work of cunning giants" (orthanc enta geweorc) in the poem The Ruin; but it represents industrial-era factories rending the peaceful world of the Shire.
And, to some extent, that's true. Tolkien was writing a legendarium for Western Europe, and took a lot from the mythology and language of that period. He wrote about that, and others have written about how he did that too. Middle-Earth is named for middangeard, the conception of our world as the liminality between the overworld of the Aesir and Vanir and the underworld of Hel. Bates's own endnotes offer a great amount of further reading materials. Despite this, the book comes across as contorting its evidence to fit its thesis in many places.
For example, cases from "Celtic" mythology on shape-shifting are used to illuminate Anglo-Saxon ideas of form, which Tolkien himself would have seen as an ill fit. Christianity is the big bad that wiped out this urwissenheit rich with ideas, stories and magic; but what of the evidence that the Germanic religions also took ideas from Christianity? Bates makes much of nine being a magic number in the Norse tales: nine is the "trinity of trinities"; is Odin hanging as if dead on Yggdrasil for nine days not a tripling of Christ's similar feat, centuries earlier?
And lastly, "the real Middle-Earth" takes a much wider influence than merely first-millennium folklore, and the book's narrow focus excludes that even while its title promises more. The tower of Orthanc (unmentioned in this book) takes its name from the "work of cunning giants" (orthanc enta geweorc) in the poem The Ruin; but it represents industrial-era factories rending the peaceful world of the Shire.
The Essentials of Modern Software Engineering: Free the Practices from the Method Prisons! by Pan-Wei Ng, Harold Bud Lawson, Ivar Jacobson
informative
4.5
I really appreciate the systems approach taken by the authors in the SEMAT methodology. Rather than defining a software development process to follow, they define the key attributes of a software development system (they call them “alphas”) and then map processes and practices onto those alphas, exploring how the practices affect development and connecting those relationships with desired interventions.
That said, when you compare the seven alphas with the fourteen SWEBOK knowledge areas, you ask: why these in particular? Why are they more important than the others? This book gives no justification.
That said, when you compare the seven alphas with the fourteen SWEBOK knowledge areas, you ask: why these in particular? Why are they more important than the others? This book gives no justification.
The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
3.5
I’m sure this book would have had more impact read by an American during the Vietnam war, for which it is a thin cypher.
Hellstrom's Hive by Frank Herbert
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
This book has the background lore you’d expect from Herbert, but revealed at a much faster pace than Dune. What’s great is that while there are two (at least) “sides”, and one sort of represents conservatism and the other progressivism, there’s no clear guidance that either is the good side, or the right side.