mikefromco's reviews
64 reviews

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell
Did not finish book. Stopped at 20%.

I had heard that Sowell was a good academic as a left-leaning person to learn more about the right. This was not the case; I grew worn out with his obviously false equivalency between things. It wasn't for me, and I went back to Cass Sunstein for a better perspective of the right.  

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers by Deborah Tuerkheimer

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan

emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

5.0

The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy by Aaron Perzanowski, Jason Schultz

informative medium-paced

3.5

As with most tech reporting, it’s a touch dated by now, but introduces some solid points and argues passionately against the “you will own nothing” approach of many SaaS and subscription business models. 

I wasn’t a huge fan of the posited solutions but I did find it a well written and coherently argued book about the subject. I would recommend it, especially since it takes a somewhat right-leaning approach to property rights of individuals but with a left-leaning enforcement argument. 

The Intimate City: Walking New York by Michael Kimmelman

4.0

An interesting perspective, but it lacks any kind of research or depth but an interesting introduction to the neighborhoods of New York City

The Shortest History of India by John Zubrzycki

informative fast-paced

4.0

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing by Andrew Ross

dark informative medium-paced

3.5

The author is a prolific writer and well-known professor so I expected a lot and I was generally pretty happy with this book. 

It struggled with poor layout and strange assembly with at times a zoomed in look at individuals lives (by far this book’s best moments) and sometimes at a stateside policy view (the weakest aspect where the author occasionally steps out of his expertise). 

The first third was quite good, a look at homelessness and drug use and the carved out middle of the Florida communities it focuses on. Then it switches to talk about HOAs, Condos and Disney-communities which is good but not great, it’s very one-sided and is very story heavy instead of actually offering some data. It features a single antecedent that is focused on heavily. Finally, the end was focused on the state policy of Florida with some poorly set up, and often times shoe-horned-in, commentary about housing development, which the author is clearly not a fan of. 

Also, this book in its title talks about “American housing” and it’s just not, it’s about Florida. It talks about issues that only affect Florida, and often times it ignores vital factors that are not as much of a problem in the rest of American that are in FL because of the lack of a property tax. Which is fine, but this is a community level case study; not a compendium on housing policy and failure. 

A good book but this one is very clearly the left-populist approach to housing that at times argues against new housing (for the wealthy) and accidentally starts to say no housing ever.