MCTS Implementing and Maintaining Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Exam: 70-431 Exam Cram, by Thomas Moore

Another cramming book for Microsoft exam 70-431 written in a concise & logical manner as a only database book probably could be. After looking at the Microsoft exam syllabus I wonder why the authors chose to structure the book the way they did because the syllabus seemed more logical & I ended up shuffling my notes into the Microsoft structure. In particular, for me the book would have benefitted from bringing all the various tools used under one section (or appendix), though I suppose that's up to the individual & their exam technique. However it has excellent points of interest highlighted throughout & the practice exams are very good, & it helped me successfully get through the exam.
3/5

MCSD Analyzing Requirements and Defining .NET Solution (Exam Cram 2), by Randy Cornish, et al

A book for cramming Microsoft exam 70-300 written in a likeable enough manner but I got confused when various topics were repeated throughout the chapters. I realised that the level of detail for these topics increased as the book wore on but unfortunately it was never completely clear what the thresholds for the level of detail were. I think the book could have benefitted from more closely following the Microsoft exam syllabus because I ended up referring to it to fix each of the development stages in my mind. The book might have ended up being much more concise than it was as well, nevertheless it did help me to pass the exam so it did its job.
2/5

The Great Crash, 1929, by John Kenneth Galbraith

A topical read of the seminal work on the 1929 crash written in a lively & engaging style. It describes the gathering sense of foreboding followed by the panic of the collapse that occurred in the Autumn of 1929. It puts the crash into the context of the wider American economy & society, describing the people it affected, directly & indirectly, & it also touches on the crash's influence on the Depression that followed it. Understandably quite a lot of technical economic information & terms, some of which went over my head, although the author does a decent job at describing them. The book obviously describes events that occurred nearly 80 years ago but it's arguably never been more relevant in these volatile times, & some of the parallels with now are quite hair-raising!
3/5

England Managers, by Brian Glanville

I reckon there's a good book to be written on why England haven't won anything in international football for over 40 years, but this effort by celebrated sports journalist Brian Glanville is not it. In fact it is one of the worst books I've ever read!

Firstly the standard of editing is terrible, quite often there are parts of paragraphs that are repeated verbatim within a page or two & there is also too much repetition of lame cliches, all of which should really have been tightened up to make the book a bit more readable.

Ultimately though the book fails because despite what the cover promises, Glanville actually attempts no analysis on why various managers have failed to establish England as world-beaters (Alf Ramsey excepted). Instead he ends up superficially describing games that occurred during the various qualifiers & tournaments, & the manager's reaction to them, whilst providing next to no new information or opinion. This means that the prose degenerates into the jaundiced & rambling anecdotes from an old man's memoirs: memoirs which should probably have stayed private.

The closest Glanville gets to any sort of analysis is to hypothesize on the good luck, or not, of each manager, which is an astoundly weak argument for a man who has clocked up many years of supposedly incisive insight into the game. Consequently because of this general lack of insight there is an underlying tone of negativity & short-sighteness - after all, if Glanville has no idea or theories to offer he might as well just focus on the negative headlines of the day, which is exactly what he does.

I can now understand why various England managers end up revilling the press. Journalists would like to us to believe that their articles are considered pieces of opinion based on their knowledge of the technicalities of the game as well as from their relationships with players & managers. However if Glanville is supposed to be one of journalism's elder statesmen & yet he can come up with nothing more intelligent or insightful than this, it's no wonder professionals within the game get so fed up that journalists have so much influence based on such shallow & half-arsed insight: "insight" that Glanville displays in this terrible book.
1/5

Class In Britain, by David Cannadine

An extensive & somewhat academic anaysis of class structures in Britain from the 18th Century up to the end of the 20th Century. There are apparently three different models: them & us; hierachical; & tripartite (upper, middle, lower). The author explores the evolution of each model & the wider consequences that had upon the society of each century.

It doesn't sound like the most entertaining read does it? & you'd be right! However the argument of how each class is assumed to have its own political party when in fact it doesn't was quite interesting & a novel one to me.

Finally I found it worth perservering with until the end because the author presented an interesting contemporary analysis of Britain's class structure in comparison to the United States. Included within this section were some noteable suggestions on how Britain can become more classless (as various politicians have promised to make Britain) for example by scrapping the ludicrous honours system.

I don't recommended it for a light read on Britain's class foibles though.
3/5

The Hot Topic, by David King & Gabrielle Walker

A punchy & informative book which presents the facts of & dissects the arguments on man-made climate change. One of the authors, David King was the UK government's Chief Scientific Advisor for 7 years so knows a thing or two about the topic & that familiarity & depth of knowledge is obvious, even if just from the amount of evidence provided within the references.

What made me appreciate the book even more though was the acknowledgment that man-made climate change is here to stay for the foreseeable future & that sensible measures must be taken to limit its damage & to reduce CO2 emissions to prevent the effects from getting far worse. Furthermore these measures can be carried out using current technologies which needn't cause the bankruptcy of any country that implements them.

I found this argument a refreshing message from the usual doom-mongers & the refusenik stance of various Western countries mostly responsible for the problem which neatly exposes the reasons for a lack of progress in tackling this problem for the lie that it is.

Negatives in the book were that some of the chapters were necessarily statistic heavy, which doesn't (usually, for most people) make for the best read.
4/5

Rubicon, by Tom Holland

An erudite, entertaining & very readable book on the rise & fall of the Roman Republic, why it happened & who made it happen. For once the usual cover blurb in its praise & its awards were not for nothing. The book successfully captures the details of the major players' characters, as well as the shocking brutality of the times, in a concise & contemporary manner, in contrast to often dry translations of original sources. Although always an interesting subject it's no mean feat to tell the complicated story in such a readable way, a way that has seen this book win so much praise, including mine - I've only knocked off one star because I wanted it to carry on.
4/5

Wild America, by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher

I'm not normally into travel books but I fancied taking a look at this one of an epic trek down, across & up North America made by two reknowned naturalists in 1953. The two managed to maintain their enthusiasm for the journey & the subject matter throughout even as they were affected by exhaustion in keeping to their 30,000 mile schedule. They describe in detail (sometimes slightly too much detail about the geology & the plants which slowed things down a bit for me) the wildlife & people that they found along the way, which made for an interesting & enlightening read. I finished intrigued as to whether anyone has replicated their journey, & if the places they visited back then, & the wildlife they saw, has been preserved. I know I'd love to be lucky enough to visit one or two of the destinations they describe to find out.
4/5

Feed The Goat, by Shaun Goater

I suspected Shaun 'The Goat' Goater's "magnificent octopus" wouldn't be in danger of winning any literary awards but I was disappointed with the banality in which his exciting career was written up. It read as if it had been typed up from a dictophone, full of the sort of football cliches normally reserved for post-match interviews.
Most disappointingly on a couple of occasions a few genuinely interesting events seemed to be unfolding only for the narrative to then skip to another game without anything being revealed at all, for example on the back cover the text says that Goater was signed by Man U as a political move following a disastrous pre-season tour but there is no mention of this in the book.
The occasional revelation was enough to keep me going though, like the fact that Goater didn't think much of Keegan's man-management (or lack of it), mainly because he kept dropping him, but again this is not explored in detail; Goater never wonders why or mentions what might have been mitigating circumstances, i.e., his advancing age for a footballer.
For me though, the book was a trip down memory lane because for much of Goater's story I was able to say 'I was there', as I followed City through the outrageous ups & downs (even by their erratic standards) that coincided with Goater's time at the club.
I'm still a fan of The Goat, I even met him once & have his autograph in my passport, he's a thoroughly decent & honest man who worked hard to get where he was, I just wish he had put some of that hard work into his book especially when he played a big part in some momentous events for City, it was such a shame that a bit more care & literary craft was not applied to the re-telling.
2/5

Post Office, by Charles Bukowski

Such is the author's literary standing & cult status I almost felt obliged to enjoy this book & rate it highly, but I needn't have worried because after reading this novel I now find myself in complete agreement with the fulsome praise I've seen elsewhere. For me Bukowski's lauded originality is in describing the dull, repetitive, unskilled labour of a mail worker's life yet managing to fill it with hilarious irreverence as well as with the profound pathos of life.
5/5

Speed Painting by Nico Di Mattia

A couple of YouTube clips of some speeded-up Photoshop painting. There are quite a few but I preferred the comic-book characters Spider-man & Optimus Prime. This guy is incredibly talented regardless of the medium he uses.

The Romans: An Introduction, by Antony Kamm

Cracking little book on the Romans, expertly condensing over 2000 years of history into 200 pages covering the major people & events as well as their daily lives, mythology, architecture, literature & army - quite a feat especially when considering how readable it is.
4/5

My Library

Any Human Heart, by William Boyd

The fictional journals of Logan Gonzago Mountstuart cover almost the whole of the 20th Century & tell the story of his life in his own words, from Uruguay to Norfolk, Oxford, Switzerland, New York & France; his life's ups & down are revealed in complete candour.

It's difficult to sum up a book that contains a whole life (albeit a made-up one) in just a few lines, but I thoroughly enjoyed following Logan's adventures which also highlighted my own ignorance about art & the art world.

At a couple of points I did feel as though the author's interests were over-powering his character's voice, however, especially in the later chapters, the book shows an author at the top of his game, weaving a fascinating, moving & hilarious story from his character's fully-lived life.
4/5

The Power That Preserves (The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Volume 3), by Stephen Donaldson

The first trilogy draws to a close with the main leper character finally coming good. Trouble is, it takes almost three quarters of the book to get to that point & up to then there are so many dire & tortuous setbacks that Lord Foul's main weapon of inspiring despair in his victims was inspired in me as well, which made for a heavy, & somewhat dull, read. After eventually getting to the final showdown I wasn't overly impressed with it either & felt in some places it was even slightly absurd.

In this genre I also look for some romantic heroism & inspirational courage but the main character in this trilogy purposefully embodies the opposite; it's often mentioned that he has a cynical unbelief & distrust of the world he has found himself in, which all worked to leave me feeling somewhat cynical too. Consequently I won't be reading the other two trilogies in the Thomas Convenant series (Second & Final).

I also wonder if nostalgia plays a part in how well regarded these books are (some even say they are better than Tolkien's) because, judging by other reviews, many people seem to have read these as teens in the 80s when they were first published.
3/5