Top of the List Reviews

22.8.23

Review: Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It is what you'd expect. pages with 1-3 little pieces of advice. A typical one: "Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today." Nice and mostly familiar. I do like the author's tone with these, very agreeable, mostly.

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21.8.23

Review: French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A not too fit writer decides to ride the route of the Tour de France a few weeks before it happens, and, without much preparation or training, he does it. Quite funny. The author's style is to string together many long words with a twist that adds the humor. I am still amazed that he made it, even with some shortcuts.

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3.7.23

Review: Redhead by the Side of the Road

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As an aging tech guy myself, I saw parts of myself and my friends in Micah. It was an enjoyable experience reading how Micah handled some surprises and was able to review and start to rethink his life.

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14.6.23

Review: Jonathan Winters is Terminator 3

Jonathan Winters is Terminator 3 by Jonathan Winters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You can picture Jonathan Winters at home with an old tape recorder, thinking up a bit, then hitting record and riffing on some odd premise. Here, all his bits are a minute or two, and are as if he left a message on an answering machine. All were different characters, a few impersonations of famous people, but mostly just really odd prank calls. For example, one is of a phone company employee named Bell (who goes on about his name for some time) leaving a message telling the receiver that he doesn't make enough outbound calls, so the phone company can't make any money, so they're cancelling phone service. Winters humor is often in the explaining...

It's only 50 minutes, so quite a nice change of pace, funny as odd.

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13.6.23

Review: Miranda Hart's Joke Shop: The Complete First Radio Series

Miranda Hart's Joke Shop: The Complete First Radio Series by Miranda Hart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I had never seen the TV series, or even heard of it, I enjoyed the radio series, in all its radio-ness. Well done, and the kind of humor that works well on radio.

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Review: The Pearl

The Pearl by John Steinbeck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes, you have to leave IMMEDIATELY.

And keeping your mouth shut only works if you do it from the beginning.

Life lessons from Steinbeck.

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