dorinlazar's reviews
539 reviews

Quite a good biography of Julius Caesar, that presents the facts and leaves the judgment aside, for the reader to make on their own.

huge improvement over the first part, way better story, and the drawing is more convincing as well. looking forward to reading the next part

This book is what's worse about today's programmers. It's pretentious, complicated, and goes against any agile thought. It's what bloatware usually builds on, and it contains a set of anti-patterns that when followed will turn on themselves.

Surely, not the entire content is bad. There are good things too, and it's ok for programmers to read it; however, they should read it and also learn from its mistakes. This book is aimed at the developer-wanting-to-become-manager, not at the developer wanting to become a better developer. I guess it serves its purpose.

The pacing is quite good in the beginning and the end, but that only leaves room for some absolutely boring middle 'play' that seems to become too long and too silly.

Definitely, in this one Robert Ludlum tried to write about love, and it gets out as pathetic as it gets in every Hollywood movie. It simply doesn't convince anyone, the characters simply don't work together.

Many people said that the Matt Damon movie had a worse story, but to be perfectly honest, this story is forgettable too, while Matt Damon as Bourne is believable.

The writing is good, and alert, and with the notable exception of the middle part, it works well, and reads fast.

Lost to the West is a try at restoring the forgotten history of the Roman Empire. It tries to cover 1123 years of history in a few hundred pages, and it does this by skipping from important figure to important figure.

It's a pretty good read; the author doesn't bore us with details, and each page is crowded with fascinating detail. Where I feel that the book lacks in detail is in describing the lives of the common people, and although hints about their situation are dropped from time to time, I wish there was more detail and more information.

However, given the lack of popular reading on this topic, Lars Brownworth's book is definitely welcome, and at the same time his podcast, 12 byzantine rulers, is a welcome companion to the book, as it doesn't just present excerpts from the book, but comes with a bit more information that is not necessarily covered here.

All in all a compelling read.

Complete garbage, a book trying to play for your attention with vulgar images and useless violence. There is nothing there but the desire to shock. It feels like a three year old throwing with feces at you, and while this might be fun and daring for the three year old, it's worth forgetting and sending to the trash-bin.

Amazing stuff. The story captured me from the first page. I loved the attention given to side-tracks and side-characters, without skipping the important parts, the action itself. Fascinating stuff

I re-read Dune about 20 years after I read it the last time, fearing that I remembered the book through the naïve eyes of a teenager. I wasn't disappointed; Dune is what I remember and a bit more.

Dune is a very well written, very readable stand-alone book. You can just read Dune and get a lot from it, yet the book feels round enough and it doesn't feel like a sequel is necessary.

My feeling is that the author didn't try to add too much in this book, and didn't expect to write a sequel. Also, I didn't find much of the philosophical load that the rest of books have, and many ideas feel a bit naïve.

Dune is a page turner, and you'll never regret reading it.