Monthly Archives: August 2016

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris J. Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Because I’ve read Talk like TED before this, I’ll use that book as a comparison throughout this review. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds

Coming as the official TED guide to TED talks, just based on that you can tell the ideas in here are good. Although TED talks are arguably the epitome of public speaking events, the ideas in this book are actually at the beginner to intermediate level of public speaking.

Technically speaking, public speaking skills and the things done on stage are simple actions but are difficult to pull off due to things like stress on the stage. This book aims to get all the basics down so that the reader can be competent enough to be a public speaker.

Where Talk like TED analysed hundreds of TED talks to find the secret as to what makes a great TED talk. It presents a lot of advanced level ideas and skills. Conversely, Ted Talks: the official guide, presents all the basics that every TED speaker has. Don’t get me wrong. This book is only really about the basics, but these are good basics that all speakers should have. The idea here is that being great in only the basics is enough for anyone to give a good TED talk.

Lastly, regarding new or unique ideas, this book has one: The 5 step approach to explaining anything. Since TED talks are mostly experts explaining concepts, this 5 step approach will make even the most complex rocket science become explainable to the layman.

Overall, the ideas in this book can be found in any other book about public speaking. So, it’s nothing much that’s new. That said, this book is good and I will recommend it to anyone who has a TED talk like speech up-coming.

(However, I will never rate any book on public speaking as 5 stars unless it talks about the number 1 problem with learning public speaking: practice.)

Score Breakdown:
Value/freshness of ideas (33%): 3.5/5
Applicability & practicality (33%): 4/5
Explanation of ideas (33%): 4/5

Total : 3.83/5

Disclaimers:
– I read this entire book in 15mins as an audio book summary on Blinkist -> learn more about that here

View all my reviews

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the kind of book you would either love or hate. 1Q84 is a super surreal book about a girl who somehow ends up travelling from the year 1984 to the year 1Q84. Confused? Yeah, the entire book is really hard to describe. Basically, it’s like Alice in wonderland but set in the 1980’s Japan. This new Japanese ‘wonderland’ is not as fantastical as Alice’s wonderland. It’s more like a reflection of the real world, with some strange happenings.

At first, it was interesting, I wanted to know what this strange new world was like. I was exploring what this new world was like and uncovering it secrets with the main characters. Then it got weird, because the things the characters do, and the world itself was weird. Then the assassination and rape plots came in, then it got interesting again. As you can imagine, the book alternates between interesting and weird all the way the end. Where finally, the climax and the conclusion kinda just fizzles out. I was pretty disappointed when all the build up turned out to be all for nothing.

To me, these sorts of surreal stories have always appealed to me, both in the written and in the movie form. I recognise a surreal novel is hard to write, but I also think that Murakami didn’t pull it off with this novel. Ultimately, the story had its moments where it’s genuine a page turner, but the weird bits of the plot kind of even it out. The writing was alright fro the most part, and the explanation of the ‘weirdness’ is clear. However, I also thought there a lot of excess scenes and information in the plot. A lot of the information the reader gets is never used later in the book. I don’t need to know all the food preparations, weird dream sequences with no meaning, or why the main character has one boob slightly larger than the other. Conversely, a lot of the plot lines are never answered or concluded at the end. Other than the well-written bits, I was left wondering ‘why did I just read that?’. Maybe if Murakami spent more time working on the plot rather than talking about random descriptions, this wouldn’t have happened.

The only saving grace is that this book does have interesting and quirky characters who are detailed. A bit too detailed for my liking though, one boob slightly larger than the other and all. Their development as characters is good and quite well thought out. I guess it helps because we view the story through their eyes.

Sadly, I can’t recommend this book to anyone. Unless you have read and like Murakami’s previous work, I don’t think you would want to step into this domain.

Score Breakdown:
Story/Plot (50%): 2/5
Character Development (25%): 4/5
Writing style (25%): 3/5

Total : 2.75/5

Disclaimers:
– I read this as an audiobook

View all my reviews

Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steelheart was the first Sanderson book I ever read, and since then, I’ve been hooked. I consider Sanderson to be my favourite author.

Steelheart was an epic book and the plot twists were so good. However, Calamity does not live up to Steelheart or Firefight for that matter. In the previous two books, the plot twists and the reveals at the end were masterful and you’d be beating yourself over not seeing all the clues earlier. In Calamity, I was scratching my head over the lack of clues. Sad to say, I was disappointed when the big reveal came.

Throughout the book, all the way up till the end, I had more questions than answers. Especially when it came to Calamity, the character. What or who is he? What are his motivations really? Where did he come from or where is he going?

SPOILER ALERT
I also consider the whole parallel dimension part of the book to be either underdeveloped or too confusing in its current form. It made for a sweet ending, but again raised too many questions. In fact, it felt a little bit too much of a cop-out.

An added note about cop-outs. Sanderson could have used the protagonist’s sudden gain of Epic powers as a cop-out, but he didn’t. Kudos to him for that.
SPOILERS END HERE

The ending bits of the story weren’t favourable at all. If you were expecting a mind-blowing ending like the first 2 books of this series, sadly, you’d be disappointed.

However, the rest of the book (which is most of it) is still good and has the consistency of all Sanderson books.

Right from the start, I was hooked on the plot. I wanted to know more and get to the ending. The narrative is inherently exciting too. ‘Magic’ system still works well here too.

The characters, whom you’ve been introduced to previously, are all back. Their characterisation is still consistent and character growth is strong with a dose of healthy self-doubt. If you liked the characters previously, they don’t disappoint here. I have to say though, I never really liked the running gag about the protagonist not being able to make metaphors. Wasn’t funny for me.

Well. You’ve come so far as to read the first 2 books, you will want to read the 3rd book whether I recommend it or not.

As a series, I will highly recommend it to anyone who loves sci-fi or mystery novels.

Story/Plot (50%): 3/5
Character Development (25%): 4/5
Writing style (25%): 4/5

View all my reviews