I like this book list much better than the one from the Sound of Silence guy from a few weeks ago! I like how the reviews jump right into it, as if there was an introductory sentence or paragraph which was then deleted before publishing
Question for all those who find his reviews valuable: What is it about them that you so value? I've gone through a few, and they're rather short and nondescript. I can get a much better sense of whether a book is of interest to me from an Amazon page.
I would have never come across that book, but the single sentence "Not only did I learn from it an immense amount of botany (including much of the anatomy and taxonomy that I had never previously retained)" made this an immediate addition to my Amazon list.
This single sentence already makes the review valuable to me.
I've previously read https://shop.rhs.org.uk/books/general-gardening/beginners-gu... (Gorgeous illustrations! Fantastic explanations!) and this seems to be a great follow-up to taxonomy, since I'm also interested in evolution (see also Danny's reviews of Gould's books).
I find this inspiration. I do something similar. My book reviews also have quotes from the book which I tag for cross reference to other books ‘[r]’ and words I didn’t know ‘[t]’
So I found this syntax very interesting:
%T A Void
%A Perec, Georges
%M French
%F Adair, Gilbert
%I Harvill Press
%D 1994 [1969]
%O paperback
%G ISBN 1860460984
I wish I could read like this. I have such a hard time. I'll read a chapter or two a day of a book I enjoy, every night for days at a time. But I can never keep it going. I'm not sure what it is
I remember joining a gamelan music group and meeting Danny a few years back. He would bring books to rehearsals and sometimes read during them. I had no idea he had such a huge collection of reviews online, apparently completely devoid of advertising and SEO and with only a tasteful/light social media presence. This sort of sharing was the promise of the old-school web. It's such a nice surprise to stumble upon these reviews via HN.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 29.1 ms ] threadI would have never come across that book, but the single sentence "Not only did I learn from it an immense amount of botany (including much of the anatomy and taxonomy that I had never previously retained)" made this an immediate addition to my Amazon list.
This single sentence already makes the review valuable to me.
I've previously read https://shop.rhs.org.uk/books/general-gardening/beginners-gu... (Gorgeous illustrations! Fantastic explanations!) and this seems to be a great follow-up to taxonomy, since I'm also interested in evolution (see also Danny's reviews of Gould's books).
So I found this syntax very interesting:
I'd say "retro", but it's more than that. It's like a homely functional design that has worked for decades in older sites.