Oct 17, 2024StiffLots of fun, lots of corpses but a bit a lark, a bit of a laugh.
Dec 3, 2024The CatalystFascinating! This book blew my expectations out of the water with a beautiful combination of interesting anecdotes, histories, and explanations of basic science that is significantly more relevant to modern life than I was aware. Charming and well written, it takes its vast subject matter and presents its list of facts as a compelling story told over time.
Dec 23, 2024Airplane ModeI thought this basically an interesting collection of anecdotes with great quotations from other works, but a weak overarching theme. I went into the book thinking that tourism has an inherent tension between problematic exploitation and earnest exploration and sharing of aspects of the human condition, and that is about how I felt after finishing it. Maybe I wanted something prescriptive, maybe I wanted some lesson to be learned from that, but I think mainly I wanted some stronger thesis to be argued for and analyzed. Instead the anecdotes, quotes, and bits of life story are weakly tied together and presented all in a bit of a directionless jumble.