booksny's Reviews (332)

Decently informative but author's personal observations sometimes were flippant in a way that didn't quite hit the mark for me.

I'd really wanted to read this book for a very long time, but sadly it did not end up an enjoyable experience for various reasons, e.g.

1. I found the chapters where he focused on only one country to be more interesting to read than when he focused on a whole region, as the latter felt quite info-dumpy
2. I would've liked more exploration of alternatives. For example, he emphasized how Putin would've liked mountains specifically in Ukraine. Why would he not want mountains in Poland instead? I might be missing something very obvious about why the Carpathian mountains continuing into Poland wouldn't benefit Russia, but that's where I would've expected the book to provide a more thorough discussion of alternative maps
3. In the China chapter, he mentions that there are 500 peaceful protests in China a day. Where did he get that stats from?!
4. He emphasized how the presence of large numbers of muslims in Europe impacts free speech+women's rights. Less than 8% of European population is Muslim last I checked - is he saying that if there were no Muslims in Europe, there would be a lot more unity around those topics? I'm doubtful of that - abortion and how to deal with hate speech are difficult topics that would be debated irregardless of the religious demographic in Europe 
5. He referred to alawites as backwards hill people. Would have liked more detail on what backwards means exactly to him
6. He said that the US is the greatest fighting force the world has seen. I would have liked some citations/metrics on that - is it based on success rate of conflicts fought?
7. The last couple pages of the Middle East chapter felt like an opinion piece unrelated to the rest of the chapter, it seriously needed more concrete examples of how western liberals misunderstand the Middle East

I gave up engaging critically with the book after the Middle East chapter, as it just felt like there were too many things lacking citation or explanation. Ultimately, while I learned some things, this was overall a disappointing read.

Easy read, cute penguins. Dialogue and thoughts were occasionally a bit stiff and unnatural 

Enjoyed most of the book, but really hated the ending.

I was gifted a book containing seven Nero Wolfe novels by a friend who knew I l liked mystery novels. I've now read all seven, this being the last one, and unfortunately my dislike of Nero Wolfe has steadily increased with each novel. 

The one thing I appreciated about this novel was some dramatic scenes - rex stout could occasionally write tension very well.

The things which I did not like about this novel was:
1. a lot of the dialogue. Stout enjoyed dense, unnatural wordplay. For example, this was a line in the novel "Your first him's opinion of your second him is about the same as yours"
2. Nero Wolfe's convoluted tactics, which makes for a lot of scenes that are pointless red herrings. He has a fondness for getting all his suspects into the same room to ask them obvious questions and be the one talking the most as some kind of odd power play.
3. Archie Goodwin, the narrator. He displays a dangerous level of sexism in this novel which, aside from one character mentioning "he looks like a chauvinist", otherwise goes completely unchallenged. This sexism leads to
- lines like "If I was a male chauvinist pig in good standing I'd say you might try raping her. As I say, she has good legs."
- his belief that a woman who takes care of her appearance could only be doing it to appeal to men
- A grieving widow meets him for the first time, puts her arms around him with her shoulders trembling and his response to that was he "gave her fanny a couple of pats"
- his ideal woman (Lily Rowan) can best be described as a low maintenance partner - someone there to give unconditional affection but never challenge or cling
4. Some very deux ex machina aspects of the plot - this was particularly obvious in the last scene featuring the maid

Now I'm done, this is going straight to the charity shop, and I'm definitely not trying another Stout novel. 

Enjoyed the surreal mystery of this! Also appreciated the actual facts in the stories; author did her research well. Wished that some of the stories had a stronger plot instead of just being musings 

Really enjoyed this! The way the writing style changed over time was impressive.

Quick read, some enjoyable bits especially after it hit the halfway mark and a couple of female characters started showing up with bigger, more positive roles (for the first half of the book it felt like it was just the female protagonist against a huge passel of unlikable men). Also liked the cooking show premise.

Wasn't a fan of the protagonist though - a little too Mary Sue, "not like other women" with no real character growth. Also not a fan of the unbelievably precocious kid and the even more genius dog. Definitely needed some suspension of disbelief at some of the convenient deus ex machina plot twists and soap opera ending. 

Gorgeous illustrations, some really interesting pieces of information 

Liked it better than what if