I’ve been reading too many books lately, plus trying to find time to write my next novel (follow me here if you want to see when that comes out), and I haven’t been finding the time to review them all. So I am going to do a quick review of four different books I’ve read lately.
- Title: Pretties
- Author: Scott Westerfeld
- Read by: Carine Montbertrand
- Published by: Recorded books
- Published Date: 2006
- Duration: 11.25 hour
- ISBN-10: 1-4281-1123-9
- ISBN-13: 978-1-4281-1123-3
This is the sequel to Westerfeld’s popular YA novel, Uglies. For YA Science Fiction, Uglies was pretty good. It had an interesting message of nonconformism, and though a little overly simplified, it was entertaining. Pretties was not as good. It’s not bad, but I found myself not caring about any of the characters in this one. Tally Youngblood has had the surgery and is trying to conform, and then finds out its OK to go along with another Pretty to not conform. The thoughts that self-harm, and dangerous activities, and starvation are the way to be a non-conformist and to have clearer thinking seemed a dangerous message, especially in a book aimed at younger audiences. Overall, I have to rate this one meh.
- Title: The Municipalists
- Author: Seth Fried
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publish Date: 3/19/2019
- Pages: 272
- ISBN: 978-0-1431-3373-5
In The Municipalists by Seth Fried, an Urban Planner and a holographic AI team up to try to save a major city from an internal terrorist takeover. This sounds like a disaster of a story, but Fried pulls it off with great aplomb. I really liked this book. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and is just a lot of fun. It does provide some messages and warnings to us all today, but mostly it is an enjoyable read.
- Title: Broken Places & Outer Spaces
- Author: Nnedi Okorafor
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Ted Books
- Published Date: June 18, 2019
- Pages: 112
- ISBN-10: 1501195476
- ISBN-13: 978-1501195471
Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor is a biographical memoir of how some of the troubles, the broken places, in her life helped her to become who she is. Okorafor is one of my favorite writers. I’ve reviewed several of her fiction books on this site, and I recommend all of them. Having said that, I don’t think this book is required reading. If you love her writing as much as I do, then by all means read this and get more insight into the person who writes, more insights into where some of her ideas come from, more ideas on who she is. It is all very interesting, but this is a very short book and I can certainly understand folks who would rather read her stories, than read her story. If you want to know more about Nnedi Okorafor’s life, get this and read it. If you want to know more Nnedi Okorafor, read her other stories. You really can’t go wrong.
- Title: Great by Choice
- Authors: Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen
- Publisher: Harper Business
- Publish Date: 10/11/2011
- Pages: 320
- ISBN-10: 0062120999
- ISBN-13: 978-0062120991
I don’t usually review business book here on Amazing Stories, but Collins two previous books Good to Great and Built To Last are two of my favorite business books of all time. They were well documented and data driven with pretty clear evidence as to why some companies moved from Good to Great, or how companies were Built To Last over time. I really liked the data-driven analyses of both those books. Great By Choice tries to do the same type of analysis, but on companies that were able to grow during times and circumstances with great uncertainty. They compare a set of companies who thrived with similar companies that did not. I can’t say that their conclusion are incorrect, but I can say they are far less convincing than the other two books. Several of the criteria they measured seem somewhat subjective in nature. There is a lot of great thoughts on things that may help a company to survive and grow in chaotic times, but it was less convincing than previous outings with Mr. Collins.
Matt Truxaw is the author of the hard science fiction thriller “Plastiphobia: aka Plastivore” and his newest novel “Anthrophobia: A Teacher’s Tale” – released January 3, 2025.
They are both available on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle and are free to read with Kindle Unlimited.
When you read either, he would really appreciate a review/rating on Amazon or your favorite book seller/book reader site.
More about Matt:
He was born in Orange County California many years ago and he still lives there. He has been reading books for most of those years and writing up book reviews for the last few years. He gets most of his books out of the library so expect a lot of old science fiction classics book reviews and other science related reviews in addition to newer books he comes across.
If you want to be ‘in-the-loop’ on these and other works, you can follow his author’s page on Amazon or his Facebook page.
For more reviews and articles by Matt here on Amazing Stories (Click here).
