Good Reads

Alan’s bookshelf: read

Fahrenheit 451
4 of 5 stars
tagged:
dystopia

The Casual Vacancy
4 of 5 stars
tagged:
novel

The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller
3 of 5 stars
tagged:
novel and experimental

The Third Twin
4 of 5 stars
tagged:
novel

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
3 of 5 stars
This is a 3-in-1 book:

– A self-help book for introverts having to deal with extroverts and vice-versa, and parents dealing with introverted kids

– Some sort of a personal diary, detailing the long initiatory pathway the author had to …

tagged:
science

Novecento: Pianiste
5 of 5 stars
Un vrai petit bijou de story telling. On est plongé dans un univers complètement improbable en quelques secondes, et on a envie d’y rester! A mettre entre toutes les mains
tagged:
novel

La vie des fourmis
4 of 5 stars
Epatant! Ça se lit comme un roman. Difficile de lâcher le bouquin une fois qu’on y est plongé. Et pourtant, c’est de la pure science! 100% documentée. Laurent Keller explore le succès des fourmis (saviez-vous que la biomasse des 7 millia…

Les filles ont-elles un cerveau fait pour les maths ?
4 of 5 stars
Epatant petit bouquin fort bien documenté qui règle son compte à cette question idiote en démontrant le rôle insidieux des représentations et autres facteurs culturels dans le constat (de moins en moins vrai d’ailleurs grâce aux politiqu…

Pedro & Co
4 of 5 stars
by Jul
Excellent! Bravo Jul pour ce premier opus! Me suis marré du début à la fin: du gros délire super bien rythmé qui n’a qu’un seul défaut: ça passe trop vite.
Vivement le 2e tome 🙂
Continue comme ça!
Retrouvez Pedro sur le blog de Jul ww…

3 minutes pour comprendre les 50 plus grandes théories scientifiques
3 of 5 stars
Une espèce de feuille de triche des grands concepts scientifiques. Pratique pour se rappeler en 30 secondes de quoi il s’agit. Certainement insuffisant pour comprendre. Plutôt sympa, écrit avec humour, style efficace.
Par contre, la tra…

La science c'est pas du cinéma
4 of 5 stars
Apprendre plein de trucs en étant plié de rire pratiquement du début à la fin, qui dit mieux? Juste génial! Et si vous ne pouvez pas attendre, retrouvez la professeure Moustache sur son blog: Tu mourras moins bête et sur l’excellent port…

J'ai débranché
4 of 5 stars
Il a cru au 5e pouvoir avant tout le monde, convaincu que l’intelligence collaborative allait changer le monde. Un peu désabusé par la tournure des événements (si le web 2.0 change le monde, ce ne sera pas en 3 tweets!), il fait son burn…

Blindness
5 of 5 stars
Besides its unique plot and enthralling story, Blindness is an inspired dystopian metaphor about civilisation, full of philosophical considerations and damn well written! Mind blowing. Definitely on my "Must be read once in a lifetime" l…

Steve Jobs
4 of 5 stars
Beautifully written. The narrative somehow allows the reader to connect with the character, though it is quite obvious that beneath the genius lied a psychopath. Could he have done things differently (as I used to believe before I read t…

Oliver Twist
5 of 5 stars
Not having been brought up in an English-speaking environment, I’m catching up with the Classics.
This is a masterpiece of storytelling! The more I know Dickens the more I love him!

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
4 of 5 stars
Excellent introduction to human believing mechanisms. Michael Shermer covers pretty much everything from the foundations of moral values to religious and political preferences. Several perspectives (Evolution, neuroscience, socio/anthrop…

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
4 of 5 stars
This book is intended for kids, to give them a chance to fully grasp the beauty of science. And boy is it efficient! Dawkins explores many ancient myths which are kind of cool. And gives their counterpart scientific explanation, which is…

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
4 of 5 stars
A cocktail of neuroscience, surprise and humanism. My first Sacks. Certainly not the last one. Despite the many references to Freud and Bettelheim and the writing (a bit rough at times), this book is a masterpiece of story-telling. Hard …

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
3 of 5 stars
Pleasant. Definitely not the book I would take on a desert island, but I can’t say I didn’t like it. Alan Alda is obviously not a writer and his style can get a bit heavy at times. But I enjoyed the way he managed to turn his life into a…

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
4 of 5 stars
Especially enjoyed the first part. Tony Hsieh is really an interesting guy, definitely someone I would love to get to know

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives
4 of 5 stars
Very good book, glad I read it, but not all parts of its content are equal.
To begin with, the book is divided into several chapters, each of which could probably have been a standalone booklet. It starts with the Vioxx and the fear of …

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
5 of 5 stars
Enlightening and poetic, definitely one of the best popular science books I’ve read. Shubin offers is a brand new perspective about our humanity.

Tales of Adam
3 of 5 stars
Same story again but not half as inspired as in Ishmael or the Story of B. A little disapointing.

A Year In The Merde
2 of 5 stars
A long list of clichés embedded in what looks like a recipe for a best-seller, a little sex, a little suspense, a ton of more-or-less funny anecdotes. A pleasant distraction, but nothing more.

The Story of B: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
3 of 5 stars
WOW!"The world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds with no programs"

What Would Google Do?
4 of 5 stars
Brilliant! I thought I understood almost everything about how and why Google’s turning the world upside down, well no, actually, I had (and still have) a lot to learn… I’ve realized that Jarvis probably only unveils the tip of the iceb…

Introducing quantum theory
4 of 5 stars
Yeah well… I’m still not comfortable with quantum entanglement, but it’ll come…

Great Expectations
5 of 5 stars
My first Dickens, and probably not the last one. Fantastic!

The Shadow of the Sun
5 of 5 stars
Pour qui comme moi n’a jamais voyagé en Afrique: Ryszard Kapuscinski démonte tous les préjugés, toutes les impressions, tous les clichés et décrit de l’intérieur une Afrique (des Afriques?) à la fois effrayante et fascinante où la chaleu…

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
5 of 5 stars
Excellent, as always with Dawkins. Science beautifully unveiled, fantastically explained and more poetic than ever…

The Lost Symbol
2 of 5 stars
As usual with Dan Brown: a nicely constructed plot; loads of facts about secret societies, but that’s about it: the writing is really poor, the superlatives almost make you nauseous: there are so many of them! Every building is the large…

Free: The Future of a Radical Price
3 of 5 stars
I don’t see the point in the argument between the anti- and pro-free and the anti- and pro- Anderson’s… This book is just an excellent journalistic work, explaining and popularizing several economic phenomena by multi-disciplinary mean…

The Big Picture
3 of 5 stars
Cool, brilliantly written, definitely witty, the main character is built up superbly… But… During all the reading, I kept expecting something a little deeper, less shallow. And maybe a little more humour… Eventually I felt (and sti…

Horowitz Et Mon Pere
4 of 5 stars
Un pur petit régal, un vrai petit bijou et une profonde réflexion sur la célébrité et le succès, avec pour décor toute l’histoire de la première moitié du XXe siècle de Kiev à Paris et sur fond de Rachmaninov!

Chagrin d'école
5 of 5 stars
A lire et à relire. Sans doute l’un des plus magnifiques traités de pédagogie, holistique à souhait, et dans le style incomparable de Pennac, qui fait de chaque mot un délice et de la langue française un régal. Excellent!

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
5 of 5 stars
Who would use Bart Simpson’s skateboard as a metaphoric support for General Relativity and Wormholes or weird dialogs between Mulder and Scully to demonstrate quantum fluctuation? Brian Green is a brilliant popularizer, he truly makes in…

The Elegant Universe
4 of 5 stars
Interesting but quite hard to keep open at some points. Brian Greene’s science writing has definitely improved a lot since then

La Solution Intérieure: Vers Une Nouvelle Médecine Du Corps Et De L'esprit
4 of 5 stars
Un peu new age sur la fin, (et bon, le titre est nul!) mais dans l’ensemble très bon livre qui aide à démêler la science du blabla pseudo-scientifique quant aux médecines alternatives

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
3 of 5 stars
Actually didn’t learn much… But that’s probably just me 😉

The Grand Design
4 of 5 stars
a bit disappointing actually. Not as good as his previous books. And the point about god wasn’t convincing (even though I’m an atheist…)

Darkly Dreaming Dexter
4 of 5 stars
surprisingly, the series is just as good as the book, which is really good 🙂

Darwin et l'évolution expliqués à nos petits-enfants
3 of 5 stars
Bien, mais pas pour les petits enfants… C’est un exercice bien difficile que la vulgarisation…

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
4 of 5 stars
After Tribes, I started viewing Seth Godin more as a thinker than as a marketing guru… With Linchpin, he has clearly gone one step beyond. I don’t know how to call this, the genre is unique… Practical philosophy? Besides, his manner …

And Another Thing...
2 of 5 stars
I didn’t actually read it through… Got kind of boring at some point. I enjoyed meeting Douglas Adam’s characters in this new adventure. The characters are just the same, the spirit, the humour, almost everything is there… But Douglas…

Découpé En Tranches
5 of 5 stars
by Zep
Génial! Je ne sais pas si cela a une portée universelle ou si c’est juste à moi que ça parle autant, mais j’ai trouvé cette petite perle de ZEP incroyablement pertinente et poétique… Comment trouver sa place en ce bas monde quand on se…

Notes from a Small Island
4 of 5 stars
Definitely not his best, but still… Funny, interesting, well written and very instructive…

Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
3 of 5 stars
A good refresher about passion, entrepreneurship, online identity, personal brand, business 2.0, and a ton of brilliant ideas about social networking. The only things I don’t like are the ubiquitous blood & dna metaphors, though I fully…

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
4 of 5 stars
Brilliant as always! Bryson manages to provide the reader with History, behind the small and pleasant kid’s stories. I now have a clear idea of what life in Rural America in the fifties and sixties must have looked like!

The Road
3 of 5 stars
Probably the most depressing book I’ve ever read. Want an advice? Don’t read it!




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