Showing posts with label Anna Katharine Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anna Katharine Green. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

How to Be Better at Almost Everything by Pat Flynn

How to Be Better at Almost Everything: Learn Anything Quickly, Stack Your Skills, DominateI've always liked the idea of Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none so the title of this book really spoke to me. You read books like Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" that talk about the merits of becoming an expert at something but there aren't a lot of books (at least that I've seen) about the idea of generalism. So this was something I was excited about reading.
I have a feeling that regular readers of Pat Flynn will like the style of writing for this. It did not resonate with me at all. The vast majority of the story examples of how these principles work were about him and how it worked for him. Well, how does skill-stacking work in general? Where are the studies that show it works for the general populace? And why is there a mixture of "we" and "you" in the instructional part of the series?  If the book focused less on the author and more on how these skills could help the reader, I would have liked it more.

Two stars
This book came out January 29
ARC kindly provided by publisher and NetGalley

Thursday, April 12, 2018

The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green

The Leavenworth CaseWhen an older gentleman dies under mysterious circumstances, suspicion falls on one of the two nieces that lives with him. For some reason, one of the nieces is set to inherit the bulk of his fortune while the other niece is not entirely excluded from the will but she is certainly slighted. The body of Horatio Leavenworth is found with a bullet in the head in the library of his mansion. The house was locked but filled with not only his nieces but also various servants (including one who has come up missing).
Our first person narrator, Mr. Raymond, works with Ebeneezer Gryce (who will become a regular in Green's mysteries) to find out whether, as the evidence seems, niece Eleanor really killed her uncle out of spite.
An interesting story. Definitely a good mystery within the Victorian writing -- a little meandering but worth reading if you like the classics.

Three stars
This book comes out April 18
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley