Book Review - Architzer 2016

I normally post reviews to Amazon, but this book is published by Phaidon, exclusively available from them, and therefore not currently available to review of Amazon.
Architizer 2016 - review

Architizer is the website to go to for endless photos of amazing new buildings and projects. This is their second 'best of the year' book of projects, though how the precise parameters of the year are defined seems unclear. 

I thought that this was a far stronger collection than the previous volume, although it lacks the obvious projects (I only recognised a couple) it resolutely avoids ‘starchitecture’, focussing on firms rather than individuals, with an inspiring mix of projects from across the world, and beyond (Mars). The text is brief but shows more consistency than the previous volume too. 

There are a few recurring themes, multigenerational living, cantilevered chunks of building, and the sun is always shining. Many of the houses look like those intriguing Japanese offcut shaped homes.

But there are few projects here without something that is novel and inspiring, from the big to simple conversions.

Googled by Ken Auletta

I have been struggling through this book for quite some time. Had I read the reviews, I probably would not have bothered to buy it, but I had a half price voucher so I just got it as a book about Google, which sounded good.

The prose is dull, the book is badly edited, there are not even photos, the book uses Google to talk about new media, but is not particularly insightful. This is a book by someone who earns his money in old media, and it shows.

The book does get slightly better in the second half, but I would advise people to avoid this, it is a real clunker of a book.

Warren Buffett and the business of life - by Alice Schroeder

Anyone with an interest in investment should find this a valuable read, it is also a well written account of an interesting life.

To qualify each of those statements, although there are some broad lessons to be learnt for investors, this is not a handy book of investment tips for the novice. Buffett made some horrendous mistakes in his investments, though by and large they make for more interesting reading than his successes. There was no great secret to his investment success. It was largely down to an enormous amount of hard work. Work searching out investment opportunities, work studying investment and business both specific and general. He worked to build up his capital, from the odd business while still at school to getting investment capital from relatives. He worked hard to be honest, scrupulous and above board in all his doings. Over time his business scaled up from one finding small undervalued and unfavoured businesses, to a white knight stepping in to save troubled businesses. The abiding impression is that investment is a serious business that entails a lot of hard work.

As billionaires go Buffett actually led a fairly uneventful life. He liked his home comforts, familiar food, he was loyal to his friends and through overwork tended to neglect his family, something he came to regret later in life. It was not a life of high adventure. But it was a life where commitment and principle were brought to bear, where he formed his own views and stayed true to them. In fact he is probably more likable than admirable. That is not to say there is nothing to admire, just that by the end of the book he comes across as a very decent person.

It is also worth pointing out that this is a long book, it weighs in at over 700 pages, in a small font. This is not just an account of Buffett, at times it also feels like a portrait of most of the people he met, and most of Omaha too. That said where it slowed, it was generally for a reason, setting up a context for what would later prove to be key events.

The author is to be commended, it is well written, thorough, clearly a labour of love. I would hope that most people would find it of interest, though suspect that it will appeal mainly to investors.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The latest Girl ... book caught my eye, but being boringly conventional I decided to start with the first in the sequence, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, even if the cover is not quite so eye catching.

For - it is a good read, I read it inside a week, which is unheard of for me. It is engaging, thought provoking and is about somewhere sufficiently different (Sweden) to be interesting.

During most of the book nothing much happens, for the remainder the action comes thick and implausibly fast.

Against - despite the title, the girl hacker is probably in less than a quarter of the book. There is an abiding cosy middle classness things, the trains run on time, and young people are polite. Everyone rapidly becomes implausibly rich because being poor is unspeakably dull.

The bulk of the book is about the journalist author's alter ego, a brilliant journalist, who solves crimes, saves lives, wins awards, beds numerous women, and is just generally wonderful.

My geek comments would be that no top hacker would use a bog standard Apple McIntosh computer, they might use a hackintosh, they might use a Linux distro of their own devising, or Windows running on a Mac, or most likely a PC laptop. The trojan programme that plays an integral part in the later plot is just balderdash, as it presumes that you would not notice that you were working off a remote server instead of your own hard-drive. I would have thought that whenever your wifi signal dropped it would be a bit of a give away. And a trojan version of Internet Explorer!

All criticism aside, it is a well written book, it is engaging and likable and although far from perfect it well deserves its success. I'll be buying the subsequent volumes.