I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

Silva’s door is open. My brain nudges me. She’s not in there. All the time I’ve been hanging around and trying not to disturb her, she wasn’t here at all …

Becks and Silva live under the same roof, but they couldn’t be less like sisters.

Becks likes watching loud superhero movies, girls, and chatting to anyone and everyone. Silva likes privacy; her bedroom is her oasis, and she has an unspoken rule that none of her family are allowed inside.

But then Silva goes missing.
Becks enters Silva’s room.
And finds eight clues about Silva’s secret life.

Can Becks piece the jigsaw together and find her, before it’s too late?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Patrice Lawrence’s standalone YA contemporary novel uses a mystery structure to tell a story of love, loss, grief and obsession with a pitch perfect narrative voice that shows both London and blended families in a way that’s vivid and recognisable. I wished some of the friendships had been more fully developed (particularly Raych) but liked the lesbian romance, the geek references and the central mystery and look forward to Lawrence’s next book.

EIGHT PIECES OF SILVA was released in the United Kingdom on 6th August 2020. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Being 7 is awesome.

This book is bursting with ideas to make this the best year EVER!

Try out tons of activities and record them all in this book.

There’s even space for doodling, drawing and writing about your favourite music, hobbies, books, and sports.

From hiking to going on a scavenger hunt, making yoghurt pops to planning a sleepover - get stuck in and make this an awesome year!

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Written and illustrated by Kia Marie Hunt, this activity book (part of a series) for children aged 7 has plenty of different things to do, some cheap, some requiring expenditure and encourages the reader to record their experiences in words or pictures. There’s a lot of variety and I think many kids would get a kick out of it doing tasks with their friends, parents and on their own.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Discover the incredible potential of mankind’s near future, as a doctor and a philosopher debate the big questions surrounding trans humanism - the tech movement that seeks to improve the human condition through science.

Transhumanism has fast become one of the most controversial subjects the scientific community has ever faced. As scientists in California make great strides in using advanced technology to enhance human intellect and physiology, the ethical and moral questions surrounding its possibilities have never been more pressing.

- should we change the way we reproduce?
- could we enhance the human body with technology to the point where we are all technically cyborgs?
- does anyone really want to live for a thousand years?
- is it possible to make love to a robot?

Through 12 thought-provoking questions, doctor and entrepreneur Laurent Alexandre and tech-philosopher Jean-Michel Besnier go head to head in a captivating and entertaining debate about the fundamental and real-world ramifications of transhumanism.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Laurent Alexandre is a surgeon and entrepreneur with an interest in the trans humanism. Jean-Michel Besnier is Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne University and a critic of transhuman utopias. This is a pretentious and yet weirdly superficial look at trans humanism, constructed as a dialogue between the authors and based around 12 questions that left me with little sense of what it was about or what the actual risks/benefits are.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Despite the criticisms that have been levelled at news organisations in recent years and the many difficulties they face, journalism matters. It matters, argues Schudson, because it orients people daily in the complex and changing worlds in which they live. It matters because it offers a fact-centred, documented approach to pertinent public issues. It matters because it keeps watch on the powerful, especially those in government, and can press upon them unpleasant truths to which they must respond. Corruption is stemmed, unwise initiatives stopped, public danger averted because of what journalists do.

This book challenges journalists to think hard about what they really do. It challenges skeptical news audiences to be mindful not only of media bias but also of their own biases and how these can distort their perception. And it holds out hope that journalism will be for years to come a path for ambitious, curious young people who love words or pictures or numbers and want to use them to improve the public conversation in familiar ways or in ways yet to be imagined.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Michael Schudson is a sociologist, historian and Professor of Journalism at Columbia University. This is a well-constructed, clearly argued book that sets out what journalism should be and why it is important and I did not disagree with any of his arguments. However Schudson doesn’t really tackle news media ownership and how ownership determines editorial direction and content, thereby undermining trust in journalism and increasing skepticism.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

The idea that health care and education should be provided as universal public services on the basis of need is widely accepted. But why leave it there? Why not expand it to more of life’s essentials?

Anna Coote and Andrew Percy argue that such a transformational expansion of public services is exactly what we need. They show that expanding the principle of collective universal service provision to everyday essentials like transport, child care and housing is not only the best way of tackling many of our biggest problems: it’s also efficient, practical and affordable.

Anyone who cares about fighting for a fairer, greener and more democratic world should read this book.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Anna Coote is Principal Fellow at the New Economics Foundation and Andrew Percy is Co-Director of the Social Prosperity Network at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity. This book is an interesting introduction to what Universal Basic Services could be and how it could benefit people, together with some indicative GDP costings for the same. It’s not so much a case as the beginning of a conversation but COVID-19 makes it increasingly relevant.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Recent policies have replaced direct government funding for teaching with fees paid by students. As well as saddling graduates with enormous debt, satisfaction rates are low, a high proportion of graduates are in non-graduate jobs, and public debt from unpaid loans is rocketing.

This timely and challenging analysis combines theoretical and data analysis and insights gained from running a university, to give robust new policy proposals: lower fees; reintroduce maintenance awards; impose student number caps; maintain taxpayer funding; cancel the TEF; re-build the external examiner system; restructure the contingent-repayment loan scheme; and establish different roles for different types of institutions, to encourage excellence and ultimately benefit society.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Jefferson Frank was founding head of the Economics Department at Royal Holloway University and Norman Gowar is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of London. This informative, if at times a little dry, book offers a good summary of how we got to the existing model of university funding in England, how it’s created perverse incentives and increased dissatisfaction across students and academics alike and suggests ways to improve it.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Our broken economic model drives inequality and disempowerment, lining the pockets of corporations while extracting wealth from local communities.

Joe Guinan and Martin O’Neill argue for an approach that uses the power of democratic participation to drive equitable development and ensure that wealth is widely shared. They show how this model - Community Wealth Building - can transform our economic system by creating a web of collaborative institutions, from worker cooperatives to community land trusts and public banks, that empower and enrich the many, not the few.

This book is essential reading for everyone interested in building more equal, inclusive, and democratic societies.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Joe Guinan is Vice President at The Democracy Collaborative and Executive Director of the Next System Project. Martin O’Neill is Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy at York University. This disappointing book chooses to sloganise against the evils of neo-liberalism and make sweeping assertions about the potential for Community Wealth Building rather than offer any detail to back those assertions up and thus fails to make the case for it.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

A battle is being fought within modern corporations.

Shareholders want managers to make their shares as valuable as possible, managers want shareholders to leave them alone, and the board of directors is caught in the middle. The Firm Divided shows how strong boards persuade managers to do what’s best for shareholders - and how weak board don’t.

Graeme Guthrie blends the stories of particular firms and individuals with the insights of scholarly research, inhaling understanding of how seemingly separate events are examples of a fundamental divide in the nature of the firm: the separation of ownership and control that results in manager-shareholder conflict. Boards of directors are caught in the middle trying to weigh their fiduciary duty to shareholders against the close ties that inevitably bind them to senior executives. A firm’s directors can influence the outcome of this conflict by monitoring managers, providing incentives for managers to work in shareholders’ best interests, delegating monitoring to outside parties, and determining the effectiveness of the market for corporate control.

The Firm Divided provides conceptual insight, underpinned by research into corporate governance, into board-manager interactions. It shows how tools that can benefit shareholders when used by strong boards can actually harm shareholders when used by weak boards. Guthrie provides a 360 degree view of firms exploring the ways in which each player pursues their own goals with examples from a range of firms in diverse industries.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Graeme Guthrie is Professor of Finance and Economics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In this elegantly constructed book he adopts a classical economics approach using case studies to examine the conflicting interests of executives, boards and shareholders and how difficult it is for shareholders to manage and monitor executives and hold executives to account but I wasn’t convinced by some of his arguments about executive pay.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

The never-before-told inside story of how English football became the most popular entertainment business on the planet.

The Premier League is a business empire built in only twenty-five years on ambition, experimentation and gambler’s luck. Lead by a motley cast of executives, Russian oligarchs, Arab sheikhs, Asian titans and American tycoons, the Premier League has been carved up, rebranded and exported to a phenomenal 185 countries. Today, players are sold for hundreds of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and all the while the league struggles to preserve its ‘English’ identity.

Drawing on dozens of exclusive and revelatory interviews from the boardrooms - including executives at Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham, West Ham, Leicester City and Aston Villa - this is the definitive account of how the Premier League product took over the world.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg both work for the Wall Street Journal (Robinson is European sports correspondent and Clegg senior editor). This is an eye-boggling account of the establishment and development of the English Premier League that’s targeted at those more interested in business and finance than the off-side rule and which sets out the increasing insane economics of the League and the egos and ambitions of the men who run it.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are in Egypt, taking a cruise along the Nile. They are hoping to see some ancient temples and a mummy or two; what they get, instead, is MURDER.

Also taking the cruise is a group of genteel English ladies and gentlemen, who believe themselves to be reincarnations of the ANCIENT PHAROAHS. When their leader is found stabbed to death, and her SLEEPWALKING DAUGHTER awakens covered in blood, Daisy and Hazel begin their most difficult case yet.

But there is DANGER ALL AROUND, and this time only one of the Detective Society will make it home alive …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The 9th and final book in Robin Stevens’s MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE SERIES for children aged 9+ is a suitable send-off to the Wong and Wells detective duo. We know from the start that one girl won’t survive but their friendship remains front and centre even as they both get some romance and Hazel resolves her relationship with her father and sisters. I’ll miss this series but am looking forward to new adventures with Hazel’s sister May.