Reviews
You won't find reviews of Hike Your Own Hike or The Hidden Europe here (that's a lie: there's one review for The Hidden Europe). Instead, this section is for my review of other books, especially nonfiction books, which I comprise 95% of my reading. I occasionally review clothes, movies, a politician, a gadget, or anything else that looks promising.
I've put my best reviews here, but if it's not enough, then you'll find hundreds of reviews on Amazon. I am one of the top 10,000 reviewers on Amazon with over 1,500 helpful votes. And yes, I can review your product if you'd like. Just contact me to see if I'm interested.
Hike Your Own Hike and The Hidden Europe are book 1 and 2 of the WanderLearn Series, respectively. Although they're part of the same series and have some common themes, they have significant differences. For example:
- Hike Your Own Hike has about 84,000 words in 352 pages for $24.99.
- The Hidden Europe has 330,600 words in 752 pages for $25.99.
Math geniuses will note that when compared to HYOH, The Hidden Europe has twice the page length, but four times the word count, yet costs just $1 more!
As you can guess, HYOH has a big font and healthy margins, while The Hidden Europe has a normal-sized font and small margins. It's the old college trick that we all did - play with the fonts and margins to make the page count where you want it. Anamarija Mišmaš did the layout and did a fantastic job!
What does this mean to you? The Hidden Europe is a bargain! Four times more information, for practically the same price! It's a bad deal for me: I had to work four times as much for the same wage. It's like getting paid a fourth of what you got before. You win.
Moreover, there's no fluff or filler in my writing. It's tight, thanks to my awesome editors, Melissa Finley and Andreja Nastasja Terbos. As one reviewer wrote: "Francis is able to weave humor, history, and himself in such a way throughout the pages that you don’t realize just how much information you’re absorbing." Read more reviews of The Hidden Europe.
The Arrivals documentary is dead on arrival. The opening scene doesn't inspire much confidence. It steals scenes from The Lord of the Rings (as it does throughout this seven-hour video), integrating them with Islamic doomsday prophecy. This conspiracy filled movie attempts to be serious but ends up being comical. It's a documentary that feels more like a mockumentary.
Why did I torture myself for seven hours? I have a degree in Religion and specialized in Islam. My thesis was on eschatology. Thus, an Islamic documentary about the end of days naturally interested me. However, the more I watched, the more I giggled.
The "arrivals" refers to the beings who will arrive at the end of the time: Satan, the anti-Christ, and God's army. This video attempts to show that these "arrivals" are due at any moment. Don't hold your breath.
Below is part 3 of 50 videos to give you a taste of it.
The book argues that we vastly underestimate how our lives (and most things around us) are a product of chance. Although we know that luck is important, we don't realize just how important it is. By the end of this book, you may end up believing that randomness is the most important factor in life.
Leonard Mlodinow's Drunkard's Walk gets a bit heavy at times, which may turn off people who don't want to hear about the math details or about the obscure history of randomness.
All highly accomplished people ought to read this book for an ego-check. Successful people (and their fans) think they're brilliance made them successful. Reality: luck played a much larger role than you realize. That's a humbling thought.
The book's biggest weakness is that it's a bit short on solutions. Mlodinow advises us to "be aware" and "conscious" of how important randomness is.
That's nice, but should I even try writing a brilliant review for his damn book? Is it pointless to try to write such an insightful review that it will land on Obama's desk? Then Obama learns about me, buys my book, and puts me on Oprah. Or not. So why bother trying if life is so random?
He does give one bit of useful advice in the end: "Have more at-bats." In other words, since randomness is so important, those who eventually do well often just rolled the dice more often. If you keep pulling the proverbial gambling lever, you will hit a jackpot eventually. If you keep swinging at baseballs, you'll eventually score a base-hit. Even untalented people will get lucky if they try enough. So step up to the plate today and swing away. Keep doing that and even a drunk guy will hit a homerun.
BOTTOM LINE: 4 out 5 stars.
P.S. Although I've never purposely drunken an alcoholic drink in my life, I did get drunk when I was eight years old. My mom put rum on strawberries and I secretly ate them all. How's that for random?
This article was first published as Book Review: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow on Blogcritics. I've expanded it slightly for the WanderLearn readers.
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