read 25 books in 2009

Four and a half stars. I’m a libertarian, still not sure how I feel about libertarian paternalism.

Loved it. 4 3/4 stars. Deducting 1/4 of a star for the horribly inconcise, ridiculously long John Galt speech (60 pages) and the fact that the book is 1000+ pages long.

Meh. Assigned reading for class. Burned through 150 pages in four days. Would have been faster but the subject matter was kinda dull. Decent chapter on linguistics but there are many better books written on the subject. A very lazy treatment of the subject matter for someone who otherwise would not seek out better.

Five out of five stars. :)

Five out of five stars. So interesting and really well written.

Great book. Should be required reading for anyone who drives a car or rides in one. Five out of five stars.

Five out of five stars. I loved it.

Very well written and interesting but a tad bit too depressing for my tastes.

3 out of 5 stars.

Read this book for class. I appreciated the fact that I learned a lot about the oil and its implications as a worldly strategic commodity. I did, however, not care for the writing or repetitiveness of the authors. I would not recommend this book as I can only guess that there must have been someone else interested in the same subject capable of doing a better job.

Fairly disappointed with this book. I bought it as part of a continuing investigation into whether or not I would like to pursue an MBA. I bought it despite the poor review in Fortune Magazine because I optimistically thought that no matter how bad it was… it would still provide insight into the life of an MBA student. I found Broughton to have a terrible attitude about HBS, Business, and his fellow classmates. Instead of convincing me that Capitalism, Business, or Harvard were the problems he did a real disservice to himself showing that he was incapable of making the best of the situation. I also found the development of the book inconsistent and hard to follow. He intermittently tried to tell the story of the experience of being at HBS squeezed between his poor explanations of what he was learning. Finally, I found his attack on Jack Welches’ statement about the prominence of business in society to be way off base. It seems to me that Broughton totally misinterpreted Welches’ idea to further his [Broughton’s] anti-MBA agenda.

After reading countless books written by MBAs, many HBS graduates in fact, I had thought that an MBA author would guarantee a well laid out book with excellent writing. Ahead of the Curve failed on both accounts.

It gets two stars only for mentioning concepts and books that I plan on looking into.

School starts tomorrow… so tonight is the end of my book binge. Now I’m back to reading school books. Which may not be a bad thing, considering I really didn’t care much for the last two books I read :(.