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Archives for April, 2015 - Page 3
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Book Review – The Middle Kingdom Ride by Ryan Pyle & Chris Pyle
The Middle Kingdom Ride: Two Brothers, Two Motorcycles, One Epic Journey Around China by Ryan Pyle My rating: 4 of 5 stars I enjoyed the book, and am looking forward to watching the accompanying DVD as well. It is an interesting book, both because of the travelogue and the epic nature of the journey and because it has two authors. Both brothers have written their own point of view, based on their contemporary video diaries recorded at the end of each of the 60 days that they spent on the road (and in some cases off it) on the way round China. The book is very much a narrative of the journey and the effect it has on the brothers. There are lots of unusual aspects pointed out, like the fact that no-one seems to have a proper motorbike in…
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Author Interview – Chris Martin
This week's author interview is with Chris Martin. He is a long-time journalist (specialising in motorcycle racing and special operations), he's currently working on a very grounded military science fiction episodic series titled Engines of Extinction. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I actually started a website about World Superbike racing in the late '90s while still in college. I knew I wanted to get my foot in the door in motorcycle racing, and I saw an opportunity to do so in that way. I guess I figured the site needed content and somebody had to supply that, so I just kind of took on the bulk of the writing myself. The site filled a void and proved to be quite popular. Before long I had professional journalists and photographers from all over the globe volunteering their…
Book Review – Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Insurgent by Veronica Roth My rating: 4 of 5 stars Reading this book made the issues I'd had with Divergent make more sense. This starts right where Divergent finishes, and they can be seen as a single long story. The world makes a lot more sense when you get to the end of Insurgent, and there is more to be explained in Allegiant (I haven't read it yet, so I cannot be sure whether or not things are explained). I'm not going to go into detail, because that would involve major spoilers. I like Veronica Roth's writing style. She keeps me wanting to keep on reading just to find out what is going to happen next. Stuff is trailed as a teaser and I want to crack on through the story to find out what happens next. I hadn't intended…
New Books of 2015 pt.3
This is the third batch of physical books that I have acquired this year. The reasons and methods of acquisition are more diverse than the first and second batches. There are nine books here, bringing the running total of hard copy books acquired during 2015 so far to 23, which increases my paper book reading target from the original 20 to 28 (because I said I'd try and read the greater of 20 or five more than I'd acquired.) So far I've finished 15 books, of which seven were paper. You can see my 2015 reading progress on Goodreads. A quarter of the way through the year and I've picked up more physical books than I expected to for the whole year. However some of this is front loaded because my birthday is in January. Also I managed to only…