Rob Sedgwick

Thoroughly enjoyable review

Reviewed: 22-01-25

Whatever you think of Graham Brady's politics, he has the tale of the last decade in the UK, and it's a fantastic story. He comes across as a man of integrity, one of the few during a chaotic time. He's the one constant in the Tory leadership crisis stretching from Cameron to Sunak and has the inside view on everything despite being "just" a backbencher. His role as the head of the "22" committee that ran the election of Conservative leaders (effectively deciding the process in which the next PM was chosen) made him the "Kingmaker" during extraordinary times. This is peculiar to the Tory party and is never likely to be repeated. It's a real bonus that he narrates the book himself.

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The Ultimate Story

Reviewed: 16-10-24

Really can't fault this book. It is the ultimate story, the story of the 20th century. Extraordinary.

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Hard to hear in places

Reviewed: 23-08-24

Not a bad adaption but I found it difficult to hear and follow there is a lot of background noise. I was listening out loud, might be better with headphones.

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My brilliant friend

Reviewed: 23-06-24

I really enjoyed this story, which is unexpected as I have little interest in art and hadn't heard of most of the artists which the story resolved around. That's down to the skill of the author and the narrator in grabbing my attention.

The book is essentially the story of a friendship. Inigo plays the part of the brilliant friend with a glittering career and Orlando, the author, his inadequate sidekick suffering from Imposter Syndrome. Both of them have their problems and deal with them in different ways. Indigo turns to crime to try and make ends meet and gets sucked into a deep hole. Orlando attempts to succeed in art but is a fish out of water, and seems to have found his true talent in writing

The sub-plot is the art market itself and the ridiculous prices paid for works of art which are barely looked at. This is in itself fascinating to learn about from someone who spent years working in these markets, albeit not as a big player.

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1 person found this helpful

Very repetive

Reviewed: 15-04-24

Overuse of smartphones and overprotective parents. It's repeated ad nauseam, You could listen to any 10 minutes and get the message.

It is an important point Haidt is making granted, and there is undoubtedly a lot of truth in what he says, although he only looks at the negative side of smartphones and misses the positive. Even a lot of kids don't have a problem and their phones help them both personally and professionally. A significant cohort of young people do suffer from anxiety I concede, but you need to look at the pluses as well as the minuses,

I suspect society and the industry will find a better way to deal with the problem than the more draconian solutions Haidt is proposing (all of which are confined to the USA anyway).

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Reading speed varies hugely

Reviewed: 29-01-24

I found the reading speed generally too fast, but much slower in places. It made it quite hard to take in what was being said.

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Good narrator, shame about content

Reviewed: 18-01-24

The irony of this audiobook is it's about the great clash between Boomers and Zillenials, to be resolved by them working together, But it comes across as a Boomer telling Zillenials what to do, a last-gasp attempt to stay relevant. Ken Costa seems to have extrapolated his interactions with younger people as typical of two entire generations. Sat in the middle of these cohorts is Generation X, my generation, which is mentioned twice in the entire book, each time as an aside. I mean if you really do want to bridge the divide, wouldn't the generation in between be the one with a foot in each camp? The reality is nobody is going to change or do anything, it's just a talking shop. Boomers will gradually disappear and as always that will be on the terms of the young, not the old.

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Far too long

Reviewed: 07-01-24

This book is far too long and goes into too much unnecessary detail. It is in four parts: the crimes, Ramirez's background, the trial and his time on death row. It then has an aftermath of an interview with the author. The crimes are written mainly from the killer and police investigation view. Ramirez' background is interesting in places but goes on a lot. The court case is incredibly tedious and is intertwined with the stories of the groupies. The death row period thankfully doesn't go through the appeals! Even the interview at the end is quite boring.

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Rambling with the odd gem

Reviewed: 31-12-23

This book's subtitle is a bit of a misnomer because as the author points out repeatedly there isn't much of a search going on and most of what is written about is speculative and rambling. You could listen to any half hour of it and the chances are it would make much the same points and cover much the same ground. I don't give it 1 or 2 stars because there are some good, thought-provoking moments, just not enough of them. I don't feel there is enough material in this for a book, more of a long magazine article.

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Overlong

Reviewed: 02-09-23

This is a good story but it is dragged out. Really you could write the book in a couple of chapters, A lot of the operation in Argentina is prolonged over several chapters when in fact it was fairly straightforward and more or less went to plan.

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