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Valerie B. (salad) - Reviews

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SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (Freakonomics, Bk 2)
Review Date: 6/26/2010
Helpful Score: 2


Claims it is better than his first book, but honestly thought it was just more of the same. That said, it was more of the same fascinating insight into how incentive drive decision-making in interesting ways. I did feel a few of the arguments/conclusions in this book were a little weak and were not well supported/argued, but it has been long enough since I read the first book that I'm not sure if the strength of the arguments were better or worse than before.

If you like this book and the first Freakonomics you may also like Social Economics books by Malcolm Gladwell ("Blink", "Tipping Point", "The Outliers") and other social commentary books like "Nickel & Dimed" and "Born to Shop".


Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English
Review Date: 11/17/2010
Helpful Score: 2


I'm a bit of a grammar fan. I love writing and I love words and this is not the first book I've read on grammar. So to find in a single book so many wonderful nuggets of new information and to *gasp* realize some of my unknown errors was a pleasant (if embarrassing) surprise.

If you are not as much of a grammar fiend as I am you will likely still enjoy the easy and humorous style of writing in this book and learn some new stuff along the way. If you just worry about little things like where to place the apostrophe or which words have irregular plurals the answers are here. I'm not sure I'd recommend this book for people who are trying to learn English grammar as a second language as the author uses a lot of colloquial expressions and play-on-word phrasing that and ESL speaker may not recognize or understand.

I love this book so much that you're going to have to find your own copy, as I'm keeping the one I got! I hope you do find a copy and enjoy it as much as I have mine.


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