Reviews and Comments

It is interesting to read what Jessica did during her year (of living dangerously), she doesn't give any exact time frames (like when her year started or ended but you can kind of guess based on a couple of holidays and travels she writes about) but that doesn't take away from the book.

One major thing I didn't like about the ebook was that all the footnotes went directly to the notes section of the book (at the end) which was annoying as sometimes I wanted to find out the source or more details about the point and it redirected me to the end of the book. I really wish the footnotes when clicked on just popped up allowing easy reading, then being able to easily go back and continue reading.

Here are just some of the things I highlighted from the book,

I’m left sitting there with the other passengers who had been staring at us like we were a science experiment. And we are. We are my science experiment. And I think it might be going very well.

A recent study says that staring at our phones and ignoring people has become our new normal, which is probably also why we have forgotten how to be around our own species.

“People are usually very happy to answer personal questions if they feel the person asking them is genuine and kind.”

I make a few rules before each event. Go with an intention. Talk to three people, with Richard’s advice in mind, and aim to really bond or connect with one person. Psychologists also say that it takes time for shy people to warm up, so if you always leave after ten minutes, you’re never giving yourself the chance to actually succeed. Stay for at least an hour. Also, don’t arrive late. This is very hard to do for an event that you’re dragging yourself to, stopping at every distraction along the way, but when you show up in the middle of an event, the crowd feels impenetrable. Arriving five minutes early gives you a moment to ease your nerves and connect with people as they arrive.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the celebrations came in at under two hours? Bride down the aisle, emotional vows, champagne toasts, salmon puffs, first dance, cut the cake, eat the cake, two fast Beyoncés, one slow Adele, one big Whitney. Fin.

Why does everything have to have an end goal?

Work sometimes feels like an endless sequence of saying, “Good. Busy!” to a coworker’s obligatory “How are you?”

But self-confidence doesn’t find us: we have to push ourselves to do something hard and live through it, and then confidence will eventually follow. I’d faked confidence and, by doing so, created it. It really did feel like a feat of wizardry.

And this is the problem with Deep Talk. Not only do you have to be a bit vulnerable and a bit ballsy to ask the questions in the first place but also you’re asking whomever you’re speaking with to be the same: open up, take your hand, and embrace the depths.

Sometimes it’s good to ask Deep Questions, and sometimes it’s better just to be quiet. To live and let live. My old mode of being, which I had forgotten was sometimes so sweet. Especially to the strangers around me.

When in life do we have the time and room and space for this kind of surprise and adventure? Hardly ever. For vacations, we stay in positively reviewed hotels, eat at restaurants with excellent TripAdvisor ratings, go to the places with the most Instagram tags. There are standardized versions of every vacation spot—we leave home looking for a new adventure and return having enjoyed a near-identical vacation to everyone else we know, complete with the same photos of us jumping into the ocean from the same spot. There is no mystery. There is no enigma. There is rarely la-la land. By not knowing where I am headed, and relying on the kindness and insights of strangers instead of using social media or guidebooks during my stay, I’m hoping to find it.

But there are no do-overs in life. This is a lesson I’m still learning as an adult.

that you’re only as good as your last gig.

“Everyone who wins the trophy on their first try goes on to be arrogant and disappointed.”

He says that we have “free personality traits.” Free traits describe a behavior or quality we take on when we need it (i.e., an introvert being more social when her work requires it or a shy person acting incredibly confident as the maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding).

I know that one small action sets off so many more.

The book has encouraged me to go and get out of my shell, the worst that can happen is you embarrass yourself, but you just need to go back out and try again. And if something doesn't work for you then try to figure out why and maybe you need to do something different (or go somewhere different).

Wow. Just wow. If you ever wonder what a doctor's perspective has been during the first wave of COVID-19 in the UK then read this book. This book was written from Jan 1st 2020 to the end of April 2020.

One thing I wish the author did different, was in the acknowledgements, she listed her book crew (agent, editors, publishing team) before her family, patients, and NHS staff. Without those people (family, patients, etc...) then she would have nothing to write about.

There are many things in the book that you will highlight or that will stand out. Here are some of mine,

'He is not a statistic,’ Robert says again, more resolutely. Then he pauses. In the bleakness and tenderness of the next four words, I think I understand for the first time the true cost of a pandemic. ‘He’s my best friend,’ he murmurs.

‘I’m not exactly scared of dying, but I can’t bear the thought of leaving my children. I am married to another doctor. We both know there is a chance we are going to turn our kids into orphans.’

The absent agony of relatives, I am learning, is the pandemic’s cruellest feature.

‘I choose to be here, in a way, because it is the one normal thing I have left. Coming here and doing my job is the one routine that hasn’t been taken from me.’

"I never wanted Red Arrows, medals or minutes of silence. Like my colleagues, my needs were more prosaic. Really, I just wanted honesty from those who rule us, sufficient Covid testing and fit-for-purpose PPE. The irony, after all, could not have been lost on Boris Johnson that the one thing Hollywood scriptwriters reliably award their superheroes is, at least, a mask and cape"

This is a book that details the life in a hospice, the place where many die when there isn't any other treatment that can be given. It isn't a place many of us experience, or we experience it when we don't want to.

Dr.Clarke (the author, who is also referred to as Rachel when she is talking about stories with her family) tells the readers many stories about people who are in the hospice and the awesome things that the hospice is able to do for them before they pass away. It could be as simple as allowing someone to die at home with no pain, to planning and running a wedding in less than 2 days.

There are multiple stories in this book that will make you cry, especially if you have been a hospital patient, have been in the hospital for numerous reasons, or have had someone you love be in the hospital and die there.

Since Dr.Clarke is based in the UK, there are multiple references to things that the UK has a different way of saying (compared to other countries in the world) which means it may be a bit harder for an international reader to read and fully understand everything without doing some research on certain words.

This isn't a book I could, or want to read in one day. It requires setting down multiple times and picking it back up again when you can. The chapter markers, while good to have, sometimes happen right in the middle of a story and all the reader will want to do is continue to read that story.

I'm sure this is a book that Dr.Clarke's patients and family can read, and be very proud of. If you every wonder what the life of a doctor is when someone is dying then pick up this book and read it.

Disclosure: I received this ebook for free as part of a Early Reviewers program. The publisher hoped for a review but it was not required. The author, publisher, nor the company which ran the early reviewers program had any say in this honest review. Nor did they get to read this before it was public.

This is a book that I wish I could have stayed up and finished in one sitting. There are many twists and turns that you don't always know what's going to happen next. It was such a good book that every time I picked up the book time went by so far.

It's part time travel, part science fiction, part autobiography.

The lengths of each chapter varied but they didn't feel too long. Some chapters were only a couple of pages but I think that's good so you can put down the book and pause if you need to.

At one point the main character uses two different names and switches between them during the story which did make it a bit confusing.

The book doesn't end how you think it's going to end, which is both good and bad. It could have ended on the last chapter and that would have been a good ending but they ended it on the epilogue which confused me. So I hope there is a second book which continues where the epilogue left off.

I do have some favourite sentences or quotes from the book, I'm going to try and not spoiler anything but there may be some small spoilers (you have been warned).

“You see, you also have to have an idea of why you’re going there and what you hope to accomplish – and that has to come from you.”

"It didn’t occur to him until too late that most people don’t willingly hand their wallets over to someone they just met."

"Well, you should now be in the apartment. If not, you’re in deep trouble. If you’re in deep trouble, go immediately to Appendix A. He flipped to the link and found Appendix A. It was instructions on how to break into a house. Possibly of practical value, but not right now. He turned back."

"By now, you are probably wondering what kind of site this is. In fact, I know you are wondering that. This is your diary, sort of. Only it’s already been written out for you. By you. You see, I am you. This journal is a collection of advice, information, directions, whatever you need to survive here. Don’t ask me when you wrote this (as if you could ask me about it). I don’t know. And, if you think about it too much, your brain will hurt. All I know is that you have to do certain things and behave in certain ways in order to not change the future. And this journal is a day by day, or maybe week by week, listing of those things.
DON’T TRY TO LOOK AHEAD. That’s the number one rule. Events have to occur in the proper sequence. Don’t try to change it."

"Lori. Please stop reading. This is none of your business at this moment. Please do not be offended. He will share with you at an appropriate time. Believe me. But that time is not now. Please close this page."

"“Why don’t you just transfer it straight to …” Uh-oh, maybe that technology wasn’t available yet. “Never mind, I’ll work on that"

“There is no efficient use of time. Time uses you. You either flow with it, or you fight it, and, believe me, fighting it takes up all your time. What are you going to do with it? Stick to one time, whether it makes sense or not?”

"Most of us are trying to figure out what we’re doing next, where we’re going. You just sort of meander from one day to the next"

"Maybe you could have let me in on who was going to be president in between. No one saw that coming.”
“Would you have believed me?”
“No, I would never have believed that many people would have thought that he was a good idea. Or even an okay idea. Or even a ‘what the hell’ idea. And I don’t think I would have felt good about those winnings anyway. It would have felt like dirty money somehow, like giving somebody money to buy the worst kind of drugs."

Tells you about the hotels from the other side. The work, the money, and everything else that goes into a hotel. An easy read that you could easily finish in a night (if you start early) or a weekend.

The audiobook on Audible is read by the author which is nice as he also provides some extra commentary.

There are many things you can learn, or just some funny things in general just by these quotes in the book:

"One thing about hotels: once they open, they never close.
I don’t mean they never go out of business; certainly they do. But the fact that a hotel could fail to be profitable astounds me. Why? The average cost to turn over a room, keep it operational per day, is between thirty and forty dollars. If you’re paying less than thirty dollars a night at a hotel/motel, I’d wager the cost to flip that room runs close to five dollars."

"Unfortunately, once your vehicle rounds that corner into the cavern of the garage or takes a right at the light, any manner of terrible things may happen at the hand of a valet parker [....] So performing your own walk around and familiarizing yourself with any present flaws might pay off later [...] If you do see the actual valet getting into your vehicle, it wouldn’t hurt to drop a few dollars at the outset, so you are on his mind as he pulls it off."

"People like to be served, but invisibly."

"Most of the time the front desk will be able to solve the problem immediately or at least act as proxy and communicate your unrest to the appropriate department or manager. Want to make sure that the agent doesn’t nod, say “certainly,” and not do a damn thing? Get his or her name. Nothing tightens up an employee’s throat like being directly identified. You don’t have to threaten him or her either, just a nice, casual “Thanks for your help. I’ll stop by later to make sure everything has been taken care of. Tommy, right?” Whatever you asked me to do I am DOING it."

"Messiness looks like trash to housekeepers, so keep papers in a folder or tucked in a briefcase. A hotel room seems to feel like home, that’s the plan, but you are not at home. You are in flux. You are in a private/public space. Act accordingly and keep organized."

"People don’t expect crazy quality from front desk agents at 3:00 a.m. They just expect them not to be totally crazy."

"If one plans to arrive after 3:00 a.m. and expect a room (as was the case with my exhausted German traveler), there are several things to know. The only way to absolutely guarantee that you will have a fresh, clean room waiting for you after a red-eye is to book it for the night before. Period. What’s more, unless you want to be considered a no-show, you will also need to ensure that your reservation is pre-registered, or pre-reged, meaning checked in prior to your arrival. This is accomplished by you (or, you know, your assistant) calling in advance and informing us of the situation. The hotel will check you in the night before to a VC (or Vacant Clean, as opposed to VD, Vacant Dirty) room and add the term “pre-reged” after your name in the system."

"Am I suggesting you always take help and always tip? Yes. I suggest you do that. However, in reality, there are times when guests don’t want to be escorted by a gloved chatterbox. Maybe your life is falling apart, and you’ve no interest in telling a stranger “where you came in from.” The best way to get back the keys to your room (and your freedom) from “the gloved hand” is to say, “I can go up alone, but thanks anyways.” “No thank you, but I appreciate it.” “I think I would rather just go up alone, if that’s okay.” Of course it’s okay. Just be polite about it. I even once saw a guest tell a bellman, “No worries, but thank you,” and still give him two dollars, just for not helping."

"Now, the kind of person liable to slam the door in a bellman’s face while the poor guy is politely lingering about for a crummy two-dollar tip, that kind of person? He shouldn’t use his toothbrush that night (or ever again, really)."

"Ben would become my brother, drinking buddy, and the man who’d tell me, if I ever complained about the New York City winters, to shove a mitten up my vagina."

"Often, as was the case here, the worst rooms are given to very specific guests for very specific reasons. [...] Reservations made through Internet discount sites are almost always slated for our worst rooms. [...] But why do we then slate Expedia guests for our worst rooms? Well, honestly, those guests didn’t really choose our property based on quality; they chose based on value. We were at the top of a list sorted by price."

"Not good at being kind, polite, and expressing positivity? You don’t have to do that either. Just hand over a twenty at check-in and say, “Give me something nice.”"

"I work for cash, not nipple-slips."

"Veteran hotel guests know it’s faster for both of us if I get the card right up front and simply pull the last name off the CC instead of mishearing and misspelling our whole day away."

"A bill around a credit card meant he was after an upgrade.
Oh, God, does this work. Let’s talk about ways to get upgraded. People will do almost anything and say almost anything to get an upgrade. But words rarely work. In a hotel, money talks ""

"[...] on the way to a second bar, one where we could smoke. Yes, you can legally smoke inside, and it’s right there in midtown, but I will not mention where, because this bar belongs to me and not to you."

"Perry, the river: they all reminded me not to take anything for granted. It all washes away, and we are all washed away with it."

"Therefore, dear guests, if you ever extend, even if the front desk forgets to inform you (which we will), then, YES, you need new keys. (You’re welcome, my front desk people! I just told everyone all at once!)"

"Goddamn it. I should have seen it coming: he was fondling the money too much, too obvious. I got played. I told him if he needed anything at all to ask for Terrance (when you give a fake name, it’s important to avoid names of employees currently working at the property and that it be a name of someone from your past whom you hate) then walked off, "

WOW. The book has so many twists and turns that you aren't always sure where the book is going to go next. Naya has a great adventure for sure, and I really hope the author continues with the series.

If you like fiction or science fiction then read this book. Unlike most books you can get hooked into this story fairly quickly. It is sometimes a little bit hard to remember the characters if you only read a portion of the book at a time.

There are points where I held my breath, laughed, cried, and many other emotions.

I do have some favourite quotes from the book (which shouldn't give any spoilers but may... so potential spoilers warning)

"Naya likes to think that there are a few unwritten rules when it comes to riding in public transport — one of which is not staring"

“All I can hope is that you make the correct decision and not the easy one.”

"People talk more freely when they’re not feeling watched over, and it also gives her a chance to continue looking"

“I should have known you would find out the truth, but [....] made me swear not to tell you anything until you were old enough… and I guess you never were, not for me, not for the truth. I wanted to keep you in the dark for as long as I could. I wanted you to have the perfect life I was never able to have.”

“There’s nothing cowardly about dealing with anxiety and moving on despite it.”

Warning: By reading this book and this review you are probably put on some sort of list that the NSA has (and may have shared with it's allies). I'm not kidding, Ed even mentions this in the book.

This is an autobiography written by Ed, while he may have had a ghost writer help him with some thing it's still in Ed's style.

When I started to read this book, I found the pacing slow. So slow I was considering stopping, but I'm glad I finished it (even if it did take me a while to finish it).

If you kept up with the articles and movies that came out featuring Ed (like Citizenfour, or Snowden) then you most likely already know a good chuck of his story but it's still nice to read it from his point of view and there are many things that aren't covered elsewhere.

It's not a book everyone will enjoy, if you are a fan of Ed or what he has done then consider reading the book. If not then you aren't missing really important.

There are some amazing sentences in this book I want to share (there may be a few spoilers if you haven't heard everything about Ed's life)

"Life only scrolls in one direction, which is the direction of time, and no matter how far we might manage to go, that invisible wall will always be just behind us, cutting us off from the past, compelling us on into the unknown."

"My schoolwork was done on paper with pencils and erasers, not on networked tablets that logged my keystrokes."

"In the absolute worst case, I’d sputter, and my classmates would think I was stupid. Let them. You should always let people underestimate you."

"Technology doesn’t have a Hippocratic oath. So many decisions that have been made by technologists in academia, industry, the military, and government since at least the Industrial Revolution have been made on the basis of “can we,” not “should we.” And the intention driving a technology’s invention rarely, if ever, limits its application and use."

"You might choose to give it up out of convenience, or under the popular pretext that privacy is only required by those who have something to hide. But saying that you don’t need or want privacy because you have nothing to hide is to assume that no one should have, or could have, to hide anything—including their immigration status, unemployment history, financial history, and health records. You’re assuming that no one, including yourself, might object to revealing to anyone information about their religious beliefs, political affiliations, and sexual activities, as casually as some choose to reveal their movie and music tastes and reading preferences."

"our clouds, computers, and phones have become our homes, just as personal and intimate as our actual houses nowadays. If you don’t agree, then answer me this: Would you rather let your coworkers hang out at your home alone for an hour, or let them spend even just ten minutes alone with your unlocked phone?"

"I was carrying one of the big old hulks back to my desk when I passed one of the IT directors, who stopped me and asked me what I needed it for—he’d been a major proponent of getting rid of them. “Stealing secrets,” I answered, and we laughed."

"I’m going to refrain from publishing how exactly I went about my own writing—my own copying and encryption—so that the NSA will still be standing tomorrow."

"Although the deleted file disappears from view, it is rarely gone."

"it was like they were just trying to show me that they already knew everything about me. Of course they did. That was Ed’s point. The gov always knows everything."

"That Volcano Ed was going to destroy everything? But I remember the guide at Kilauea saying that volcanoes are only destructive in the short term. In the long term, they move the world."

"and play games I have to pirate because I can no longer use credit cards."

"I used to worry about the bus and metro, but nowadays everybody’s too busy staring at their phones to give me a second glance. If I take a cab, I’ll have it pick me up at a bus or metro stop a few blocks away from where I live and drop me off at an address a few blocks away from where I’m going."

If you don't know about the 'decoy women' who helped with World War II (as I didn't) then this book will help you understand their view and what they had to go through.

As with many books it was hard to get started, and a few times I wondered if I was going to continue but I'm glad I did.

There are many things in this book that can apply to our lives today, like

‘Especially,’ Esme said, ‘if they have the good sense to steer clear of politics, religion and money.’ And from giving unsolicited advice about starting a family!

Or even

"Briefly, she skimmed the remaining pages until, desperate to hear something that put matters in a less terrifying light"

There are some things that could be changed, like providing translation in certain parts, or getting the main part of the book sooner, but other than that it's a great book with many humorous parts.

‘What the devil are the RAF planning to do with an aquarium?’ he asked, his bafflement seemingly genuine. ‘Practise fishing?

I do wish this book was longer, or a second book, you will understand why when you finish the book.

Disclosure: I received this ebook for free as part of a Early Reviewers program. The publisher hoped for a review but it was not required. The author, publisher, nor the company running the program had any say in this honest review. Nor did they get to read this before it was public.

This is a book about a boy who starts out in the summer months between end of the high school and beginning of college. It touches on many things that happen to him between then and the end of that first school year. This book would be best suited for those near the end of high school who are going off to college soon, or those in the first couple of years of college.

It doesn't mean that others won't enjoy it, but it may bring back some painful memories or the book may talk about things that they wouldn't understand if they haven't experienced it yet.

There are some great quotes in the book (which I don't think give spoilers but may):

"[the] college you attend can have a major impact on your life, and I don’t think it’s a choice that should be influenced by hobbies and diversions"

“I’m trying to show you something, all right? You don’t just throw in the towel when things get hard. You have to keep going. I’m not just talking about basketball. Do you hear me?”

"There were no stockings, no lights, no smell of pine, nothing at all to indicate what day it was except the little pile of gifts where the tree usually stood. They were wrapped poorly, except the ones [...] from our mother"

"It was the reason I kept doing such stupid things [...] And I knew that I would continue to make these mistakes until I admitted [...]. My old life was gone. I had to build a new one."

"I’d been so focused on technical distinctions that I’d never considered the more basic question of how it would feel to be in their position. I’d thought only about how they fit into my life rather than how I fit into theirs."

"I think that’s what people mean when they say they have no regrets. Everyone has regrets, but it’s a way of saying your regrets have value to you."

"But the thing about regret is that after a while, good things start to come along that wouldn’t have otherwise."