The flaws with Sun Tzu are its stating the bleeding obviousness and tautology. Apparently you should avoid attacking well fortified positions for instance. Then again, the WWI generals seemed to miss that bit. They cleary never read Tzu's views on facile ground.

Tautologically, you should never fight a battle unless you're sure you're going to win it before you start. Well, who can be sure even with good advice. I bet Napoleon thought he'd win Waterloo.

Best of all though, next time I'm on a business course and the tutor starts quoting Sun Tzu, I'll have a good idea whether the tutor is bluffing or not.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=12

You can't help thinking there is something naieve about providing your enemies with a book outlining your methods and thinking they won't outwit you. There is also the possibility that someone was using Che, someone less scrupulous perhaps.

The manual is also let down by contradicting itself, such as allowing relationships and later not. Also by its sexism, Che tries not be sexist but still thinks women make better cooks as that is part of 'their traditional role'.

The emphasis on revolutionary indoctrination is also terribly dated. Hopefully people don't still believe that you have to take on a convoluted, contradictory pseudo-Marxist-Leninist rationale for what may be a perfectly straightforward insurrection against the corrupt. Ideology all too often just gets in the way of simpler explanations and twists original good intentions into more sinister things.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=10

This is a true story of a young midwife working in London’s East End in the 1950s. Back then, midwifery was still a relatively new discipline and of course, it was still unusual for women to work, even though the second world war had helped the cause a lot.

The book is an account of her experience, interlacing general observations about the living conditions in the East End with details of specific families and births. Jennifer Worth is very good at giving a sense of the times, mixing up descriptions with dialogue, narration with action.

However, she goes all religious on the last few pages, implying that the midwives only did such great work because of their religious fervour, as if unreligious people have no ethics and sense of working for the community. While I can't obviously blame her for expressing her opinion on the matter, there is an inherent bigotry in the last few pages which wasn't apparent in the rest of the book and which undermines the whole historical stance of the book.

But with this in mind, this is still a good book and if like me, you're fed up with religious people denying the fact you can be both atheist and a good person, I suggest you read it but skip the last few pages.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=8

I normally enjoy literary fiction with flourishes and an extensive vocabulary, such as Paul Auster, but I feel that Jonathan Lethem's style is closer to a kid showing off the new words he's learnt at school.

But he redeems himself with a powerful tale of awkward teenagers, racial tensions, inner-city violence, gentrification and creative outcasts in Brooklyn.

While the story touches on many taboo subjects, such as male homosexuality within the black community, racism against white people, violence against your owns and absent mothers, it simple brings another side to the table without judging. The narrative style - the story is narrated in the 1990s but most of it takes place in the 1970s - provides an historical emotional attachment and you almost forget that this is fiction, so poignant and believable the stories are.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=7

Seeing the sex, sleaze and gossip of Old Hollywood from this fresh angle is delightful. Cheetah is the Candide of Hollywood, a favourite moment being when he finds the doorhandle more interesting than the lesbian encounter he's stumbled in on. Well, which would be more unusual to a chimp?

So sad that his career was over at 14, that former Olympic medalist Wiesmuller died of cancer, swindled of his earnings and that the whole book might be a hoax and that this may not be Cheeta after all.

Still very worthwhile though for the points made about the use of animals in the entertainment industry and the wider society - ironically presented by a chimp disagreeing with them. I expect that an appeal for more humane treatment of animals was the author's motivation for writing.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=4

While the constant change of POVs in the same scene is a bit frustrating as it makes it difficult to really empaphise with a given character, the story and the characters are all three dimensional and reveal themselves in unexpected ways.

Graham Greene mixes religion with gang violence and it is particularly interesting that the most religious gangster is the most violent. This is a stern reminder that being religious doesn't mean being ethical and fair.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=5

The book includes interviews with those who played a role in Chris' life, be it his parents or people he met on the road while hitchiking. Almost more important than the interviews is the central chapter during which Jon relates his own experience when he climbed a new route up the Devils Thumb, Alaska. Even though this chapter is about Jon, it feels very much about Chris.

Whether you admire or criticise Chris for what he has done (I'm personally on the fence), this book will help you understand what goes on in the mind of those giving themselves extreme physical challenges, something the film based on the book failed to do.

Link to this post: http://www.cogitas.net/bookworm/search.php?p=1