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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 06:56, 17 June 2013
, 06:56, 17 June 2013no edit summary
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{{newreview
|author=John D Barrow
|title=Mathletics
|rating=3.5
|genre=Sport
|summary=As a sports fan and a maths teacher, I was thrilled to get the chance to read a book which claims to give us 'surprising and enlightening insights into the world of sports'. This is rather a frustrating read because it seems to have got the balance wrong in many cases. There are some chapters which are so short as to be barely worth reading – one merely points out that while humans can’t run as fast as cheetahs or perform gymnastics as amazing as that of a monkey, we’re better all-rounders than any other animal. This is true, but hardly seems worth wasting a page on, it’s so obvious. Then there are other chapters, like the interesting one detailing the points scoring system in the decathlon, which are good but could have been much better given more space. The decathlon one is a prime example of this – it’s five pages, so one of the book’s longer sections, but could surely have been excellent if it had gone into more detail. I can’t help thinking that dropping half of the sections and doubling the other half in length might have been the way to go here.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099584239</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=It was a happy accident which started me watching Paul Hollywood's television series about bread and baking - and it quickly became compulsive viewing. We were predisposed to the basic idea as it's many years since we last bought a loaf, but we've always used a bread-maker. The results have been good and far better than anything you could buy anywhere but an artisan bakery, but there are limitations as to what you can make. I was tempted to see what else we could achieve and whilst the television series didn't promise that it would be ''easy'' it did leave me with confidence that we could do ''better''. Buying the book was the next step.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408840693</amazonuk>
}}