Corporate Finance (Banking and Capital Markets) - D. Adams

Advantages: Very funny, apt observations
Disadvantages: May not appeal to all readers

...Monkey: Evolution favors monkeys. Eventually humans will be kept in cages as pets... Dilbert: Impossible! We humans will never allow ourselves to be treated like that! Now, get out of my cubicle! -------------------- Dilbert, the mainstay of office-life critical witticisms, is the concept of Scott Adams, who quit his job to write the column, using it primarily to exorcise the demons that haunted him (and, indeed, seem to haunt all in small-to-large corporate America) during his tenure as a mid-level office worker. In his introduction, he says: 'I was doing some thinking today. But I didn't enjoy it very much, so I decided to write this introduction instead....' Who can argue with this? This, perhaps in a brief statement, summarises much of the underlying philosophy of the corporate culture Adams presents in his Dilbert... Read review

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Advantages: A laugh-out-loud funny collection of pieces by the inimitiable Douglas Adams
Disadvantages: You'll hate not knowing how the story ends!

...Douglas Adams is most famous for his trilogy-in-five-parts, The Hitchhiker novels/radio play/ TV adaptation, which was finally made into a film after his early death. (I'm sure he would have smiled to know that, after all the trials and tribulations, it was made at last, although it is highly unlikely that he would have approved of the final product.) His last, unfinished, hilariously comic novel is reproduced here alongside various fiction and non-fiction pieces, so although the title of the book is the same as the title of the incomplete novel, there is much more to this collection than one draft of a promising new novel. The book opens with an editor's note from Peter Guzzardi who simply explains how the book came into being. This is followed by a prologue which outlines Adams' life story and then summarises his history in... Read review

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Advantages: vintage M. Banks
Disadvantages: none really

...fleet of warships. And all of the action seems to concentrate and point to the strange and fascinating artificial world of Sursamen, a so called Shellworld, a sphere comprising 14 levels of various habitats layered above a core inhabited by a creature called a WorldGod. As usual, Banks spins his tale of galactic intrigue and Special Circumstances action with a panache and in a style that confirms his place at the very pinnacle of his genre. The characters are particularly well done this time, humane, interesting, and noticeably and naturally developing throughout the novel. A lot of the action takes place in a primitive world of Sarl, living a quasi-feudal existence on one of the levels of Sursamen: and presents a convincing picture of how such a culture could function in a world where the most advanced civilisations attained... Read review

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