Geek Ink
The World’s Smartest Tattoos for Rebels, Nerds, Scientists and Intellectuals! People don’t think of tattoo artists as ‘true’ artists, but it takes significant technique to do this level of detail on a living target.
It’s very difficult to review a book that is filled with images – you just need to see them for yourself. For example, there is an Escher tattoo and some visual puzzles that if the artist had gotten a tiny bit wrong, it would have been wreaked. There’s a kitten and a dinosaur, and you better believe every hair on that kitten is visible.
Some reviewers complain that not all of the tattoos are geeky, especially the plant and animal ones. Clearly, they have never met a scientist passionate about their work! I used to work with mosquitoes, and I can tell you that some of the people in my lab would KILL to get an ultra-realistic mozzie of this quality.
Speaking of killing, you’d probably have to kill someone if you wanted to get a tattoo by the 25 featured artists in the first half of the book. Some tattoos are weird and wonderful, some are just weird! This book reminds an aspiring tattoo owner to careful pick your artist before committing to an indelible ink.
I have a single tattoo of my own, and I’ve always wanted one or two more. I’m in the position where I’d like to have my old tattoo transformed into a dragon! This book had a couple of dragon designs, and I was particularly impressed by the watercolour designs. Most people see tattoos as black line art, but there is so much more out there to be drooled over!
One of the girls I went to high school with wanted to be a tattoo artist – she was a fantastic artist as it was. I’m not sure she ever got there, but Jaz, if you’re reading this, go get it sorted! Or maybe she can look through this first and read the fascinating stories of the artists that are featured – how they got into tattooing and their favourite works and techniques.
This could be a coffee table book, a Christmas present or just something to choose a tattoo from and pass it on. I promise that you won’t believe your eyes when you look at the talent in this book.
Allen & Unwin | 21st February 2018 | AU$32.99 | hardback
The photos in this book are enough to make you drool and then go for a hunt in the freezer for a cookie (jam drop or choc chip? Yes please!). The discussion of the literature is also thoughtful and might introduce you to a couple of little known classics that might take your fancy. I only wish I was part of a book club so that I too could bake some amazing cookies in the theme of the book of the month.
This book is a flip-through book, where you are going to want to just glance at each page until you find something that takes your fancy to build. Come prepared with a box of random LEGO parts to build with, and there will definitely be something there for you. I’m personally fond of the buildings and not so fond of the oversized minifigures.
I confess, I’m not a beer drinker, and the closest thing I get to helping with beer is when I turn the hose on to fill the … keg?! (Luckily) my fiancee is a beer maker, so I thought this book would be right up her alley. After her initial reservations of reading a book not about management techniques, she got into this book and willingly read it. She happily chatted to me about it for 10 minutes and explained all the steps to me – she was invigorated by reading this book. Thus this review is written from her perspective.
Well, I started off reading this book with avid fascination, and ended up not finishing it due to a sense of reading about exactly the same wrongdoings over and over again. The chapters are titled by the offenses detailed within them, yet the ‘characters’ have so much in common. I feel as if Tim tries to make them appear different, yet so many offenders have the same personality types (psychopath / narcissus) and the same upbringing (low socioeconomic status / abuse).
I freely admit that business management and so forth is not usually in my personal interest area. However this book caught my fancy because I knew the stories would interest me. I’ve always enjoyed the Hudson River plane landing, and I knew this book would explore why that actually happened and how it coud be prevented. Some of the case studies here are actually talking about how large businesses can hide ilegal practices under legal looking paperwork.
I found this novel interesting but very outdated. The contents is almost 30 years old! I skipped over most of the scientific parts, discounting them as outdated, but some of the observations by Oliver Sacks
Lyrically written and with beautiful prose, you will find yourself travelling deeply into Petrea’s consciousness throughout her life. This memoir is one of the more enjoyable ones I have read, although at times I found myself having to hold onto my disbelief at how things worked out so conveniently. I AM a scientist by trade after all.
Although I might flippantly reply to a question of “What is the meaning of life?” with “There isn’t one.” this novel provides a better answer, or at least contemplation of the answer. People often have regrets about what they could have / should have done differently. There are the typical lists of ‘The Top 5 Things People Regret’, but this novel actually offers readers a gentle guide to how to go about improving things now.
I was really looking forward to this novel, but then I couldn’t get into it. I expected that most of the novel would be during the time that Sala was pretending to be a girl, but instead it was split into about half-half. I honestly never felt like he was in danger. He was never with a group of people who were ordered to drop their pants and half the time they were in hiding where he wasn’t even in contact with people. As far as I could tell, the worst risk was the people who had known his mother and that his mother was Jewish.