Sarah's Library

 I signed up to win this book in a GR giveaway, I didn't win the 'real' book, but the author contacted me with the offer of a free ebook version in return for a review.  This has not impacted my ability to review it honestly and critically.

11/11 - The ebook is very short, only 72 pages and I'm at the half way point.  I have just stopped reading for the night and since I already had my laptop out in order to read the ebook (I don't have an ereader, so I use Adobe Digital Editions on my laptop) I decided to write the first part of my review now while the thoughts are fresh in my mind, instead of waiting till tomorrow morning.  I was drawn in by the premise and the title.  To start with I have no idea what chapter 1 was all about, it made no sense to me at all and all I could think as I was reading it "Oh oh, this looks like it's going to be my second only 1 star review and my first bad review for a book straight from the author."  After I managed to wade through the crap that was the first chapter my interest was re-engaged by the theories Smith posits.  For example his idea of when and why females lost their facial hair - to make facial expressions easier to read and give us the ability to use more sophisticated ones.  I would be very interested to know where he got his information from, what proof he has of this theory.  It's funny to see his one and only character's name is Sarah, but I don't understand what she's doing there or why we're on a simulated roller coaster ride.  I think the information in the book (if it's true) would be interesting enough without all the gimmicks that Smith's added.  To be continued...

14/11 - While I found the information about evolution in this book very interesting and thought provoking, I didn't enjoy all the silliness of the Disney ride metaphor or the description of a film presentation that makes up the first chapter.  After reading the first part of my review, the author contacted me to explain a few of the things I had problems with.  He reiterated that chapter 1 is an excerpt from one of his other books (this fact is included at the very top of the first page) while the rest of the chapters are from another of his other books.  This didn't really explain to me why Smith would include this completely unneccessary portion of another book, it didn't add anything to the rest of the story, in fact I nearly gave up on the whole book halfway through reading the first chapter.  The second part of my review that he brought up was the fact that I mentioned wondering what his sources were - he reassured me that he did have some and would be happy to send me a copy of the bibliography, which is included in one of the books that he took the majority of his information from.  My question to him was why not include it in this book as well?  A lot of the readers of this book will not have contact with Smith and so won't know, or find out, that to read the bibliography you need to buy another of his books because it's in there.  And how many readers are going to be willing to buy a book simply to get the chance to read a bibliography that refers to a book they already have?  Certainly not me.  In the introduction that advises you of the fact that this book is comprised of two of his previous books, he also mentions the reason he has published the book in this way is that some readers have preferred reading it in this abbreviated way.  I personally would rather have read the book that made up the interesting chapters, that is chapters 2-15, and forget chapter 1 entirely, and that is what I recommend to other readers interested in the information over the gimmicks.