Reviews by Andrew

That was 6 hours and 49 minutes of my life that I won't get back. And it wasn't a valuable use of my time.

This book has every appearance of being written with the sole purpose of making money. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it delivers no value. Most of the book is taken up with stating the obvious - that you have to keep your customers happy by looking after them to stand any chance of getting referrals. The 'advice' was regurgitated from other sources (Brian Tracy amongst others) and the references are already well known.

I am planning a referral system for our customers as they are all so enthusiastic about the service that we deliver and was hoping that this book would be a kind of manual on how to do it. I was really dissapointed.

My advice - don't waste your money on this book.

I heard a lot about the culture series so decided to start at book one - seemed like a logical choice.



I found the sweep of the story brillliant and a great introduction into the Culture universe. It was a good read - or listen - and the narration by Peter Kenny was nothing less than brilliant.



So why only 3 stars?



I found the pace to be ponderous, gettting to the mostly predictable points with what seemed at times glacial speed. If I had been reading this I would have skimmed a lot and I don't think that I would have missed much.



There were character threads which were pointless and led nowhere.



I really felt that there was a slimmer 5 star book burried in here, but the author seemed determined to create a blockbuster at all costs.



However, I liked it enough to persevere with the culture series and if you read this and find it slightly disappointing as I did, I would urge you to keep going with them. Future books build on the culture universe and use it as a framework for some great storytelling.

What a stunningly well written - and narrated book (narration by the author). This is not the first edition - and it shows. All the little niggling things have been covered - and Peter Jones is at pains to say 'if this particular idea doesn't work for you - don't do it'. I can't think that I will do everything he recomends in his book, but I have implented some of his ideas (probably do more aftrer re-listening) and feel I am in better control of my life already. Not completely, but few people have the luxury of being in complete control, life keeps getting in the way, but I am certainly not living 'life by default' now!

If you can't gain something from this book you are either perfect (so won't even be bothering to read this) or you are happy living a life of chaos.

If you are even a bit disorganised, this will help. If you are totally disorganised (I was) it could change your life.

The book shows that it has had many updates and covers pretty much all of the problems of getting organised (how am I going to find the time to do all this stuff! Answer - do a bit at a time and use some of the time you win back to do a bit more). I haven't done everything in the book, in fact, there is a hell of a lot that I haven't done and probably never will, but I am now probably the best organised person in the company and I keep my desk clear - for the first time ever!

The delivery is a bit dry, but don't be put off by it.

Get the book, follow some of the advice - probably the quickest win is by sorting out your email - and improve your working life. This WILL cut down your stress and help you do your job better. (By the way, I am not on commission for this book!)

This book is 7 hours 52 minutes but would have been so much better if it had been about a third as long. The narration is so desperately dull that if you were stuck in a lift with the narrator and he struck up a conversation with you, you'd want to beat him to death after a few minutes just to shut him up.
Having said all that, if you persevere and ignore the authors self promotion and irrelevant examples, there are some little nuggets of gold in here. If you have the time and patience and the willingness to sort the wheat from the chaff, go for it.

What a great book! Very entertaining and a great insight into the advertising industry. Slightly annoying that a book by a British author has an American narrator, but I guess that's because it's mainly aimed at an American audience. Everyone can learn something about presentations from this book - but even if you didn't - it's a damn good listen!

The author has obviously read a lot about business but really doesn?t appear to have any direct first hand experience of it. The whole thing feels like a year 10 business studies project, and if it were, then you would give the pupil high marks for effort and research, but you wouldn?t want to take this seriously in a real life work environment.

The advice, recommendations and examples of use show such a naivety about real life business that you just can?t help but smile. The danger of this book is that the only people who would take it seriously are those who are themselves so na?ve about business that they desperately need some sensible advice and guidance ? but won?t find it in this book.

I made it to the end of the book as I believe that just one good idea from a book can make it all worthwhile, but there wasn?t anything of value in this. In fact, I believe that if you were brave (or foolhardy) enough to implement the ideas in this book you would at best waste a lot of time, at worst ? well, I don?t know what the worst thing that could happen to your business would be ? but this would probably make it happen.

I have rated this book as one star ? but that really is far too high. My advice would be ? spend your money on an audiobook with real value. I have bought lots of audiobooks from Audible and this is the first one that hasn?t met or exceeded expectations.