2 stars
| I had to read this book for my Information Architecture course in grad school. In comparison to some of the other books we’ve had to read for the class, this one was a nice approachable length, which I was thankful for. Morville presents many interesting theories, connecting a multitude of ideas together to show how everything is “intertwingled”. However, by the end, the book devolved into ramblings. The majority of the last chapter is just stream of consciousness opinions Morville has about things like nutrition and health care. I suppose since his theory is that everything is connected, it is not entirely random, however I don’t think it gave any insight into what the book was actually about. Honestly, reading that chapter gave the impression that Morville had a word count he needed to fill, but had already covered all he set out to so he tacked on a bunch of ramblings to meet the word count. Ignoring the last chapter, I though the book was well-done overall. Morville does well connecting various ideas. This was interesting, but there were an awful lot of quotes, some right after another. In general, this was okay, but after a while the whole book just felt like him referencing others’ work. He shows the connections, but it would have been nice to read his words not just a smattering of others vaguely connected together. There are also many references (Dutch uncles, the timeless way, the quality without a name) that are cited without being discussed in detail, which may be confusing for those not familiar with the concepts. Morville pulls a lot of insight from various experiences working on projects and from his personal life. This can work well, however by the end, I was just annoyed with his constantly bringing up his work. The examples made sense, but perhaps there were just too many. It felt more like name-dropping than actually providing insight. The text is broken up nicely with images related to the topics being discussed. Some of them were helpful such as the various models. Others were just clip-art-style images that added nothing to the point. For example, when Morville references triathlons, there are images of a stick person running, biking, and swimming. It worked to break up the text, but really wasn’t necessary and added nothing to the content. For the most part, the book was fine, but Morville’s habits became annoying by the end, making me easily irritated with the text. I was interested in the ideas, but the overuse of quotes and countless examples really grated on my nerves. An okay read. Goodreads |