Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood content, hard to read low-contrast printing
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2016
Yes, only 3 stars. I'm reviewing the book as a whole, not just the content. I give the content a 5, the writing a 4, and the physical print quality a 2. Here's why...
Content is excellent. I've got the other books he wrote, they are very helpful and the amount of pain removed from my body makes it worth far more than I paid. About the only improvement I could suggest is more sketch overlays that indicate the area of focus, direction of motion, things like that. I sometimes have to re-read the text 4 or 5 times to try and figure out the motion implied in the photo or series of them. Sketch lines down the spine and arm or leg, little angle symbol or curved arrows help me to understand very well. I still give it a 5 because maybe I'm just a visual learner and need that kind of thing, maybe most people can just "get it" from the words.
The writing style just isn't for me. It's not bad, it's conversational, and I get why. This is not a textbook. (I think the content could be re-written as a most excellent one.) Repetition bugs me. I know I need to re-read things to understand. Seeing the same phrases written out over and again may help some people, but doesn't make understanding any easier for me. The foreshadowing is excessive, to me, in the beginning. I read the table of contents, I can kinda tell what's coming later. If I had a nickel every time I see the phrase "later in this book you will learn" I'd maybe have a free book. :) Ok, not really true, but read it enough times and it gets annoying. So, 2 pretty minor things that bug me personally and probably nobody else. I give it a 4, you may give it a 5, but this review is simply my opinion.
Now what I really don't like, (and the main reason for giving a 3-star overall), the print quality. Seriously, anybody that thinks light thin text on shiny paper is a good idea should not be publishing books. If the ink were a full black, the font a little thicker, or maybe just printed on regular paper it wouldn't be such a struggle. (And maybe it is a full black, but the shiny paper effect makes it look like a dim gray at best to me.) More light doesn't help since that just makes the shiny glow off the paper worse. The contrast is simply poor and I can't stand reading this book more than a few minutes at a time, which is really frustrating because the information is so valuable that I am compelled to suffer through it. It's really hard to read and I'm very disappointed about that. Even the orange-bownish text used on captions is substantial enough to be easier to read than the main text. The binding is nice, and overall it's a nice well-made book. I can't honestly go lower than a 2 on the quality because it is a quality product. There's a lot of good photos, and maybe that's the reason for the paper type. Let's say the physical book gets a 5, but the #$%^$ main text font gets a -1 million rating.
EDIT: I'm going to try and upload a picture showing what I'm talking about, and I apologize if my camera isn't the greatest. This is a bit of page 48 and 49. Most pages are like 48 with that thin font. For some strange reason the first page or 2 of each section is like page 49, and it's much easier to read even still having a little glare from the paper. Nearly every heading is low contrast gray-on-white, or medium blue on light blue, etc, when there's perfectly readable black and white (or at least higher contrast color choices) nearby. Due to these font and color design choices I am constantly tilting the book to try and reduce glare, or leaning in and squinting to make out some low-contrast text, and in the end the eye-strain makes me want to throw the book at the wall. Maybe the facebook-generation has no visual issues with everything being low-contrast, (and maybe they can see in the dark for all I know), but it really ruins what would otherwise be a great book for me.
