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shirezu's review against another edition
2.0
If this is what clever is then I guess I don't want to be clever. The questions proposed are interesting and could lead to an assortment of answers but in the majority of them the author ended up in a philosophical rant. Sometimes the answers were interesting and educational but mostly they were boring and predictable.
The point of the Oxbridge questions, as mentioned at the start of the book, are to provoke responses from people by putting them out of their normal frame of mind and gaining an insight into how they think. I would have much rather read good, and maybe some not so good, real responses given by people actually applying. Not answers from someone who's been able to sit and think and research each question before writing an answer.
An ok book that could have been much better. Thankfully I got it for cheap.
The point of the Oxbridge questions, as mentioned at the start of the book, are to provoke responses from people by putting them out of their normal frame of mind and gaining an insight into how they think. I would have much rather read good, and maybe some not so good, real responses given by people actually applying. Not answers from someone who's been able to sit and think and research each question before writing an answer.
An ok book that could have been much better. Thankfully I got it for cheap.
tony's review
1.0
Very disappointing. This is like a blog you'd follow for a while because of its curious conceit, but would gradually realise didn't really offer much beyond the raw idea. At least with a blog you'd maybe get some wonderful fights going on in the comments, but in book format it's just a pub bore pontificating one table over, with whom you can't even get into a good argument. For a much much better version, get 100 different people to answer each of the questions, and then select the most interesting, surprising, or insightful of each. That could be a book worth reading. This one isn't.
lordofthemoon's review
2.0
This is a compilation of questions from Oxbridge entrance examinations, from various departments and the author's own answers to them. He specifically doesn't suggest that his answers are canonical but are for discussion only and some of them may make for interesting pub debate but I ultimately found the book unsatisfying. It wasn't that I disagreed with some of the answers, which is to be expected, but it ultimately felt a bit vague and unfocussed.
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