Dream, Death, And The Self

This TLS book review of J.J Valberg's Dream, Death, And The Self is like no other book review I've ever read. It is more of a summary than a book review, really. Or maybe I'm just used to really crappy book reviews.
The first four paragraphs made me want to go and buy the book immediately. J.J Valberg's thoughts about death and dreaming are thoughts that I've always had, and in fact, death is my biggest fear precisely because I find it so incomprehensible.
Later on, though, the book becomes less and less appealing. Barry Stroud, the author of the book review, says that Valberg is very repetitive and finds that the book could be half as short and still say the same things. He also begins to use some of Valberg's terminology, such as "horizon" and "conception of the self." These seemed really vague and made me not want to read the book as much as before.
Overall, though, I think this is really cool. You get to see new ideas and thoughts without really reading the book. If you do want to read the book, though, the book review then tells you whether it is any good or not. I think that is the purpose of the TLS book review. Get the ideas across, and then say whether the actual expressing of the ideas was any good. A book is good not because of its good ideas, but because of how these ideas are expressed.