Tag Archives: Book

The Great LEGO Puzzle Book | Review

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Things have been quiet here at TLCB Towers. Days have passed without us publishing anything, during which time the only sound in the office was the soft clicking together of bricks. And that’s because our friends at No Starch Press sent us a copy of their new book to review, and it’s a belter! This is The Great LEGO Puzzle Book by Jacob Berg.

An ingenious idea (that we’re amazed hasn’t surfaced until now), The Great LEGO Puzzle Book takes a handful of the most basic pieces that all LEGO fans are likely to own, and uses them to create over a hundred building puzzles.

Jacob begins The Great LEGO Puzzle Book with ‘2D to 3D’, with the challenge being to turn an image of pieces in profile into a real-life 3D stack. The challenges progress with increasing difficulty before moving on to more complex variations via ‘Complete the Cube’, ‘Master the Shadows’, ‘Third Shape Missing’, and lastly – our favourite – ‘Fill It!’, which is kinda like a brick-based version of that wild Japanese game show.

Each of the aforementioned chapters contains dozens of puzzles, solvable using the same basic LEGO pieces, and is seriously addictive. It’s also seriously accessible, and a great game to play with kids that teaches both building and orientation skills, with all of the solutions detailed in the book’s final chapter and a few hints given along the way.

Our copy of The Great LEGO Puzzle Book was in digital form, which was clear and easy to read, and with several physical copies of No Starch’s past titles on shelves here in the office we’re confident the printed version will be up to their usual high standard.

The Great LEGO Puzzle Book is rather unique (and captivating) addition the No Starch’s expansive LEGO book catalegue, deploying our favourite little plastic bricks to a whole new purpose. If you like sudoku, crosswords, brain puzzles, or Rubik’s Cubes (or you know someone that is), we can thoroughly recommended it

On sale in the No Starch Press store, The Great LEGO Puzzle Book is available now at $17 for printed and $14 for eBook versions, which is a bargain to keep yourself (or a partner, friend, or your children) wholesomely amused for hours.

★★★★★

The LEGO Builder’s Handbook | Review

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We like books here at TLCB Towers and have a growing library of titles written by members of the LEGO Community, sharing their knowledge, techniques, and sometimes even building instructions with their fellow LEGO fans.

Cue our friends at No Starch Press, whose latest title ‘The LEGO Builder’s Handbook | Become a Master Builder’ was offered to us for review. But who better to review a book about becoming a Master Builder than someone who’s attained that status already! Thus said copy was dispatched to one of our TLCB Master MOCers, the immensely talented Kyle Wigboldly (aka Thirdwigg), for a vastly more qualified appraisal than our own. Over to Kyle!

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In today’s internet centrick world, you can find any group to connect with that you need or want. We in the LEGO world can find any number of ways to connect with other builders just like us. We are constantly barraged with the specific LEGO interest sites, reviews, and purchasing options. So there is something refreshing for me about being presented with a book that may not fully connect with my specific build interest. Reading a LEGO book can be a nice way to slow down and wander along with where the author is leading you, rather than in the direction a nondescript algorithm (or TLCB Elf. Ed.) is pushing me. The LEGO Builder’s Handbook written by Deepak Shenoy is such a book to let me wander. The book was published in 2024 by No Starch Press, longtime publishing friends of the LEGO community.

The book is organized in three main parts; The Basics, Breaking Free of the Grid, and Computer Assisted Builds. While there are a number of pictures, renders, and examples, this is a text heavy book. Rather than showing lots of images of what others have built, the book focuses on teaching you how to build. It shows various ways you can expand your building techniques provided you have the parts needed. Though it is hard to define for whom this book is written.

The audience seems broad which is evident when you start with The Basics. As a LEGO builder who is squarely in the LEGO Technic area of building, this book is not directly for me. But the value started to be more clear when I started sharing the book with various children in my house and neighborhood. But ‘The LEGO Builder’s Handbook’ is not squarely directed to them as well. I found the book is at its best when experienced with a wide range of building skills. The book starts with learning the basics about building with system bricks; how do you make a strong wall, and how do you think about recreating a scale building with the correct propositions? There are skills that every good builder will need to learn to become a better one. Skills that the children in my life do not yet know. But working through the book together gave them some tools to get better. This section used building a large Empire State Building model as a throughline to demonstrate the skills being shared. I found this connection both practical and overwhelming. It was nice to see how the skills being taught could be applied to a large, and impressive building, but it was overwhelming because moving straight from learning about how to use overlapping brickwork to a three foot tall structure is a little bit of a leap.

The next section, Breaking Free of the Grid, had less of a practical/applicable gap. If you want to take your building from “thanks for showing me your creation” to “featured on The LEGO Car Blog,” working outside of the grid is the best next step a builder can make. It is in this chapter that both myself and the children in my life could connect on is the fascinating mathematical integration of the LEGO system. Stacking brick and plates, using brackets and sideways studded bricks, and half stud offset, continue to impress upon me the versatility of the LEGO system. This chapter of the book is extensive, and fascinating. A whole chapter is focused on the half stud offsets, and another on building with SNOT (studs not on top).

The final chapter, my favorite, is the chapter about angled building (so much math!) This chapter is accessible, but it is certainly not entry level. An experienced builder should be expected to know and use this information. A growing builder will need to develop into these areas, and this book gives you the tools and images to help you with this. This part of the book shines brightest.

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Humbly Reading

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If you’re into reading about LEGO as well as building it (and you must be to some degree, as you’re reading this), then our friends over at No Starch Press have a seriously good offer available, all for charity.

No Starch Press’s digital Humble Bundle brings you up to twenty of their Lego titles in digital form, for a ‘pay what you want price’, with the profits going to the It Gets Better charity.

Over 2,500 bundles have been sold so far, containing books including the TLCB-recommended titles The LEGO Lighting Book, The Unofficial Lego Technic Builders Guide, The Art of Lego Scale Modeling, and Tiny Lego Wonders.

You can take a look at the twenty No Starch Press titles available to be bundled via the Humble Bundle store here, and if you can’t decide on which ones to pick you can find many of them in our Review Library by clicking here.

Look Here, Old Sport. What is Your Opinion of Me, Anyhow?

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“It was a rich cream colour, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns”.

It was also – in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ – a Rolls Royce. However Baz Luhrmann, never one to let reality interrupt the stylised nature of his films, cast a 1929 Duesenberg Model J in his 2013 move adaptation, set in 1922.

Despite deviating from both the book and, er… time, the Duesenberg Model J was the perfect vehicle with which to represent the extraordinary opulence of the story’s titular character. The fastest and most expensive automobile of the time, the Duesenberg Model J was the car of choice for America’s ultra-wealthy, with bodywork created by any number of American or European coach-builders, a weight of up to three tons, and a straight-eight engine that could, if optionally supercharged in ‘SJ form’, make 400bhp.

This astounding model of the Duesenberg SJ used in 2013’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ is the work of the fantastically talented Adrian Drake and is – like its real-world counterpart – quite unfathomably long.

Measuring 144 studs from front to rear bumper, with a complete interior behind four opening doors, LED lighting, and the most intricate and incredible brick-built wheels we’ve ever seen, Adrian’s creation is fit for the most mysterious of 1920s millionaires.

It also wears a truly jaw-dropping body, created from a myriad of overlapping bricks, plates and tiles, that can only be accomplished when building at a scale as large as this.

A stunning collection of imagery reveals Adrian’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ Duesenberg SJ in phenomenal detail, and you can find it – along with the builder’s other works – on Flickr. Click the link above to take a ride across 1920s New York, and here to see the real movie car doing just that in Baz Lurhmann’s gloriously over-the-top film interpretation.

Hell Hath No Fury

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‘Tis this season of scaring small children, taking candy from strangers, and dressing in little-to-nothing. But enough about this TLCB Writer’s plans for tonight, we’ve time for one final post before the Halloween spookiness begins. Cue Stephen King’s ‘Christine‘, a haunted ’58 Plymouth Fury containing the vengeful spirit of a past owner, and a taste for blood. Regular bloggee Jonathan Elliott has brought Christine back in brick form, and you can take a closer look on Flickr via the link. Just make sure you take good care of her…

The LEGO Lighting Book | Review

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LEGO and lighting have been wired together for decades. From early 4.5V lighting sets, via the 12V and 9V eras, to the latest LEGO LEDs, a huge range of sets have been enhanced by the addition of light over the years.

Of course it took third-party companies about five minutes to figure out that for a niche group of builders, there was demand to go well beyond LEGO’s own lighting offerings. Cue Game of Bricks, Lightailing and others, who have created some fantastically intricate, fully programmable lighting products designed to bring official LEGO sets to life.

But building with LEGO isn’t just about official sets. The best models are those designed and built uniquely, using scale, techniques, and themes that could never be packaged into what is at heart a children’s toy.

These are the models we publish here of course, many of which have an even greater potential to be brought to twinkly life by in-built illumination. Now Brickworld Coordinator Brian M. Williams and the excellent No Starch Press can show you how. This is The Lego Lighting Book.

Available in digital download or hardback, The LEGO Lighting Book is the latest in No Starch Press’ ever-expanding catalogue of brick-based titles. Combining LEGO history, step-by-step building instructions, example images, and a few not-quite-purist approaches to wiring lighting into LEGO bricks, Brian M. Williams’ runs to around 180 pages, with production and printing as lovely as we have come to expect from No Starch Press publications. That said, it is worth noting that whilst most images are super sharp, a few look like they were taken in the dark on a camera phone in 2009. Probably because they were.

The book begins with a brief background to lighting at Lego shows, and a history of LEGO’s own range of lighting components, before moving on to applications, step-by-step instructions, and – interestingly – a bit more physics and electronics than we were expecting.

Whilst rather detailed, the author makes good use of imagery, layout and white space to ensure The LEGO Lighting Book is easy to follow and engaging, exemplified by high quality building instructions that both demonstrate how to build – and then illuminate – example creations, and also create brick-built electronics components, which is something of a niche within a niche.

Not all of the instructional builds will be suitable for everyone however, with the steps of a few involving ‘double-sided tape’, ‘soldering’, and one beginning with “drill holes to create a path for the wires”…

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I’m Going Out, I May Be Some Time

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He might sound like something from the Urban Dictionary, but Windle Poons is in fact the oldest wizard of Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University faculty, with an age of well over 120. Fortunately Windle’s mobility is aided by a magnificent wheeled chair complete with a variety of horns, which even saw service in battle during one of Ankh-Morpork’s regular magical crisis. Recreated here by Eero Okkonen, who sounds fairly wizardy himself, Windle’s chair looks marvellous in brick form, as does the mystical centenarian himself. Take a trip to the Disc’s finest university of befuddled old men via Eero’s photostream at the link above.

Lego Technic: An Unofficial Illustrated History

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Psychiatrist’s Digest, Volume XVI

INTRODUCTION

What does it take to cause an otherwise sane person to write a 400-page book in their spare time, primarily for personal satisfaction? This important question will be investigated at length herein, using a well-researched case study concerning one Cole [Redacted], who, being myself, commands significant personal interest from this researcher. Beware of disturbing psychological evidence.

TESTIMONY

I am a Canadian Lego fan by the name of Cole, but since I prefer a little anonymity on the internet, I think I’ll leave us on a first-name basis. I’ve been interested in LEGO since I was five, when I got the awesome birthday present of my Dad and uncle’s 1980s LEGO Classic Space collection. Once I was a few years older, I got heavily into LEGO Star Wars. I was an obsessive sort of kid, and wanted to know everything I possibly could about it, which mainly meant spending hours poring over the DK LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionaries and Character Encyclopaedias. [Early signs of instability] As I matured, [Patient is unaware of the meaning of the word] though, I began searching for a new theme to become involved in.

Eventually, I decided on LEGO Technic, and acquired the 42043 Mercedes-Benz Arocs 3245 set, which struck me as being a great deal and a great parts pack. For the price of $270 CAD, I could get 2,700 pieces, including a little of almost everything in the Technic lineup, including pneumatics and electronics. After building and enjoying the main and alternate models, and getting some more Power Functions, I ripped the set apart and dove head-on into MOCing. My learning process was heavy on trial-and-error (especially heavy on the latter part) [Low self esteem?], but I soon started up my online presence on the official LEGO Technic and Mindstorms galleries. Over time I moved from there to MOCpages, and then, following its untimely demise, I joined Eurobricks, [Patient displays tendency to mash unrelated words together] where I remain to this day. (My trial-and-error crash course had brought me to a point where my stuff wasn’t a total embarrassment on this more “high-class” site.)

Anyways, the story of my Technic book [The 400-page folly of the patient] begins a bit earlier, back in the MOCpages days, I believe. Because of certain circumstances, I ended up having a lot of spare time away from home (and my LEGO), that needed filling. Somehow or other I decided that it would be fun to write a book of all the Technic sets, since this was something that I really wanted to have [Turning point in the case]. I was still the same kid who wanted to obsess over Visual Dictionaries, but all I had for Technic was a stack of old LEGO catalogues. I’m not sure how far I expected to get when I started, but I was enjoying myself, and before I knew it, I had a binder full of a hand-written first draft covering the years 1977-2017! The next step was to type and format the whole tome, and I ended up practically rewriting large sections of the book in the process. It would have been way faster to just start the whole process online, but I didn’t have a laptop or anything, so I made do with what I had. Anyways, I did a proofreading or two, and then printed the whole thing out for myself at 20c per page (I’d added 2018 by this point) Eventually, after adding 2019 and 2020, I got around to trying to make the book presentable for other peoples’ use [Could this be contagious?], so I did a bunch more proofreading and checking, and eventually was able to put the book up on Eurobricks as a free download. 

This year I revisited the book, making a bunch of small fixes that readers had suggested, removed my rather subjective ratings (I’ve had people who liked them and people who didn’t. They’re gone for now, but they might just come back) [Patient is indecisive and easily swayed by public opinion], and added the 2021 sets. I put this on Eurobricks as well, and, as suggested by forum moderator Milan, reposted the book in a clearer format. For now, the book is finished, but I expect to have more changes coming eventually – apart from the inevitable 2022 update, another Eurobricks user volunteered to help me with improving some formatting things, so there may be an update of that sort coming sometime or other. [The patient shows no sign of concluding their fantasy]

SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE

So, what does this book consist of? Continue reading →

High Tech LEGO Projects | Book Review

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We like rule breakers here at The Lego Car Blog. Thus when No Starch Press offered us a sneaky peak into a book with ‘rule-breaking inventions’ written on the cover, we had a take a look! Well, one of our readers did, seeing as we don’t have a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set in the office, and re-coding this site nearly killed us. However reader Wilson Luk is far smarter than we are, and a better writer too; check out his assessment of No Starch’s dangerous new book below!
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Ahhhh Robotics…

For every new breathtaking advancement in robotics, 10 memes come out declaring the end of humanity (Boston Dynamics, I’m looking at you). LEGO appears intent on speeding up robotic dominance with the new LEGO Mindstorms 51515 Robot Inventor set, the much anticipated successor to the EV3 Mindstorms set. While the new set offers a bunch of quality of life improvements with its new app and native scratch and python support, no one can discount how the new Gelo build looks eerily similar to Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot…

Luckily, our topic today is a little more human-friendly. Grady Koch’s new book High Tech LEGO Projects demonstrates that there is still a ton of life in the older EV3 kit, pushing the boundaries of what the 7-year-old kit can do, without the whole world-dominance vibe.

No Starch Press has kindly provided me with a print copy for this review. My particular copy may be a pre-production copy as it has a bit of a raised splatter texture on the back cover. Nonetheless, the actual contents of the book is clearly printed on nice semi-gloss paper. Colours and text come out well, ensuring no issues following build and programming instructions.

High Tech LEGO Projects is the most recent book tailored towards EV3 users from No Starch Press. This time around, High Tech LEGO Projects introduces some basic circuitry and hobby-grade sensors to the mix, extending the capabilities of the ageing EV3.

A wide range of projects are covered in the 12 chapters of this book, with 2 extra projects available for download from the No Starch Press website. Each project showcases a different electrical component either to use with the EV3, or simply to add to one of your existing or upcoming lego creations.

Many of the projects will require extra pieces beyond what is provided in the EV3 Mindstorms set. Most of these can be found on BrickLink/BrickOwl, while many of the electrical components and tools can be found at local or online electronic stores.

Get comfortable acquiring the extra LEGO pieces, but don’t get too attached to them. Some of these projects are not for the faint of heart. The second project already has you drilling holes through TWO technic gearbox pieces! I can already hear the collective screams of agony right now. The first time I saw the picture demonstrating where to drill, my first reaction was to cover the eyes of all my Lego mini-figs.

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LEGO Engineering Fundamentals – Interactive eBook | Review

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It’s been a Technic-filled day at TLCB, but are you looking at some of the models featured here and wondering how they work? From steering and suspension, to ratchets, walkers, gearboxes – LEGO Technic can be used to create any mechanism you can think of. And probably a lot you can’t.

And that’s where Jorge Moreno Barrios’ eBook ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ shines, as the first 3D interactive guide to creating incredible mechanisms (and the basics too) from LEGO Bricks.

We were given access to an early copy of Jorge’s eBook, which is available to purchase through Apple Books, to assess how it works. And how it works is rather brilliant.

‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ is divided into five chapters, each of which features 3D interactive renders of the subject;

1. LEGO brick alignment (effectively the measurements needed to build)
2. A complete 3D catalogue of LEGO Technic parts, sorted by use (e.g. ‘steering’, ‘gears’ etc.) with part numbers
3. Simple machines, consisting of levers, pulleys, wedges and screws
4. Basic mechanisms, including gears, ratchets, cams, chains, and junctions and linkages
5. Basic structures

Each render can be rotated on any axis, allowing the reader to see it from any angle, with the moving components rotating/sliding/lifting on a loop as if they were built from real bricks. Rotating the subject also reveals Jorge’s explanation of the render in question, with key words highlighted to ease understanding. If that sounds complicated it isn’t, and it works wonderfully. Naturally we can’t share the interactive element here, but hopefully the static images we’ve included will provide some insight.

In the examples above the inputs and outputs turn on the screen, with all the components of each mechanism following suit. Many of these are very simple pulleys and levers, taking readers through the basics of both Technic building and machines in general, but some – despite the ‘basic’ in the chapter titles – delve into advanced physics, recreating the beautifully intricate designs by noted engineers and kinetic sculptures. Again, each of these is completely interactive, and is ‘alive’ on the screen running through its mechanised loop to demonstrate how the design works in practice, with some looking really rather incredible indeed.

It’s mechanisms such as these we think readers will find most useful, as ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ provides a toolbox of options for ‘I want my creation to do [this], but I don’t known how’.

So is the eBook perfect? – It is Version 1 after all.

Not yet, as there are a few of refinements we’d like to see for v2, chief among which is a contents page. The ‘How this book works’ animation also didn’t work on our copy, and there a few official LEGO sets rendered within the book that are – we think – used as examples of either parts or mechanisms in action, but without any explanation. A brief ‘Set No. [xxxx] uses pneumatic cylinders and a basic lever. You can find details of these on pages [x]’ would definitely help to explain their context. The same is true for a few mechanisms that don’t have descriptive text – often because it isn’t needed, but we would prefer at least a title for every render as a minimum.

Verdict
Despite a few obvious improvements, the basics behind ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ are superb, and the first time you rotate a moving mechanism on screen to see the explanation appear you do go ‘Ooooh!’. Well we did anyway.

It’s also the first book we’ve received here at TLCB that has actively made us want to try creating new things, things we would never have thought of on our own, nor had the engineering capability to do. For that reason alone we can’t recommend ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ highly enough.

For now, this is a four star book. With a few tweaks for v2, it’ll be an easy five.

★★★★

Buy LEGO Engineering Fundamentals eBook via Apple Books here

Lego Train Projects | Book Review

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We can be accused of many things here at TLCB, but not reading isn’t one of them. The mass of emailed complaints our inbox receives don’t read themselves…

Requests for building instructions also land here with frequency, and as such a whole industry has sprung up to provide the online Lego Community with step-by-step directions to build all sorts of creations, from realistic real-world supercars to tiny micro models. Today we have another addition to this increasing pool of instructional resource, thanks to Charles Pritchett and the guys at No Starch Press, this is ‘Lego Trains Projects‘.

Running to 200 pages, ‘Lego Train Projects’ brings seven rather lovely train creations to life via step-by-step building instructions, with everything from a coal hopper to a hefty diesel locomotive. Each is compatible with LEGO’s own 6-wide train system, and matches their more advanced models – such as the 10020 Santa Fe Super Chief – for detail, only without the need for stickers.

Whereas previous No Starch books have offered small descriptions or backstories to the builds within them, there’s little pre-amble here, as Charles gets straight down to the building steps. A title page for each model displays the number of pieces, whilst a bill of materials (aka a parts list) and alternative colour suggestions finish each section.

The instructions themselves are fantastic, equal to LEGO’s own with clear steps, sub-assemblies, additions to each step highlighted in yellow, and probably a touch more complexity. The models aren’t necessary more complicated than the more advanced of LEGO’s own offerings, but they do pack in a variety of techniques that are probably above those within the grasp of the average builder, thus ‘Lego Train Projects’ could be a worthwhile educational aid for those wishing to up their game beyond basic studs-up construction.

The result is a set of train-based models that will up the realism of most layouts considerably, and which can be easily tailored to suit the preferred colours of the owner, with our favourite of Charles’ seven designs probably being the milk tanker, which could easily be converted to an Octan tanker if you prefer petrol over cow juice by simply switching the coloured rings.

Verdict

As we’ve become used to with No Starch Press publications, the quality of both print and paper is superb; ‘Lego Train Projects’ not only looks great, it feels great too, with a soft matte cover and beautifully crisp pages within. Whilst we personally don’t always understand the need for building with instructions, if you’re looking to use them to build yourself some really rather lovely train creations, they don’t come much better than this.

★★★★½

No Starch Press

Fast Bricks: Build 6 LEGO Sports Cars! | Book Review

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They’re the questions we receive here more than other (apart from your Mom calling to find out if we’re free); “Where can I buy this?” / “Are there instructions?”.

We’ve reviewed a range of books here at TLCB (see here, here, here and here) that aim to answer the questions above, providing parts lists and building instructions to enable readers to create real-world vehicles from LEGO bricks. Today we have another, kindly provided by publisher ‘Brick Monster‘ who have a range of both instructional books and downloadable building instructions available at their website, offering everything from BrickHeadz to dinosaurs.

Fast Bricks: Build 6 LEGO Sports Cars!

Overview: Brick Monster’s latest publication, entitled ‘Fast Bricks’, details the step-by-step building instructions and complete parts lists for six real-world sports and performance cars. Each car is designed to match LEGO’s old six-wide Speed Champions scale which, whilst less detailed than the new 8-wide standard, should mean both a plentiful parts supply and that fewer parts are needed.

The book follows the now familiar format that we’ve come to expect from instructional publications, offering a brief (and really well written) introduction to each car, along with a few key statistics – although in this case they are about the model itself rather than its real world equivalent.

Instructions and Print Quality: The bulk of the book is taken by the step-by-step instructions, which are clear and well laid out. Minor sub-assemblies are used every so often and all parts added are highlighted by a contrasting brightly-coloured outline, which is very nice touch. A ‘Bill of Materials’ ends each section, along with the alternate colour schemes available for each build. Unfortunately we have no images of these available to show here, which is something that Brick Monster should look into so that they can showcase this content.

‘Fast Bricks’ is not the glossiest book we’ve reviewed and nor is it printed in the highest quality, but it’s well suited to its purpose, where ultra high quality paper can actually be a hinderance to following building instructions, however beautiful the product looks. On the other hand one area where higher print quality would have been useful was in the instructions for C8 Corvette pictured on the cover, where the dark blue bricks chosen are hard to distinguish against the black lines that surround them. This is never an issue with official LEGO sets and highlights just how good LEGO are at both designing and mass-producing the building instructions found in their products.

The Models: It’s the Corvette that is probably the best model within the book, although all feature a range of excellent building techniques that newer builders may appreciate learning.

However, unfortunately for us in some cases the builds are not particularly recognisable as the car they are purported to be. We could have ten guesses for the Mazda MX-5 and Lamborghini Huracan and we wouldn’t have guessed correctly, with other models having only a passing resemblance to their real-world counterparts.

It’s a shame, because – whilst not really offering anything new – the layout, instruction designs, descriptions, and parts lists of ‘Fast Bricks’ are all pretty good.

Verdict: We wouldn’t have thought there was a need for yet another building instructions book, however the constant requests we receive here at The Lego Car Blog indicate that – as usual – we know nothing, and there remains a significant interest in step-by-step instructions for models.

We’re not sure that any book is the best medium for providing step-by-step instructions anymore, with digital downloads performing the job just as well, but nevertheless ‘Fast Bricks’ take on the book-based instructional formula is another competently engineered addition, utilising well-judged techniques and instructional designs to walk readers from a pile of LEGO bricks to a finished sports car model. We just wish the models found within it looked a bit more like the cars they’re supposedly based upon.

★★★

Buy your copy of Fast Bricks by Gilad Barlev and Brick Monster here.

Build a LEGO Mustang | Book Review

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Lego-building legend Sariel has appeared here multiple times over the years. He’s part our our ‘Become a Pro‘ series, is the author of some excellent Lego books, and his beautiful fully remote controlled Mustang GT350 is one of the the finest models we’ve ever published.

Today we’re privileged to share a piece of work that combines all three of the areas above, as the awesome guys at No Starch Press sent us a copy of their new book written by Sariel; ‘Build a LEGO Mustang‘. And not just any Mustang either, it’s the same glorious 1960s GT350 fastback that first appeared here almost two years ago, with remote control drive and steering, LED lights, a 2-speed transmission, opening doors, hood and trunk, and a V8 engine. So, what’s it like?

Firstly, as with all the No Starch Press Lego products we’ve reviewed, ‘Build a Lego Mustang’ is a very well published book. High quality, glossy, and with excellent full colour imagery throughout. Unlike previous publications though, ‘Build a Lego Mustang’ is not coffee table art, a Lego history, or varied model showcase. Instead it’s an instruction manual, detailing the 420 steps required to recreate Sariel’s Mustang masterpiece.

Running to 110 pages, Sariel’s book provides the building process to create his amazing Ford Mustang GT350 for yourself, using a presentation and process that will be familiar to anyone who has built an official LEGO set. Like LEGO’s own instructions, ‘Build a Lego Mustang’ includes a complete parts inventory at the start, followed by the traditional ‘spot the difference’ steps that turn a pile of bricks into a complete model. Continue reading →

From an Idea to LEGO | Book Review

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Here at The Lego Car Blog we’re definitely towards the more adult end of the Lego fan spectrum (not that you’d necessarily know that from our writing ability or professionalism…), however it’s worth remembering that LEGO is, first and foremost, a toy.

It’s therefore with great pleasure that today we can share with you a book aimed exactly at LEGO’s core audience, and on a topic that we’re surprised has taken so long to be published. From Lowey Bundy Sichol‘s ‘From an Idea to…’ series, this is ‘From an Idea to LEGO’.

Lowey’s ‘From an Idea to…’ series of books explore some of the world’s most famous companies, explaining to children aged 8-12 how they were created whilst teaching entrepreneurship and business along the way. They are in fact the only books in the world that provide biographical business studies to kids, which – in a world filled with ‘influencers’ teaching children little more than how to open boxes of free things – is a wonderful alternative.

‘From and Idea to LEGO’ runs to around 100 pages and is filled with lovely illustrations by C. S. Jennings, fun facts and pop-out text (more on that in a bit). Printed in black and white on non-glossy paper the book is typical of those aimed at children (and a price point) so don’t expect another glossy coffee table publication of the type we usually review, as that’s not the point of this book.

Lowey charts LEGO’s history from carpenter’s shop and the invention of the plastic brick, via near bankruptcy to its position today as the world’s largest toy maker. The language is easy to understand, yet still detailed enough to educate, and when a new piece of business terminology appears it’s printed in bold and accompanied by a small pop-out explaining what it means, examples being ‘Patent‘, ‘Brand Equity‘, ‘Profit‘, ‘Revenue‘ and so on.

It’s this aspect of ‘From an Idea to LEGO’ that we particularly like as, whilst it’s well written, the history of The LEGO Company has been detailed many times before. What hasn’t is the business acumen behind the story, particularly in a format that children can understand. Lowey’s explanations are well-judged, clear, and will undoubtedly help readers to join the dots between having an idea and turning it into a profitable business. Lowey’s ‘Lemonade Stand’ example in the book may be slightly cliche, but it communicates the basics brilliantly.

If you’d like your kids to begin their understanding entrepreneurship, and perhaps to fuel ambition beyond becoming a YouTuber, then the books  from ‘Lowey Bundy Sichol’s ‘From an Idea to…’ series are a wonderful way to start. That one of the four books published so far is about our favourite plastic bricks is a bonus!

Read more about the ‘From an Idea to…’ series here.

‘From an Idea to LEGO’ is available to pre-order now.

Little Red Corvette

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From one of America’s worst 1960s vehicles to one of its best. The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray was something of a revolution for US sports cars when it arrived in 1963. This is the C3 iteration that launched a few years later, with about 58 different V8 engine options (seriously, just look at this list!), the same slightly dodgy handling, and ridiculously good looks. This lovely Speed Champions-esque version of the iconic American sports car comes from previous bloggee ZetoVince who designed it for the ‘How to Build Dream Cars with LEGO Bricks‘ book reviewed here last year. Head to ZetoVince’s photostream via the link above for more details, and you can read our review of the book in which it features by clicking the final link in the text.