I've never had this much fun learning how to do things like domesticate animals and make penicillin.
This type of science fiction is no longer my bag. The childish sex scenes and the dialog of the “poet” killed it for me after about 30% of the way through. Did not finish.
I enjoyed Simple Rules. Some of the examples were useful. A Simple Rule I already follow is “Don't keep reading if it seems to be repeating itself”. This book suffered from that problem, so I skimmed the second half and that's that.
A book about writing letters by local author, Keith Winnard. I love everything about writing, sending, and receiving hand-written letters, so this book was inspirational, if not terribly informative. Keith is an enthusiastic cheerleader of the cause.
Some great ideas here to help with inspiring creativity. Quite a few also that felt too similar to others. Good skimming, though.
I no longer enjoy following douchebag characters. Didn't finish this one. American Psycho did it better anyway.
Five stars because this is the first “real” book I ever read. 1970-ish. I read it while my parents and grandparents were out shopping and running errands. I made a sort of fort under my grandmother's kitchen table and just read and read.
I don't understand how so many people read this book and were able to get past the actual sentences. This may be a great book for lovers of time travel stories, but for lovers of writing it falls short.
I like Douglas Rushkoff's ideas around civilization and human-ness. I agree with him in general about the isolating effects of the way we “connect” today. What I didn't love about the book is that so many of his 100 “statements” just say things as if they're obviously true. I wasn't always so sure. I also think I could have gotten as much out of watching a few more of his videos on YouTube.
I loved the initial short story-like introductions to each character in the first half of the book. I also enjoyed when their stories began to intersect at some point in the middle. But then it became a bit of a slog focusing on eco-terrorism. I admit to skimming the final third, which is too bad because it means I probably missed some really great individual sentences.
Love the whole murder mystery time travel horror weird bits, but frankly I became lost late in the game and never found my footing.
It's as if Neal Stephenson wrote a book about AI without knowing what AI stands for. Still, some interesting bits even though I wasn't interested in most of them.
I loved this. Fun story, wild characters, cool world. I really enjoy the way Miéville writes.
While there were many laugh-out-loud moments, I just could not muster the energy to finish. I may come back to this one day.
Walk, push a cart, “I'm hungry.”, look for food, “be careful,” hide, walk more.
Bleak is okay with me. Boring is not. Points for style, though.
I was looking for some creative inspiration. Dan Winters' description of his photographic journey provided.
I only made it half-way. I had no idea what was going on and I didn't care enough to find out.
Interesting, but I'm not sure why I needed to know 3/4 of it. My favorite bits were about Ted Nelson and hypertext.
I enjoy nicely designed book covers, although a poorly designed cover doesn't detract from a good book. That said, I really dislike Glut's cover.