this was like a cross between murakami’s “wind up bird chronicles,” and mitchell’s later work “cloud atlas.” that might sound like it’s a bad thing, but it’s not. while both of those books are probably better than this one, both of those books are excellent, so there’s little shame in that.
i decided to dust off another book that i hadn’t read in many years. this book is fun, and goes by remarkably quickly for a book of its length.
fun nonfiction. not the most substantive text, but entertaining to be sure.
i liked this even more than hard-boiled wonderland. i’ll probably have lea read this this year for our christmas exchange.
i had never read anything by zelazny other than his amber books, which are sci-fi/fantasy pulp of the best kind. this is an interesting book, that plays around with such lightweight themes as personal identity over time, what it is to be a god, and religion vs. technology.
i’m not sure what to say about this book. it’s good, but it just didn’t quite resonate. there are some great lines/phrases/concepts in it, but as a whole, it never really cohered for me.
perhaps not as good as the diamond age, but it still is kind of cool to see how people were imagining the internet/Metaverse back in 1992.
i read this, once upon a time (i.e. my freshman year in college), but i had forgotten pretty much the entirety of the book. this was my book-for-lea-to-read of the year, and i figured i should probably refresh myself on it (though lea read it before i “checked up on it”). this and snow crash are fun reads (at least, i think snow crash is a fun read … it’s been six years since i’ve read that one, too, and it’s on its way to madison as we speak).
when prose is as beautiful and lyrical as this, you can only wonder how much better it is in its original language. to be fair, i didn’t actually finish this book — i gave it to my brother to take home and read, but what i did read was fantastic.
this was a bizarre book, but it was also really good. to talk about it much more might spoil it. i’m glad lea recommended it to me, and now i’m passing on the favor by recommending it to you.