Charlie

This book is too long by a third at least maybe even by a half. So much extra was put in just because the author enjoyed writing scenes that really didn't need to be there. There's pretty sketchy character development and the plot is only okay. It feels pretty hackneyed at this point. Plus, in the last couple hundred pages of the book, some of the language suddenly becomes pretty offensive for this day and age. Some very unfortunate use of accented English is used and there are definitely some words that would not pass muster today. Even if this may have been one of the first of the genre That doesn't necessarily mean it's still any good. For over 900 pages. I'd say skip it

Really fun writing. Ready

Read it after I watched the show. Impressive how much it's like the show. Almost note for note. As fun and easy to read as the show is to watch.

Good. Got a bit tedious with me. Teenage angst and depression. But the interesting setting for a book that's really all about mental health and much less about that time.

Best book I've read by Stephenson in awhile. Like since Diamond Age. His early books were actual techno thrillers. As he's gotten older he seems to have settled into writing books that include a LOT more description than is absolutely necessary. This is one of those. However, for me, this one isn't as deadly as Seveneves which I gave up on. (That book's premise made it sound as if I'd love it but the pace was deadly.)

This book is set just far enough in the future that we are not there yet, but it's pretty clear that we will be. If not in the specific details, the general idea is spot on.

The characters are solid and interesting. I wanted to read about them which is what made the excess of description ok. That said, if I hadn't been stuck at home with Covid right as I started this, I might have lost the thread due to lack of time. There's a good 150 pages that could be cut right out of this book and we'd never miss it.

I love Coupland. I own all of his books. But I know that a few of those are just sorta ok. This one is his best since a Girlfriend in a Coma (which is one of my top three books of all time). These tiny, interconnected character studies are bite sized moments of brilliant writing. So evocative. So fun. Surprising. Really refreshing read from a favorite author who can still do it!

Totally, absolutely, kinda ok. This book was obviously written before his more famous, and better, Ready Player One. And it's just not as good. The characters are not well written at all, and the story is pretty dumb. It's got a hackneyed story line and is really just an opportunity for Cline to show off his deep knowledge of pop culture. Sure, I read the whole thing but I was traveling for work and brainless, just ok entertainment was what I needed. But honestly, it just wasn't that good.

Whoa. Quite a book. After an engaging start and some very impressive building, the ending was a bit too pay and fast. But well worth it and a surprising read.

A good book and a quick read. Definitely sad and sometimes frustrating because it's easy to think that you know better. But if you let go of your preconceptions that come from growing up in your culture, this is a window into how's family from another culture deals with tragedy.

Quick, silly two day read during a bout with Covid. About what my brain could handle. In better hands, the idea could have been really well done. As is, it passed the time

This was a great book in the series. the start was a bit discombobulating for me, but once I got that I was on the right book, it was exactly what I wanted. And somehow, the characters came even more alive than they normally do in these books. Bobbie really shines in this one.

Hit and miss collection of short stories. Some are great. Some,... Just eh.

On second read street 20 years It was good but definitely convoluted. I could see his desire to really expand his worlds and get into the details of massive political upheaval. But it wasn't nearly as finally tuned yet as it becomes in his later books. Entertaining but definitely a few storylines that sort of got lost in the shuffle and others that seemed to pop up out of nowhere and all of a sudden take over the entire book

This was easily the best book of Murakami's that I've read. It retains the magical, yet based in reality feel of his previous books. Unlike others though, he comes really close to nailing the ending of this one. It's a big one and feels a bit longer than necessary in parts, but damn good nonetheless.

This was a good book, but not nearly as good as [b:Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320544000s/830.jpg 493634] or [b:The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer 827 The Diamond Age Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer Neal Stephenson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320415915s/827.jpg 2181158] also by Stephenson. Unfortunately, it seems as if he's gotten used to writing very long novels that are only lightly edited. In other words, although the story was engaging, all the effort he put in to setting the scene or building the characters was for naught because there was too much extraneous information at times. It's nice to have things fleshed out, but not to the nth degree.Also, the ending left me cold. The final conflict (a mini-war actually) was very confusing to follow because of the huge panoply of characters, both major and minor, who were ranging across the very large and international field of battle. As things came to a head, I found myself not really caring who lived and who died because what was actually happening was a huge mish-mosh of details.In short, Stephenson may have grown too big for his britches and is now able to argue down editors so the book ends up too long.

I love [a:Russell Banks 15128 Russell Banks http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1275844031p2/15128.jpg]. He's got this way fo writing that is deep and thought provoking while also being entertaining and relatively easy to read. It's like brain candy for smart people. Light reading, but not.This book was a joy to read for the first 4/5ths of it. Great character development, a good plot that moves along at the right pace but is moved in a unique manner. EG: it's not just this happens, then that happens and then this happens..... the story is told through some jumps in time, from different perspectives and characters do grow and change, appropriately.All that said, the last 1/5th of the book it suddenly became this weird mystery that comes out of nowhere. Although it's point as a writerly device makes sense (I don't want to give it away so I won't explain that much more), the actual writing in this section fell flat for me, especially after the preceding 375 pages.Still, I enjoyed this book and do recommend it.

I can't believe anyone likes this book or likes this writer (based on his writing in this book). I appreciate schlock as much as the next guy and love to take time off with brain candy. But this book was just poorly written. The language sounded stilted and forced and the plot was so painfully obvious that there was no mystery to what was going on or how it would turn out. Seriously, this story has been told a million times before but much better. Skip it.

You know I love sci-fi and that I love apocalyptic stories so I was excited when this book came in to the library for me. It's not a great book and certainly not a prime example of the end-of-the-world genere, but it's a quick, easy read and the author goes a few extra steps to try and explain why the super-smart AI that causes all the problems got out of control. In other words, it's not just the hubris of man thinking he can keep an AI under control.My problem with this book is that the story is told as a historical account of the war which is a method I've most recently seen done in [b:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War 8908 World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War Max Brooks http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320398267s/8908.jpg 817], a seriously great book that accounts for the war against the zombies extremely well. Robopocalypse, unfortunately, tries to follow a similar pattern, but leaves one with only the faintest sketch of characters. I had no real emotion for any of them after I was through.Still, an entertaining and quick read.

This is at least the second time I've read this book. It's still amazing. Much, much denser than Brothers K, which is my all-time favorite book, but heck, it's a book about why we're here and the answer has nothing to do with baseball (unlike Brothers K again). Why wouldn't it be dense.

Still, an all-in-all amazing read.

I realized after reading this book that it's the third in a series. Whoops. However, I made it through and enjoyed it well enough, nonetheless.

Among a few tediously “modern” stories, there's a few good stories in this book. The best are the ones where plot doesn't intrude and instead Vollman paints a picture of a time and place and lifestyle of a subculture of people.

So far it's not a bad book but it's not a great one either. It's an “eco-thriller” so I dig it because I am very interested in the environment. But because it's Neal Stephenson, it's more about the character than the environment and since the charcter's voice isn't terribly readable, this book isn't as good as his others. Still, I want to read it all the way through and am not bored.

Well, I had high hopes for this book when it was given to me. After all, Orhan Pamuk, the author, won a Pulitzer and has been all over the news lately. He must be a good writer, right?

Turns out he is a good writer but this book was not for me. I tried really hard to like it and to care and to want to know what happened to everyone and why it happened (which was what he was interested in), but couldn't. Mostly this is because snow is a very slow moving book.

It takes place in a small city on the Eastern border of Turkey during a snow storm when all the roads in and out of the city are closed. The protagonist is a poet who has been living in self-exile in Germany and he's come back as a reporter to cover a story about suicides by young women in the city. He quickly falls in love (too quickly considering the pace of the rest of the book) and has runs ins with the secret service, Kurds and Ilsamists.

I was hoping for something much more lyrical. Something more poignant. Instead I got a lot of characters all running around in the midst of a mini-revolution trying to stay alive in the most asine of ways.

There were moments of excellent story telling, but most of these were stories within the story. By the time I finished this (a month and a half after I started!) I was trudging through because, I figured, I made it this far, I might as well finish now.

This was a great book. It took me a few days to really get into it because the voice is different than most novels, but once I got into it's rhythym, I loved it. It was like spoken word on the page. Or a Jazz tune played by Thelonious Monk in his heyday. This book flowed and the main character reverberated in my head.

WBS is the story of a black boy who grew up in California and ends up being the voice of his people (I'm not giving anything away here. He says that on the first page of the book). We follow him from third grade through his early 20s from the beaches of LA to inner-city ghettos and finally, college. It's a dark fairy tale that requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, and one I was willing to give. Read this.

My favorite of this series

Terrible