Taylor Fisher

This collection of short works is a great quick read that can be picked and put down at any time. Creating a compelling story in so few words can not be an easy task, but all of the stories were compelling enough to keep me reading them.

I approached this book with a bit of trepidation due to being a mechanical pencil man. By the time I had gotten to the advice on mechanical pencils presented I was already convinced to pick up the classical wooden pencils of my youth.

This was required reading for a management seminar I will soon be attending, and after reading this book I'm not hopefully about the quality of the seminar at all. There is some good information presented, but the format it is presented in was an absolute chore to get through. I would have been happier if the writer had just written out the things he wanted you to know, rather than writing a whole story to illustrate them. It would have made the book about 2-4 pages long, but it would have been more informative and less troublesome to read through.

I've had a hard time with some of the other Neal Stephenson books I've tried, but for some reason this one was right up my alley. I disagree with most of his thoughts on metaphysics as presented, but the overall narrative was able to keep me interested much more than I expected. I went into this book expecting to probably set it aside (as I have done with some of Stephenson's other works). I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself staying up late to see where the story would go next.

The kangraoo books really nail the comedy thriller thing very well. It seems like a fine line to tread, but it's done with such skill you hardly notice how hard it should be to weave those two ideas together. The narrative feels like a slow burning fuse, it builds and builds and you know there's an explosion coming, but there's just enough comedy to defuse the tension every little while so you don't suffer from tension fatigue. When the explosion at the end comes, it is fast and satisfying. This book kept me up late on more than one evening because I just needed to see what happened next.