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Jamie rated a book 3 of 5 stars

Redshirts
by John Scalzi (Goodreads Author)

read in January, 2013

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Finished listening to Redshirts by John Scalzi. No spoilers below, in case you're concerned.

The book is about a group of Ensigns in a thinly veiled Star Trek setting who slowly figure out that they're extras on some sort of thinly veiled Star Trek TV...more Finished listening to Redshirts by John Scalzi. No spoilers below, in case you're concerned.

The book is about a group of Ensigns in a thinly veiled Star Trek setting who slowly figure out that they're extras on some sort of thinly veiled Star Trek TV show knockoff. And like such extras (commonly known as "redshirts") they are doomed to die in dramatic ways in service to The Narrative.

The book's hook is definitely its strongest suit and Scalzi is most entertaining near the beginning when he illustrates how ridiculous and contrived many of Star Trek's plot devices were, and considers what people would think of them if they were slapped up against a more realistic setting. It's funny to see the redshirts piece together how to increase their odds of survival on away team missions, watch them boggle at black boxes that spew out nonsense designed only to move The Narrative forward, and scream out things like "What kind of asshole would encode a distress signal about killer robots?" It's entertaining in an inside joke, look how absurd this stuff really is kind of way.

Unfortunately things get a lot less entertaining in Act II when the redshirts try to take control of their fate. No spoilers, but suffice to say the book contorts around and crawls so far up its own butt that it just gets silly. Absurd is fun, but just plain silly is not.

Scalzi plotting in this section is also odd in the way it lurches around and leaves a lot of important stuff to happen off "camera." I supposed one could say that he was just being very meta and making another sly commentary on how things work on bad-to-mediocre sci-fi shows, but it just hurts the quality of the story. And speaking of which, Scalzi also takes the opportunity to slide in a kind of polemic about bad science fiction writing. This kind of works in the context of the story (to say more would lead to spoilers) but it still often feels like the characters are reciting one of Scalzi's blog posts instead of speaking with their own voices This is a common problem, actually, as there are also frequently few meaningful differences in the cast's voice and character. They often sound like I would expect Scalzi sounds like rather than their own people.

Finally, there are not one, not two, but THREE superfluous codas at the end of the book that follow up on some of the ancilary characters. They're tonally very different from the rest of the book, and feel very much like the author (or his editor) read first draft of the book and said "Hrm, this needs more heart." But instead of infusing the heart and emotional connections into the main book, Scalzi just slapped on the codas and said "There. Done."

On balance I actually liked the book, though. The best parts felt like inside jokes about bad sci-fi shows and reveled in the incredulity that you or I would feel if we were part of that crew. Super meta, I know, but in a way that's kind of charming and often amusing.(less)

Jamie rated a book 2 of 5 stars

11/22/63
by Stephen King

read in September, 2012

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Stephen King's awkwardly titled novel 11/22/63 tackles a question that apparently interests the author quite a bit: What if you could keep President Kennedy from being assassinated on that dreaded day in history? I mean, it's a foregone conclusion fo...more Stephen King's awkwardly titled novel 11/22/63 tackles a question that apparently interests the author quite a bit: What if you could keep President Kennedy from being assassinated on that dreaded day in history? I mean, it's a foregone conclusion for most Americans that they'd save the President's life if they could go back in time and do it, right? King takes this idea and plays with it, spinning it around in a few directions and trying to throw us for a loop with the protagonist Jake Epping's quest to change history for the better, but 11/22/63 is ultimately just boring.

To his credit, King does manage to sidestep many of the issues that I have with time travel stories. Epping can only time travel to one exact moment years before Kennedy's death by travelling through a "rabbit hole" in time, and while multiple trips are possible if (or rather when) he screws things up, each trip back to the present resets the timeline and undoes anything he had done in the past. And of course, King's faceless, deliberately vague personification of the past is obdurate when it comes to change and will throw all kinds of obstacles and hardships and temptations in our hero's way.

Unfortunately King doesn't really do anything interesting or thrilling with this premise. Instead he just has Jake Epping fart around in 1960s America, falling in love with the era and its people. I think part of my problem with the books is just that I don't have the adoration and familiarity with the time period that the older King obviously has. I simply don't care about Moxie soda or classic cars or whatever else Norman Rockwell saw when he looked out of his window every morning. As such, a lot of the nostalgia and emotion was lost on me. Perhaps if King had set the book in the 80s, but he didn't.

Instead he wallows in things I don't care about and paces the book incredibly slowly to show off all the research he's done on the Kennedy assassination. There's an enormous chunk of the book where Epping is bumbling around in 1950s Derry Main (the setting of many related stories, most notably It) and King decides it's wise to spend hundreds of pages in "tutorial mode" by having the protagonist prevent not one but two tragedies for the sake of laying the groundwork for time travel in this specific case. It was plodding, gratuitous, and didn't need to take nearly as long as it did.

There is some good stuff in there, as Jake Epping's relationship with his new, 1960s era lover evolves and deepens naturally and there's a touching payoff for that in the end. There's also a brief section of the book that explores what happened after Epping completes his quest, much of which felt like it should have been more of the focus of the book. It's just so much of 11/22/63 is so slowly paced, so redundant, and so heavy on the foreshadowing that it was just tiresome. King is much more interested in writing a character in the form of Jake Epping (and, to a lesser degree, Lee Harvey Oswold) than he is writing an interesting or gripping story. While I appreciate the former, I'd sure like more of the latter.(less)

Jamie joined the group Broken Forum

Jamie rated a book 3 of 5 stars

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself
by David McRaney

read in January, 2012

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You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself is a blog turned book that aims to explore many of the common biases and errors in decision-making that hav...more You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself is a blog turned book that aims to explore many of the common biases and errors in decision-making that have made the field of behavioral economics so active in the last few decades. Author David McRaney confesses to not being a psychologist (hey, it happens) but he does a pretty darn good impersonation of throughout the book’s 48 chapters, each of which is dedicated to one reason why you may not be so smart about day-to-day decision-making as you think.

In general, McRaney does a good job of making each one of these 48 topics accessible. He doesn’t talk over a general audience’s head, yet he usually manages to work in descriptions of the research and scientific evidence that each chapter’s topic is predicated on. And it helps that by and large each topic is something that most readers can relate to --remembering childhood events, procrastinating, deciding what brands to buy, affirming your political beliefs, responding to authority figures, arguing with idiots on the Internet, and the like. The book’s schtick is that through its revelation of common errors and biases related to these topics it constantly posits that you aren’t as smart or rational as you might think, because you are no exception to the effects described. Each chapter tries to hook you with declarations of a common misconception and a related truth. It’s the kind of “See, science and psychology matter to YOU and your everyday life” stuff that I love reading about. You should find something interesting in every chapter.

The other thing that makes the book approachable is that McRaney isn’t afraid to use informal language and specific cultural references. The book is replete with references to Battlestar Galactica, World of Warcraft, and other touchstones. It also contains occasional phrases like “this is bullshit” and “what the hell?” and other casual language that makes it feel like you’re listening to someone go on about this stuff over a beer or a shared commute. It’s a friendly and refreshing tone for which I’d like to thank not only the author for offering, but also his editor for allowing.

The book’s roots as a blog also show through in that most of the chapters are very short --some are in fact as brief as a healthy blog post, it may not surprise you to find out. On the one hand, this can be nice because you can nibble your way through the book, working through one or two of the chapters at a time if you’re not up to taking huge bites. It also makes the book easier to use as a reference later if you want to return to one of the errors or biases.

On the other hand, though, I think the book often misses the opportunity to tell stories that give some more context and meat to the phenomena it describes. Other books in this same vein that I’ve read have walked the reader through narratives about either how the researchers developed their ideas and experiments, or told stories about real-life applications of the biases and mental hiccups they describe. In his book How We Decide, for example, Jonah Lehrer frames a discussion about dopamine predictions by describing how a Lieutenant Commander in the British Navy reacted to odd readings from his radar display and barely saved many lives in the process. There’s none of this gripping storytelling in You Are Not So Smart, nor does McRaney do anything along the lines of tying several related topics into one larger concept, like maybe how our instincts to preserve our self image worm their way into an astonishing array of daily decisions. This book is clearly a collection of blog entries based on a bullet list of topics. And while that has its appeal, if McRaney does a follow-up work I’d probably enjoy it more if he really took his time to research some interesting background material and weave a bigger picture out of all the individual strands.(less)

Jamie rated a book 3 of 5 stars

Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline (Goodreads Author)

read in November, 2011

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Okay, let's say you're a child of the 1980s, and like a lot of people who were teens during that unprecedented explosion of pop culture you're thoroughly steeped in the lore of 80s American movies, television shows, video games, music, and toys. NOW,...more Okay, let's say you're a child of the 1980s, and like a lot of people who were teens during that unprecedented explosion of pop culture you're thoroughly steeped in the lore of 80s American movies, television shows, video games, music, and toys. NOW, imagine that all that trivia is key --almost literally-- to proving not only that you weren't wasting your youth, but also to defeating evil, getting the girl, and acquiring massive riches. That's pretty much the nerd fantasy behind Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

The setup for this dystopian future science fiction novel is that James Haliday was a game designer and fan of the 80s who was equal parts Howard Hughes, Richard Garriot, and batcrap crazy. He was also the pro generator of "The OASIS," a virtual reality game into which most of the world has retreated in the face of global calamity. Right before dying, Haliday announced a massive quest within his creation, challenging players to find a series of secret challenges within the virtual universe. The winner gets control of the OASIS as well as several billion dollars. Enter our hero and narrator Wade Watts, a.k.a., "Parzival," a destitute youth who educates himself on everything the 1980s had to offer in order to find Haliday's Egg before an amoral megacorporation can do the same and seize control of the virtual paradise.

The main hook in Ready Player One is how it revels in 80s pop culture. Absurdly enough, Parzival has to quote lines from Mathew Broderick movies and beat multiple classic coin-op arcade games in order to find and beat each of Haliday's challenges. In addition to these central plot points, conversations between fellow egg hunters (or "gunters" for short) are thick with similar references. Having come of age in the 80s I'm in the sweet spot for this kind of thing, and I recognized and appreciated almost every single reference. I smirked, for example, when one character snapped at another with "Tell the truth, Claire!" even when the author provided no other context. And I not only vividly remember the classic Atari 2600 game Adventure, but I had myself found the game's easter egg after which Haliday's entire hunt was patterned. So as a literary device, this stuff is fun if you're the kind of person who will appreciate it. If you're not, I'm not so sure.

On the downside, while the OASIS makes a vivid and flexible backdrop against which you can tell a story, Cline seems to over rely on it a bit in terms of plotting. Improbable plot devices constantly popped up in the form of overly convenient "artifacts" or super-items within the game, which highlighted cracks in Cline's otherwise good plotting. Need a way to make the bad guys totally invincible for just long enough to make things dramatic? Artifact. Need a way to save the hero from certain death? Artifact. Want a humongous showdown between protagonist and antagonist? Two artifacts. It gets a little obvious at times, as does Perzival's uncanny knack for possessing whatever area of obscure expertise needed to beat every challenge.

That said, Ready Player One is generally really readable and a lot of fun if you're in the target audience. Things zip along quickly in the vein of a classic quest tale, which is exactly what the story is. Cline also taps into many themes that are relevant to anyone living nowadays --things like online privacy, escapism, commercialization of art, the value of offline friendships, obsessive fanboyism, and the like. These topics are handled pretty well in the context of the larger story, and Cline makes some insightful and interesting statements.

So I'd recommend Ready Player One if the gist of it sounds interesting to you. The "everything that was nerdy about your youth is actually awesome and totally key to domination of your opponents" plot is a bit eye rolling, as are the transparent plot devices, but it's still fun and it's neat to see someone throw references to things I loved as a kid like they were so much party confetti.(less)

Jamie rated a book 4 of 5 stars

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
by James Gleick

read in August, 2011

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Jame's Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is kind of all over the place, as you might expect given its nebulous subject matter. The author intends to do pretty much what the subtitle suggests: review the history of information as...more Jame's Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is kind of all over the place, as you might expect given its nebulous subject matter. The author intends to do pretty much what the subtitle suggests: review the history of information as a concept, dive into the scientific field of information theory, and ponder what recent volume of information flow means for us as a society or even as a species. As such, it's a mix of history, hard science, and even a dash of speculation.

My favorite parts of the book were the history of science bits, which Gleick presents after what seems to be exhaustive and comprehensive research. He traces the evolution of information as a concept, starting around the invention of the written word, then working up through the time line and pointing out landmarks like the printing press, the discovery of logarithms, the telegraph, Morse code, the telephone, the computer, the Internet, and the like. Each of these is discussed in the context of how they shaped the abstract concept of "information" and all led to the inevitable creation of a theory of information. I also loved learning about all the people behind these inventions and discoveries, and Gleick delivers the best bits of biographies on characters like Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace (nee Byron), Claude Shannon, James Maxwell, and more. These parts of the book were replete with fun facts and amusing stories, like the woman who tried to "send" a bowl of sauerkraut by the newly invented telegraph or how the editors of the Oxford Dictionary decide what new words to add each edition. It's all very educational and made me think of information and the information technology around me in new ways. I always love learning about visionaries and how they made their mark.

The sections on the formal theory of information, though, were also enjoyable, but to my layman mind they were sometimes dense to the point of being impenetrable. Gleick doesn't shy away from the hard stuff, and his discussion of information theory is flung far enough to cover many fields: mathematics, cybernetics, quantum theory, psychology, electrical engineering, chemistry, astrophysics, computer programming, genetics, history, cryptology, and more. And while Gleick doesn't revel in jargon and he makes many attempts to keep things at a high level, much of the book is unavoidably scholarly. Still, I was usually able to follow along with the WHAT he was getting at, if not the HOW. And it really is impressive how widely he casts his net.

And I'm glad I did. While some of the finer points may have been lost on me, I enjoyed the history of science treatment and got enough of it to get a feel for the shape of information theory and how the general concept of information has evolved and been revealed through advances in philosophy, science, and technology --what it is, how it's measured, where it goes, and what its properties are. It's heady stuff, but fun to think about.(less)

Jamie rated a book 2 of 5 stars

Robopocalypse
by Daniel H. Wilson (Goodreads Author)

read in July, 2011

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"Robots go bananas and kill everyone" isn't exactly a novel idea in science fiction, but it stands as a sturdy foundation for Daniel Wilson's book Robopocalypse. You know the drill: Man creates artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence takes o...more "Robots go bananas and kill everyone" isn't exactly a novel idea in science fiction, but it stands as a sturdy foundation for Daniel Wilson's book Robopocalypse. You know the drill: Man creates artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence takes one look at man and says "Yeeeeah, I'm gonna just go ahead and destroy all humans." Man proves resourceful, spirited, and difficult to eradicate. Time travel may or may not be involved.

What's interesting about Robopocalypse is that instead of focusing big battles a la Terminator, it lingers on the beginning of the "New War" and shows how the AI serendipitously gains control of all the mechanical and electronic do-dads that near-future humanity has grown reliant on and turns them against their creators. So not only are there service robots choking people to death, there's killer vacuum cleaners, smart cars that deliberately crash themselves (and their human passengers) into one another at high speeds, buildings that turn off the lights and lure people into elevator shafts, and the like. Much like World War Z, each chapter in Robopocalypse is a vignette following a wide cast of characters who aren't even connected until the book's climax. These early to middle parts of the book were the most enjoyable to me because they showed a wide, creative array of ways that things could go south if our machines turned against us.

Unfortunately this also works at cross purposes with the rest of what you want out of a novel. Robopocalypse is epic in nature --it chronicles the near annihilation of humanity-- but it feels very cursory. The rapid-fire chapters cover a lot of ground, but Wilson doesn't take any time to build characters or develop them beyond crude, stunted arcs. I don't really feel like I know or care about any of these people --or robots, for that matter. The book is full of great gaps in its plot so that it lurches forward months at a time, robbing the reader of getting to know the characters or get a feel for what they're going through. It's all punchline and no setup.

The nature of the chapter vignettes also fails in that each one is supposed to be told from the perspective of a given character, but the author often tries to convince us that the action is being reconstructed by an overall narrator who sees gleans events from a variety of sources such as security cameras, eyewitness testimony, and other recordings. This conceit simply doesn't work in that you're always conscious of an omniscient author cramming things together in a way to tell the story he wants to tell. There's no "found footage" feel to the narrative like I think he was going for. Instead you just have to decide to go with it, but roll your eyes a little while you do.

So, it's unfortunate that Robopocalyse wasn't better written, because it has some neat ideas that could have stood some fleshing out. It feels like a book that should be three or four times longer than it is, given its desired scale and large cast of characters.(less)

Jamie and 47 other people liked Jake's review of The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2):

" I enjoyed the first book, but did not feel the same way about this one. Fantasy books are meant to be the unbelievable, this much is certain, and the heroes that take the starring role are meant to be people of great intrigue and who can accomplis... " Read more of this review »

Jamie rated a book 2 of 5 stars

The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)
by Patrick Rothfuss (Goodreads Author)

read in May, 2011

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Note: There are going to be some spoilers for The Wise Man’s Fear below. I don’t feel like I can really explain my opinions about the book without delving into that kind of territory, so come back later if you haven finished the book yet but plan on...more Note: There are going to be some spoilers for The Wise Man’s Fear below. I don’t feel like I can really explain my opinions about the book without delving into that kind of territory, so come back later if you haven finished the book yet but plan on it.

It’s disappointing, really. I generally liked Patrick Routhfus’s initial book in his fantasy series, The Name of the Wind, which introduced the trouper orphan Kvothe and promised to tell us both how his extravagant legend grew and what the truth behind it really was. We saw Kvothe live on the streets, use his native wit and ability to get into The University, and then saw him start to make a name for himself while trying to learn what he could about the mysterious company that foisted that whole "orphan" status on him. The book was framed in an interesting way by “present day” Kvothe telling his story to two men: one who wants to tease the truth apart from the legend and one who wants truth to become legend again.

The Wise Man’s Fear continues Kvothe’s story, and while it’s still got some of the interesting world building and character moments that the first book does, it’s also got some crippling flaws that made it hard for me to get through the book if for no other reason that the constant face palming kept blocking my view of the page. First among these is the fact that Routhfus spends the first chunk of the book retreading territory well worn from the first. We get to see more of Kvothe puttering around the University, more of Kvothe being poor, more of Kvothe pining after his untouchable lady love, more of Kvothe feuding with the obligatory rich bully kid, more of Kvothe imperiling his health for the services of a money lender, and generally more of everything we got in the last half of the first book. And this isn’t just a quick refresher to help span the long wait between books; the author spends THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE PAGES rehashing.

Then, when Kvothe does move on, Routhfus pointedly refuses to discuss an entire adventure involving "a storm, piracy, treachery, and shipwreck." Granted, you could view this as more deconstruction of the genre on Routhfus's part, but what it really did was make the retreading of University life seem even more glaring. But things do get a little more interesting after we leave the University, but this is quickly followed by the two biggest face palms of the book. One of my complaints about The Name of the Wind was that Kvothe was a bit of a “Mary Sue” in that he was super good at everything and way too mature for a kid in his early teens. Kvothe excels at almost every subject, is a master musician, a clever magician, a brilliant engineer, a fleet-footed burglar, and more. Routhfus does not rectify this in the second book, but rather exacerbates it. In fact, at points it rather embodies some of the most embarrassing male wish fulfillment fantasy that the genre has to offer.

To wit: at one point Wise Man’s Fear’s plot lurches suddenly to the left and Kvothe suddenly runs off to …well, I’ve really got no other way to say it: he learns to have sex real good. He becomes (or is naturally) supernaturally good at the sex, in fact, because his tutelage comes from the ancient goddess of …sex. Of course. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say that this whole section of the book was so embarrassing and out of place that it really seemed more like it came from a mouth breathing fanboy than the author of the imaginative and well plotted The Name of the Wind.

And from there, it doesn’t get much better, because after our hero graduates with his Ph.D. in sexing, the next stretch of story takes us to Japan. Well, not really, but it might as well be, since Kvothe’s learning martial arts and swordplay from a mysterious, honor-bound warrior society again sounds like something that some Japan-obsessed fan fiction writer would come up with. Also, he shows some ninja ladies how awesome he is at sex. No, I’m totally serious.

All that slagging aside, there are actually things about The Wise Man’s Fear that I liked. The interludes with modern day Kvothe continue to be interesting, and even in the awful “goddess of sex” and “Japanland” sections there are scenes that I liked, such as Kvothe’s meeting with a malicious tree spirit that uses its clairvoyance to mess with people and the way he solved his final warrior’s test with a different tree full of leaves sharp enough to cut him to ribbons.

And I continue to like how Rothfus deconstructs the whole fantasy hero trope through the telling of Kvothe’s story. But I just wish he had shown enough restraint to let the real Kvothe be less than the legend and let his exploits be revealed to be less than what they became in the retellings. In the first, book, for example, we learned that while Kvothe didn’t “slay a dragon and save a princess” as legend has it, but he did trick a large, lizard-like beast into poisoning itself, thus saving himself and his female companion. That’s the sort of clever stuff that I think is infinitely more interesting than tossing in a incongruous clichés like a sex goddess or a mysterious society teaches people how to be kung-fu masters in just a few weeks.

I’ll still the next book --look forward to it, actually-- but suffice to say I’m pretty disappointed in this one and hope Routhfus returns to proper form.(less)

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Jamie is now friends with Qwantu Amaru
Jan 11, 2013 06:09am · like
Jamie rated a book 3 of 5 stars Redshirts by John Scalzi (Goodreads Author) read in January, 2013	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Finished listening to Redshirts by John Scalzi. No spoilers below, in case you're concerned. The book is about a group of Ensigns in a thinly veiled Star Trek setting who slowly figure out that they're extras on some sort of thinly veiled Star Trek TV...more
Jan 11, 2013 06:03am · see review
Jamie rated a book 2 of 5 stars 11/22/63 by Stephen King read in September, 2012	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Stephen King's awkwardly titled novel 11/22/63 tackles a question that apparently interests the author quite a bit: What if you could keep President Kennedy from being assassinated on that dreaded day in history? I mean, it's a foregone conclusion fo...more
Sep 12, 2012 02:00pm · see review
Jamie joined the group Broken Forum
Feb 02, 2012 08:34am · like
Jamie rated a book 3 of 5 stars You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself by David McRaney read in January, 2012	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself is a blog turned book that aims to explore many of the common biases and errors in decision-making that hav...more
Jan 10, 2012 01:05pm · see review
Jamie rated a book 3 of 5 stars Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Goodreads Author) read in November, 2011	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Okay, let's say you're a child of the 1980s, and like a lot of people who were teens during that unprecedented explosion of pop culture you're thoroughly steeped in the lore of 80s American movies, television shows, video games, music, and toys. NOW,...more
Nov 15, 2011 01:39pm · see review
Jamie rated a book 4 of 5 stars The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick read in August, 2011	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jame's Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is kind of all over the place, as you might expect given its nebulous subject matter. The author intends to do pretty much what the subtitle suggests: review the history of information as...more
Aug 23, 2011 02:04pm · see review
Jamie rated a book 2 of 5 stars Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson (Goodreads Author) read in July, 2011	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
"Robots go bananas and kill everyone" isn't exactly a novel idea in science fiction, but it stands as a sturdy foundation for Daniel Wilson's book Robopocalypse. You know the drill: Man creates artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence takes o...more
Jul 14, 2011 01:45pm · see review
Jamie and 47 other people liked Jake's review of The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2): " I enjoyed the first book, but did not feel the same way about this one. Fantasy books are meant to be the unbelievable, this much is certain, and the heroes that take the starring role are meant to be people of great intrigue and who can accomplis... " Read more of this review »
May 14, 2011 02:22pm · see review
Jamie rated a book 2 of 5 stars The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) by Patrick Rothfuss (Goodreads Author) read in May, 2011	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
May 14, 2011 08:23am · see review

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