Patrick

Patrick rated a book 3 of 5 stars

Kill Decision
by Daniel Suarez

read in June, 2013

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Like his other two books, Daemon and Freedom TM, this one takes some interesting scary technology -- in this case, autonomous military drones that behave like swarming insects -- and examines the likely political and social forces such a technology c...more

Patrick rated a book 3 of 5 stars

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story by D.T. Max

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
by D.T. Max (Goodreads Author)

read in January, 2013

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This is an engrossing, serviceable, somewhat gossipy but ultimately fair-minded biography of David Foster Wallace. He probably would have hated it, since he wanted his fiction to stand on its own, but it answered a lot of questions I had about what h...more This is an engrossing, serviceable, somewhat gossipy but ultimately fair-minded biography of David Foster Wallace. He probably would have hated it, since he wanted his fiction to stand on its own, but it answered a lot of questions I had about what his life was like while he was writing his best-known works. This biography is not great literature, but it does the job. I completely understand the fans who are infuriated by it, and I agree that you should only come to it after reading Wallace. You will get no sense of his greatness from this.

Wallace is/was my exact contemporary, born a few months before me, so I have always had a shock of recognition from his work, as we absorbed the same books, movies, TV shows, historical events, geography and cultural milieu. I remember reading Infinite Jest as a revelation of what good fiction could be. I read it several times in the 90s and discussed it with many friends and was an early participant in the Wallace-L e-mail list. It is a work of genius tainted only slightly by his failure to foresee certain particulars of the digital world that was coming. I was sad and disappointed when he killed himself with his third novel unfinished. It was clear from IJ that he had a deep knowledge of addiction, rehab and the like, but it was not always clear how much of that stemmed from personal knowledge. As this bio shows, quite a bit did, and much of it is not pretty. He was pretty much a mess starting in high school, and it seems like a miracle that the books and nonfiction articles were ever completed. He was a womanizer with stalker tendencies, had flashes of violence and self-destruction. He had some grotesque personal habits. He made up facts in his nonfiction. In the end, it sounds like he had settled into a comfortable, happy life of teaching and marriage, but his desire to finish his book caused him to tinker with a medical regimen that had kept the howling fantods at bay for years. In retrospect, the tragedy seemed foreordained from his earliest years, but perhaps that is an illusion of biography. D.T. Max knows the ending.

Max is no literary critic, and his judgments of the works sometimes ring as hollow, but he satisfies a passing curiosity about the David Copperfield stuff. It is interesting to read about where Wallace was and what he was doing, and remembering what I was up to at the same time. It is quite possible we walked by each other at some point on the streets of Somerville, Amherst and Manhattan. That is part of the fun of a modern biography, I guess.

I thought Max was particularly harsh about the material in the last book. I am about 10 percent into "The Pale King," and I will return to it now. There have already been flashes of brilliance -- and some more trying passages -- but I feel like I owe to Wallace to finish now.

Rest in peace.

(One very minor quibble -- in a bit about Wallace's classroom exercise involving some interesting words, Max misspells "minuscule." Wallace would have been outraged.)(less)

Patrick rated a book 4 of 5 stars

The Twelve (The Passage, #2)
by Justin Cronin

read in January, 2013

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Not quite as thrilling as The Passage , but it is enjoyable escapist fare. The fun of the first book was learning the nature of the vampire virus, and some surprising plot turns running over the course if a century. This felt more like a typical SF d...more

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That is All
by John Hodgman

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Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace

Both Flesh and Not: Essays
by David Foster Wallace

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Patrick rated a book 2 of 5 stars

Surveillance: A Novel
by Jonathan Raban

read in November, 2012

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The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness
by Dan Lloyd

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Patrick rated a book 3 of 5 stars Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez read in June, 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
Like his other two books, Daemon and Freedom TM, this one takes some interesting scary technology -- in this case, autonomous military drones that behave like swarming insects -- and examines the likely political and social forces such a technology c...more
01 giu. 20:19 · see review
Patrick rated a book 3 of 5 stars Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max (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
This is an engrossing, serviceable, somewhat gossipy but ultimately fair-minded biography of David Foster Wallace. He probably would have hated it, since he wanted his fiction to stand on its own, but it answered a lot of questions I had about what h...more
06 gen. 09:29 · see review
Patrick rated a book 4 of 5 stars The Twelve (The Passage, #2) by Justin Cronin 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
Not quite as thrilling as The Passage , but it is enjoyable escapist fare. The fun of the first book was learning the nature of the vampire virus, and some surprising plot turns running over the course if a century. This felt more like a typical SF d...more
01 gen. 15:08 · see review
Patrick is currently reading That is All by John Hodgman	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
30 dic. 12:34
Patrick is currently reading Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace	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
30 dic. 12:31
Patrick added the Goodreads iOS app
30 dic. 12:27
Patrick rated a book 2 of 5 stars Surveillance: A Novel by Jonathan Raban read in November, 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
14 nov. 10:34
Patrick is currently reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle	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
28 ott. 07:26
Patrick is currently reading Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness by Dan Lloyd	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
28 ott. 07:25

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