Jack Baty

It was fine. More like “Ready Player Six”, I'd say.

I enjoy the occasional pop culture reference, but good lord that was a lot of them.

I knew I was in trouble when, as soon as he met a girl, I said to myself, “How much you bet he accidentally says something clever and they kiss before the day is out.”, and whaddaya know. Of course that's what happened.

Also, “The Last Starfighter” and “Enders Game” did this already, and arguably better. Still, it was a quick, mildly entertaining read.

I imagine Catherynne Valente thought to herself...

I think I'll write something sort of like Douglas Adams, but with MORE!

The first 300 pages were fantastic. Then the story delved further into bitworld and became less interesting to me. Many reviews said that the last part of the book was almost entirely a fantasy novel within bitworld, so I gave up at around page 500 and will not be finishing the book.

This is disappointing, because the first 3rd was so very good.

Nothing going on in the first 100 pages or so that makes me want to continue reading.

Some great ideas here to help with inspiring creativity. Quite a few also that felt too similar to others. Good skimming, though.

An ode to libraries wrapped in a history lesson disguised as a crime thriller.

What a wonderful, surreal, weird book. I loved every minute of it, but I couldn't begin to tell you what it's about.

Merged review:

What a wonderful, surreal, weird book. I loved every minute of it, but I couldn't begin to tell you what it's about.

Interesting, but I'm not sure why I needed to know 3/4 of it. My favorite bits were about Ted Nelson and hypertext.

I enjoy nicely designed book covers, although a poorly designed cover doesn't detract from a good book. That said, I really dislike Glut's cover.

I read this based on glowing recommendations from people I trust. Turns out it's another repetitive, drawn out self-help book I didn't need.

I hope we can have many more Murderbot books. I like them better than Jack Reacher books.

I like Douglas Rushkoff's ideas around civilization and human-ness. I agree with him in general about the isolating effects of the way we “connect” today. What I didn't love about the book is that so many of his 100 “statements” just say things as if they're obviously true. I wasn't always so sure. I also think I could have gotten as much out of watching a few more of his videos on YouTube.

Yep, I still love Murderbot.

I enjoyed it. Cal has never had a social media account. Counter-intuitively, this gives him a clear perspective of the cost/benefit balance offered by social networks. He offers a number of actionable ways to reduce and clarify how we interact with devices and other people.

A nice enough palette cleanser.

I like the ideas, but Keen wandered a bit too much for me.

I've never had this much fun learning how to do things like domesticate animals and make penicillin.

This would be a fantastic book for someone just starting out with a Bullet Journal. I've been neck deep in my “BuJo” for several years so there wasn't that much here for me. Still, I recommend it.

The feel-good book of the year :).

As funny and fun as “John Dies at the End”. Books like this are made for me. Someone described them as “Nonchalant Absurdism” and that just about nails it. I smiled and/or laughed the entire time.

Terrific read. Unique and fun.

A book about writing letters by local author, Keith Winnard. I love everything about writing, sending, and receiving hand-written letters, so this book was inspirational, if not terribly informative. Keith is an enthusiastic cheerleader of the cause.

I did not succeed at loving the book, but the first half was interesting. After that it sort of fell off for me.

Fascinating history of the people and science behind the detection of gravitational waves. Surprisingly exciting stuff.

I don't understand how so many people read this book and were able to get past the actual sentences. This may be a great book for lovers of time travel stories, but for lovers of writing it falls short.

Reading “The Reason I Jump” is the best way I've found to improve one's understanding of how a person with Autism thinks and feels. It's an amazing perspective, described well, by 13-year-old Naoki.