Reviews and Comments

I'm a sucker for a short book. There's something to be said for being able come complete a narrative in a sitting or two.

The Fifth Year is told from a child's perspective in a believable way. Fragments of meaning emerge. It's not clear what is a dream and what is reality.

I appreciated this book's depiction of childhood. The main character is the only child in the household, but she is not lonely, and she relishes everything about the adults caring for he.

A concise, accessible set of definitions and arguments. It's well designed, and it can fit in a back pocket. Good propaganda has to look good too, something socialists often forget.

An interesting story about people looking for a different way to live. The novel makes clear that an attempt to escape can end up trapped in the same power dynamics from which one seeks respite. The most interesting part of the book is how it deals with the leaders of cults/communes/"leaderless" movements.

A short primer on sabotage. I appreciated this book's condensed argument for understanding technology as a site of class struggle. It's bibliography offers a great path for digging deeper, if you want. But the goal of this book is to offer 136 pages that get you thinking about what it means to put forward a decelerationist politics. From the followers of Ned Ludd to quiet quitters, we have lots of tools for sabotage, and Mueller argues that we should be thinking critically about how to use those tools.

I found this in a used bookstore with a label on it that said "truly scary." I had never heard of this book. What a find.

Published in 1982, this book reminds you that Silicon Valley's history of depravity runs deep. A computer company is developing Ultrachip as a hail mary to save the company, and they organize a Turing Test of the SOCRATES artificial intelligence program to show off what the chip can do. There's some schlock here, but it's definitely worth a read both in terms of being a quick fun read and (maybe more importantly) as a historical document.

Lots of great stuff in here, but I especially appreciated that the book frames the central constraint for AI as a hardware issue, something we are of course living with today in a more intense way. Also great stuff in here about labor...very hard to believe this was written in the 70s/80s. Here's an exchange between a Stanford computer science professor and a New York Times journalist:

"Tomasso paused for a second and leaned back, gazing down at the gray terminal atop his desk. 'I remember,' he said, 'about five years ago, I was at some technical conference, where I met a consultant who works for different computer firms. And she was telling entry-level programmers that they'd be better off learning a trade.'

'I don't follow,' Maralee said.

Tomasso spread his hands wide. 'Which would you rather do? Hire some good engineers once, to design a smart system that basically operates in natural language, or else keep paying overpriced programmers forever?'

Maralee frowned. 'So where do the programmers go?'

Tomasso shrugged. 'I'm no sociologist. But I suppose they either get more sophisticated at what they do or' - he raised his hands again - 'they learn a trade. Computers or not,' he said with a slight smile, 'we're always going to need plumbers.'" (94-95)

This series continues to deliver. This book focuses a lot on how to name things: what to call the situation (not a catastrophe but maybe an anastrophe?) and what to call the people stuck in the 19th of November.

Here's my favorite passage from this volume:

"Maybe that is why I write. Maybe it's my way of being alone. Maybe the page is my door out of the disarray. A means of finding a way through all the thoughts and voices that blur together. To sit alone with paper and pen and know that there is nothing but Tara's hand moving gently across the page, gathering the voices and gestures into that motion, ideas and explanations, all that we share, that we are many, a community, a flock, an odd bunch, and yet: my hand moves simply with all that has seeped into my sentences, into my hand, and I write myself onto a narrow path, sentenced by sentence, I make my way forward, tiptoeing, so softly. Alone." (160)

Doctorow defined enshittification in 2022 and then elaborated on it in various essays and op eds. This is a book-length version of the argument that "two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time."

The book is meticulously researched and well-written, but I do think maybe this is an argument that is more persuasive in a tighter, shorter format. There's tons of evidence in the book, and I might argue there's (strangely) too much evidence.

I love that the book walks through the natural history, pathology, epidemiology, and cure for enshittification. The structure is excellent, but maybe the book is a bit too "baggy."

I avoided this book for quite some time given the Good Morning America sticker. I think what I was suspecting ended up being true. The beginning of the book is decent (especially the discussion of the space shuttle - appreciated by this Gen Xer), and I also appreciate that it offers a queer love story (especially given that I listened to it with a queer teen). However, the melodrama ends up overtaking everything, and the characters' one dimensionality limits what was maybe possible.

Re-reading this one because I'm teaching it. One of my favorites.

This is my first time reading one of these books (Strange Houses and Strange Pictures are lauded by most), so I'd be interested to know what fans of the series think. I like the conceit (floor plans with strange details that end up being linked to dark story lines), but the last quarter of the book is a detailed reveal of a large, overarching story. That last section started to feel a little tedious. Still, it was a fun read, and I'd consider reading the other two books.

This book is really well written. I bought it because the book design was incredible and because it was billed as a "fable." It did not disappoint. Here's a passage in which the protagonist plays jazz on an instrument he fashioned from a goat horn. His audience for this performance is a goat who he has named Harmony:

"The first time Adi played 'Stella by Starlight,' cycling through his old club and crib-side standards, Harmony kept silent. But an hour later, when he played it again under a sky so star-spattered and cosmos-smeared that the song seemed not just befitting but ordained - this time Harmony joined in, rising to her hooves and bleating so gently and forlornly that after a while Adi lowered the horn to just listen. Her voice was deep and warbly, devoid of the staccato blats heard commonly up and down the island, and all the other goats yielded to her voice, choosing to listen like Adi was. Splitting his gaze between the starlight and the firelight, the only conclusion he could muster was that everything in nature, which meant everything everywhere, was more intricate and indecipherable than an outcast man on an obscure island could possibly fathom. The thought was a surrender yet in its wake trailed a peculiar solace, a sudden disburdening: if the questions could be answered then the strain of asking them must be futile. After a while he laid himself down in a soft hollow of sand, still listening to her sing as his eyelids slipped closed." (126)

True story: I didn't know the word "palaver" when I bought this book. I assumed it was a reference to some Portuguese term.

That kind of tells you what I knew about this book before I picked it up - I tend to shop on vibes at the bookstore. But this was a decent account of a mother and son figuring out their relationship and a fun account of queer communities and food in Tokyo.

I'm always interested in reading books about tech from the "near" past. This book, published in 2017, was probably ahead of its time. Addressing the idea of "waiting" in an attention economy that captures every moment is, of course, really necessary. The interesting thing about this book is the historical and cultural reach. Farman does deep historical, archival stuff about the use of seals on letters and with Civil War soldiers writing home, and he also travels around the world.

It is a quick read that is good for both academic and general audiences.

"The delay between sending and receiving a message is something people have always interpreted with anxiety, hope, fear, boredom, or longing. These interpretations are powerful tools for shaping the ways that we understand human connection and intimacy. These interpretations also help unlock innovation, as we speculate about the unknown and create new ways of exploring the universe." (1)

I loved Cryptonomicon, which was waaaay longer than this one (which is the beginning book in a series), but for some reason Cryptonomicon was much more interesting and engrossing to me. I'm not sure if my lukewarm response to this book was about me and my disjointed attention at the beginning of a semester or about the book. However, I did find a lot of moments in this book where Stephenson seemed to be showing off all the research he did. Personally, I wanted more Russian Revolution and communist drama. The narrative sometimes took a backseat to the historical setting.