One Sentence Media Reviews
This historical treatise has a lot of notoriety but I found it unnecessarily dense, and ultimately flawed, in that its focus on states and state power ignores a related discussion of capitalist power, such that altho there is a useful perspective to glean here about how a drive for social legibility can transform a society, I wouldn't recommend the book overall.
A very Lethem book (obliquely) about the obama-trump transition, and about class differences when you’re a too-clever new yorker; comes off a bit dated now but it’s also arresting and special.
It’s fun to read all about Musk’s slow motion train wreck of a purchase (rip twitter) but on the other hand (and it pains me to admit this), the authors’ not-so-subtle anti-musk bias leads them to gloss over technical details that would’ve added fascinating color to the story.
Sobering look at the history of the company and the country makes a compelling bear case for Apple in the coming years; altho a galaxy brain take might be that Tim Cook has been actively plotting the American downfall and the rise of Chinese Communism.
This old classic hardly needs a review, I’ll just say on my second time through that it is impeccable and deep, and left me unsatisfied and antsy (as I think it was intended to).
Impeccably written and edited and researched, this approachable history of the famous Chinese telecom takes 2/3rds of its length to get interesting, but pays off mightily with a very nuanced and deep understanding of this important geopolitical situation.
I love this strange, poetic book because I'm a linguistics nerd and this is a linguistic nerd's idea of heaven, but also I must warn that it's pretty roughly written.
I guess I read this years ago after I last watched the Wire but anyway if you watch the Wire you ought to read Snoop’s autobiography, it’s short and heartfelt and raw and it’s fun to imagine the her character from the Wire reading the book to you, evidently she basically just plays herself.
Having just torn thru all three books in this fantasy story, I can say that I’m really glad I did - I’ve never read a genre book before that so expertly eschewed the hero’s journey archetype, all while retaining great entertainment value and emotional impact, and without seeming forced.
A straightforward and solid entry in the Vorkosigan series - mostly lighthearted but full of action, builds nicely on the many books before it.
Bujold brings back some of the darkness and sadness that so enticed me originally in this recently-written Vorkosigan Saga entry, but marries that darkness to the light comedic stylings that define the majority of the saga, resulting in a quick, fun, exciting, and unique entry.
Tremendous, brilliant masterpiece, but deeply harsh, made harsher by contrast with its many comedic moments.
I haven’t read a book about a video game in a while, and picked this up more for Watts completionism than anything else, and while I guess he does elevate the material to some degree, it’s pretty boring and two dimensional, consisting mostly of running and explosions and not a ton else.
I just can’t read this much about Iowa.
This entry deep in Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga manages to interleave some extremely piercing insights on self-esteem and love with some very fun romcom hijinks, without ever getting annoyingly cheesy - one of her best works.
It’s gotta be hard to write a history book about a CIA officer, since the available research is so lacking, and it really shows - this history of Robert Ames is overly vague and scantily sourced, and can’t decide if it’s a broad overview of the Lebanese civil war or a biography of this one spy’s life or some weird mix of the two.
Bujold (or “Boujyoung” as I like to call her) is back in full form for this latest entry in my never-ending crawl through the Vorkosigan saga, a quick comedy of manners style detective novel filled with great characters and light-hearted silliness.
This later book in the interminable Vorkosigan series is a competent, fun whodunnit novella wrapped in 200 pages of boring on either end.
Third book in this sci-fi apocalypse series is even bleaker and awful-er than the last to the point that it fully tips over into way too much territory, also it has an unsatisfying ending and desperately needed to be cut down to half its size.
Watts’s second entry in the Rifters series doesn’t quite have the same unique magnetic characters of the first (and maybe it has slightly too many characters in general) but what it lacks in story it makes up for in prediction and world - read this to wallow in a truly terrible future dystopia that feels extremely likely.