This was a CBR Book Exchange book from a few years ago, thank you Mrs. Smith. I lent it to my father, who lent it to a friend, and then when I got it back it shuffled to the bottom of my tbr pile. That eye stares at me accusingly. I decided to start it last night hoping I would finish in time to write a review for bingo. Um. Less than 24 hours later, I’m finished and writing the review. The review may take […]
Ask a Manager: The Book
I found this book via recommendation in the comments of the “Ask a manager” advice blog run by Alison Green, and as soon as I got a few pages in it was pretty obvious why. This book is essentially that website in novel form. The plot is essentially Ender’s Game by way of Office Space; a corporate drone realizes that all the bureaucratic frustrations in his job have been artificially and intentionally inflicted on him, but the tone is solidly comedic. It’s an amusing if […]
“People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they’ll spend all day telling you who they are.”
When I first re-discovered reading for pleasure as an adult, I happened upon a bizarre book called The Flame Alphabet. I was tremendously intrigued by the concept of language being used as a weapon, but was ultimately VERY disappointed and confused by The Flame Alphabet (because it’s weird, y’all. Super weird.) Fortunately, book lovers were there to point my uninitiated self in the direction of Snow Crash and this book. Turns out, “language as weapon” is a veritable sci-fi subgenre! Lexicon is, easily, the most […]
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will turn me into a puppet
Max Barry’s ”Lexicon” is a book I’ve wanted to read for years, probably since it came out and I saw that the reviews about it were great. I eagerly picked it up as my fifth book for the half Cannonball, having breezed through the first four during a rare period in my life when I both had time and energy to read. That energy disappeared while I was reading Lexicon. I don’t think it was Lexicon’s fault. A book about words and their power, filled […]
The Power of Persuasion
Lexicon is the story of a group of people called Poets who are very persuasive; if they can pinpoint a person’s sector they can use certain words to compel them to do the Poet’s bidding. There are a lot of references to the Tower of Babel and word origins but overall the book is a very accessible read. I am not very into “sci-fi” or anything not particularly rooted in reality but Lexicon was compelling enough for me to overlook the silliness of word magic. […]
Sticks and stones may brake your bones, but words will turn you into my meat puppet.
Target: Max Barry’s Lexicon Profile: Speculative Fiction, Thriller As I have written before, I find book recommendations to be more annoying than useful (which raises some interesting questions about why I write book reviews). There are so many variables involved in what makes any given book appealing to a given person that, without a history of literary compatibility, it is almost impossible guarantee that any two people will like the same book. Still, every so often I’ll follow up on a recommendation or a particularly good […]