Read this because I have a (morbid) fascination with tech bros and “tescrealists” and Kurzweil is kind of a god among them. He’s a nut obsessed with lRead this because I have a (morbid) fascination with tech bros and “tescrealists” and Kurzweil is kind of a god among them. He’s a nut obsessed with living forever, but you can’t deny he’s got a brain and ideas and has actually contributed to the progress of technology, which is more than you can say for most of the crowd.
Anyway, sadly for Kurz this is a super tech bro-y book. He name drops Bitcoin and Bojack Horseman among other predictable signals to a certain subculture that tends to buy into this ideology but that has NOTHING to do with the Singularity. It’s cringe.
He also makes this weird claim that it’s okay that people don’t make as much money now (and if they get automated out of jobs) because you get more bang for your buck nowadays, like sure computers are a little more expensive but they do so much more so it’s okay!! Oh yeah and because people enjoy doing things that are free (he says scrolling on tiktok lol) they don’t need more money anyway and we should rethink what GDP even means. Please Kurz.
When he does actually get into the stuff about singularity, it’s 2/3 of the way through the book and makes a huge jump off from the base he was attempting to build with all that bulk. He talks about the beginning of the universe, brain biology, and the evolution of technology and the internet in basic high-school or pop/sci level review. And somehow that’s a good enough foundation for him to promise that we WILL have augmented reality beamed into our retinas, omniscient AI assistants listening and responding to our every needs, nanobots swimming in our bodies to stop aging oh yeah and SUPERHUMAN machine intelligence all in the 2030s. Ok, Kurz!!!!
I tend to love sci-fi, especially hard sci-fi and vintage ephemera that attempts to predict the future (e.g., flying cars, geodesic domes, colonizing the moon) so I tried to enjoy this book as just more of that because, to an extent, it is. But the language used is this is not science fiction it’s not “we could have this!” it’s so confident: “we WILL have this” and “it WILL happen like this.” And knowing this is holy gospel to people with actual power and money makes it not funny at all. At least until the 2030s when we can all look back on it and laugh or think “god if only.”...more
I LOVED my experience reading Very Cold People, ironically it felt almost like a warm hug. The book captures adolescence so well—what it’s like to disI LOVED my experience reading Very Cold People, ironically it felt almost like a warm hug. The book captures adolescence so well—what it’s like to discover how weird it is being human while observing and experiencing situations and people that are kind of awful or unsettling but not really being able to do anything about it except think or write or internalize it.
I know this doesn’t really seem like “warm hug” territory but it’s so REAL and nails the little details while rarely mincing words. The precision of it all makes it almost nostalgic, like somehow I experienced all of this in my childhood, too (even though I didn’t!). It’s like it’s saying “you’re not alone, adolescence sucks almost universally, all 12 year olds are little awkward weirdos having a terrible time.”
I think my bully chose me because he knew I wouldn’t resist. Ryan O’Reilly spoke over the French teacher and said, She sent Nick a holly-gram but he didn’t send her one! and the French teacher just ignored it. I pretended to ignore it, too, but Ryan knew that I was being corroded by shame, that I was becoming even more vulnerable, skinless.
I don’t remember what else he said, but I remember it lasting minutes every class period, and that no one helped me. No one told him to shut up. His mouth hung open like a hot, stupid dog’s. By then I was a nervous wreck, poorly nourished because I had such a hard time with food. It’s just nerves, my mother said, meaning that it wasn’t a medical problem, wasn’t a real problem, was just something I’d have to endure, just as it was, just as I was.
I thought I’d die of it, but I didn’t die. You can learn to eat violence. There is pleasure in not resisting. I dedicated myself to teaching my bully just how much a person can consume.
Ah! I can't wait to read more from Sarah Manguso....more
Enjoyable to read but it came off as—was—more of an addendum to/retread of/musing on her previous more in-depth memoir which I have not read, so I felEnjoyable to read but it came off as—was—more of an addendum to/retread of/musing on her previous more in-depth memoir which I have not read, so I felt like there were important things I was missing. Kind of like a book two in a series, really. ...more
I thought the topics covered in No Judgment would interest me—gossip, goodreads, autofiction—but the parts of those things Oyler covered at length werI thought the topics covered in No Judgment would interest me—gossip, goodreads, autofiction—but the parts of those things Oyler covered at length were the parts that interested me least. Like gossip about journalists I've never heard of at a magazine I never read or her own friends' handwringing about being turned into her book characters.
I did appreciate her skewering complaints about the merits of works of fiction versus autofiction, because at the end of the day isn't all fiction just autofiction in a way? But then that quickly devolved into her complaining that "people think they know me because they read my novel" and my eyes kind of glazed over.
The essays also have an undeniably snobby voice which put me at odds with her even when I didn't want to be—even when I agreed with her opinions there was this weird adversarial position of reader versus writer or vice versa. I don't feel like I came out of this having really learned about anything or having thought about something in a new way so I can't really recommend it on that merit either. tbh I just didn't like it....more
This was such a disappointment! I can’t get over how one-note and cartoonish the supporting characters were, and how I let it all slide because “it’s This was such a disappointment! I can’t get over how one-note and cartoonish the supporting characters were, and how I let it all slide because “it’s a ghost story, it’s not a family drama.” ...more
Some essays in this collection are soooo great like "Somethingness (or, Why Write?)" which explores various writers' answers to the titular question, Some essays in this collection are soooo great like "Somethingness (or, Why Write?)" which explores various writers' answers to the titular question, "The Uncanny Child" on the subject of becoming aware of the self as an individual, and "Same River, Same Man" on rereading old favorite books. I also loved the smaller mentions of perusing the recently-returned books shelf at the library and a book club with her friends for reading "stupid classics"—classic high school curriculum books they'd never read. These are both good ideas I can copy.
Buuut... I didn't love how safe and careful Gabbert comes off most of the time. The opinions and experiences she writes about are almost boilerplate—nothing in this volume is surprising. She loves Rilke and Proust and Plath and makes sure to include her disavowal of the racist and homophobic language in old novels and takes easy shots at Bradbury for having been an old conservative white man. Outside of classic novels, she covers tired topics like the culture shock of the pandemic and the post-pandemic "loneliness epidemic." No one can argue with these takes, there's nothing to disagree with, nothing transgressive that struck me to my core (in a good or bad way). It's like she's never pissed anyone off in her life and it left me unsatisfied most of the time....more
This was so cute, so sweet, and so heartfelt! Imogen is such a sympathetic character, always trying to live up to everyone's expectations of her—even This was so cute, so sweet, and so heartfelt! Imogen is such a sympathetic character, always trying to live up to everyone's expectations of her—even if it's not exactly what she wants, she finds a way to make it work so she doesn't have to let anyone down. Of course, by catering to what everyone else wants, she's neglected to learn about herself and what she wants.
Imogen, Obviously is a validating story about being true to yourself even when others are trying to push you into a box that they're more comfortable with. Even when those others are your best friend—because honestly, it so often is your friends who are the villains in real life. I'm so glad I, O went there. Sometimes friends aren't really much of friends at all.
Thankfully, Imogen finds this out by being surrounded by a new group of friends who show her love for just being her and it allows her to blossom and really embrace herself, too. It's all so heartwarming and I can't recommend it highly enough. ...more
Fell in love with this immediately as I found it to be a kind of foil to the Sally Rooney novel if that makes any sense. Like real messy, not fake mesFell in love with this immediately as I found it to be a kind of foil to the Sally Rooney novel if that makes any sense. Like real messy, not fake messy. Something like faux street smart as opposed to faux intellectual or maybe chaotic instead of sad.
Astrid was unapologetic and snarky and over it, over everything. Characters like that are so delicious for me. And I love that about the book. But it was also jampacked full of noise. It was so today, so actually yesterday, pop-culture reference after chronically online brainrot thoughts. They were fun at first, but it’s most of the book. It’s just throwaway stuff from Twitter and Tiktok trends. And then there are just so many scenes that happen just for fun? For atmosphere? Idk. But they pile up and they’re boring.
But chucking out all of that stuff, getting into the actual thoughts and ideas of Astrid was so fun. She’s such a real character, I just wish she was like actually doing something....more
A mean and boring satire of Millennial life. But is Millennial sadness really something that needs satirizing? If we’re all living it already, isn’t iA mean and boring satire of Millennial life. But is Millennial sadness really something that needs satirizing? If we’re all living it already, isn’t it just kind of “woe is me” or “woe is us” or even a kind of pick-me-ism of Millennialhood? “I’m not like the other Millennials” or “I am like the other Millennials but at least I have the sense to point it out and cringe about it.”
I don’t know. The writing is definitely honest and accurate, but that doesn’t mean it’s good or interesting. It’s not. There’s nothing at all literary about Banal Nightmare. The characters’ thoughts and words are either gross and harsh and mean or advertisement taglines, memes, and pop culture references. They’re either a cynical dick or a brainwashed consumerist sheep. There's a scene where a character relays a dream she had about using the bathroom and another character responds with the Olive Garden slogan, "When you're here you're family," and then simply says, "Poop dreams," "in reference to the documentary Hoop Dreams."
I guess the point is that these characters are stupid and sedate trapped inside the banality of late capitalism. But that seems to be the only point ever, hammered over and over. It's all various characters ranting about the same sorts of things in the same sort of voice. The scenes either comes off like an unhinged message you might rage type up in the group chat then actually nevermind erase or smug vignettes: (view spoiler)[
Hillary Clinton, I mean my god, I mean Jesus Christ, who in their right mind chooses a guy who looks like he’d lose in a fuck-marry-kill between John du Pont and Robert Durst to run a fucking popularity contest on behalf of a notoriously unpopular war-hungry gaffe-prone wife of a serial rapist? Oh, guys, I know, great idea, what if we based our slogan off of the “I’m with Stupid” shirt? Cool? You really think I didn’t want to vote for you because I was busy flirting with boys? Yeah, maybe that’s what you were doing when you were young, covering up for your husband’s rapes while your good friend Henry Kissinger was getting blow jobs from Gloria Steinem while she pinky-promised the CIA she’d keep her feminism reasonable, you might be, you know, mistaking your-fucking-self with me, you dense fuck...
and
Up the street, a woman finished reading something for her book club. The book was dumb. She didn’t have anything to say about it. She put the book on her desk and then logged on to Facebook to read posts from her close high school friend who had become very conservative. She went downstairs into the living room to read the posts out loud to her husband, who had been lying on the couch eating cookies and watching a comedy TV show. They talked for forty-five minutes about authoritarian personality types, then went through their friends deciding who was authoritarian, who was antiauthoritarian, and who was too dumb to know which they were. “Who the fuck is an undecided voter?” asked Gerald. “If you don’t know who you’re voting for, you should be taken to a field and shot.” Mary pointed at him and said, “Authoritarian personality.”
Is it getting by on cutesy wink and nod references, like ha-ha hypocritical liberals? Or ha-ha don’t we all hate scroll our conservative former high school classmates’ social media pages and ha-ha don't we all harbor resentment for our powerlessness amid the current political climate? Like maybe these things would be worth a "like" on twitter—I mean maybe—but nothing about them presented in this angry Facebook post format screams "this needs to be a book." There's barely even a novelistic thread linking them together, and often times they're fired off by random characters that never show up again. They’re just throwaway references, "gotchas."
Banal Nightmare is more like a series of narrative complaints than a novel and nothing about this worked for me. Hated every minute of it. But maybe I was supposed to....more
I think The Shards is probably not a book for everyone but it was for me. It was so deeply for me. I'm pissed that it's over, that I finished it so raI think The Shards is probably not a book for everyone but it was for me. It was so deeply for me. I'm pissed that it's over, that I finished it so rapidly at the end after reading it for two months straight (it's so long) but I just had to know and it just had to end eventually.
It's a 1980s preppy teenage slasher, and it's just as candy as you'd think if you like that sort of thing. The narrator is 17-year-old Bret, some version of the author in some version of Los Angeles. His voice is dry, shallow, acerbic and he's horny and unhinged and dramatic. Everything is described with fashion labels and everyone is described by hotness and every moment is lived through songs (especially "Icehouse" by Flowers/Icehouse and "Vienna" by Ultravox). It's just a treat if you like new wave and fashion and sexual tension.
The plot is secondary to the vibe and follows Bret's increasingly unhinged obsession with a serial killer in the news and his connection to a new (hot and troubled) boy in town, Robert Mallory. Robert just wants to be friends with Bret's clique of hot, popular friends but his (hot and troubled) presence disrupts the entire balance of the friend group. He's suspicious and he lies and Bret's the only one who seems to notice or care. Everyone else wants Bret to shut up and let them all get through senior year with as little drama as possible. But Bret is a writer and he thrives on drama and thinking about drama and how much of what's going on is just his own imagination? And honestly, who cares?
I was worried the book would end in a twist or a cliche or a cliche twist, but it didn't really and it's all beside the point. The book is about the vibe. It's about being along for the ride and being invested in Bret and his voice and his sex life and his friends' stupid prep school drama and empathizing with him crying to "Vienna" when his friends are hanging out with someone else instead of him. If you can't do that then I don't recommend the book, but if that stirs something in you then I can't recommend it highly enough. (Especially on audio! Bret narrates the book and having his own voice and inflection is just invaluable.)...more
Like a real life Bret Easton Ellis novel. Read if you have a curiosity about wild and bad rich white boys. Don’t read if you don’t like reading about Like a real life Bret Easton Ellis novel. Read if you have a curiosity about wild and bad rich white boys. Don’t read if you don’t like reading about people you’d hate irl or if you have a gut cringe reaction to aughts pop culture references. ...more
Something about tech bros is sooOooOOoo interesting to me so I ate this up. Faux handles them with an appropriate and balanced level of curiosity, skeSomething about tech bros is sooOooOOoo interesting to me so I ate this up. Faux handles them with an appropriate and balanced level of curiosity, skepticism, and disdain. It was especially delicious after following the SBF trial and knowing how it was all going to end up for him. I need another book like this but about AI bros next....more
Liberating. A book that needed to exist. Like both that Miranda July needed to write it and the world needed to be able to read it. The world meaning Liberating. A book that needed to exist. Like both that Miranda July needed to write it and the world needed to be able to read it. The world meaning at least me. ...more
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