A fast paced modern day noir with a very engaging main character.

This guy was considered a major intellectual? This was just a collection of unsupported metaphors.

The story is great - the book is not.

I was really, really inclined to like this. I am a computer programmer and a woman; but this was not well written. No central narrative stood out.

As someone who genuinely enjoys thinking the characteristics of different media, this was fantastic and I wish I hadn't waited so long to read it.

I can't tell if this book needed to be shorter or longer. It felt repetitive at points; but I also felt like I was only get a thumbnail sketch of each of the Dark PR patterns.

The Ursula K. Le Guin was good and there were a couple of other good stories; but most of this was really forgettable.

Why did the tweens with mind control powers have to be so horny? And incestuous?

What I thought was foreshadowing for the plot turned out to just be bad writing.

Jeg syntes det var ganske morsomt.

Je n'ai pas la maîtrise du français pour commenter le style du roman.

Ceci est mon introduction au genre de l'anticipation en français. L'avenir que présente le roman est déprimant ; mais pas sans potentiel de rajeunissement.

Really fascinating.

I am used to the concept that social norms have radically shifted over the past 70 years or so; but this rate of social change is usually presented as being unprecedented. What this book shows is how radically the institution of 'dating', the means by which new families were formed, changed just as much in the preceding 70 years in the US.

Fun quick read, spent less time on the speculative bubble of baseball cards in the late 1980s/early 1990s than I was hoping; but interesting little slice of American history.

There is a warning at the beginning of the book. It takes a great deal of arrogance to write such a warning. It takes even more talent to have written something that actually requires one.

Painfully dated, painfully sexist and, even ignoring the former two complaints, painfully written.

And yet, having originated many of the tropes of my favourite genre I cannot entirely condemn it.

As an earlier reviewer mentioned, the premise, that everyone and every animal on earth, suddenly finds themselves exponentially smarter, could have been an excuse to write a Utopian novel. Instead, Anderson explores the pressures placed on society both from the intellectual below, as those that once performed menial labour now finding it impossible to tolerate, and from above, as those that were already highly intelligent find themselves losing their humanity.

Either of these scenarios could in turn have been the plot of mediocre dystopian novel; but instead everyone muddles along surprisingly realistically.

While most of the characters lack the depth that this premise deserved, the depiction of Archie Brock, a retarded man now raised to what was formerly genius level (in particular, the opening scene, when he realizes how far away the stars must be), raise the book to the level of a masterpiece.

This is certainly the darkest thing that Diana Wynne Jones has written. Having read her autobiography, this story is all the more disturbing.

I finished this book several months ago and have been since attempting to figure out how I would review it.

Whether the book's thesis concerning the origin of consciousness is true or not, it presents a compelling and original view of how ancient humans thought. The author readily admits the difficulty in confirming his theory; but I did find what evidence there was to be good.

This book has also radically changed my views and extended my understanding of religion.

It is light and delightful. And to the best of my memory, the sort of book I would have enjoyed reading as a child.

Dawkins is capable of bringing a great deal of insight and excitement into the simple question of how we understand complex life-forms to have arisen. When he leaves this topic, as in the later chapters on punctuationism and taxonomy, the book drags.

Is this a flawed book?

Of course. The style of prose it advocates was already out of date when it was published. It presents the taste of its authors' as inviolable laws, leading to painful contortions in the written language of those who try to follow it.

As the previous sentence indicates, even in matters of simple punctuation I do not agree with The Elements of Style.

And yet much of the advice is still solid. Even if you disagree with Strunk and White, it is better to have consciously rejected a rule than to have never considered the matter.

There is also a surprising playfulness with language that appears between dour pronunciations. This side of The Elements of style was unknown to me prior to reading it, seemingly having been missed by both its detractors and fanatics.

It was delightfully clear and pleasurable to read.

An Excellent textbook composed almost entirely of difficult to find results.