By Neal Stephenson.
I'm unsure about this book. It's a good read. Chapter by chapter it is very compelling. Dawn is a fantastic character. And then it just ends. Sure, she is in a bit of a predicament, but there is little overall mystery and there have been so many twists and turns along the way that I don't doubt that Dawn will escape.
Elsewhere online, I see that Stephenson is planning to start a series with Polestan being the first book.
By Laura Dave.
A fun and readable family mystery. After his employer is accused of fraud, a father sends his wife and his daughter cryptic messages and then vanishes.
By Jenny Odell.
Odell wants us to disengage from the attention economy and spend more time focusing on things that are important to you, you personally. She bristles at the thought of using this time to be more productive-- more productive according to who? For what reasons?
Your time is yours to spend. Odell urges us to use it to engage more with the world, with nature, with society, with your friends. To deeply pay attention to things, To use our will to maintain sustained attention. To build our will to guide our attention and stave off distraction. Maybe we should focus on things longer, rather than turn away the moment we become fidgety.
After reflecting on this book for a few days, I've concluded that it is mature- grown up. Rather than preaching a system that will make everything better, Odell accepts that the tough parts of life and can't be cleanly cut away from the positive.
"It's tempting to conclude this book with a single recommendation about how to live. But I refuse to do that. That's because the pitfalls of the attention economy can't be avoided by logging off and refusing the influence of persuasive design techniques; they also emerge at the intersection of issues of public space, environmental, politics, class and race."
"I would be surprised if anyone who bought this book actually wants to do nothing. Only the most nihilist and coldhearted of us feels that there is nothing to do."
"peace is an endless negotiation amongst free-acting agents whose wills cannot be engineered."
"I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply; spend more time with your friends."
"A lot of people withdraw from society, as an experiment... So I thought I would withdraw and see how enlightening it would be. But I found out that it's not enlightening. I think that what you're supposed to do is stay in the midst of life." --Agnes Martin
By Dashiell Hammett
The most famous of all hard-boiled detective novels, "The Maltese Falcon" is a fun read. The plot revolves around an intricate web of deception, as private investigator Sam Spade navigates through conflicting accounts from various characters. What makes the story particularly engaging is watching Spade piece together the truth by comparing different versions of events, weighing what each character claims to know against what actually transpired.
Reading over other reviews of the Maltese Falcon, I see that all characters are only described through their appearance, their words and their actions. At no point does the narrator share their inner thoughts.
In addition, main character, Sam Spade, is ultimately a good man even though he flirts with the dark side-- just enough to earn a criminals trust, but never enough it actually do something wrong. This distinction-- a main character vs a morally ambiguous main character is what distinguishes "Hard Boiled" literature from "Noir."
