Keeping Busy On The Train

Mini-review: It goes in thousands of directions, but strangely wasn't confusing. Compares quite favorably to Soul Crash, Gibson's first book, but is set on and all over the Earth (ha ha) over the backdrop of a secretive international internet community. A reviewer on Slashdot said there was "too much deus ex machina" going on, and I agree. But that's what happens sometimes when a writer goes off on wacky tangential plot points.

I give it an B+ for how it kept my interest.

 

Mini review: Story about a mother whose son shot up his school. I stopped reading mid-stream, but could have guessed as to the ending, which I will not share with you here. Material was interesting, but it kept going off on tangents. And the method of writing as letters to someone seems like it was brought on by a case of "ok, how do I get to the next point from here" or as an exercise in overcoming writer's block. And I know the area in which the mother lives, which made it half a notch more interesting to me to see how they treated it.

I give it a C+ but with modifications that could have been higher.


 

Mini-review: About an autistic boy who wants to solve the crime of who killed his neighbor's dog. The characters are emotionally set off by the narrator's total lack of emotion, and it's a pleasure to watch. References to Swindon, home of XTC. I can see this as a movie, with Hugh Grant playing the boy's father ("...in a total diversion from his usual chick-flick fluffy characters") and someone like Helena Bonham Carter as one of the female characters, as long as she played it like that Fight Club chick. Prime numbers are cool.

I give it an A.