This book was a mistake and a huge letdown. There's so much wrong with it that I can't bring myself to enumerate it all, so below are some of the highThis book was a mistake and a huge letdown. There's so much wrong with it that I can't bring myself to enumerate it all, so below are some of the highlights.
First, while I am willing and able to suspend belief and entertain the scenario of a global zombie epidemic and war, what I cannot do is accept for even a second that the stories that the "investigator" shares in his "report" will pass muster at any agency funding said investigation. There are some that are so bad and so inconsequential and tropey that it would make any individual reviewing it question the entire body of work. It's like reading a scientific paper with bad data. I know, he mentions at the beginning that he wanted to bring humanity into the report, but it was a bad idea and even worse execution.
Second, as alluded previously, some stories seem to be there for the sole purpose of killing trees. Very early on he interviews a young woman "with the brain of a four year-old" and it was so cringe that it almost made the idea of re-reading my highschool diary palatable - and I used to listen to Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance... I was hoping that somehow all of these seemingly unimportant stories would somehow connect at the end and redeem the investigator, but nope. They are there and then you are done.
Last, as other reviewers have mentioned, the author's voice permeates each of its characters in a way that breaks the spell and makes it all but impossible to get into the character's persona. Brooks was wholly unsuccessful in extricating himself from the pages of his book and his characters paid the price. Note that this is not a death sentence to a book, but when the stories are so short that you barely get to know the narrator before it is over, the effect is compounded and irreversible.
This book is filled with way too many "WTF Tara?" moments for me to give it a high rating.
Imagine for a second that you have this friend who dresses This book is filled with way too many "WTF Tara?" moments for me to give it a high rating.
Imagine for a second that you have this friend who dresses very conservatively, displays thrifty behavior, is always talking about struggling to make ends meet, and then one day says to you: "So, wanna come ride around in my Ferrari this weekend? We can chill in my Chelsea penthouse after, IDK." Huh? This is how the entire book was for me, in a nutshell.
Supposedly, the Westovers are these hardcore "off-the-grid" survivalists: self-sufficient, god-fearing luddites that despise the government and all it stands for. At least enough to stockpile gold, silver, ammo, canned goods, fuel, bibles and other assorted fiction, ointments and essential oils, and more in order to prepare for the end-of-days. Yeah, essential oils, they were going to run an MLM scheme from their bunker...
So, for a minute you buy the story because, through the vehicle of descriptive writing, Tara Westover reels you into her childhood world where you are left with very little choice but to sympathize with her plight. She loves her family and she is so uneducated that...whatever.
But then, casual as all hell, she drops bombs like "well, I just pulled out my cellphone to call father..." TARA! WTF? YOU HAD A CELLPHONE THE WHOLE TIME?!?! And "so I sat down at the family computer to look at them classes in university..." YOU HAD INTERNET TOO?!?
And then, there's the gaps. She goes from not knowing Europe wasn't a country, having no clue of the location of France, not knowing you have to actually read a book and not just look at the pictures (while actually in college, I kid you not!), and never hearing about the Holocaust somehow, to being accepted to Cambridge under a prestigious and highly competitive program where she impressed everyone by being the best thing since cucumber sandwiches. I'm not saying it's impossible, but please elaborate. Did you just take a trip to Oz where the wizard gave you a brand new brain Tara? Ugh.
It's a bit exasperating when by way of unearned facts, you break the spell midway through the book and force your readers to walk over the shards; It's not fun.
I looked forward to reading this one for a long time but, unfortunately, it's incongruous AF. Cannot recommend....more
Public Shaming: *exists* Jon Ronson: "Hmmm...sound like something I could write about..." Ronson's thesis: *having an existential crisis* Definitive ConcPublic Shaming: *exists* Jon Ronson: "Hmmm...sound like something I could write about..." Ronson's thesis: *having an existential crisis* Definitive Conclusions: *taking a day off*
An alternative title for this book could have been: "Dispatches from the Land of Opprobria". As such, what you'll mostly find here are Twitter-centric stories told in an uninteresting voice, spun for consumption by a Millenial/Gen-Z crowd that is quick on the trigger in finding things offensive for sport. Granted, some of the stories recounted herein display a monumental lack of taste on behalf of the guilty parties, however, I get the sense some of these would have been brushed off in a time and/or culture much less obsessed with being the first to tweet.
One of the things that bothers me the most about this book is that for all the "research" Ronson did, and all the "experts" he talked to, he somehow managed to miss "the" story when it comes to public shaming: the Monica Lewinski scandal. This is an unacceptable oversight. For the life of me, I cannot comprehend why he would not deem it important to explore the shame dynamics in what was, and still is, a very disproportionate allocation of shame capital towards the woman in this story. Decades later, only one of the parties involved can be said to have successfully shaken the stigma. In a recent interview with John Oliver, Lewinski was asked if she ever thought about changing her name and why she ultimately didn't go through with it. To this, she responded that no one is asking Bill Clinton the same question, clearly pointing to a cruel disparity in society's expectations regarding how men and women ought to address post public-shaming identity reconstruction.
However, the biggest issue I have with Ronson's work is that he is ultimately inconclusive about his findings. His social commentary is trite and light in substance, and his meandering in some chapters lead to argumentative dead-ends that will probably have you wonder if Ronson put them in just to be able to expense the costs involved.
TL/DR: bloated article about other's people thoughts on the matter. Zero understanding of search-algos and popular culture in general. Ridiculous soluTL/DR: bloated article about other's people thoughts on the matter. Zero understanding of search-algos and popular culture in general. Ridiculous solutions. If you'd like to know more about bias in algorithms and modern tech, look into: "Weapons of Math Destruction" and "Technically Wrong", which were actually written by qualified (tech) professionals in the field.
Seriously, I gave this one a chance but the book is a tease in the first half and a disappointment in the second.
The writing is obtuse, riddled with circular arguments, name-dropping, and the use of other people's better arguments about the very thing you're supposed to be an expert about. Which is a shame because it is an important subject that deserves better treatment. Noble's arguments ultimately devolve into "trust me, I'm right because such-and-such wrote about it already in...and I agree!" Don't believe me?
"Recent research on Google by Siva Vaidhyanathan...who has written one of the most important books on Google to date, demonstrates its dominance over the information landscape and forms the basis of a central theme in this research."
And here again,
"Frank Pasquale, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, has also forewarned of the increasing levels of control that algorithms have over the many decisions made about us, from credit to dating options...."
and again,
"The political-economic critique of Google by Elad Segev, a senior lecturer ... charges that we can no longer ignore the global dominance of Google and..."
and wait, there's more
"Molly Niesen at the University of Illinois has written extensively on the loss of public accountability by federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is a major contribution..."
And here is this random jewel, just cause I can: "Ultimately, this book is designed to “make it plain,” as we say in the Black community..." Really?
Alright, I know some of you are going to say that it is ok to cite other people's work, but beyond her statements, no further exposition is offered. The whole thing is like this. I'm not sure I recall a single original argument.
What's worse, It takes Noble roughly half the book to end her long intro about her plan of attack. Thirty-seven pages in she is still telling you:
"This work is addressing a gap in scholarship on how search works and what it biases, public trust in search, the relationship of search to information studies, and the ways in which African Americans, among others, are mediated and commodified in Google."
Can we get on with it?
OK, but let's say you've bought the argument that tech is decidedly out to get you, and appreciated the moral expounding. Surely the author is ready to drop some solutions "like it's hot" (as they say in the Black Community...) to this problem, right? Well, her solution for all this is a tad comical, if not heroically ironic:
“In my own imagination and in a project I am attempting to build, access to information on the web could be designed akin to a color picker tool or some other highly transparent interface, so that users could find nuanced shades of information and easily identify the borderlands between news and entertainment, entertainment and pornographers, or journalism and academic scholarship.”
Break out your crayons and stop your engineers Google, all you need is a color palette!
Ugh. If only the absence of color-blindness could be fixed with more color eh? Search results are not primarily the problem, lack of critical thinking skills is. Blocking misleading, inflammatory results for black-on-white crime cannot be the solution when there are people out there with racial anxieties worked to a frenzy that will keep looking until they find what matches their worldview.
If all this weren't sad enough, in a last-ditch effort to end on a strong note, she caps the book off with a piece about Yelp and its business model, but I thought we were talking about Google?
Eco's writing is so infectious, lively, and likeable that I thought it appropriate to pen my review in his style.
1.In which I, as reader, feel used. YEco's writing is so infectious, lively, and likeable that I thought it appropriate to pen my review in his style.
1.In which I, as reader, feel used. Yes, I'm almost certain Eco wrote this thing for the sole purpose of informing us of how knowledgeable he is of the finer points of monastic orders, book trivia, and medieval philosophy. Knowing most would not put up with this crap for 500 pages, he wisely chose to interrupt his many digressions on poverty, heretics, whether or not Jesus laughed, Aristotle, architecture, etc, with an amateurish mystery plot. It's pedantry disguised as fiction. I've been used.
2.In which the pace sucks. Just when you thought it was getting interesting, just when the plot is getting meatier and it grabs your attention, here comes a dissertation or a long drawn description of doors, churches, parchments, beasts, characters that are totally irrelevant to the plot, and backstories that do nothing to shed light on the events. You must often wait a chapter or two to get back to the mystery that drove you to read this thing in the first place. Do yourself a favor and quit after he has solved his first "mystery" (page 25?).
3.In which its heavy-handedness is offensive. Lurk around bookworms long enough and you're bound to find some pompous pseudo intellectual enraptured by the rich, textured, yet subtle literary clues so artfully crafted into this piece: "You mean to tell me that Jorge De Burgos, the blind monk, is actually a nod to Jorge Luis Borges, the blind Argentinian writer? Whaaat?" So clever... I'm sure the late Borges heard this, face-palmed, and then turned in his grave. EDIT: I have been duly informed, perhaps by the type referenced above, that Borges was actually alive when this "work" was published. He died shortly thereafter...
4.In which the plot fails to deliver. Provided you made it as far as the end, all in hopes of finding a conclusion so stellar as to redeem the drudgery that preceded it, what one is most likely to find is disappointment. Most, by the time they get there, will already know who the culprit is, and given the setting and the tools the protagonists are carrying, what will happen in the final scene. Is it a fantastic twist? A conspiracy centuries in the making? No. Just lunatic ravings akin to the ones that drove Eco to romanticize about love, lust, knowledge, etc......more
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