Thursday, April 10, 2014

Loss of Words - April 10, 2014


Although I wasn’t thoroughly enamored with the book reviewed today, it did present a reasonably believable future in which we are all completely reliant on our smart phones.  Since I start to feel very nervous when mine has been forgotten somewhere, I am not sure we are too far off this reality. 

 

Currently Reading:
  • Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones (received through Goodreads)
  • The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers who Reinvented American Literature by Ben Tarnoff
  • The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (received through NetGalley)
On Deck:
  • We Were Liars by e. lockhart (received through the publisher)
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
  • From Souk to Souk: Travels through the Middle East by Robin Ratchford (received through NetGalley)
  • Dog Gone, Back Soon by Nick Trout (received through NetGalley)


Recent Reviews:

The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon (received through NetGalley)
3 Stars

In the near future, glorified smart phones, called Memes have taken over our lives.  The Memes are able to foresee our wants and needs in advance and perform such tasks as paying bills, calling cabs, and defining words automatically.   As the technology advances, a contagious “word flu” takes over the United States as people become so dependent on their gadget that they are unable to speak.  Two narrators, Anana and Bart, tell this somewhat confusing apocalyptic tale as they try to fight against losing their words and find Anana’s missing father.  I thought this novel had an interesting premise and I could see it as somewhat cautionary tale (I WAS reading it on my Kindle and used the installed dictionary several times to look up unknown words), however I found it really boring at times and had to force myself to keep reading.  The narrators had a tendency to get way off topic and would skip around in time so that I never really knew what was happening in the present and what had already occurred.  I enjoyed the cleverness of the novel, but I just wish it had been more enjoyable to read.  I received this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

No comments:

Post a Comment