“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers
And the winner is….
drumroll please…..
Random.org has delivered it’s verdict.
The first book giveaway winner is comment #1 from t.
The very funny, Confederacy of Dunces will be winging it’s way to you courtesy of The Book Depository and 1001 Books to Read Before You Die Blog.
😀
For everyone else, thank you for taking part. We will be doing more giveaways, so don’t forget to subscribe and enjoy the reviews and the chance to win another giveaway.
And if you love books you are more than welcome to submit reviews for publication here.
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Book #258
Reviewer: Kara
Case is a washed-up, drug-addicted computer hacker who is rescued from his downward spiral of dangerous scams and suicidal tendencies when Molly, a “Razorgirl,” recruits him for a mysterious mission that throws him right back into the world of cyberspace and computer hacking he left behind. The rest of the novel details their adventures sci-fi-style — complete with battles among cybernetically-modified humans, large-scale computer espionage, and cool tech-y inventions that like the ability to project holograhic images or to see through another person’s eyes – literally.
As a caveat to this review, I must mention that I am not a science fiction reader. Beyond a few short stories and some Ray Bradbury, I’ve read little to none and I’ve never felt particularly inspired to do so. I picked up Neuromancer because of its genre-breaking (or making?) status and the sheer volume of accolades and glowing reviews that have been showered upon it. In other words, I figured that if there was a sci-fi book I should read, this was it.
I didn’t really enjoy the novel, but I’m willing to entertain the idea that my lack of experience with and interest in the genre could be the problem. There were some pretty sentences and the major characters (Case and Molly) were decently well-developed, but the plot line was dense, confusing, uninteresting, and full of conveniencies and things that seemed to me to be invented by the author to further things along. I can tell you what happened, even using the book’s lingo, but I’d be hard-pressed to explain why any individual bit of plot matters or what the point of the whole mission was in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t get that sense of bits and pieces clicking together as things moved along that I expected and there was no indication that the final result has any impact or influence on the world Gibson has created or even means anything at all.
The most interesting thing to me (and this comes up in every review and essay anyone has written about the book) is Gibson’s invention of the term “cyberspace” and, more than that, his imagining/prediction of it: “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.” This creative achievement is certainly worthy of note but, ultimately, I can’t really recommend this book to anyone except true-blue sci-fi readers. If you happen to be a sci-fi enthusiast though, Neuromancer is a must-read!
Competition deadline is looming
Hi all,
This is just a friendly reminder that our competition for a 1001 List book closes shortly.
Our 50th post is due to hit the blog at 9am NZST on Monday morning. For those who have trouble with time zones, NZST is UTC +12.
So if you are in London, you need to have commented before 10pm on Sunday 13th May. If you are in New York you need to get yourself online before 5pm on Sunday 13th May. And for our lovely neighbours in Australia, if you are on the east coast in Sydney, get up early and leave us your book wish before 7am Monday 14th May.
Remember, all you have to do is visit this blog post and leave a comment telling us which book from the 1001 lists you would love to own, and why. It couldn’t be simpler to have a chance at a new book for your library.
Happy commenting and good luck to you all.
Celebrating our first milestone
We are about to celebrate our first milestone on this long and interesting reviewing journey.
Our 50th review is due out on the 14th May, so we want to make a big deal about having made it this far.
But before we get to the exciting bit, we would like to say a huge thank you to our very kind and voluntary review crew members. Without you this would be so much harder to keep on track, producing two reviews a week for everyone to read and enjoy.
Now the exciting bit of this post.
We are having our first competition at 1001 Books. Here is what you have to do, and what you might be lucky enough to win…
Leave a comment on this post telling everyone which book from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die lists you would love to own, and why you want to own it.
What you will win? The book you want to own, of course !
Now on to the not-so-fine print.
– One entry per person please.
– If you want to tell us about more than one book, that’s fine, but if you become the winner you will have to choose just one.
– The book will be the paperback version.
– The competition opens today and will close when the 50th review is published, so get your comments in early.
– We will use Random.org to select the winning comment number*.
– The book you choose will need to be available from The Book Depository, as that is our preferred supplier.
– Although our 1001 Book List page currently only contains the 2006 edition books, entries from all three lists are welcome.
– And one last condition – if the book has not already been reviewed, we would appreciate it if you would write one for us.
And there ends the list of conditions. We want to wish you all the very best of luck, and we are looking forward to hearing all about your bookish wishlist. Happy reading everybody !
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* Our comments do not use a numbered format, so we will consider the earliest comment to be #1 and so on down to the last comment. Please don’t nest your comment.
1001 Books to Read Before You Die 