William Gibson's Zero History is, for the first six chapters or so, basically setting the scene. The scene, however, is essentially modern day reality, so I didn't really need six chapters for that. Nothing of interest happens in those first few chapters; I imagine if I kept reading, something would eventually happen, but at this point, I don't really care. I just found this review and enjoyed it more than the book.
I received In Search of the Old Ones a while ago, thinking to learn about the Anasazi. It's not really about the Anasazi, though; it's about the history of the archaeological study of them. So what you're reading about is the cowboys who stumbled across the first cave pueblos, and what happened to the artifacts, and how scholars divided Basketmaker from Pueblo periods, and the author's own explorations. If that's what you want, it's a good book.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
I think that Gibson is a natural short-story writer and does best when he sticks to that form. The last novel of his I read was "Pattern Recognition", which felt like it was going somewhere for 2/3 of the book and then the last 1/3 read like the writer didn't know how to finish the story but had to make deadline.
I also think that his continuous dropping of brand names in his works, while it may look ultra-cool now, will look awfully dated in the not-too-distant future.
Post a Comment