Zoe’s Comments (group member since Jun 03, 2012)

Zoe’s comments from the Not Quite A Topless Robot Book Club group.

Bri wrote: "One of the things that really bothered me about the book, and that doesn't get better with subsequent re-reading, is the idea that Only Men Did Anything Cool During The Eighties. Have you guys noticed this? All of the references, all of the clues, 99% of Anorak's Almanac focuses on books, movies, computer games, etc. written and developed by men. "

On that note, it really bothered me that Wade was so upset that his imaginary girlfriend might be a man. Like, it kept coming up, to the point where he asks her if she's a real girl, "a human female who has never had a sex change." Geeeez. I don't know if it's meant to be foreshadowing for the Aech reveal, but it really made me dislike him as a protagonist.

Actually, early in the novel I had this vague idea that Art3mis would be his aunt. Yeah.

Oh, Daito and Shoto. Their relationship was pretty adorable, but the gratuitous Japanese was a bit tone-deaf (I don't claim to be fluent here, but why are two teenage boys on the internet using formal sentence structure? Is it because they're samurai?). Nitpicky, I know, but look at what book we're reading. He set himself up for it. >_>

Maybe it's because I'm not the target audience---I didn't grow up in the 80's, just the second-hand modern nostalgia you see now---but I didn't really like the first half of the book. It felt like he was pulling the answers to these puzzles out of nowhere. "Oh yeah, that incredibly important pizza place I've never mentioned before! And of course this was a reference to the famous game blah, blah, blah..." But I liked it by the end. (I did feel pretty pleased about working out the Zork reference before Wade did. :3)

You know there's an easter egg contest hidden in the hard copies of the book itself? That's pretty meta, right there.

Agreed about Aech. Depressing because it's true. Also a nice bit of character development for Wade "MY GF CAN'T BE A MAN" Watts. Did anyone else see Aech's name for the first time and immediately think "Halliday"? Nice red herring there, Ernie.

Any thoughts on the ending? I thought it was hinting that Wade would press the big red button so everyone would have to work together on fixing the Real World, but that was a heck of an open ending.

1. General Apathy (general_apathy). 'Nym. :)
2. I used to read Rob's toy column, and ended up lurking the site because of a terrible addiction to bad fanfic.
3. I like books that change the way I look at the world. Pretentiousness aside, I read a lot of "urban" fantasy, magical realism, mystery novels, retro-future/cyberpunk... in text or graphic form.
4. The Wise Man's Fear (sequel to The Name of the Wind) by Patrick Rothfuss. And I'm working my way through Trigun again.
5. I haven't read Good Omens. (:O) Should it be something we haven't read?