We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

meme culture

I ... hmm. I had a lot of feelings about this book and most of them are bad. This is the very first cyberpunk novel I've read and while I really loved the settings and the concepts, the execution in Snow Crash left me cold. Casual racism and sexism abound and given that this was written in the early 90s by a white dude, I can't say I was surprised (just resigned to disappointment).

I quite liked Y.T., the fifteen year old working partner to the protagonist, Hiro Protagonist (yes, really), but the way Stephenson wrote her storyline is just Awful. I've read through a few reviews of this and not a single one has mentioned the frankly appalling sexual relationship she has with the dangerous 30-something antagonist Raven. The aforementioned -isms had already brought my rating down, but that situation killed the novel for me. The experience of Snow Crash has made me very wary of trying the genre again.

Flavia: "There had been several times in the past, at work in my chemical laboratory or lying in bed at night, when I unexpectedly caught myself thinking, “You are all alone with Flavia de Luce,” which sometimes was a frightening thought and sometimes not. This was one of the scarier occasions."

Review to come.

"You know, when there’s always been money in your life, it’s not something you spend much time thinking about.”

hmmm, no, can't relate.

I wondered if deep down he wanted to love me as much as I wanted to love him. But there were certain things you couldn't do anything about. Fathers were one of those certain things.

3.75 stars, review to come.

It took me forever to finish this book, because every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence gave voice to some breathtakingly personal anger.

The question we have now in this resistance movement,” said Aditi Juneja, “is: Are white women going to use their power to defend their own interests or are they going to use it to transform systems so that we all have more power? If this movement is going to be sustainable, once you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who’s not quite like you, can you see how connected your fights are? Do you realize: I have to show up for them? Because our liberation is intertwined."

#relevanttomyinterests

Stop worrying about what other people think and just try to be a "good person", whatever that is. Because we're all gonna die anyway.
-Marcus Aurelius, a sad man.

How do you rate a book like this? I feel as though fantasy erotica (or erotica in general) cannot be held to the same rating standards as other books.