Scan barcode
micahhortonhallett's review against another edition
4.0
A brilliant, funny, complex and overwhelmingly geeky collection of short stories. Read it in an afternoon and as soon as my bedside stack gets below a foot and a half I will be hunting down everything else Mr Yu has ever written.
dontpanic42's review against another edition
5.0
Delightful. In most of these stories, Yu takes different perspectives on the well known, with resulting stories that are engaging, thoughtful, often funny, and sometimes heartbreaking. Like any story collection, they're not all perfect, but I'm giving it five stars because of how consistently good they are, with some real gems in the mix.
"Standard Loneliness Package" - 5 stars. Starts the collection with a bang. What if we outsourced not just our call centers to India, but all of our negative emotions? This story takes the perspective of a man working at such a center in India. Clever and bittersweet.
"First Person Shooter" - 4.5 stars. Eek there's a zombie! Oh, wait, it's fine, it's just out shopping in the middle of the night.
"Troubleshooting" - 4 stars. A troubleshooting guide for a device that can give you anything you want, if you only knew what you wanted. An intriguing angle on exploring how what we think we want lines up with what we actually want.
"Hero Absorbs Major Damage" - 5 stars. Told from the perspective of the main hero in some sort of RPG/computer game, with dawning self-awareness and fun twists on game tropes.
"Human for Beginners" - 4 stars. A short, funny, and spot-on guide for non-humans about human extended families.
"Inventory" - 4 stars. What does the world look like to your dream self? The dream version of Charles Yu tells us this story, where every day begins anew and he tries to figure out who he is and how he relates to the world around him.
"Open" - 3 stars. Partners in a struggling relationship find a literal door to their better selves in their living room.
"Note to Self" - 3 stars. If we live in a multiverse with infinite versions of ourselves, why not write ourself letters? That correspondence becomes this story, which is interesting enough but doesn't quite go anywhere.
"Yeoman" - 5 stars. Reminiscent of John Scalzi's Redshirts in sending up tropes from Star Trek. Very funny.
"Designer Emotion 67" - 4 stars. The presentation by a Big Pharma CEO that is both a satire on our pharmaceutical industry and an all too real view of where it's headed.
"The Book of Categories" - 5 stars. Begins as a strange sort of index for a meta-catalog, a sort of book-ception. But somehow turns into a meditation on the loss of a young child. Heartbreaking.
"Adult Contemporary" - 3.5 stars. What initially comes across as a time-share deal is really selling someone a taste of a different kind of life. But maybe we're in a TV show? Has some interesting commentary on consumerism and how we envision and shape our lives, but didn't quite hit home for me.
"Sorry Please Thank You" - 4 stars. I just recently read J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," which has some similar vibes. This three-page story really ends the collection on a gut punch.
"Standard Loneliness Package" - 5 stars. Starts the collection with a bang. What if we outsourced not just our call centers to India, but all of our negative emotions? This story takes the perspective of a man working at such a center in India. Clever and bittersweet.
"First Person Shooter" - 4.5 stars. Eek there's a zombie! Oh, wait, it's fine, it's just out shopping in the middle of the night.
"Troubleshooting" - 4 stars. A troubleshooting guide for a device that can give you anything you want, if you only knew what you wanted. An intriguing angle on exploring how what we think we want lines up with what we actually want.
"Hero Absorbs Major Damage" - 5 stars. Told from the perspective of the main hero in some sort of RPG/computer game, with dawning self-awareness and fun twists on game tropes.
"Human for Beginners" - 4 stars. A short, funny, and spot-on guide for non-humans about human extended families.
"Inventory" - 4 stars. What does the world look like to your dream self? The dream version of Charles Yu tells us this story, where every day begins anew and he tries to figure out who he is and how he relates to the world around him.
"Open" - 3 stars. Partners in a struggling relationship find a literal door to their better selves in their living room.
"Note to Self" - 3 stars. If we live in a multiverse with infinite versions of ourselves, why not write ourself letters? That correspondence becomes this story, which is interesting enough but doesn't quite go anywhere.
"Yeoman" - 5 stars. Reminiscent of John Scalzi's Redshirts in sending up tropes from Star Trek. Very funny.
"Designer Emotion 67" - 4 stars. The presentation by a Big Pharma CEO that is both a satire on our pharmaceutical industry and an all too real view of where it's headed.
"The Book of Categories" - 5 stars. Begins as a strange sort of index for a meta-catalog, a sort of book-ception. But somehow turns into a meditation on the loss of a young child. Heartbreaking.
"Adult Contemporary" - 3.5 stars. What initially comes across as a time-share deal is really selling someone a taste of a different kind of life. But maybe we're in a TV show? Has some interesting commentary on consumerism and how we envision and shape our lives, but didn't quite hit home for me.
"Sorry Please Thank You" - 4 stars. I just recently read J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," which has some similar vibes. This three-page story really ends the collection on a gut punch.
dude_watchin_with_the_brontes's review against another edition
2.0
In some ways this reminds me of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, in that there are SO MANY things I love about it, but Yu cannot let you forget, even for a second, exactly what he thinks women are for. The last story was so explicit about it, it left me so upset.
I liked the first story a lot, Standard Loneliness Package, which had a really interesting premise, and a pretty good execution except for, you guessed it, there is only one woman, and she is defined 85% by her relationship with the protagonist and 15% by her relationship with her father. Hero Absorbs Major Damage was similar - very cool premise, lots of humor, but there's only two women and one of them is the love interest, and the other is
Troubleshooting, Inventory, and The Book of Categories were all interesting in the vein of Invisible Cities or Einstein's Dreams in that they seemed to be mostly focused on the thought experiment, and less so on developing characters (or at least, more than one every-man character), and that may be why they were among the better stories.
Overall, though, this book reminded me of that quote from The Social Network (which I have never seen, but has brought about one of my favorite quotes of all time): You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.
Spoiler
It is literally a letter to all women that they should love men who seem unloveable so they don't kill themselves.I liked the first story a lot, Standard Loneliness Package, which had a really interesting premise, and a pretty good execution except for, you guessed it, there is only one woman, and she is defined 85% by her relationship with the protagonist and 15% by her relationship with her father. Hero Absorbs Major Damage was similar - very cool premise, lots of humor, but there's only two women and one of them is the love interest, and the other is
Spoiler
in love with the love interest (which is played for "ooh, that's hot!", while male homosexuality is played for "ew gross no homo" laughs).Troubleshooting, Inventory, and The Book of Categories were all interesting in the vein of Invisible Cities or Einstein's Dreams in that they seemed to be mostly focused on the thought experiment, and less so on developing characters (or at least, more than one every-man character), and that may be why they were among the better stories.
Overall, though, this book reminded me of that quote from The Social Network (which I have never seen, but has brought about one of my favorite quotes of all time): You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.
rocketiza's review against another edition
4.0
Four stars may be a little generous, but when Yu hits, he really hits.
katieparker's review against another edition
3.0
A very quick read, given that I finished it in a day (even after reading 150 pages of a different book). Some stories I really liked (Standard Loneliness Package, Open), while some I had a harder time following (The Book of Categories, Note to Self). Overall, it was quirky and had some good, insightful moments.
asunnybooknook's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 thought provoking but written for men by a man fr
helpfulsnowman's review against another edition
3.0
A lot like his last book, this one left me feeling a bit confused, but also kind of awed.
Charles Yu is an awesome writer, and he has awesome ideas. He's a great science-fiction writer because he uses technology and science as an avenue to talking about human emotion instead of using it to talk about big spaceships, haunted spaceships, or really, extra big spaceships.
Does anyone write books about small, humble spaceships anymore?
I also appreciate that he's not afraid to experiment. He's not afraid to write a collection of very different stories, to write some that are very short, or to play around with different formats.
Some of it goes over my head, though. When things get theoretical, or when reading a story about a guy writing letters to an alternate dimension version of himself, I'm lost. And I don't know what the threshold is, but after being lost there is a certain number of words I can read before needing to be anchored again.
So a great Charles Yu story is great. A not-as-great Charles Yu story is a little like being in a science class that's above your level. You're marveling at some big stuff one minute, and then in the next you're lost. It's good to take classes that make you feel like that. But I've always preferred great stories to good classes.
Charles Yu is an awesome writer, and he has awesome ideas. He's a great science-fiction writer because he uses technology and science as an avenue to talking about human emotion instead of using it to talk about big spaceships, haunted spaceships, or really, extra big spaceships.
Does anyone write books about small, humble spaceships anymore?
I also appreciate that he's not afraid to experiment. He's not afraid to write a collection of very different stories, to write some that are very short, or to play around with different formats.
Some of it goes over my head, though. When things get theoretical, or when reading a story about a guy writing letters to an alternate dimension version of himself, I'm lost. And I don't know what the threshold is, but after being lost there is a certain number of words I can read before needing to be anchored again.
So a great Charles Yu story is great. A not-as-great Charles Yu story is a little like being in a science class that's above your level. You're marveling at some big stuff one minute, and then in the next you're lost. It's good to take classes that make you feel like that. But I've always preferred great stories to good classes.
rdonovan01's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
skbarks's review against another edition
5.0
Funny, moving, whip-smart, beautiful, and so, so creative. I enjoyed all of the stories and loved a lot of them, and the last one in particular is deadly. I want to read something new by this guy every day.
"The sorry cancels itself out, and it might only mean this: that happened to you, and I can see that it hurt, and I am going to say this word, sorry, that corresponds to something, a vector, a medium of propagation and/or force-carrying particle that allows transmission or communication of sorry, or the related but not identical state of sorryness, a mysterious action-at-a-distance between humans that allows one human, separated in space and time from another human, to impart upon the other an influence, an effect. The state of being sorry."
"The sorry cancels itself out, and it might only mean this: that happened to you, and I can see that it hurt, and I am going to say this word, sorry, that corresponds to something, a vector, a medium of propagation and/or force-carrying particle that allows transmission or communication of sorry, or the related but not identical state of sorryness, a mysterious action-at-a-distance between humans that allows one human, separated in space and time from another human, to impart upon the other an influence, an effect. The state of being sorry."
assyrians's review against another edition
dark
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0