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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like this before, and it was really enjoyable. I also read it while in New York, coincidentally the same day I went to the Apple Store.
This was really just a relaxed, vibey time. I really enjoyed seeing our main character learn about printers and seem to fall in love with fixing them. It was fun to see the varied side characters come and go, with this style of writing really highlighting perceptions of people and their lives vs the reality. I also thoroughly enjoyed the weird anthropomorphised pieces of technology.
This also just has a lot of interesting tidbits about Apple and Tekserve. I didnt really know anything about them but apparently the book is accurate.
This was a really comforting read, nothing much really happens. I can see why it isn’t for everyone but it was for me.
This was really just a relaxed, vibey time. I really enjoyed seeing our main character learn about printers and seem to fall in love with fixing them. It was fun to see the varied side characters come and go, with this style of writing really highlighting perceptions of people and their lives vs the reality. I also thoroughly enjoyed the weird anthropomorphised pieces of technology.
This also just has a lot of interesting tidbits about Apple and Tekserve. I didnt really know anything about them but apparently the book is accurate.
This was a really comforting read, nothing much really happens. I can see why it isn’t for everyone but it was for me.
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
This is a novel, loosely, but more so it's a little window back into a specific era of repairable technology and the people who were drawn to it. Set almost entirely in a (real, I think) Mac repair shop in New York City in the 1990s, this book jumps from backstory to backstory, introducing a range of self-taught computer fanatics. The cast and the story both feel wide but not deep. I didn't get to know anyone well, not even Claire, the newest hire and lead character. It did give me some serious nostalgia, even though I was really too young in this era to really have any meaningful relationship with it's technology. A weird but charming little book.
I liked this book but I honestly can’t tell you why…
Boring and half the book is blank (literally, treat it as half the number of pages for estimating length).
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Really loved this little book. Charming, funny time capsule from a moment when technology didn’t suck. Hold on to your weird niche communities for dear life, folks.
Oddly riveting and nostalgic little book about Apple and printer repair in the 90s
5 stars worth of atmosphere, capturing a very specific time, place & culture. Loved it.
A strange love letter to working in tech, particularly as a woman, with all of its myriad frustrations, but also the feeling of satisfaction. The novel takes place in TekServe, which was until 2017 a real Mac service company in New York (look I know the entire publishing world is obsessed with New York, but I love Macs and work in tech and still had no idea about this business). It features characters who were there at the time and are still living, which would normally throw me, but here I just hope they feel captured correctly. The novel follows Claire from her date of hire until she leaves the business. It was marketed as a coming-of-age story, but I think that's pulling the focus. What it really describes is the culture, personalities, and eccentricities of a business that is trying to do right by its customers and its employees. It's rare to find something so spare and sincere capturing the energy of a growing business, the weirdness (and sometimes creepiness) of the people involved in tech. Even the parts of printers are humanized and given character here. There is something thrilling about finding footing and competence in a job, which LaserWriter II captures beautifully. I couldn't ask for much more from such a quick read.
Probably the most disappointing read of the year for me. The Macintosh got me into publishing, journalism, and graphic design. Years later, the Macintosh helped me transition my career into software development. In-between I worked at the California counterpart to Tekserve, ComputerWare. I am genetically predisposed to loving a book like this, yet I didn't. I felt aggravated at chronological mistakes, the over-reliance on the "anthropomorphic electronics" gimmick, the exceedingly shallow characterizations, and the choppy partial-page layouts. It is borderline "Ready Player One" for Mac heads (admittedly better written though), where the mentioning of certain machine models is in-and-of-itself the nostalgia pull, by name drop alone.
I think this is a case where the author's personal fanaticism gets in the way of telling a compelling story of those times. I understand wanting to invest the book with the energy we felt during those days, but that can only come from the people and their stories, of which this book is surprisingly lacking. The "octagonal mirror" inside a LaserWriter isn't going to describe that to me; the stories of the human staff and customers are. This either needed to be told more journalistically, or written first-hand by someone who was really there.
I think this is a case where the author's personal fanaticism gets in the way of telling a compelling story of those times. I understand wanting to invest the book with the energy we felt during those days, but that can only come from the people and their stories, of which this book is surprisingly lacking. The "octagonal mirror" inside a LaserWriter isn't going to describe that to me; the stories of the human staff and customers are. This either needed to be told more journalistically, or written first-hand by someone who was really there.
this book made me so homesick for the early internet, and remind me how lucky I was to experience some of it