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A review by cabridges
Virtue Signaling and Other Heresies: Selected Writings from Whatever 2013-2018 by John Scalzi
4.0
[Disclaimer: I received an advance NetGalley copy for an honest review.]
Whenever a major event happens in the news, particularly when it has to do with politics, the world of publishing, science fiction, or puffed-up whiny manboys who are alarmed that women are standing up straight and talking right out in public, I head to science fiction writer John Scalzi's 20-year-old, "Whatever," to see if he's written about it.
More often than not, he has. More often than not, his posts are smart, funny, sarcastic, and insightful.
"Virtue Signalling and Other Heresies" is the latest collection of blog posts to Whatever, covering the last five years with special attention to the mess in the White House since 2016. My beliefs on politics -- and feminism, and treating people with respect, and general ethical behavior -- line up with this so reading the posts again was cathartic and depressing and fun. Scalzi is not one to suffer fools or hide his opinions and he lets fly again here, although since the election some of them have been more in sorrow than in anger.
Partly because of that he chose to break the essays up so there wouldn't be one "hard slog" during the Trump years, running them mostly in alphabetical order instead. I understand this, but where on the site itself you expect to get a mishmash of subjects from day to day I thought it made the book as a whole more disjointed as the posts lurch back and forth.
But you'll get his thoughts on the election, and Trump, and Republicans and Democrats. Also his family, writing, the business of writing, why "Avengers: Infinity War" left him flat even though he thought it was amazingly done, why you shouldn't let your child name your cat, why using "they" as a singular pronoun is just fine, Muhammed Ali, and whatever else occurs to him.
"Virtue Signalling" is another wonderful dive back into John Scalzi's mind and that's always a fun place to visit.
Whenever a major event happens in the news, particularly when it has to do with politics, the world of publishing, science fiction, or puffed-up whiny manboys who are alarmed that women are standing up straight and talking right out in public, I head to science fiction writer John Scalzi's 20-year-old, "Whatever," to see if he's written about it.
More often than not, he has. More often than not, his posts are smart, funny, sarcastic, and insightful.
"Virtue Signalling and Other Heresies" is the latest collection of blog posts to Whatever, covering the last five years with special attention to the mess in the White House since 2016. My beliefs on politics -- and feminism, and treating people with respect, and general ethical behavior -- line up with this so reading the posts again was cathartic and depressing and fun. Scalzi is not one to suffer fools or hide his opinions and he lets fly again here, although since the election some of them have been more in sorrow than in anger.
Partly because of that he chose to break the essays up so there wouldn't be one "hard slog" during the Trump years, running them mostly in alphabetical order instead. I understand this, but where on the site itself you expect to get a mishmash of subjects from day to day I thought it made the book as a whole more disjointed as the posts lurch back and forth.
But you'll get his thoughts on the election, and Trump, and Republicans and Democrats. Also his family, writing, the business of writing, why "Avengers: Infinity War" left him flat even though he thought it was amazingly done, why you shouldn't let your child name your cat, why using "they" as a singular pronoun is just fine, Muhammed Ali, and whatever else occurs to him.
"Virtue Signalling" is another wonderful dive back into John Scalzi's mind and that's always a fun place to visit.