Scan barcode
A review by baechael
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener
5.0
This book is so good!!!
I mean wow. I’m not usually into memoirs, and when I mean not usually I mean that the only other memoir that I’ve read all the way through was Becoming and I had to switch to the audiobook halfway through because I just couldn’t get myself to read it. (But listening to it was amazing, it felt like Michelle was telling me presidential secrets.) But I’m getting off topic.
In my experience, memoirs and biographies tend to be on the dry side and generally just don’t interest me. Why should I care about what happened in some random person’s life? Why did they feel the need to talk about it? (Granted i do think that there are some biographies that are very important - eg: Know My Name, Becoming, In The Dream House, etc.)
However, I was fully engaged and highly entertained the entire time I was reading Uncanny Valley. It’s informative, insightful, and surprisingly hilarious. To top it off it’s very well written! I could feel the authors sensation of being lost and struggling to discover themselves in an era and a culture that isn’t supportive of the creatively minded. It is infused with what it’s like to be a millennial and dealing with the struggles of a woman in the workforce as well as startup culture as a whole.
I also had a blast figuring out what companies and pop culture references she was making based on her very tongue in cheek way of describing but not explicitly stating what it was. The whole book has this “nudge nudge wink wink” thing going on that just elevated my reading experience.
I would recommend this book to anyone. But for those of you that normally read fiction, I’d say that if you like or are interested in Sourdough (the book not the food) you’ll most likely be into Uncanny Valley as well!
I mean wow. I’m not usually into memoirs, and when I mean not usually I mean that the only other memoir that I’ve read all the way through was Becoming and I had to switch to the audiobook halfway through because I just couldn’t get myself to read it. (But listening to it was amazing, it felt like Michelle was telling me presidential secrets.) But I’m getting off topic.
In my experience, memoirs and biographies tend to be on the dry side and generally just don’t interest me. Why should I care about what happened in some random person’s life? Why did they feel the need to talk about it? (Granted i do think that there are some biographies that are very important - eg: Know My Name, Becoming, In The Dream House, etc.)
However, I was fully engaged and highly entertained the entire time I was reading Uncanny Valley. It’s informative, insightful, and surprisingly hilarious. To top it off it’s very well written! I could feel the authors sensation of being lost and struggling to discover themselves in an era and a culture that isn’t supportive of the creatively minded. It is infused with what it’s like to be a millennial and dealing with the struggles of a woman in the workforce as well as startup culture as a whole.
I also had a blast figuring out what companies and pop culture references she was making based on her very tongue in cheek way of describing but not explicitly stating what it was. The whole book has this “nudge nudge wink wink” thing going on that just elevated my reading experience.
I would recommend this book to anyone. But for those of you that normally read fiction, I’d say that if you like or are interested in Sourdough (the book not the food) you’ll most likely be into Uncanny Valley as well!