Yes, it's great!

I love Valancourt re-editions and the intros to them also inspired by this book

Another fun retro one is Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction --- not as good as paperbacks from hell but interesting

The movie was very well made too.

Also like Kenzaburo Oe for his similar writing style.

I think Agency is the worst book he's published, and it's not even close.

It was doubly strange to me, because I thought The Peripheral was the best thing he'd done since Idoru at least.

That's the only thing I might disagree with you on - I thought the Blue Ant books were pretty good, but not great. Pattern Recognition was definitely my favorite of the three, but still, aside from some of the characters and some of the set pieces, it just didn't impress me all that much. And by the time he'd recycled the characters yet again for Zero History, I was bored.

But then The Peripheral came along, and I was caught entirely off guard. Everything about it impressed me, and most notably, the character of Flynne. She's easily one of the best protagonists he's ever written.

And I emphatically agree with one of your points - I too noticed, and thought it was oddly ironic, that the entirely milquetoast protagonist of Agency (whose name I can't even remember) essentially had no agency at all. She barely even had any presence.

Does it hit differently than just reading the whole book?

Like, is reading the whole book from Page 1 to the last page a different experience than reading the last page first, then reading the whole book including the last page?

It's not typical scifi, moreso in the background as a matter of fact. The day to day stuff doesn't have anything that different than our world today so it feels very grounded.

Came here to recommend this one, such a nice store

I never even finished The Peripheral. But I don’t read as much as I used to either. So my copy of Agency sits unread. The thing is, I’ve read all the others- the Sprawl, the Bridge, the Blue Ant trilogy. But this one could not hold my attention. Few books do these days, however.

Anyone even a little bit interested in this book should check out the Valancourt Paperbacks from Hell series, they've been doing great work with them.

Dude get out of my head! I just finished HorrorStor — among Best Friend’s Exoricism and Final Girls — and I just love how much fun his horror is. He clearly knows the tropes and cliches and is just having a great ride with it.

I was doing research on him and found he wrote Paperbacks From Hell about horror books in the era and and I was like I have to pick it up! This was my sign haha

That's how I got through War & Peace the first time; someone with really nice handwriting annotated mini paragraphs worth of notes in the margins and they really helped me get through the book.

If you want some recommendations for professional annotations, I loved The Annotated Alice. It has annotations for both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in a single copy. Well-researched, probably because it went through several editions each time the publisher found new information to add to it.

Hate to break it but i do read books that are literary masterpieces, I stated my opinion and it's what i think, Im not on tiktok, and the subject of the book is not the problem to me, the problem is the fact that they (meaning Colleen H. and Tiktok) are romanizing SA and labeling it as "Okay". i've read plenty of books with SA and murder, along with other violent matters, but it's normally accompanied by some sort of acknowledgment that it is a bad thing, and very toxic.

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I usually read the last page of a book when I'm almost halfway through it. But that didn't change anything when I read it and made me more enthusiastic to quickly finish it sheet by sheet.

I read "Demon Seed" by Dean Koontz, and man was that a trip!

She's really into calling racists racist, even when they protest. And she's not subtle when she does so. Other than that, I haven't heard anything objectionable.

Besides the newspaper, ghost stories were all I was interested in when I was five, which was the 70's. I don't remember much of them, but had a hellacious nightmare or two

One of the main reasons why art was pushed so hard at their school was that the founders were trying to prove they have souls, proving that they should be treated like humans rather than like livestock.

I recently acquired Greely's Cove by John Gideon, it was mentioned in this awesome tome !

Hi, i think that the use given by the author is particularly necessary for the structure of this book to truly work…the payoff at the end makes it worth it! I was thrown off at first too since it is quite unusual to see second person narrative, however I think you get used to it as you go along. I’d press on, if you find the story engaging! Might not be worth it if you just find it boring, could be it’s just not your cup of tea. I hope you enjoy it if you do end up reading on!

I read the first two books and I haven't gotten around to the third. The second person narrative was something I never got used to either. I kinda lost interest in the story along the way too. Meh.

This. I appreciate your feedback. And no, you are being coherent (if I may add, unlike some of Saunders inoherence :))

I like the way you phrased that- totally agree.

You might benefit from this website

I think this is an indication of psychosis.

Its a reveal. You know something's up, you just don't know what it is, it's eventually...revealed. A twist is when you have no idea that anything is up and the reveal comes out of nowhere and changes everything.