So far there’s nothing new for me here. He’s encapsulating a lot of prior books I’ve read. (Though he’s doing an incredible job of it.) There are a handful of references that I’ll want to go take a look at though.
Read while having dinner at UCLA before class. Covered categories, examples, and duality.
I think Amazon had a review that said if you’re a fan of Louis Sachar, you’ll love this book by Gordon Korman. I think that Korman has been writing great stuff for so long that it’s really more appropriate to say that if you love Gordon Korman, you’ll probably like a lot of Louis Sachar.
Like all Korman’s books, this one has a lot of heart. It wasn’t quite as laugh out loud funny as some of his other efforts, but it’s definitely got some great humor.
Typically I don’t like narratives that are told from multiple viewpoints, but Korman manages to pull it off incredibly well by starting each chapter with a title that uses an “Un-word” followed by the narrator and their IQ score. As a result we also get a much more nuanced picture of all of the characters which are incredibly well done.
As one of the “smart” kids growing up, I wish this book had been around to have read then, but it’s still great now and everyone is sure to appreciate it. While the protagonist is a boy, I really appreciated that there was lots of great female representation here.
Very entertaining so far. I can feel the poignancy building. Can’t wait for the pay off.
I’ve seen a few places in the text where he references “group(s) of Japanese scientists” in a collective way where as when the scientists are from the West he tends to name at least a principle investigator if not multiple members of a team. Is this implicit bias? I hope it’s not, but it feels very conspicuous and regular to me and I wish it weren’t there.
Pretty damn awesome! What a fun little read. Not as hilarious as No Coins, Please! but also some somewhat older and more sophisticated characters. There’s something that I love about not only just the “little guy” pulling one over on “the man” but it’s seemingly more fun when the “little guy” is a kid. These two books and the movie Kidco ( Twentieth Century Fox, 1984) create sort of a mini genre in which I wish there was more material.
Coffee, tea, and cocoa on the left; sodas and iced drinks on the right…
I’ve been doing this for several years now and it gives me a lot more control over how much meta data I can add, change, or modify as I see fit. Let me know if I can help you do something similar.
Read a big chunk throughout the day while I was at home sick with a bad headcold.
