Tag: Alena-Graedon • BookLikes

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review 2014-06-19 05:25

I consider myself somewhat of a Luddite, (yes, I know, as I “blog”) but I am slowly coming to grips with the digital age. I try to resist the lure of things like Facebook, but then get caught up in time-sucks like Pinterest. Lately, I can see how people lose hours of their day watching a Twitter feed, scanning the Booklikes dashboard, or thumbing through the beautifully designed Flipboard app. But when it comes to deep-seated fears and beliefs, I honestly believe that none of these things is necessary, that we could live happy and productive lives without it. In my house growing up, we had a friend we called – regularly – for any trivia we could not remember. Movies, books, random news items; she knew it all. Of course, she was a librarian. The other day, when I was telling my kids about her extraordinary memory, I explained to them that she was replaced by the internet. After reading this book I would go back to that old dial-up version without hesitation.

The Word Exchange is a dystopian novel that takes place only a decade or two in the future. Cell phones have evolved to the extent that they almost read your mind. They hail cabs for you, they anticipate your needs, and yes, they find the words you cannot remember when you need them, for a price. Anana Johnson and her father Doug, have what is probably the least plausible job — they work for the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL). When they call it NADEL, it seems way cooler than it actually is. But of course, in this world, it’s obsolete – their life’s work is compiling one of the rare remaining printed books. Fans of old New York will love the details, especially the pneumatic tube system and the Mercantile building.

This is a book Anne Fadiman might have written, using her father as a reference for the character of Doug Johnson. (If you are a chronic typo spotter, and a hopeless lover of books, look her up if you don’t know who she is; it’s totally worth your time. Start with Ex Libris. Her husband writes too.) What I mean by that digression is that the author, like Ann Fadiman, clearly loves words. The arguments she couches in the mysteries of this book are as compelling as they are disturbing. Liesl Schilinger, writing for the NY Times, called it “A nervy, nerdy dystopic thriller” and that is a near perfect description. There are parts of the story where the action slowed, or where certain parts seemed repetitive, but for the most part, this was a haunting cautionary tale. Read this book when you don’t have too many important things to do the next day. If you’re like me, you’re not going to get much sleep.

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review 2014-06-16 00:00

The Word Exchange: A Novel

"A Single Word ... "

First of all, I have to say that I have a high reading level; but this book almost made me feel dumb. I had to constantly look up some of the words in order to understand the context in which the word was being used. I found the footnotes to be distracting and unnecessary. It was wordy and slow reading as it took me close to 6 weeks to actually reading the hard copy book all the way through the book for the sake of doing the review. I had to get 50% through the book before the story started to come together. The concept of this techno-thriller is set in the not-so-far-in-the-distance-future was interesting as it showed us what could happen if we only relied on devices without written words but for me it had images of my daughter, who is addicted to her cell phone; showing up in my head time and times again. She lacks the ability to speak to a person in real life and the ability to function without blasting everything out into the “social media” world that we live in - when it should be keep “in house” so to speak. At times you came across some brilliantly written parts but I began to wonder with the book would read the same in half of it's length. i am giving this book 2 stars out of 5. It doesn't do anything for me other then have me reaching for my own dictionary.

*** This book comes to me through Net Gallery for my honest opinion.***

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review 2014-06-16 00:00

The Word Exchange: A Novel

"A Single Word ... "

First of all, I have to say that I have a high reading level; but this book almost made me feel dumb. I had to constantly look up some of the words in order to understand the context in which the word was being used. I found the footnotes to be distracting and unnecessary. It was wordy and slow reading as it took me close to 6 weeks to actually reading the hard copy book all the way through the book for the sake of doing the review. I had to get 50% through the book before the story started to come together. The concept of this techno-thriller is set in the not-so-far-in-the-distance-future was interesting as it showed us what could happen if we only relied on devices without written words but for me it had images of my daughter, who is addicted to her cell phone; showing up in my head time and times again. She lacks the ability to speak to a person in real life and the ability to function without blasting everything out into the “social media” world that we live in - when it should be keep “in house” so to speak. At times you came across some brilliantly written parts but I began to wonder with the book would read the same in half of it's length. i am giving this book 2 stars out of 5. It doesn't do anything for me other then have me reaching for my own dictionary.

*** This book comes to me through Net Gallery for my honest opinion.***

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review 2014-06-12 22:36

Book Review: The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon

I am Sam Tule

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review 2014-05-14 23:18

Review: The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon

A Book Addict's Musings by Readinghearts

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for my review

Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopia

Page Count: 384

List Price: $26.95 - Hardcover

$11.99 - 13.99 Digital Edition

Publication Date: April 8, 2014

Publisher: Doubleday

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Word Exchange, the debut novel from author Alena Graedon, has been called "the dystopian novel for the digital age" and "inventive" and on some levels I agree with those descriptions. I loved the idea of The Word Exchange, which is set in the near future and deals with the constantly forewarned death of print media. Anana Johnson and her father Doug are working on the multi-volume third edition of the North American Dictionary of the English Language when Doug goes missing one night. As Anana searches for her father, entries in the dictionary start disappearing, and people begin to succumb to a disease that is dubbed "the word flu" and makes them talk in gibberish. Where is Doug Johnson? Who is behind "the word flu"?

There were so many things that I enjoyed about The Word Exchange. As I mentioned above, I loved the idea of the book. More than just a book about the death of print as a medium, this book actually goes farther to imagine the death of the English language as it is today. The allure of that premise drew me in immediately, and I felt that the basic story line held up to my expectations. All of the elements of a good dystopian story were there. Megacorporation Synchronic was plausible as the Big Brother figure, as was The Diachronic Society as the rebels fighting to preserve the current way of life, Anana as the plucky heroine, and Bart as her sidekick. Even the smallest of characters, like Vera and Victoria Marks were given interesting backgrounds that drew me to them. I think my favorites, though, were Phineas with all of his quirks and idiosyncrasies, and Max. My only detraction here was that I felt that the story went on a little bit too long. On story alone, though, I would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars.

Where I felt the book lost it was in the execution. The author uses a number of devices to illustrate the underlying philosophy of the story; that society is becoming immune to the finer points of the English language, but I felt that she tried to be too clever and that, on a whole, these devices ended up detracting from the story rather than enhancing it. The one that I felt worked the best was the way the chapters were organized by the letters of the alphabet. The inclusion of a word and definition at the beginning of each which gave an overview of the main points of that chapter was really good. In fact, that is the only device that I felt really worked. On the other hand, the author's use of obscure words unfamiliar to the average reader, while clever, was a huge detraction from the flow of the story. I consider myself to have a good vocabulary and I ended up having to look up upwards of 50 words, so many that I actually lost count. Eventually I began to think how lucky I was to be reading this on an e-Reader, with a dictionary definition just a touch away. While this may have been the author's attempt to point out how easily technology can suck you in, to me it just seemed like the author was actually touting that which she was supposed to be warning against. Another device that totally did not work for me was the actual printing the gibberish that people began to speak as "the word flu" spread. In the beginning it was interesting, illustrating how intrusive electronic devices have become in our society. As long as these gibberish words were kept to a minimum and it was easy to still figure out what the character actually meant to say, it was okay. After a while, though, it got old, and was so pervasive I ended up skipping whole pages, and toward the end, one whole chapter. While I understood that these devices were part of the plot of the book, I felt that the average reader would find them cumbersome and could find them enough of a distraction to actually give up on the book altogether.

Taking everything into consideration, I did enjoy this story on many levels. I can see a certain market for this book with just the right readers. I can't see a mass appeal for it, though, and for that reason I don't feel that I can recommend it to everyone. I will, however, recommend the book to certain of my reading friends, but that pool is unfortunately pretty small. I would like to see what this author could do with something a bit more mainstream.

2014 read-for-review reviewed

Source: abookaddictsmusings.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-word-exchange-by-alena-graedon.html