The Sagan Diary

Like Questions for a Soldier, this is just a filler that mainly repeats what we already know. (If you read the afterword, you'll see that he was compelled to write something for a special cause.)

However, Scalzi gets a little experimental this time and tries to look at his subject from different angles, both philosophically and linguistically. The result is interesting, but his (or Sagan's, as this is supposed to be verbatim from her brain) poetic phrasings are often a bit too much ("I have signed on for a mermaid’s sacrifice and will walk on knives for dumb love"), distracting from the quite touching notions this is meant to transport.

Overly poetic, but explores some interesting philosophical concepts, the experience of synthesized consciousness, and the power of how much thought you can put into things, given accelerated brainpower and access to the entirety of world knowledge.

I read about half of it. While it absolutely is a very well-written book, kind of funny at times and easy to read, I felt I was basically wasting my time with it. There was little to no added emotional value to the book. Nothing moved me in it. Really everything was too macho for my liking. In comparison to an author like Philip K. Dick I think the ideas presented in the book are not very new or wild, while also in comparison to an author like Ursulla Le Guinn I think there's, like I said, very little to hang on emotionally here.

It was a very enjoyable reading experience, and a great piece of entertainment .But only that. I was hooked since the beginning, most because Scalzi has a fairly straightforward writing style, fluid and his sense of humor is very funny.

I really enjoyed the Old Man's War series so I was glad to pick this up as a free Audible download. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy it at all. It's not a story like the full novels, nor is it amusing as they often are; it's just an introspective monologue by one of the main characters. It is somewhat interesting insofar as it gives a little more detail about the life of an engineered soldier and provides some additional details to the OMW series, but really only for very die-hard fans - the kind who would read Tolkein's Silmarillion because they enjoyed The Hobbit. Another review said it felt rather like fan fiction and I have to agree.

Not bad, but not quite my thing. I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't what I got. Still: well written with a surprising amount of humor thrown in. I felt it took a while for the plot to really get started, though in that time it developed the world. Much lighter than [b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War|Joe Haldeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167322714s/21611.jpg|423].