Reviews and Comments

I tried really hard to like this book. In many ways it should be wonderful: a complex, layered slice of English lives. But it never really feels like it gets started -- it perfectly gets across the phenomenology of being at a party and not quite knowing everyone, or catching sight of yourself in a mirror and wondering how you got there in life, which seems to be what Woolf was trying to do. But this ends being a bit self-defeating, because the whole thing is so well-observed and so true to life and covers so much ground that everyone already knows what these things feel like anyway! Felt a bit like reading a dictionary in one's own language.

This epic was one, long, drawn-out fight scene. The Odyssey was much better.

What a ride. I started reading a book about words, a foundational work in modern pragmatics. Via a semi-mystical meditation on The Republic I arrived at the story of Q*, the fairy-godmother, rushing screaming out of the gates of Never Land.

What a book.

A surreal, modern kafkaesque meditation on reading. This was a very strange, very worthwhile read. Thoroughly recommend. The ending was good -- just really should have seen it coming.

This was fun! It's a long time since I properly sat down and read poetry. Highlights included i don't wanna be nice and beezley street

I enjoyed the first half of this book more than the second. It began life as a short story, which led to a serial of further short stories, which eventually led to the book. The beginning is clearly a science fiction author in awe of the sheer scale of the world he has imagined, and it is breathtaking. As the story progresses, it feels like Aldiss is trying more and more to write a Proper Book with Characters and Plot, and the wonder of the mad flora world is the worse for it.

This was a difficult book to finish. I wanted to finish it, for about a week, but the last 50 or so pages are emotionally harrowing. Hard work.

Stylistically beautiful. Terse and without any extraneous detail, it reads a bit like a ascetic philosophical exploration of decisions in society.

A lot of other reviews (and the blurb above) focus on the book's setting in Korea -- traditionally meat-heavy diet, traditionally rigid patriachal family structure etc. I didn't find this -- apart from the names of people (which are few) and the descriptions of food, there is very little to locate this book in space or time beyond being somewhat modern.

A lot of people recommend the Varieties of Reference to keen undergraduates as a follow on from Naming and Necessity. I will be recommending this instead. Insightful, broad-scope book covering a lot of ground and presenting a solid new theoretical direction, in a clear and fluid style. Thoroughly recommend to anyone who wants to get deep into the theory of reference.