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Taipei (2013)

by Tao Lin(Favorite Author)

4.19 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0307950174 (ISBN13: 9780307950178)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Vintage

review 1: He's got a style, that's for sure. Robotic, literal, dull. But there's something about this style, and this book, that grew on me as I read it. It's the way he describes, in such strangely compelling detail, in almost technical terms, the inner life of a bored, spoiled 20-something Brooklynite... the social interactions that occur in this book are like diagrams in an electrical engineering textbook, which makes sense when we see just how reliant Paul, and the younger generations in general, rely on social media in their daily lives, to the extent that our daily lives are experience in terms of social media, i.e., 0s and 1s. The loneliness in this book is excruciating: Paul himself is never "alone," but he's never truly "connected" with anyone in the "offline" sense; to liv... moree in modernity is increasingly reduced to a series of algorithms, networks, digitalized and accessible information...This book can be a slog, and it can be redundant, and it can be mind-boggling, but it's effective in demonstrating the intractable role "pop-technology" plays in our lives, often unthinkingly, and how difficult it is to truly discern our own private lives from the online "outer" lives we create for ourselvesA peculiar work of fiction, worth reading, and petabytes better than Lin's previous work.
review 2: I found this a compelling read about the meandering, drug-addled, melancholic year in the life of a late 20-something American-raised, Taiwanese-American author living in contemporary New York. Written in a straight-forward yet immersive manner, the author uses very little hyperbole and sparse conversational elements to capture a seemingly honest account of a life in formation as affected by his relationships to geography, family, acquaintances, romantic prospects, technology, and self-discovery through drugs and constant self-reflection. less

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