A strangely fascinating exploration of the dark side of cyberspace, where virus writers, porno peddlers, and fantasy game fanatics have created an anarchic subculture that blurs reality and imagination. Sinha, a former London advertising copywriter, became addicted to the Internet in 1984 when he was asked to create ads for a modem manufacturer. Although his online addiction nearly destroyed his life, it also brought him into a strange new world of cyber-relationships. There’s the unforgettable Jarly, who like Sinha, is obsessed with Shades, a multi-user fantasy game inhabited by evil knights and fair damsels. Jarly spends 16 hours a day playing Shades and, in one hilarious incident, even pisses his pants at the keyboard. Jarly has no job or human relationships, and every penny he can beg or steal goes toward his astronomical telephone bills. Calypso is another Shades addict. She meets men playing the game and sleeps with them so they’ll pay her bills. Geno is a virus maker who taps into government computers and wreaks digital havoc. He lands in federal prison after trying to break into the FBI’s computer system. In the book’s most comically surreal episode, a group of Shades players throw a house party where “two worlds, the one we call “real’, and the cyber-world of Shades, collided and became entangled.” Like a crack addict, Sinha is a genius at self-delusion, telling himself that his habit is under control. Meanwhile, as he spends all his free time in cyberspace, his marriage is falling apart. His narrative is nonlinear, experimental, and at times disorienting, especially when he’s trying to capture the murky “feel” of cyberspace. Like his cyber-pals, he often loses touch with reality, transcending into new realms of consciousness. Sinha brings the reader along for the often harrowing ride. Part Dante, part Bill Gates, part Jack Kerouac” however you categorize this bizarre book, it’s worthy of attention.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88630-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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