SILICON FOLLIES

Name: SILICON FOLLIES
Author: Thomas Scoville
ISBN: 0-7434-1120-X

by Thomas Scoville ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 2001

Air is said to be leaking from the dot.com balloon, but, important as that may be, a novel about stocks can’t rely on stock...

bookshelf

Subtitled “a dot.comedy,” Scoville’s formula-beset debut concerns romantic, social, and office politics in the boom economy of California’s Silicon Valley.

Paul is adrift. In college he dreamed of writing “the Great American novel,” but his only marketable skill is an innate flair for computers. Liz is unemployable. At Stanford, she majored in English, and she still views the world of technology as “a blizzard of acronyms in a vacuum of time-delayed adolescence.” With their worthless degrees, the two find themselves at a start-up company called TeraMemory working for Barry, a young, graceless dot.com millionaire with tortured syntax, Paul as a computer consultant, Liz as a personal grammarian. Despite their personal and ethical misgivings, romance ensues as stock options accrue. Meanwhile, Steve, an expert hacker with limited social skills and anti-capitalist aggression, plots TeraMemory’s undoing under the metaphysical auspices of Psychrist, a Bay Area techno/performance-art wizard. For the techno-challenged (“Terans”), the prose here can be challenging, as in some of the e-mails that consist primarily of computer code, but it can also amuse, especially when it charts Steve’s plans for hacker actions. Still again, it’s also way too often hackneyed—here, daylight “flees” and “geek” appears as a verb. No irony goes unexplained, characters often mutter to themselves (“Marriage, he scoffed to himself”), and chapters are cutely titled (“Hacked in Seattle”; “Bidding for a Date with the CFO on the e-Bay of Love”). The idea—that all this wealth requires some foundation in something—isn’t original, and here it drives characters straight from movie-of-the-week casting.

Air is said to be leaking from the dot.com balloon, but, important as that may be, a novel about stocks can’t rely on stock characters. Even dot.comedies need real humor, not overdoses of cuteness.

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2001

ISBN: 0-7434-1120-X

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Pocket

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

bookshelf

DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

bookshelf

Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).