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Oct 2024
9:49am, 29 Oct 2024
54,658 posts
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McGoohan
The Nov 2024 book is Appliance by J O Morgan. Disappointingly this is not a the sequel to The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas M Disch 
From the Amazon description:
**Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 **
From the Costa Award winner, a highly inventive and and humane novel about our relationship with technology and our addiction to innovation.
This is the tale of a new technology, an alternative history that unfolds over many decades. It is a fable told through a constantly shifting cast of characters, all drawn into the world of a machine that slowly alters every life it touches.
But in this unending quest for progress, what will happen to the things that make us human: the memories, the fears, the love, the mortality? As we push towards a brave new world, what do we stand to lose?
It is at least short...
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Nov 2024
7:14pm, 10 Nov 2024
22,617 posts
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Columba
Not impressed.
It's a polemic (at least, that's how it struck me). It's all about how "they" invent new technology, which seems to "us" so useful that we adopt it, even though "they themselves" don't fully understand how it works, and don't always anticipate some of the ways in which it fails... But everyone comes to use it, and indeed becomes entirely dependent on it so that life without it simply cannot be lived.
But we knew all that already, didn't we?
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Nov 2024
7:16pm, 10 Nov 2024
22,618 posts
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Columba
Also, the "constantly shifting cast of character" annoyed me, as I either didn't care enough about them to get involved, or did care about them and wanted to know what happened to them.
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Nov 2024
2:21pm, 15 Nov 2024
54,716 posts
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McGoohan
I am half way through and just popped in here to say... I hate this book and J O Morgan is a terrible writer.
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Nov 2024
2:27pm, 15 Nov 2024
89,349 posts
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Diogenes
What idiot chose this?
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Nov 2024
2:31pm, 15 Nov 2024
54,717 posts
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McGoohan
Be assured, there'll be a full investigation and whoever it turns out to be, I'm going to kick them out of the book group!
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Nov 2024
2:59pm, 15 Nov 2024
46,798 posts
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Night-owl
I just started it today
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Nov 2024
3:53pm, 15 Nov 2024
54,718 posts
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McGoohan
Er... It's brilliant! Enjoy!
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Nov 2024
10:01am, 19 Nov 2024
9,248 posts
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westmoors
Not my favourite by a long way. Felt like a collection of short stories with the underlying theme of a 'technological advance'. Did enjoy the chapter with the children playing with the toy plane though.
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Nov 2024
12:49pm, 19 Nov 2024
46,816 posts
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Night-owl
Didn't really enjoy it. Was really a series of short stories and once one story was finished we didn't hear more about the characters and what happened to them.
I hoped Kathy was OK. Frank was horrible. But it makes you think. Technology can be great but it can be a curse used to think it would be good sometimes great to get home a la star trek (beam me up scotty)
Am glad I got it from library so didn't pay for it
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