Rating: 
Summary: An intense skate over the surface of modern time perception.
Review: I devoted some time I didn't have to reading this book all the way through (these days, I read the first few chapters and the last of most of the books I pick up). It's written fluently and clearly, but the succession of short chapters (which each address a facet of our modern free-fall into quickness)creates an effect not unlike the quick cuts of the modern commercial.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Insightful
Review: A good read to be sure, from cover to cover! Borrows on some themes found in "Breathing Space: Living a Working at Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society" by Jeff Davidson, but misses the impact of factors Davidson identified such as increasing population density (the earth gains 1,000,000 more people every four days!) and technological breakthroughs (more than a ten a second).
Rating:
Summary: Interesting book and brings things into focus
Review: James Gleick covers a wide area of our daily lives, and how things have changed regarding the value of time. Apparently time has never been so short than in our days. Interesting perspective, and a book that brings things into focus with subjects discussed from marriage to work and everything in between, as we continue to waste time. Great and wonderful writing make it an enjoyable read. Another book that has helped me to manage my time, especially on the chapters of Making Time for Yourself, and the Marriage & Sex chapter, as well the topic of a Perfect Life discussed, and a book that I highly recommend is Dietmar Scherf's "I Love Me: Avoiding & Overcoming Depression"--also sold at Amazon.
Rating: 
Summary: a catalogue, not an exposition, of the modern condition
Review: .James Gleick writes about the modern condition, expressed in a simple fraction: "the amount of stuff to do, divided by the amount of time available." How do we cope with the limitless choices of modernity, against our ever painful consciousness of passing time? Gleick argues we do two things: we accelerate just about everything in our lives, and we (try to) do many things at once -- we multi-task. We speed dial, channel surf, and microwave our dinner -- all at the same time. This novel spends nearly three hundred pages cataloging vivid and various examples of our hurried, manic, society. But Gleick never moves beneath the surface of description to discuss the consequences of life at high-speed. If there are trade-offs, we hear little about them. He approaches the phenomena as an insightful observer, not as a penetrating critic. If Gleick's purpose for this book was to tell us that modern life has gotten faster, he has succeeded in richly illustrating the obvious. But if he had hoped to tell us something more, he has only disappointed this reader. .
Rating:
Summary: Stop!
Review: Stop, everyone! Drop everything you do and read this book! Ever wonder why we're all of us in such a huge hurry, day in and day out? If you have, this book is for you. But if you haven't, you're, I'm afraid, even more in need of reading this. Wide ranging and erudite, Gleick's new book takes us through every facet of our lives. Sex, baseball, movies, watches, computers--you name it. (My only regret is that the book doesn't talk about the acceleration of popular music--look at what Punk and Hardcore did to Elvis and the Beatles!) Kudos, Mr. Gleick. And welcome back to the printed world.
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Summary: He's done it again!
Review: James Gleick is simply a wonderful writer who engages his readers in a way that they just don't want his books to end. What a treat "faster" is.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After "Chaos" and the epic "Genius" I expected great things from "Faster". It is a moderately entertaining read, and reasonably carefully written (no obvious mistakes or errors of reasoning). However, it is a cheap effort after the author's previous two books. It reads like a write-up of what the author found on an extended web-search and researching session, rather than making any insightful observations or drawing the material into some kind of conclusion or deep analysis. There is a lot of banal, obvious material - who needs to have MTV explained to them, or cannot figure out for themselves that a book titled "365 ways to save time" is unlikely to be more than landfill? I'd like to make some minor points - one is the uncanny resonance of many parts of the book with Don Delillo's "Underworld", the second is that the author makes the perhaps forgivable error of assuming that his audience is based in the USA, making many references to "our society" or "the country" which grate a little on some of the citizens of any possible obscure countries outside the USA that may exist. Finally, there is a flash of the author's real talent where the concept of a software "race condition" is clearly and accurately explained in lay terms - a difficult task.
Rating: 
Summary: whoosh
Review: If you can carve out a few hours from your busy schedule and read this book, you'll find it time well spent. And you'll also find yourself thinking much more pointedly about your time. "Faster" is really about time, about its importance and the pressures modern society places on our time. We live in what's called the Information Age where everything moves at the speed of light, and Gleick does an outstanding job of showing how the sheer speed of activity in our lives has changed us. It's not a pretty picture. Think about all the time-saving devices that have come about in the last 25 years-- microwave, fax machine, copier, e-mail-- and then think about how much extra time these wonders have created. They haven't freed up time-- they've made it possible to fill time with more activity. Gleick's observations about how technology has accelerated the pace of life are spot-on and more than a little frightening. Everyone talks about shortening attention spans, yet today there is so much to attract our attention that it's hard to choose what to focus on. Too many books to read, too many shows to see, too many ways to spend our leisure time, which has not increased fast enough to match the demands on it. "Faster" does an excellent job of illustrating what a serious problem this is, a problem that doubtless will get worse before it gets better.
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Summary: Hurry up and read this book!
Review: "Faster" is a book about the modern culture of speeding up to save milliseconds. James Gleick finds so many interesting aspects of this "age of acceleration" that we are now living in... further, he wastes no time in describing the many facets of this new lifestyle and the possible ramifications of what he calls "hurry sickness". Why are we in such a rush?? Are we really saving time? And just what do we DO with those few seconds we seem to save by multitasking even the smallest of our daily activities? "Faster" answers many of those questions and it also looks into other scientific aspects of time and how we perceive it. I highly recommend this book for those who feel rushed in their lives but don't know why. I also recommend it for anyone interested in the science of time and time travel. James Gleick is a genius. He has an incredible way of provoking the reader to look closer into something and see what is really happening there. Hurry up and read this book, you'll be amazed at what you'll learn.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Reading, but Rather Repetetive
Review: James Gleick has definitely done his homework, which always makes for good reading. But, while he seemed to point to the "acceleration of just about everything" as a problem with humanity, he didn't really offer any solutions. In fact, as I trudged through the book, I felt increasingly vindicated for my "accelerated" lifestyle. I even picked up some good time-saving tips from the book. All told, the book was thought provoking and the ending capped it off nicely - however abruptly.
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