Faster

Rating:
Summary: Gleick.....you let me down
Review: I read Genius and Chaos some years ago and found them to be remarkable books (I would have given them each 5 stars). Of course I was pleased to see a new effort by James Gleick on the market and immediately bought it. Big mistake. It was as if he had run low on cash and needed to crank something out...absolutely a waste of my time... I tried to force myself to finish it, but finally gave up near the end (actually, I had to force my self through the whole thing...waiting, hoping for it too improve). I felt betrayed because I had always been somewhat of a cheerleader for Mr. Gleick and his writing. I'm not sure why (possibly because the subect may just be to "skinny" to wrap an entire book around) but his writing style for this effort was too much fluff and superfluous adjective...page after page of cute analogy. I am confident that no one could read the first two books and then this one and come to the conclusion they were written by the same author. Pass on this and read Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" instead. At least then you will learn something while meandering about aimlessly.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing enlightening, but a fun read!
Review: Gleick's "Faster" is not an "improve your life" book, nor is it an in-depth study of things that make our lives seem faster today. In my eyes, that the book is neither of these is its biggest strength.

"Faster" does not develop a clear thesis, but presents the reader with a variety of situations, devices, and actions that he claims speed up and stress our lives. He leaves it up to the reader to develop their own point of view on the subject (pointing in a certain direction, however).

The funnest part of this book was relating the statistics he uses to family and friends (they are TRULY memorable statistics) and absorbing them myself.

Overall, nothing spectacular, but well worth the read... if you have the time.

Rating:
Summary: Hard and Fast
Review:
On the whole, I liked it.

Time is a difficult subject to tackle as definitively as Gleick has handled his previous subjects. After all, time can't even be defined, only measured. He jumps around a number of related topics - the science behind watches, computers and more, and a lucid assessment "hurry sickness" in society. All interesting stuff. Loved when he cited the best example of contemporary impatience: that some people press elevator call buttons repeatedly, even this doesn't do a damn thing to make it arrive sooner. (Yeah, I do it, too.)

Some reviewers have (fairly) stated that by the end the book seems less analytical and almost ranty. It is also written like a series of essays, rather than a whole book, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It also helps Gleick avoid a wee small pitfall of his earlier works: being a little TOO enamored of his subject. As great as "Chaos" was, it was occassionally annoying with phrases like this: "Before Chaos, knuckle-scraping neaderthal mathematicians could barely add 1 + 1. Today, thanks to Chaos, the super-brained Math People can cause money to materialize out of thin air just by thinking of it." [OK, I know I exagerate. But not by a lot.]

Faster reads well (dare I say 'quickly'?) and provides food for thought.

Rating:
Summary: Quick! Read this! Pleasantly diverting and therapeutic
Review: I loved this book, found it therapeutic in fact. There's a certain relief that comes with diagnosing the causes of stress and being able to step away from a feeling state (frazzled panic for example) to look at an issue intellectually. This book, in a fairly, light breezy way, looks at how we experience time differently than our ancestors. I found it very grounding. And I've stopped pushing elevator "close door" buttons.

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.

Rating:
Summary: If you liked Chaos - RUN AWAY FROM FASTER!
Review: Gleick's Chaos was a masterpiece. It was a book that applied science to reality, and did it interestingly.

Faster is several hundred pages of complaints. He decries the speed of society on one page, and complains about how slow it is in others. He doesn't actually explain or educate like his other books. He just rants and whines, and expects the reader to enjoy it.

It isn't worth it. Treasure that book you loved, and skip this one you won't.

Rating:
Summary: Faster? Too fast.
Review: Gleick is, as always, a master at conveying the complex in simple terms. _Faster_ has a handful of great watercooler anecdotes, and even a cautionary message or two. But midway through, the doctor seems to become the patient. Gleick gets caught in the exact churn he's trying to characterize through the book. You can almost picture him, calling his publisher, asking to push the deadline back by a week, just long enough to cram in a few more chapters... all of which serves to blunt the impact of the book as a whole.

Bottom line: read the first few chapters, throw the rest away.

Rating:
Summary: "Faster" ran out of steam
Review: "Hurry Sickness" and other fast-paced antedotes of our modern life are very thoughtfully and humoursly explained in this book. I recognized many of the symptoms described by the author in my own life. Unfortunately this book provides no cure for the disease and I quickly lost interest as the author failed to make any point or forcast any ultimate outcome. I tried to zoom ahead to the end but was discouraged to only find a good chunk of the book to be filled with acknowledgments vice any insight as to how we can control our fast lives. In the end I enjoyed the first half but ultimately I was left feeling "yes, I know our life is hurried - what's your point?"

Rating:
Summary: TRUTH HURTS!
Review: This book explains very effectively,what is wrong with today's society.This is the kind of book that might offend alot of stressed out people who are on a merry-go-round of meaningless activities,which is probably the majority of the country.The more time we save with technology,the more time we need to fill in the gaps of not doing anything which means alot of running around chasing our tails.Welcome to the new millenium! Great Book!