Signal to Noise

Rating:
Summary: Poor Story Line, Bad Characters
Review: I bought this book thinking it would at the very least be a _MicroSerfs_ for the Multimedia Gulch scene. It was worse than even that. Carla Sinclair's ham-fisted prose makes Doug Coupland look positively Shakespearean by comparison. Her storytelling talents would get her fired as a screenwriter for the Teletubbies. All told, this is a fantastically amateurish piece of (attempted) fiction which clearly only got published in a move to cash in on Carla Sinclair's 15 minutes of fame.

Whoever called this book a "satire" needs to find a dictionary, quick. In ancient Greece, the unfortunate victims of Aristophanes' satires were in some cases driven to suicide after seeing themselves ridiculed onstage. _Signal_To_Noise_ is nothing but a series of gentle pokes in the ribs and unctuous self-congratulation for the employees of Wired magazine and a few others in the enveloping "cyberculture" clique.

The bottom line: you'll regret reading it.

Rating:
Summary: if only i could give it zero stars
Review: i paid fifty cents for this book after being told that there were sly references to dave eggers (mike yoke in the book) and douglas coupland (canadian writer darren cooper!).

i want my fifty cents and four hours back.

carla sinclair has managed to write a dull, unbelievable story about inconsiderate, useless people. the dialogue was flat, the plot was insipid, and the ending was trite.

jim is an editor at the ultra hip tech culture bible of a magazine _signal_. (he's a spineless pencil pusher.) kat is an intern at a zine, and feels that the world owes her more. her sense of entitlement throughout is appalling.
she drunkenly gambles away $200,000 on his computer never quite apologizes.

this book is even worth any more of a review.... just stay away from it.

Rating:
Summary: Poor Story Line, Bad Characters
Review: This book was a BIG disapointment.

The story an characters are unlovable, unlikable and inconsiderate.

The story revolves around a cyber chick who wants to
screw the hotshot magazine king. He happens to be
addicted to online gambling. One day she jumps on his
computer and gambles away a truckload of money. She does
not even applogize to the guy for ruining his life. She
says something like, "you should have locked your computer"

Then they discover the gambling is "fixed", so, they go to
the Nevada to confront the online website losers.

This story is SO Hollywood. It seems obvious to me, it
was written to become a screenplay and movie. It is
"action packed" and totally phony.

I was really disapointed, because I thought Sinclair was
a really cool person, who had character and integrity.

I was wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Sinclair tries to imitate Coupland, but falls on her face.
Review: This was a mildly entertaining book, and a fast read, but throughout, I couldn't help but notice the author trying to copy the style of Douglas Coupland. The plot was interesting and offered plently of action and tension. On the other hand, the dialogue was downright clumsy. I'm sure that Miss Sinclair is a fine non-fiction/magazine writer, but her dialogue sounds like she spends all of her time in chat rooms.