Book Review - Distrust That Particular Flavor

Cover image photo taken by David Wilder.

William Gibson is best known for his fictional works, including best-selling novels like Neuromancer and Zero History. He also has a fascinating Twitter account, that includes a lot of interesting quips and retweets. It's well worth following, in my opinion. I have read all three of his trilogies (Sprawl trilogy, Bridge trilogy, and Blue Ant trilogy), a short-story compilation titled Burning Chrome (in which he coined the term "cyberspace"), and a collaborative novel he wrote with Bruce Sterling called The Difference Engine, and this book was next in the queue for me (I am in the ongoing process of reading many authors' works in chronological order, Gibson included).

Distrust That Particular Flavor is different from the rest of Gibson's works because it is non-fictional: a collection of essays, articles, speeches, introductions, book and music reviews, travel journalism, etc. that he wrote over the past few decades. It's a refreshing take from an author that I have grown to admire over the past decade or so for his fictional works.

The book takes us to foreign lands like Singapore and Tokyo, analyzes the evolution of communication media, observes of the early forms of the Internet, pays tribute to famous writers like H.G. Wells and George Orwell, details Gibson's obsessive quest to find wrist watches on premodern eBay, and many more interesting tidbits. I especially liked how autobiographical some of the pieces were at times. This was a really easy read for me, which is exactly what I was looking for at this point in time.

For now, Distrust That Particular Flavor provided an excellent set of pieces that should tide me over until I re-dose with Gibson's latest novel, The Peripheral, published in 2014, which I am greatly looking forward to tackling sometime in the (hopefully) near future.

5/5 stars. 260 pages.

Weekend Thoughts - 2.13.16

Image by William Cho, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Computer viruses in the good old days had certain characteristics—they might call you names, insult you with foul language, or play games before they performed some nefarious task to cripple your machine. Viruses nowadays operate in a silent fashion, possibly infecting a machine without the owner being aware of their existence at all. WIRED published an article featuring a new website called The Malware Museum, which exhibits some of the older, more interesting viruses for nerds like myself to check out.

2. I came across a video of digitally-animated photographs taken at Burning Man 2015. It's mind-blowing—you really have to check it out to understand why.

3. Science fiction author William Gibson, also famous for having coined the term "cyberspace" (pre-Internet, no less!), wrote a piece in The Guardian describing the process involved in writing his phenomenal first novel, Neuromancer. The book is amazing—science fiction fans should definitely be aware of it, but if you're not then go check it out! Gibson's twitter account is also well worth reading.

4. An Ontario man who was missing for 30 years was found after remembering his own identity last month. Edgar Latulip experiences mental health problems and vanished when he was 21 years old, arriving in St. Catharines, 120 kilometers southeast of his hometown. Upon his arrival, Latulip fell and suffered a head injury which left him with virtually no memory of his personal history and who he was, so he created a new identity for himself. After three decades of living as another person, Latulip met with a social worker in January and expressed that he was not quite who he thought he was. The social worker found his missing persons case file and Latulip agreed to participate in DNA testing to prove that he is the missing man from 30 years ago. Quite a happy ending to a bizarre story.

5. I found out about this from one of the vegan YouTubers I watch regularly (High Carb Hannah—check her out, she's awesome!). An Australian man will be eating nothing but potatoes for all of 2016 in an effort to lose weight and address his binge eating issues. Unfortunately, the article includes misleading nutritional advice from a spokesperson who states that "carbohydrates are not a good source of protein". The issue with that statement is that potatoes are not "carbohydrates"—they contain carbohydrates (along with a complete amino acid profile and plenty of other nutrients). Thinking of foods as being various macronutrients (such as saying things like "Meat is a protein", "Pasta is a carbohydrate", or "Oil is a fat") is potentially harmful thinking because most foods contain more than one nutrient. Of course the carbohydrates themselves aren't a good source of protein—proteins are a good source of protein! Anyways, the so-called "potato cleanse" is something that I have been considering trying during the last few weeks. In fact, I may do something to alter it like Hannah is doing currently with her "only-potatoes-low-fat-sauces-and-non-starchy-vegetables" cleanse that she has been vlogging about on her YouTube channel. From what I've been learning, potatoes are pretty much the perfect food to eat. If I decide to try it out for myself, I'll be sure to blog about it here and let you know!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.