9781596062115

I've tried to read a few of his novels, and i can never get past the first few pages. Why i ever got this book remains a mystery to me, but i loved it. Scalzi is a clever fellow with enough opinions to wear out a keyboard. Yes, it's true that all of the content of this book is available for free online. If you're the kind of person who gets all upset about paying for something you could have gotten, in some functional analog, without paying, then by all means, read the blog. As the author notes, though, it's a bit of a scavenger hunt to find all the old entries due to various hosting and format changes. I've docked one star because there's no index. The entries are out of chronological order, often thematically linked, and that's fine until you're trying to find that one you read a few days ago that you just have to show to your friend/sibling/partner/guy sitting next to you on the subway. All i needed was a table of contents to save minutes upon minutes of my time, but apparently seconds of the publisher's time wasn't worth it.

John Scalzi has been blogging since 1998. He named his long-running blog Whatever, because he writes about whatever popped into this head and whatever interested him. He writes on the most sacred and touchy of topics with an admirable logic and humor, so that even if one doesn't agree with his views, one can at least admire the craft he uses in giving his opinion and enjoy it all the same. For those who are quicker to offense than amusement enjoyment, he might just step on your toes a little. It happens. I only just recently discovered John Scalzi and his blog Whatever. My first and only experience with Scalzi's fictional writing thus far is from my experience with METAtropolis, although I plan on reading Old Man's War as soon as possible. However, I have been trying to keep up with his blog, Whatever, because of his feature "The Big Idea". I quickly found that Scalzi doesn't limit himself to talking about writing, writers, and books, but instead approaches any topic that catches his fancy. This hodgepodge approach is duplicated in Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, because any sort of organization has been denied. As an example, here are the first three entries by topic and date: "Disclaimer", a humorous disclaimer regarding Whatever posted on March 1, 2003; "Jesus' D**kheads" about those people who feel they need to be "d**kheads" in the name of religion posted on July 13, 2007; "Holden Caulfield in Middle Age" about why Holden Caulfield doesn't excite Scalzi's imagination and sells out in his middle age posted on July 18, 2001. Topics range from politics to fatherhood to religion to clones to punklets to Ayn Rand to gay marriage to, well, everything. Not only is Scalzi often humorous in these articles, but he gives pretty much every topic a strong logic and approach. Nor is every topic humorous or pointed. Sometimes, Scalzi will let you into a topic so that you can feel just how close it is to his heart and life (past or present), such as in the articles "The Child on the Train" and "Being Poor". I started out writing down my favorite articles, but ended up with a list far too long to be viable for anything. My sense of humor meshed enough that I wasn't offended and couldn't stop reading. At the same time, I was struck by some of the history that we've lived through in the past 10 years and loved the reminders of those major events. In a way, these blog entries offer a sort of history that can't be offered by a simple time line, because each article delves into the reactions, emotions, and arguments surrounding each event. Overall, I enjoyed this book completely. (Who with a working sense of humor wouldn't love: "I Hate Your Politics" or "Ayn Rand: Mom!" or "Jesus' D**kheads. Okay, working sense of humor and the unique ability of not being offended easily.) I only have two complaints. Which, is pretty damn good. The first is: While I completely understand that the book is free, crazy, unorganized just like the blog it comes from--and that's great--and index would have been just lovely. Really, every anthology should have an index. Even if it was an "artistic decision" not to. I simply know I'll want to quote from "Meeting Authors (and Me)" or a similar article, but only have a hazy memory of the title and absolutely no index to help me find the page. Second, there are a few glaring typos in the book. Not very many, but enough that I cringed a few times. I'm not talking about the high rules of grammar either, but instead very simple to catch things like a missing word or a word accidentally duplicated. I can't help but think these should have been caught when moved from blog (where I view such errors as acceptable, because the format is more conversational and relaxed) to book (where such errors really aren't excusable). Despite these (very) few complaints, I believe Wil Wheaton said it best in his introduction to the book: "In the vernacular of the damn kids today, this book is made of EPIC WIN."

Enjoyable to read and packaged in nice convenient entries. Scalzi's blog entries will not only cause laughter but will also leave you pondering the subject he has discussed. Best read in short bursts but how can you stop when the writing is so good.

My Dad and I are huge Scalzi fans, but my Dad's a total tech-phobe and so doesn't read The Whatever, Scalzi's blog, as I do. I bought this book to give to him, and figured I'd page through it quickly before sending it on as a gift. Well, even as an avid Whatever reader for many years, the majority of these posts were new to me! Many were from further back and were about timeless topics, and the few repeats - posts which I had enjoyed already - I really liked reading again. There were just a few clunkers for me in this book - just the couple entries that were about political things which I would have been more than happy to let live in the past, and one rant in particular that struck me as grumpy rather than witty - but for a book this size (it's about an inch and a half thick), I was able to just page past them and breeze onto something I found more enjoyable. I really loved this retrospective of John Scalzi's blog. Even if you've been reading The Whatever for some time, I'd still recommend it. You'll find some good new stuff in here, and let's face it - the length of most posts make them ideal bathroom reading. Uncle John's Bathroom Reader takes on a whole new meaning...

This is the second volume of posts taken from Scalzi's Whatever site. This volume's subjects range far and wide, as opposed to the first volume You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing, which was dedicated to posts about, well, Writing. This also means there's no overlap between the two books, and thus you have a second helping of what John delivers up on a daily basis at his site. The posts here, which are really essays both long and short, are just as funny and sarcastic as those in the earlier book - the one here on cheese had me rolling on the floor laughing - and also just as thoughtful and insightful. Scalzi has some strong opinions about a lot of subjects, from politics to marriage and child raising, and these opinions come through loud and clear. John has an inimitable style that makes for very easy reading while being quite informative, and usually these essays are quite logical and well thought out. All this makes for a very enjoyable read while at the same time making you do a bit of thinking. However, more so in this volume than the first, I found there was something lacking from this book, which is alluded to in the title of this volume, the thing that makes John's site required daily reading, namely all the comments he gets on his posts, many of which are just as interesting as the original post. Now obviously it would have been a major task to include some of these comments (just getting permission from all the various contributors would be a daunting endeavor), but still, I missed them. There are a couple of these comments printed here, specifically the winners in a small contest John ran on his site for the best examples of `hate' mail (alas, my own entry apparently didn't make the grade), and these are certainly interesting in their own right, but they give no indication of the broad range of the typical comments on his essays. Still, books of essays are extremely rare today, and darned few of them can approach the level of both entertainment and thoughtfulness found here. If you haven't read Scalzi before, or know him only from his fiction books, give this one a try - and then head to his site for even more goodness. ---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)