Agent Palmer

Of all things Geek. I am…

Spoiler Free Review

Spoiler Free Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

The Gum Thief Wears the Rose-Colored Glasses of Nostalgia Well

Roger is not where he wants to be, working at Staples well past the age where that would have been noble. Bethany is Roger’s much younger co-worker who discovers that he’s a writer, or at least he’s attempting to be. What follows is a collection of letters and emails written by the characters that move the story along revealing the world as we know it.

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Did Anderegg’s Nerds reveal Tom Bombadil to be my Shibboleth?

“Hostility towards nerds and geeks wastes a lot of human capital and impoverishes everyone in the process.” Speaking as someone who has taken his share of this hostility, it’s never easy to bear the brunt of it, but at least thanks in part to David Anderegg, Ph.D. and his book Nerds, I understand where it came from.

Even if it comes from a dark place and is always unwarranted.

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Genius & Anxiety Sets the Record Straight on a Perilous Century

“In a political climate where anti-Semitism is resurgent and revisionism goes unchallenged, this history is a counterpoint to the fake news and false assumptions. From the humble hamburger to the space rocket, everything has a Jewish reason.”

The last paragraph on the inside dust jacket for Genius & Anxiety by Norman Lebrecht is not only the reason for its being, it is also a reason to open its pages.

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Take a Look in the Book of the Path Dr. Seuss Took

Apparently, I did not know Dr. Seuss. I thought I did. I thought I knew that he wrote a lot of books and that his real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel (Ted Geisel works when playing trivia night) and that he wasn’t just a writer but an illustrator as well.

That’s barely the tip of the iceberg.

If that’s also all you know, or even if you know more than that, it’s worth picking up Becoming Dr. Seuss by the biographer Brian Jay Jones, to get the whole story.

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