Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: Pattern Recognition (a novel), by William Gibson As soon as I finished reading this novel, I started back at the beginning and read the whole thing again. I liked it that much. I’m surprised I didn’t read this earlier. I loved Gibson’s “Neuromancer”, and read both sequels, “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”. “Virtual Light” is one of my favorite books of all time, and I re-read it about once a year. But its sequels, “Idoru” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, left me cold. I didn’t connect with the characters, and the plots seemed muddied. But, after hearing Gibson speak earlier this year, I thought I’d get back on track again, and I’m glad I did. The main character is Cayce Pollard, a 30ish American woman with a strange gift-slash-curse: she is acutely sensitive to product logos. On the plus side, she can immediately tell if a new logo “works”, so she is in high demand from advertisers willing to pay her big bucks for her opinion before launching their ad campaigns. Th...