{"id":864,"date":"2015-03-23T15:20:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T23:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=864"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:32:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:32:13","slug":"review-lexicon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/23\/review-lexicon\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Lexicon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/16158596\" style=\"float: left;padding-right: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1356080172m\/16158596.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Lexicon\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/16158596\">Lexicon<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/18741\">Max Barry<\/a><br \/>\n      My rating: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1235390611\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>      Went to the library to pick up a book, saw this one on the \u201cNew\u201d shelf. How come no one told me Max Barry had a new novel out? I need to update my Google alerts.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s about words and more specifically linguistics and even more specifically neurolinguistics (actually, psycholinguistics, but let\u2019s not split hairs). Even better! The NLP thing taken to it\u2019s inevitable end, nice. I\u2019m all in.<\/p>\n<p>21 hours later and I\u2019m all done. Max Barry knows how to pace a thriller, doesn\u2019t he. With just enough pseudo-science thrown in to keep this from being a Lee Child joint but not so much that you feel you\u2019re getting Dan Browned.<\/p>\n<p>However, once I stepped back, found myself trying to explain the book to my wife, I realized it was a bit thin. A blurb on the book jacket used the phrased \u201cweaponized Chomskian linguistics.\u201d But no, not really. More like J.K Rowling\u2019s magic-word-creation trope used to good effect. Another blurb said \u201cElmore Leonard high out of his min on <i>Snowcrash<\/i>.\u201d Not really.<\/p>\n<p>I realize I\u2019m more reviewing blurbs here than the book. Fine, whatever. My point is\u2014it\u2019s better to go into Lexicon with no expectations, because then it\u2019s a mighty good read. But you\u2019ve read this review now, the shape of the book is already haunting your expectations like a ghost. I\u2019m programming you. <\/p>\n<p>Unwittingly, though. I\u2019m just saying\u2014not as deep as <i>Jennifer Government<\/i>, or even <i>Company<\/i>, but it has their paranoia and Barry way-ups the thrill ride, so worth it.<\/p>\n<p>      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1235390611\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lexicon by Max Barry My rating: 3 of 5 stars Went to the library to pick up a book, saw this one on the \u201cNew\u201d shelf. How come no one told me Max Barry had a new novel out? I need to update my Google alerts. And it\u2019s about words and more specifically linguistics and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/23\/review-lexicon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Review: Lexicon&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-dW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":865,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions\/865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}