Max Barry’s ”Lexicon” is a book I’ve wanted to read for years, probably since it came out and I saw that the reviews about it were great. I eagerly picked it up as my fifth book for the half Cannonball, having breezed through the first four during a rare period in my life when I both had time and energy to read.
That energy disappeared while I was reading Lexicon. I don’t think it was Lexicon’s fault. A book about words and their power, filled with action and mysterious characters, that had all the right ingredients to be amazing cannot possibly have had that effect on me. Yet I found myself getting bored with the book, my attention span getting shorter by the page. I could only read a few pages at a time before going off to do something else, which made the frequent flashback parts of the book all the more confusing because I never seemed to remember where and when I was when I picked up the book again.
I should have given this book the attention it deserved. It is, after all, a well-written book, with compelling characters and a very interesting concept (although, regrettably, that tends to play second fiddle to the aforementioned action sequences). It’s an easy, sometimes even funny read. But maybe that was part of the problem for me: that it didn’t take itself seriously enough. It may have kept my attention a bit more if it were heavier on the linguistics and the power of words than on action. Still, it is a book I’d generally recommend to people.
I didn’t read your review yet, because I, too, just got this from the library, surely also because I read good reviews on some Cannonball moons ago. And I’m amused by this, because I feel like this happens quite often to me, that I’ll be about to read a book that’s been on my TBR for years, only to find that someone beat me to it by a week or so.
I know what you mean, that happens to me too! But in my case it sometimes reminds me to pick up that book already :)
I received this as a CBR Book Exchange gift a few years ago and my father promptly borrowed it. I haven’t seen it since. I need to get it back because I still want to read it.
Haha…I know the feeling. About a year ago I, too, lent a book to my dad that I hadn’t read. I don’t even remember what the title of the book was anymore.
I read this a few years ago and really enjoyed it. It was so original, smart, fun, and well written. But yes, the action scenes were way more interesting to read than the detailed bits about language.
I completely agree with your description of the book but the author lost me during the action scenes. I wish he’d have gone deeper into how language affects our way of thinking. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing :)