Scan barcode
valjeanval's review against another edition
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
I always enjoy Scalzi blogs, though the time period made this collection pretty hard to enjoy. It’s a stark reminder that our country could have taken a better path.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death, Grief, Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, Sexual assault, Suicide, Violence, Death, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Transphobia, and Sexism
cabridges's review against another edition
4.0
[Disclaimer: I received an advance NetGalley copy for an honest review.]
Whenever a major event happens in the news, particularly when it has to do with politics, the world of publishing, science fiction, or puffed-up whiny manboys who are alarmed that women are standing up straight and talking right out in public, I head to science fiction writer John Scalzi's 20-year-old, "Whatever," to see if he's written about it.
More often than not, he has. More often than not, his posts are smart, funny, sarcastic, and insightful.
"Virtue Signalling and Other Heresies" is the latest collection of blog posts to Whatever, covering the last five years with special attention to the mess in the White House since 2016. My beliefs on politics -- and feminism, and treating people with respect, and general ethical behavior -- line up with this so reading the posts again was cathartic and depressing and fun. Scalzi is not one to suffer fools or hide his opinions and he lets fly again here, although since the election some of them have been more in sorrow than in anger.
Partly because of that he chose to break the essays up so there wouldn't be one "hard slog" during the Trump years, running them mostly in alphabetical order instead. I understand this, but where on the site itself you expect to get a mishmash of subjects from day to day I thought it made the book as a whole more disjointed as the posts lurch back and forth.
But you'll get his thoughts on the election, and Trump, and Republicans and Democrats. Also his family, writing, the business of writing, why "Avengers: Infinity War" left him flat even though he thought it was amazingly done, why you shouldn't let your child name your cat, why using "they" as a singular pronoun is just fine, Muhammed Ali, and whatever else occurs to him.
"Virtue Signalling" is another wonderful dive back into John Scalzi's mind and that's always a fun place to visit.
Whenever a major event happens in the news, particularly when it has to do with politics, the world of publishing, science fiction, or puffed-up whiny manboys who are alarmed that women are standing up straight and talking right out in public, I head to science fiction writer John Scalzi's 20-year-old, "Whatever," to see if he's written about it.
More often than not, he has. More often than not, his posts are smart, funny, sarcastic, and insightful.
"Virtue Signalling and Other Heresies" is the latest collection of blog posts to Whatever, covering the last five years with special attention to the mess in the White House since 2016. My beliefs on politics -- and feminism, and treating people with respect, and general ethical behavior -- line up with this so reading the posts again was cathartic and depressing and fun. Scalzi is not one to suffer fools or hide his opinions and he lets fly again here, although since the election some of them have been more in sorrow than in anger.
Partly because of that he chose to break the essays up so there wouldn't be one "hard slog" during the Trump years, running them mostly in alphabetical order instead. I understand this, but where on the site itself you expect to get a mishmash of subjects from day to day I thought it made the book as a whole more disjointed as the posts lurch back and forth.
But you'll get his thoughts on the election, and Trump, and Republicans and Democrats. Also his family, writing, the business of writing, why "Avengers: Infinity War" left him flat even though he thought it was amazingly done, why you shouldn't let your child name your cat, why using "they" as a singular pronoun is just fine, Muhammed Ali, and whatever else occurs to him.
"Virtue Signalling" is another wonderful dive back into John Scalzi's mind and that's always a fun place to visit.
libra17's review against another edition
5.0
I took Virtue Signaling out of the library a few weeks ago when I happened to notice the quote on the inside cover while browsing the display of new books:
'Virtue signaling' is a phrase the dim and bigoted use when they want to discount other people expressing the idea that it would be nice if we could all be essentially and fundamentally decent to each other. - John Scalzi
I picked up the book and decided it was coming home with me right then.
Virtue Signaling is a book of selected posts from Scalzi's blog, called Whatever. I do not read Whatever, have no familiarity with Scalzi's writing beyond Fuzzy Nation (which I read earlier this year), and actually had no idea that he even existed before that. That being said, I went into Virtue Signaling having no idea just how much I would enjoy the kind of frank, thoughtful style has in his nonfiction writing/commentary. This is a book that I ended up purchasing for myself, just so I could highlight the passages and even entire essays that really resonate with me. I really loved this book. It is something I would be happy to recommend to others, and Scalzi is an author that I am very likely to further explore.
'Virtue signaling' is a phrase the dim and bigoted use when they want to discount other people expressing the idea that it would be nice if we could all be essentially and fundamentally decent to each other. - John Scalzi
I picked up the book and decided it was coming home with me right then.
Virtue Signaling is a book of selected posts from Scalzi's blog, called Whatever. I do not read Whatever, have no familiarity with Scalzi's writing beyond Fuzzy Nation (which I read earlier this year), and actually had no idea that he even existed before that. That being said, I went into Virtue Signaling having no idea just how much I would enjoy the kind of frank, thoughtful style has in his nonfiction writing/commentary. This is a book that I ended up purchasing for myself, just so I could highlight the passages and even entire essays that really resonate with me. I really loved this book. It is something I would be happy to recommend to others, and Scalzi is an author that I am very likely to further explore.
paladinjane's review
4.0
Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
This is another volume of selected essays originally published on Scalzi's blog Whatever. Specifically, these are essays from the last 5 years in which he discusses politics and various socially and culturally significant events, plus a few other essays reflecting on family and friends. I happen to largely agree with Scalzi on political and social issues, so I found this book highly enjoyable and entertaining. If you don't like the political and social views he regularly expresses on his blog and on Twitter, then you won't enjoy this, a book in which he does nothing but express those views.
I found this volume to be generally cathartic and highly relevant. In the midst of so much chaos and vitriol in the news and on social media, it's nice to read a bunch of sane essays.
I did dislike the organization of this book. The essays are presented in alphabetical order, which was slightly disorienting when I would have expected them to be either grouped by topic or presented in chronological order. My disorientation stems from the fact that the commentaries on the 2016 election are effectively out of order. At the same time, I completely understand Scalzi's choice not to organize by topic, because yes, the Trump section would have been a pretty depressing slog.
This is another volume of selected essays originally published on Scalzi's blog Whatever. Specifically, these are essays from the last 5 years in which he discusses politics and various socially and culturally significant events, plus a few other essays reflecting on family and friends. I happen to largely agree with Scalzi on political and social issues, so I found this book highly enjoyable and entertaining. If you don't like the political and social views he regularly expresses on his blog and on Twitter, then you won't enjoy this, a book in which he does nothing but express those views.
I found this volume to be generally cathartic and highly relevant. In the midst of so much chaos and vitriol in the news and on social media, it's nice to read a bunch of sane essays.
I did dislike the organization of this book. The essays are presented in alphabetical order, which was slightly disorienting when I would have expected them to be either grouped by topic or presented in chronological order. My disorientation stems from the fact that the commentaries on the 2016 election are effectively out of order. At the same time, I completely understand Scalzi's choice not to organize by topic, because yes, the Trump section would have been a pretty depressing slog.
More...