Word: powerbooks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...didn't know that Jeanette Winterson, author of The Powerbook, is actually considered to be quite an evil, pretentious and annoying person by most of the publishing world. But I assumed as much, for Winterson's leaps into multiple story and time lines, and her melodramatic attempts at eastern-sounding philosophy, are tremendously ostentatious and tremendously unappealing...
...Powerbook reads like a work that cannot get over itself. Yes, the premise is interesting; a woman opens up her e-mail only to be transported into various places across the world in assorted times, from Ancient Rome, to the Medieval Era, to a strange pre-industrial world. Genders change, lovers change, sexuality changes. The protagonist is at once male and female, hetero and homosexual, and has some great sex scenes inducing readers to reconsider their fantasy location...
With short, free-verse style chapters that have catchy titles in cool fonts that are perfect for the modern reader who possesses only the concentration required to endure short commercial breaks, The Powerbook should be an interesting read. There's even the required internet allusions throughout the book, including lines like, "There's no Netscape Navigator to help me find my way through life." But formula is not everything...
...biggest problem The Powerbook has is that Winterson thinks she can successfully shift time and place with a simple chapter heading. As a result, the book becomes entirely confusing; it is impossible to tell when the protagonist has changed age or gender, for often the protagonist will remain the same but the time, place and lover will be different. If Winterson's intent is to involve the reader in an interactive hunt to chase down the three or four occasionally similar story-lines, then she succeeds...
...restocking the boardroom and labs with trusted NeXTers, ending the belated effort to build a market for Mac clones, spiking ancillary projects like the Newton palmtop and the Claris software subsidiary and replacing the bewildering tangle of product lines (raise your hand if you know the difference between the PowerBook 3400c/180 and the PowerBook 1400cs/166) with just four: the G3 desktop and laptop machines for the Mac-friendly publishing and graphics communities; the iMac desktop consumer machine; and the last pillar of Jobs' four-prong strategy, the consumer laptop iBook...