Ian Bogost has reviewed Awkwardness, combining a generally positive assessment with some fair criticisms. Also, it turns out that I am, awkwardly enough, somewhat object-oriented in the book.
4 thoughts on “Awkwardness: An Object-Oriented Perspective”
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An und für sich 
I really enjoyed the book, which I was able to ingest easily on Christmas Eve. Makes me eager to write one of these Zero books too.
Good to hear — my goal was to write something that would be a pleasant, moderately thought-provoking afternoon read.
It was not entirely clear to me how the discussion was “object-oriented” – is it just a cool phrase to throw around now to attract attention? Is anyone talking about “social orders” and “lives of concepts” an object-oriented thinker? Have we all been object-oriented all along and did not know it?
[speaking, of course, as a non-playful and generally trollish hater of all things OOP]
Also, I didn’t get the business about “dependent clauses” and “magical commas” – is there one good style in English and the rest is just nonsensical “academese”? I know my English teacher always annoyingly suggested that I write in simple sentences and not use subjective (offering no explanation as to why I shouldn’t it and why, if these things in fact exist in English, I shouldn’t use them to my advantage), but according to this standard Proust was a horrible writer and an “accessible” Bogost is a brilliant one…