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Title: Read Pattern Recognition instead
Review: This is a formulaic love story set in what is supposed to be a research institution. The author has clearly done a lot of reading and found a lot of trivia about fads, and drops short infobites about fads in history into the text throughout. Unfortunately the plot moves slowly, the writing is competant in a breezey way and the researchers don't appear to do any real research. As a researcher myself I was disappointed in the shallow portrayal of science. Apart from the rather unlikely ways in which the main characters conduct their research (going to the public library to find general books on sheep? Sorting newspaper clippings but never having any idea of a theoretical approach?) there are just silly factual mistakes, like when the protagonist is said to have a double major in her PhD.William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is about the same general ideas but is much better written with a more engaging and less clichéed plot.
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