The Age of Earthquakes caught my attention for its very noisy and jerky way of communicating its messages, differing in whether it delivered a few words and a picture, or covering an entire page in text. When I first read it it felt powerful because the different uses of text was jarring and the claims were implicit and targeted at the reader with personal pronouns. However, as I neared the end of the book this impact lessened and I felt that the book lost the initial speed it had.

Although unique in how it presents its ideas, the ideas are quickfired and short, and not explored in depth long enough to give the reader an idea of the message the author is communicating, only the general idea. It’s fast pace and topic hopping gives the reader a rush at first, but after that rush is over there is nothing to keep their attention, due to the lack of reinforcement of the ideas it brushed over. I found this frustrating because the topics touched upon had me hooked with its ideas of how social media has affected humans not just individually, but socially and culturally. But after a while, it started to sound like rambling.

However, the book was probably written this way on purpose to symbolize the internet itself and how we obtain information. The internet gives you a rush of information, reliable or not, than flies off to another URL or tab in Google Chrome. The book mimics that, giving quick irrelevant facts and making sure it is extreme in its views, rarely providing a counter argument, if it all. Although I feel that it hurt the potential message the book could have had, I appreciate the fact that the speed and style of the book resemble the internet in an uncanny way.

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Artwork credit to Nathan Batson