The word exchange

The Word Exchange takes place in a world where people are using their handheld devices (they're called Memes) almost exclusively and books and the written word are disappearing. Memes communicate and with an implant can help you react to what's going on around you, hailing a taxi or finding

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specific words for you. Ana works for her father Doug who runs one of the last printers. They are currently printing a dictionary (NADEL) but Doug disappears. With his assistant Bart (who's in love with Ana) Anana (she's called both) attempts to find her father. The search is complicated when people start coming down with aphasia or word flu. They lose the ability to think or speak words and eventually die.
The concept is clever and I felt I should have liked this book more than I actually did. For one thing there seemed to be a need to actually use every word in a dictionary as part of the story. I found myself looking up words, but lost that battle when the word flu struck. The author brilliantly starts using imaginary words to illustrate the word flu, sort of like the poem Jabberwocky (Alice in Wonderland is a theme throughout the book). This makes sentences harder to understand but at the same time illustrates the terror the person with aphasia is going through.
The story is slow in parts and I didn't like the footnotes or other literary devices that seemed too cute. The story is told through the POV's of Ana and Bart (he uses a journal). I happened to like Bart better as Ana was a little too much a stereotypical dizzy blonde at times. But the idea that the Luddites are the heroes is attractive and it is a book worth reading. I received this as an ARC for an honest review.

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It's sometime in the near future, and everyone is addicted to a gadget called the Meme: basically a smartphone that can, to a certain extent, read your mind. One of the Meme's most popular new apps (or "limns") is the Word Exchange, which instantly senses when you don't quite know a word you've

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just heard or read and provides the definition for you, for two cents a word. But things are more sinister than they appear, as the company that makes the Meme has been buying up the rights to dictionaries, potentially putting language itself under corporate control. And then there's the mysterious "word flu," which makes the speech of the people it infects increasingly unintelligible...

This is another one of those books that I feel I should have liked much more than I actually did. The premise is fun and imaginative, even if most the details are deeply ridiculous. There's a slightly technophobic vibe to it all that I don't really sympathize with, but the novel is tapping into a very worthwhile conversation about language and thought and technology, and the present and future interplay between all of those things. There's also some nerdy language, philosophy, and literary references, which is something that generally appeals to me.

And yet, I could never quite get into the story and stay there. All kinds of things, large and small, kept irritating me and interfering with my ability to suspend my disbelief. The biggest of these is the coy "little-did-I-know-then!"-style narration, which annoyed me to a surprising extent, turning what might have been a suspenseful eagerness to find out what's going on into a frustrated desire for the narrator/main character to just knock it off and tell me, already. And then, when she finally does start explaining things, she tends to do so by means of giant chunks of exposition. Actually, a lot of things about the main character bugged me, if only because too much of her behavior -- e.g. when she tells the truth and when she lies, who she presses for information and who she passively accepts cryptic remarks from -- seems dictated more by the needs of the plot than by actual characterization.

But I honestly cannot tell for sure how much of what bugged me or failed to satisfy me here stems from real, serious problems with the writing, and how much of it is me just being in an especially nitpicky mood and failing to be able to make the leap to "just go with it" that stories if this nature -- that is, full of improbable technology and crazy conspiracies -- require.

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I both really enjoyed and was really frustrated by this book. The near-futuristic dependence on digital devices was frighteningly plausible, the lexicographical subject interested me, &c., but the characters all were sort of one-note and annoying, the chunks of exposition and the "long reveal"

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bugged me after a while, and I wanted more at the end. A mixed bag.

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“The end of words would mean the end of memory and thought. In other words, our past and future.”

In Alena Graedon’s alternate history literary thriller, The Word Exchange, the printed word has all but disappeared in less than four short years. Set in New York in 2016,Just weeks before the

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publication of the third and final printed North American Dictionary of the English Language(NADEL), its curator, Doug disappears leaving behind a cryptic message for his daughter, Anana. Concerned and confused, Anana, with the support of a colleague, Bart, begins to search for her father, and stumbles upon a shocking conspiracy that threatens to destroy the very foundation of civilisation – language.

The population in The Word Exchange depends on ‘super’smart personal devices, known as Memes, for almost every want and need and to perpetuate that reliance, the company, Synchronic, responsible for the devices has recognised and exploited the profitability in owning not only the means of communication, (ie the Memes) but also language itself through the Word Exchange. Synchronic does this by essentially forcing the development of a new language, but one without any rules or context, thus forcing users to consult (and pay) the Exchange in order to communicate. Only a handful of people, including Anana’s father, Doug, object, and predict disaster but it is too late when meme users begin to develop ‘Word Flu’, essentially aphasia (the loss and the comprehension and formulation of language) that leads to more serious individual and societal complications.

The Word Exchange is, in part, a cautionary tale about society’s increasing reliance on digital communication and information, and its possible impact on language when paired with corporate greed. If you are appalled when the Oxford Dictionary updates with words like ‘vacay’ and ‘phablet’ and insist on spelling every word in full when you send a text message, The Word Exchange will leave you feeling horrified, yet vindicated.

I think The Word Exchange is both an ambitious, complex, and clever novel and a frustrating, vexatious, and pretentious read. The concept, while not unique, is intriguing and creative but for me the execution was largely alienating. The pace is almost glacial til halfway through and littered with incomplete info dumps, Anana is a weak and annoying heroine who uses disruptive footnotes in her ‘journal’, and the prose is wildly overwritten, even allowing for intentional irony.
But for all that there are moments of brilliance in the narrative, like when, for example, we begin to understand and relate to Graedon’s premise as Bart’s aphasia progresses and made up words proliferate, stripping his journal writing of context and meaning.

I am, in all honesty, torn. The Word Exchange is simultaneously too much, and not enough, an intelligent story but somehow lacking in common sense. If you are curious, I do think it is worth the attempt, but I wouldn’t judge anyone who gives up on it.

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A clever, ambitious story with some astute and provocative meditations on language, communication, and technology. Graedon has a great gift of style but the narrative begins to unravel about a third of the way through.

Sets out to show what a virus in the literature world can o to people's language and dictionary plus the introduction of future tools that aid communication are illustrated.A bit like Farenheit 451 but in a 2080s setting ( my guess). Not really captivating to read, but clever.

The book takes place in the not too distant future and may be characterized as a literary sci-fi novel. Technology reigns supreme and rules the lives of most individuals, making ordinary tasks much easier through the use of memes which connect directly into the mind of the user.

The story reminded

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me somewhat of a more literary and serious version of the Tuesday Next books, although there are still word puns and a lot of play on language. In fact, language is what drives this book and it's obvious from reading it that it will appeal more to individuals who love words and have a better vocabulary. That's to be expected, since the main characters' line of work is creating the dictionary (these would tend to be highly verbal people, wouldn't they?).

The book is well written, and I liked the construction of the 26 chapters to begin with the corresponding letter of the English alphabet, along with a definition of a word that begins with that letter. This is a great book for people who love words and enjoy wordplay.

Note: I received a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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So are you ready for a suspenseful technological thriller about dictionaries? Your wait is over...The Word Exchange is here! The story takes place in a not too distant future set mainly in New York City. Books and magazines are increasingly rare as most folks have become increasingly dependent on

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their Memes, a handheld device that is so intuitive that it can order your favorite take out as soon as it senses you are hungry. What seems like an incredibly convenient device becomes more and more of a crutch as it takes on more and more of the routine thinking tasks of it's owners.

There is a minority of people who are warning of the dangers of this dependency on technology and machines, but they are not taken too seriously. One of those people is Doug Johnson who has been laboring away to complete what is to be the last printed edition of the North American Dictionary of the English Language. His daughter, Anana Johnson works with him and is the one who discovers he is missing one late night shortly before the dictionary is destined to hit the shelves. Left behind are some cryptic clues addressed to "Alice," the code name Doug had assigned to her in case anything untoward might occur.

And perhaps the situation is even more sinister than it seems. The Synchronic Corporation that markets the device called the Meme has an even more advanced device waiting in the wings, the Nautilus, but first the company markets a game, which becomes very popular, in which the players make up definitions of new words, mostly random combinations of letters, and then vote on the definitions that they like best. The game was originally developed by Max, the live in boyfriend who ditched Ana right before he and his buddies sold their start-up for tons of Synchronic's money.

Ana's increasingly frantic search for answers takes her to the bowels of the building where the Dictionary offices are, and she is shocked to witness the destruction of dictionaries as well as assembly line workers reassigning new meanings to some of the words in the online version of the dictionary. Some are wearing the Nautilus device. At the same time she is beginning to feel sick, and notices that others are experiencing the same symptoms. Those symptoms include the unknowing use of nonsense words in conversation, and in some cases the complete loss of speech capabilities. The "word flu" virus in the devices has leaped to a new host: the device users themselves.

And either she is experiencing paranoia as well as the flu, or there are some sinister types out to get Ana too, as she discovers more clues that might resolve the mystery of what happened to Doug.

This book is so carefully structured that it is a delight to unravel. The vocabulary of rare and unusual words is prevalent enough in the text that I feel the author must have wanted to remind all us readers how handy that dictionary is. Ms. Graedon also integrates the philosophy of language and it's relationship to culture, communication and mankind's sense of history into the dialogue of Doug's friends as well as the conversations with Doug that she recalls.

Lots to ponder on several levels but the book is also enriched by the sweet love story that slowly evolves between Ana and her co-worker Bart. Slowly that is, for Ana, though shy Bart was smitten the minute he saw her.

I received an e-copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley.

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I requested this book because the description compared it to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, which I loved. I'm a huge fan of books about books (and/or the English language), but I tried not to set my hopes too high to avoid being disappointed. I needn't have worried about that. This book was

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very, very good. It's not exactly like Penumbra -- I wouldn't want it to be -- but its tone of reverence toward words and the search for knowledge is similar.

Like all good dystopian novels, this one is terrifying because of how closely it reflects the direction in which we're headed. In the book, a Meme (a sort of futuristic smartphone-esque device) can anticipate a user's desires before she actually gives it a command (e.g., a Meme will hail you a cab as soon as you mentally make the decision to take one). The other day, I opened the "Maps" application on my iPhone and was shocked to see that it had imported addresses from my most recent communications. It's like my phone was saying, "Your friend sent you his address in Syracuse so you could mail him a Christmas gift. Are you trying to find directions to his house? Or maybe to your brother's address, which he texted to you last week?" It was unsettling to think that my phone was anticipating my needs, but I was more impressed than suspicious. In The Word Exchange, Alena Graedon takes things a step or two further; her technological creations actually sync with their users' genetic makeup, so it's hard to tell where the device ends and the user begins. Who is really in charge then? And how far are we from this?

I don't mean to sound alarmist or paranoid, because I'm not. I realize that this is a work of fiction. However, you do have to admit that we've already sacrificed a large amount of personal privacy in technology's name. And then there's the whole language factor. You don't realize how much you rely on language until you watch people lose it. It's frightening to imagine a world like the one Anana finds herself in; what's scarier is how close we already are. I doubt we'll ever find ourselves at that point, but I am curious to see how close we finally come.

The book consists of twenty six "chapters," each one headed with a dictionary entry (alphabetically, of course). Some of the definitions are traditional, some are directly related to the plot, and some are made up -- a testament to the ever-changing nature of words. At just under 400 pages, the book isn't short, but I couldn't put it down. I kept telling myself, "One more letter before bed," but that didn't go so well for me.

All in all: The nerdiest -- and by far most interesting -- thriller I've read. Well written, smart, and compelling. To find all three of those in one book is rare.

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I would like to thank NetGalley and Doubleday for the opportunity to read this e-ARC. Although I received the ebook for free, that in no way impacts my review. Given the challenge of this undertaking I am giving this book 3 stars.

A dystopian novel for the digital age, The Word Exchange offers an

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inventive, suspenseful, and decidedly original vision of the dangers of technology and of the enduring power of the printed word.


In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted “death of print” has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are things of the past, and we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but also have become so intuitive that they hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange.
Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL), where Doug is hard at work on the last edition that will ever be printed. Doug is a staunchly anti-Meme, anti-tech intellectual who fondly remembers the days when people used email (everything now is text or videoconference) to communicate—or even actually spoke to one another, for that matter. One evening, Doug disappears from the NADEL offices, leaving a single written clue: ALICE. It’s a code word he devised to signal if he ever fell into harm’s way. And thus begins Anana’s journey down the proverbial rabbit hole . . .
Joined by Bart, her bookish NADEL colleague, Anana’s search for Doug will take her into dark basements and subterranean passageways; the stacks and reading rooms of the Mercantile Library; and secret meetings of the underground resistance, the Diachronic Society. As Anana penetrates the mystery of her father’s disappearance and a pandemic of decaying language called “word flu” spreads, The Word Exchange becomes a cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a meditation on the high cultural costs of digital technology.

I was very excited by the book blurb, thinking I'd finally found a book that combined lexicography, possibly some etymology, and a modern novel rife with action, suspense, and romance. Sadly the book did not fulfill my admittedly high expectations. Had it been shorter, and not as rife with examples of aphasia and the "word flu," it might have touched me more. But alas it did not, or at least not until the final quarter or less.

While the premise of the story is very promising, the delivery quickly became far too bogged down with demonstrations of the aphasia that characters were suffering from, and then made things substantially worse with further examples of the "word flu." Aphasia is essentially a disruption in a person's ability to understand and formulate words/language, and in this case it was demonstrated by people making up nonsensical 'word salad' that was then interspersed with real words, leaving the reader to try to figure out the speaker's intended meaning. Though I understand this was done to demonstrate how difficult it was for the uninfected, or in the early stages of the illness, I still felt that it was relied upon far too heavily. Had much of it been cut out I feel the book would have had more impact, maintained the pacing, demonstrated the risks inherent with becoming dependent upon digital technology, all while sustaining a level of suspense.

On it's own the "word flu" wouldn't be so challenging to read about, but as the level of aphasia increases concomitantly with the severity of the "word flu," it become, for me at least, a tremendously frustrating read. To the point where I found myself struggling to make it through the book - because the aphasia impacted my ability to understand the characters, or even care about what were purportedly the major relationships.

Anana, Ana for short, goes looking for her beloved father, and boss, Doug. What she finds confuses her to no end, not to mention scaring her silly. She makes rather witless choices for someone who is supposed to be smart, and while that's to be understood given her fear for her father, it doesn't justify her continually poor choices. Before he went 'missing' her father told her to avoid using her Meme (think of a Siri that is both psychic and on steroids), that they are dangerous to everyone. She hears this from a few other trusted folks, but learns the hard way when to listen to those she respects for their wisdom and intelligence. He also told her to stay away from her ex-boyfriend Max, and even to avoid his own protégé, and Ana's friend, Bart. Hearing all this what does she do - she pines over Max and enlists Bart's help in trying to locate her father. She even drags Bart along to Thanksgiving dinner to act as a shield in an attempt to avoid telling her mother & grandparents about Max breaking up with her.

It is almost astounding that Ana survives the story at all, given her flailing about. She seems to be more of a danger to her father and others than not, even though she's just trying to locate her father to ensure his safety. In reality she would have been better off trusting others and looking to her own safety. There was no one thing in particular about Ana that left me feeling cold, yet that was just what happened. I only barely felt connected with her near the very final pages of the book, and that still may have had more to do with characters around her than with anything she herself did.

Of all the characters I found Bart to be the most likable. He was down to earth and came across as being real. He'd been carrying a torch for Ana for ages, certainly during the three years she'd been dating Max. Yet he never said anything, only supported her to the detriment of his own heart. Doug was also a cool character, and I mean that both ways. There's a lot more to him than meets the eye, and he is a loving father. His passion for language is clear, and certainly spoke to my own love of language.

As I mentioned at the start of this review, I think that the premise of this story has great potential, and real merit. Unfortunately I felt that this particular execution fell short of the mark. It almost felt as if there were two separate story lines competing throughout the book. And they both could have stayed, but they needed to be merged more cleanly for me to really enjoy them as a single story. To do that would have required some heavy editing, losing some extraneous side stories and shortening the book at the same time. All the same, this may just end up being be a very fascinating read, for the right people.

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This review is not spoiler-free.

I really wanted to love this book. I had this on my to-read shelf before it hit netgalley. The main idea is that the technology we're dependent on makes us even more dependent because it changes the English language and then it makes us sick. Clever idea but terrible

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execution.

The book is supposed to be the combination of Bart's journal and Ana's memories. Bart is a big fan of words no one actually uses. Early in his first chapter he describes Ana as a "variegated seraph". He also describes her as "Ana qua Ana is, basically flawlessness qua flawlessness, sui generis". Thank god my e-reader has a dictionary. But then he develops aphasia so it takes awhile to figure out if what you're reading is gibberish or just an overcomplicated word.

Ana really likes footnotes. While footnotes are useful in scholarly text, they're annoying in novels. It breaks up the flow of reading to go read the notes and you risk spoilers to learn nothing of use.

Ana is also an idiot. She is repeatedly told to not use the Meme, but she always has it on her. While her naivety is realistic (her Meme is her phone, ID, credit card and everything else at once. How would you cope?) you would think she'd get the message eventually. There's also the scene in the basement. She stumbles across strangers in the basement of her (and her father's) office building, sitting at tables in a deep trance with metal discs on their foreheads and they're reading nonsense symbols. It's creepy by itself but with everything else going on the scene before her is scary. Most people would get the heck out of there. But not our Ana. She sticks one of the discs on her forehead! And then once she does leave, she goes back into the creepy people in a trance room. If she didn't have major help, she wouldn't have lived to the end of the book.

The pacing is a huge issue. There's no world building. We're looking into a world 20+ years into the future but other than the Memes and driverless cars, little else in technology has changed. The book takes place over about 8 weeks, but most of it is about the first 2 or 3 weeks. The plot is a slow, slow burn and then there's an info dump at the end.

It took me 3 weeks to read this book (which is unusually slow for a book of this length). With most books I'm left sad it ended but with this I was relieved to finally be done with it.

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In the near future, glorified smart phones, called Memes have taken over our lives. The Memes are able to foresee our wants and needs in advance and perform such tasks as paying bills, calling cabs, and defining words automatically. As the technology advances, a contagious “word flu” takes over

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the United States as people become so dependent on their gadget that they are unable to speak. Two narrators, Anana and Bart, tell this somewhat confusing apocalyptic tale as they try to fight against losing their words and find Anana’s missing father. I thought this novel had an interesting premise and I could see it as somewhat cautionary tale (I WAS reading it on my Kindle and used the installed dictionary several times to look up unknown words), however I found it really boring at times and had to force myself to keep reading. The narrators had a tendency to get way off topic and would skip around in time so that I never really knew what was happening in the present and what had already occurred. I enjoyed the cleverness of the novel, but I just wish it had been more enjoyable to read. I received this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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I received a digital galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

First off, I am sure there is an audience for this book. It was just not for me. As a point of reference—and not that these books have anything in common, but—I also gave Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Alice Sebold’s

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The Lovely Bones the same low rating, and there were obviously plenty of people who found those books nothing short of amazing. So I hope that my personal opinion won’t dissuade anyone interested in this book.

I did enjoy the first half of the story. I understood the author’s intent with the thesaurus-style writing, and as a lover of words, I actually appreciated the opportunity to increase my vocabulary. The footnotes however, were a chore on the Kindle, and I am not sure they added much of anything. There were just so many.

I thought the tone of the book was interesting in the first half. There wasn’t a lot necessarily going on (widely introspective), but the author had set a compelling stage, and the story worked and was entertaining. But as the book progressed – or in this case didn’t – I simply became bored. It seemed that the same information was being given over and over, just from different viewpoints, or just adding a little more to what was already known. I also felt that Ana and Bart had too similar of voices to be individual narrators of the story. As the “word flu” progressed and ordinary words were replaced with nonsense words it just became too tedious for me to read.

…but I did finish. The ending was also underwhelming for me, I guess because I hadn’t grown attached enough to any character to really care about what happened to them. When that happens no turn of plot can save it for me. I liked so many ideas in this story it just wasn’t delivered in a form that I was excited about. I wish I could be honest in a less harsh way, because again, I am sure there are people who are going to love this book.

One final note: I would definitely read another book by this author in the future. Alena Graedon proves she can write, this particular story just didn’t work for me as a whole.

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Near-future apocalyptic fiction which will give users of electronic devices the willies.

A few years from now, tablets have morphed into Memes, devices which use neural pathways to provide information before the user even realizes it's needed. One consequence has been a growing dependence on the

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Word Exchange, a pay-as-you go dictionary which is replacing memories of word meanings. As the Meme manufacturer buys up rights to dictionaries and announces a major new hardware version of the wildly popular device, a handful of lexicographers begin to warn the public about the dangers of the Memes, which they fear is responsible for the new "word flu", which replaces random words with gibberish in its victims language and can lead to muteness or death. Multiple vectors seem to be at work: neurolinks, electronic transfer between devices, and even human speech. The story is told from the viewpoint of several people, especially the daughter of the editor of the last print dictionary expected to ever be published. The editor has vanished, and as his daughter searches for him, critics of the Meme come under violent attack.

This is a fascinating exploration of what we're willing to risk in our quest for instant information and communication, and how our memories and brains might change as we increasingly rely on devices to remember for us. There is an interesting analysis of what the loss of our language might mean for ourselves and for society - that is, if society could even survive without a means of reflecting on the past or remembering into the future. Because the main characters work in the stratosphere of language, the book is cleverly peppered with terms I needed to check on my Kindle, and each time I did so, I wondered whether I used to know these words. Certainly, technology is heading in the direction of Memes (iMemes anyone?), and I found it interesting and instructive to contemplate the long-term consequences of our growing reliance on devices other than our own brains.

A successful debut and a book to ponder later.

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In her new novel, Alena Graedon describes a near future when a computer virus merges with the biological kind resulting in dire consequences for humanity. This is particularly disturbing since we can easily see the seeds have already been sown widely. Technology has evolved dramatically from tubes

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to typewriters to faxes to computers and evidence suggests that this is altering the way our brains are wired—especially developing brains. We have already gone into the realm of wearable technology (e.g., Google Glass) and implantable medical devices are on the horizon. It takes no great imaginative leap to predict that the merger of technology with biology will have great appeal—not just for medical purposes. Indeed, these gadgets have an addictive quality that can easily be seen today in all public spaces, often threatening traditional communication and sometimes even risking life and limb (i.e., texting while driving). Graedon cleverly makes these associations while predicting that the greatest threat may be to our ability to communicate using words. She effectively makes the case for the importance of preserving language: “The end of language would mean the end of memory and thought” and shows us what this could look like in her thriller.

Ana Johnson, much like Alice in Wonderland, descends into a rabbit hole precipitated by the sudden disappearance of her father, who represents the analogue world of words as a dictionary publisher. She suspects skullduggery and sets out to solve the mystery in an increasingly threatening environment where everything is rapidly deteriorating because of the spread of a word virus characterized by progressive aphasia and death. Graedon effectively solves the unique dialogue problem of characters occasionally spouting nonsense words by providing contextual meaning, although this sometimes presents a challenge to the reader. The plot is engaging and certainly timely, but I found the resolution to be too simplistic and hopeful (i.e., to return to the more traditional modes of communication). It seems clear, based on our love for these gadgets and our unwillingness to deal with other real treats (e.g., global warming, corporatization of our democracy),that just adopting the old ways seems excessively optimistic.

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The Word Exchange is an interesting, and at times captivating, novel about a near future where the dependency of humans (in the developed world) on the future version of the smart phones leads to an outbreak of an infectious disease. Alena Graedon writes in a fluent, clear manner, and manages to

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create very different voices for the three characters whose diaries and articles make up the story. The writing sometimes goes from beautiful and coherent to choppy and muddled, perhaps reflecting the "diary" quality of the passages.

At times, the subject matter is very much what grad students in the English department at Princeton would spew out as they smoke their cigarettes looking depressed outside East Pine; a lot of Kant and Hegel and philosophy of language and so on... Though I enjoyed these (after years of exposure to the aforementioned crowd and their relentless banter about these unintelligible subjects), I reckon the book, at least these parts, are not for everyone.

The story is well developed in the book, as we are reading the diaries of the two main characters, which studiously inform us of their feelings, flaws, and tribulations. The plot, though intricate and interesting, is a bit muddled at times. The Meme, the future version of the smart phone, is described enough times, but perhaps with too much repetition without adding any new information. Thus, my understanding of its abilities and evolution remained somewhat un-evolved throughout the book from the first time it was introduced. Likewise, while Graedon makes a valiant effort to describe the benign and fatal versions of the disease, including a whole explanation of the evolution of retrotransposons, I am not sure how many readers will get it (I don't count, as I know all about transposons and viruses already...) To my surprise, I still finished the book unsure whether people incorrectly believed that making phone calls with regular phones could infect a person, or they (and the book) concluded that this was actually the case (the former makes sense with all the "unknowns" about the disease, while the latter does not make sense, as a virus cannot spread via phone lines, at least not a retrotransposon-based virus that requires machine-to-neuron interphase to spread...)

I enjoyed reading The Word Exchange overall. I liked the philosophical bits, probably more because it reminded me of grad school days of making fun of all the humanities grad students who were obsessed with Hegel, and the made up words. The parts toward the end which became harder and harder to understand because of non-sensical words were fascinating. It is a great reminder of what words mean to us, and their power over our understanding of the world around us.

As with most near-future sci-fi, my only pet peeve here was that I find it highly unlikely that in the near future we will be that connected. I mean, here we are, in the most developed countries in the world, where even the privileged often cannot connect, or connections suck, or areas of the world are highly inaccessible to wireless connections. Here we are still waiting at least a few seconds, if not 5 or 10, for some webpages to load. Here we are where wireless and other technology fail constantly. And needless to say (and I am a former brain researcher) that we do not know much about the brain, let alone implanting chips in it to make any kind of progress. So I guess just how near this near-future is is kind of important, because if very near (say 100 years), I am afraid I am way more pessimistic than Ms. Graedon about the abilities of our technologies.

Recommended for those who like gadgets, dictionaries, libraries, old comics, and diners. Also recommended for those who like New York City.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free digital copy in exchange of my honest review.

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When I read the publisher’s synopsis I immediately moved this to the top of my reading list. A literary science-fiction thriller involving the death of language in a near-future world where almost all printed material is gone and ‘memes’ (smartphone-like devices) have become essential tools

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sounded so good, and it could have been if it wasn’t so difficult to stay involved in the story.

Despite a compelling premise, the story didn’t take off until after the half-way point. The concept was good, the execution not so much. It got bogged down in lots of stream of consciousness rambling and overly descriptive narrative that was confusing, distracting and didn't make me care much about any of the characters.

I began by listening to the audio, but with the slow progress in the plot my mind kept wandering. After a few hours I switched to an eGalley figuring if I was reading faster it would be more interesting. But there were all these annoying footnotes forcing me to jump to the end of the chapter to complete the thought. I suppose they were there to make some point or other but it was lost on me.

At about the half-way point I put this book down for a week before returning to the audio version. I was interested enough to want to find out how it ended and there were still a lot of questions to be answered. Anana’s father was still missing. The Word Flu Virus was spreading and people were speaking nonsense words. (However, the inclusion of actual non-sense in the dialog was another distraction that made it hard to understand and follow a conversation). At this point we still know little about the word flu or where it came from. Eventually we do learn the history of the memes, those smartphone-like devices, and a corporate conspiracy is revealed and most of the questions are answered. The last third of the story was much better, but I don’t like to work this hard to read a book.

Those who like speculative fiction might want to give this a try. The story line was clever, and although this is a genre I usually enjoy, the writing style wasn’t for me.

Audio Production:
The audio production was competently performed by Tavia Gilbert and Paul Michael Garcia. The story was told in alternating points of view between Anana and her friend and co-worker, Bart. My only problem with the audio was that it was difficult to keep my mind from wandering when I came to an overly verbose section. When the story picked up I had no problem paying attention. The pacing of the novel was uneven but it was not the fault of the narrators – both of their performances were fine. And those footnotes I mentioned earlier? Much easier to hear them read right along with the text – an improvement over the need to jump to the end of each chapter, multiple times, in the print version.

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Couldn't get into this book. It just didn't appeal to me. Didn't make any sense. The use of big words that normal people don't use throughout what I did read seemed to contrived. Didn't attempt to fiinish the book.

In the not too distant future in our digital world, the written word has become obsolete. Book stores, libraries and even dictionaries are disappearing. What everyone owns is a Meme(a highly advanced device which can do anything and everything for its owner. When Anana Johnson’s father Doug

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disappears she begins a search for him. At the same time the Memes become infected and therefore infects the owners. People are dying from a word virus.

When I read the premise, I was intrigued and wanted to really like this book. In today’s world everyone seems addicted to their smartphones and e-readers, that this story could be a premonition of things to come. Except it was really slow and I couldn’t get into. I didn’t give up and finished the book, but I have to say it dragged on, and I didn’t care for the characters both good and bad. In this dystopian world, this novel would be one of the first to go.

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The Word Exchange: A Novel by Alena Graedon has a very interesting premise behind it. What if technology becomes so integrated with an individual that a computer virus not only messes up data, but makes the human sick as well. The themes explored here are chillingly relevant to today's overly

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technologic social scene. So many people are buried in their smart phones and such, that they don't really see the world around them. The story was good and it did pull me in, but it's pacing suffered by too much tell and not show. Also Bart's initial entries require a dictionary to get through, and the breadth of my vocabulary is not small. The gibberish gets hard to read after a while. The ending seemed a little too easy. It's as if crisis averted let's all go back to the early 20th century.

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I really wanted to like this book, and, actually, I started out loving it. It was the perfect blend of dystopian science fiction and nior mystery set in the not-too-distant future. Like Super Sad True Love Story, this book focused on the detrimental social side effects of technology. Here, a device

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only slightly more intrusive and intuitive than most smart phones (referred to in the book as a "meme") has negatively affected the way that people are able to communicate with one another. A popular application called "Word Exchange" is a pay-per-use service available on the meme, and its prevalent use has surpassed the dictionary as the go-to digital reference for definitions. The only problem with this appears to be the gradual lessening of the common man's vocabulary and comprehension, leaving meme users increasingly dependent on technology to survive. When the editor/publisher of North America's largest dictionary goes missing under suspicious circumstances, it seems that the company that manufactures memes and publishes the Word Exchange, Synchronic, has a corner on providing the definitions for words. When Synchronic introduces a new game that invites users to create their own definitions words that are later incorporated into the Word Exchange for purchase, the manner in which people communicate is forever changed. To add to the confusion, there appears to be a highly infectious and sometimes-deadly virus affecting meme users, the word flu, that, too, dramatically degrades the victim's ability to communicate effectively. This book is the story of one woman's quest to find her father, the aforementioned dictionary editor, in an attempt to save the integrity of language and communication.

As I mentioned before, it started off deliciously. It was suspenseful, quirky, intelligent and, somewhat, original. I loved the author's choice to alternate between Anana and Bart's perspective; their unrequited attraction added tension to an already tense situation. BUT, and this is a big ole BUT, things started to fizzle about half way through the book for me. Anana's search for her father became (gasp) boring; her attempts to unravel a secret society were too drawn out to hold my interest. I could have forgiven the murky stasis of the middle of the book if it had picked up towards the end, and, for awhile, I thought that it was going to satisfy my desire for action and excitement; HOWEVER, everything after Synchonic's reveal party seemed anticlimactic. The ending was "meh." I wanted to care, but I didn't quite muster up the necessary interest.

So, in closing, great premise, great beginning, great writing BUT the boring, drawn out middle made the ending lackluster and just so-so. I wanted to draw a comparison to The Crying Lot of 49 because of all the hub-bub about corporate conspiracies and secret societies BUT I don't think this book is as successful as Pynchon's classic. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to a smart PATIENT lover of literary fiction but it certainly wouldn't be your average joe's cup-of-tea.

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Good, but a bit long.

This is one of those novels that you have to think about for a while after reading. The story hits home in today's culture of the smart phone, and It chills me to think that we may actually be heading in this direction. People addicted to their phones and tablets, which are almost symbiotic with

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the user, anticipating what they want before it can be voiced. The idea of humans losing their language may seem far fetched, although, I have seen first hand the younger generation losing the ability to write and speak the language as it was designed. Excellent novel, although a little hard to follow at times. I especially loved that the twenty-six chapters represented each of the letters of the alphabet. I will say that this has been a unique reading experience.

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In THE WORD EXCHANGE we are given a glimpse at some new technology soon to be coming our way. It is called the Meme and it can do virtually anything for you. Need a cab, Meme will hail it for you. Need to pay the restaurant check, Meme will do it for you. Want to watch a movie, Meme will stream it

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for you. Want to take a nap, Meme will give you some sleeping medicine. Don't know the meaning of a word, Meme can help with that, for a price of course. Isn't that how everything works? By simply wearing the new Meme on your forehead or your wrist you can have all this and more in your life. If you really want to get things easier you have the option of implanting the chip inside your head. Should you change your mind, they can be removed.

In THE WORD EXCHANGE we see how much easier our lives can be when we use technology and how things are perhaps resisted by a few people when it becomes available. We first see Anana when she becomes worried that Douglas, her father has missed their scheduled dinner date. They'd been doing for that past few weeks since her boyfriend had broken up. In the beginning no one seems to take her seriously as she tends to be a little neurotic.

Douglas helps to publish the North American Dictionary of the English Language and has managed to neglect the use of technology for the most part. Before he left, Douglas placed several clues for his daughter to find. In the weeks prior to his disappearance, he'd tried to talk with Anana. He'd tried to convince her that we needed print in our lives and of the dangers of using the Meme. In fact, he'd even given her a couple bottles of antivirals he had lying around with instructions when to use them.

One of the first people Anana contacts on Doug's disappearance is Bart his assistant. In the beginning, he too doesn't think anything of it. As time passes he begins to realise Doug has disappeared and in between living his life and a new job offer Bart tries to help Anana. Before long the word flu is in the open and people are dying from the word flu. Just what is it and how did it start?

THE WORD EXCHANGE is a new take on old ideas. It gets you to thinking just how much technology do we really need and why is it that we're so stressed all the time with these new toys. What new problems will we gain, both physically and psychologically as we become more dependent on new technology. Is it possible we could lose our ability to think?

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