Just finished reading this for the third time, and I see something new in it each time.

Best book I’ve read in probably a year. Will make you homesick for a place and time that probably never existed.

I was offended by the excision of the main character’s bisexuality and some other details of the book that were left out or fudged in the movie, but on the whole it was an enjoyable adaptation.

Worth consuming especially if you’re a woman who says, “I’m not a feminist, but…”

Will make you wonder why you’re not organizing your life around mitigating as much human suffering as possible.

Though I didn’t enjoy the movie very much (it seemed like somehow you were supposed to think it was more clever than it was), except for the scene when they’re getting the chair from the upholstery guy, I did cry at the end. But I’m not sure whether that was because I saw the parallels between the relationship in the movie and my own relationship, or because I had an earache.

I found this book a bit disappointing. I don’t feel like it really delivered what it promised (an argument that the psychedelic culture of the ‘60s directly led to personal computer culture), only sort of a disorganized mishmash of anecdotes about various people. I’m a sucker for any book that even tries to recapture the mood of the early computer industry a little, but I think it could have been done better; maybe someday, someone who was there will write a book like this.

Restored my sense of meaning in life. See it—now.

I read this because the movie “Lost and Delirious” was based on it, though the book was almost completely different. They stripped out the whole genderqueer element for the movie (nubile teen lesbians are hotter than a relationship between a gender-variant character and a woman who possibly doesn’t know that the other character is female-assigned), and changed the ending entirely.

If you read one book about abortion, it should be Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood by Kristin Luker. But if you want to read more, you could read this one. One point he makes that I think should be made more often is the revealing nature of most pro-lifers’ support for a “rape or incest” exception—if abortion were REALLY equivalent to murder, would that make a difference? It points to the fact that many pro-lifers are more interested in holding women responsible for the consequences of chosen sex than in saving embryos’ lives. I wish more pro-choice activists would emphasize this point, and emphasize that the right to an abortion is about defending women’s right to simultaneously be autonomous and have the sex lives they choose, rather than emphasizing edge cases such as very young women and women made pregnant through rape.