Glen Campbell Campbell من عند Badalpur, بنجلاديش من عند Badalpur, بنجلاديش

This book is hilarious with lots of subtle commentary on the American office culture. I couldn't put it down and read through it in a week.

I read the first chapter or so of Bellwether in some sci-fi compilation back when it first came out, and finally got around to the actual book. I wish I'd thought to read it back then; not for its own sake, per se, but because it's a good example of her strengths and weaknesses, and would probably have gotten me to read To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book earlier. I'd really rate this 3.5, but I'm rounding up because I do like Connie Willis quite a bit. It's a fun book: Willis is expert at creating a manic comedy of errors, and there are points where Bellwether comes close to the heights of lunacy she reaches in To Say Nothing of the Dog. It's also a relentless attack on the human tendency to herd, and draws constant parallels between that behavior in fashion, hobbies, music, management styles, etc. etc. And (this would be slightly spoilery if it weren't so clearly suggested from early on) tying that to the mathematical complexity of human social systems is a very interesting idea. Unfortunately that laser focus is one of the book's weak points, and one that I've seen in other Willis books: it deals so heavily with the main concept of the book (fad behavior in this case) in all its forms that it gets repetitive. After a few chapters, there's a sense that you're re-reading nearly any scene that takes place outside the lab. I'll also say, spoiler-free, that the actual arc of the story was not terribly surprising whatsoever. It's not so bad that I regret reading it, even slightly -- I don't bother writing reviews about books unless I think they're worth reading. Willis is an interesting, engaging writer; she's just written better and more epic books than Bellwether.