Since the attitudes are so alien, it's actually more alarming that the setting is so familiar - I wouldn't have found this book nearly such a disturbing offense to my every sense had not those senses insisted on trying to make sense of the familiar. This book is, from my point of view, Out There. What is so ineffably Other about this book is the mindset that the author has, so foreign that it's like trying to understand the motivations of neolithic Maori found in cave art, or snack wrappers discarded by time-traveling Venusians. So a book about growing up in Silicon Valley like this one contains a lot that I recognize. In fact, our upbringings are largely similar, though I am about ten years Beers' junior. It's not that I can't relate to the events in the book - the book was loaned to me by some friends who were amazed to find that I actually, really grew up in Silicon Valley, just like the author. In the years that it has taken me to read this book, I have quite often felt sympathy with those hapless souls, as I struggled with a book so alien, so incomprehensible, that my brow would bead with sweat and my vision swam if I, in my hubris, tried to read more than a few pages at one sitting. Lovecraft drew on a long tradition of men meddling in arcane knowledge, struggling through ancient tomes so alien that the very reading of them drives one mad.
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