Taylor moved when she was young for her music career. She did not seem to keep hardly any friends from before she was famous. She was very close to her mom. The book mentions how Taylor was not able to purchase her song catalog, which was sold to somebody she did not like. Therefore Taylor rerecorded her songs so she could own the newly recorded versions.
Later Ray was amazed at something called a multimixer. It made milk shakes. He started a company selling them. He had to pay off his prior paper company to get the rights to it. Then he visited the McDonalds brothers' hamburger store. He talked them into expanding nationally.
Ray's first wife refused to go into business with him at his multimixer startup. He fell in love with another woman, but she was married. So he married someone else as his second wife. Eventually he talked this other woman to divorce her husband. He divorced his second wife to marry his third wife. WTF?
The game was developed in Japan. It was released well before any similar genre like Dance Dance Revolution. The book does not go into how the characters in the game appear like they are made of paper and are super thin.
Apparently there was at least one sequel with a similar name. There was also another follow up game with the same character, but had a different name.
Initially the BlackBerry was marked to business folks. It was a fast and reliable way to send messages. The company made money by charging fees to the communication companies that carried its traffic. It also made money selling the BlackBerry devices.
The most interesting and tragic part of the book is the fall of RIMM. The Apple iPhone came in with its capabilities and marketing blitz. This made RIMM falter on whether to continue using a physical keyboard or go like Apple with an on scree one. The final nail on the coffin was the release of the iPad. RIMM could not execute on its similar PlayBook tablet.
Eventually Mike and Jim, who were co-CEOs and co-chairmen of the board, had to step down from the top positions. They unanimously appointed a successor. But that guy then went in different directions and limited what these past CEOs could do in the company. Jim quit immediately. Mike quit a while later. This new CEO was fired in two years.
This book revolves around a one line BASIC program written to run on the Commodore 64 computer. It produces a maze on the screen. The book is highly academic. A lot of tangent ideas are covered in the book.
There are variants of the program. There are implementations on other computers. And there are related mazes coded. There is even code for the computer to traverse the maze. And then there is a game where the user tries to move through the maze.
The book itself is too academic for me. But it takes me back to the 1980s, where I programmed in BASIC on the TRS-80 Color Computer from Tandy/Radio Shack.
Parker knew the gun store owner. He got a pistol and boxes of bullets from him for free. Parker went into a clothing store. He killed the zombie clerk. But the zombie manager bit him. Parker stumbled to a hospital for drugs. He had to shoot one zombie there. He barricaded himself into a room to hide from a horde of zombies.
Parker previously followed a woman into a grocery store. The woman lured him in there. She was going to shoot him. Parker talked his way out of it. The woman led Parker to her home. She had two kids and a husband who were zombies. They were chained to chair around the table. Parker had to punch the woman to get free.
A gang spotted Parker. He tried to get to the roof top. He shot the lock off a shed door. Pulled out the ladder and climbed to a ceiling hatch. The gang climbed an adjacent building. They also followed up through the hatch. Parker made a run for it, shooting a couple gang members.
The gang wanted to burn the building that Parker jumped onto. He went down the stairs and discovered an apartment with weaponry. He tossed two grenades to disorient the gang. Then he used a machine gun to destroy their fleeing motorcycles and cars. He finished the job at the crashed cars site with his final grenade.
Parker was lured into a fenced building by a security guard. The guard cooked Parker a steak dinner. But the guard had three zombie sex salves. Parker tricked the guard to let his guard down. The zombie slaves got the guard. Then Parker fled. This is where I realized I definitely read this book before.
I think the author took a chance with something different here and failed. Surprised that a lot of people rated this highly on Amazon. Just must not be my cup of tea. I hope Stewart O'Nan does better next time.
