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22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It Seems Too Real to be Fake!, December 3, 2007
Looking for the perfect gift for the Apple fan in your life? If so, your search is over. Get them a copy of Options by Fake Steve Jobs, AKA Daniel Lyons. If you're not already aware, Lyons has been writing a blog called The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for quite awhile and it features some of the best sarcasm and wit on the planet. He leveraged that fame and fortune to write Options, which takes a fictitious and hilarious look at the Apple stock option backdating scandal. The Fake Steve blog is a treat to read but I couldn't help wonder whether the style and approach would get old in a book length work. Boy, was I wrong. Daniel Lyons is a genius. He describes events in such fascinating detail that you not only feel you're there but you assume they actually occurred! My personal favorite is the point towards the end of the book when Jobs meets with Yoko Ono to discuss reselling The Beatles library on iTunes. I won't spoil it by divulging too much here but I laughed out loud more than once while picturing this meeting in my head. There's also a funny twist to the ending, which again, I won't spill the beans on here. Still not sold? Read this piece from the back cover and tell me it doesn't hit the nail on the head: "Sometimes I feel like a great chef who has devoted his entire life to monastic study of the art of cooking. I've gathered the finest ingredients, built the most advanced kitchen and prepared the most exquisite meal. So perfect, so delicious, so extraordinary. More astounding than any meal ever created. Yet each day I stand in my window and watch 97% of the world walk past my restaurant into the McDonald's across the street."
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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Works better as a blog, November 1, 2007
Most people considering this book should already been familiar with Fake Steve Jobs in his original blogging form. His writing works better in that medium than in this novel -- Fake Steve Jobs is funny when commenting briefly on events in the news, but he's too thin to support an entire novel. The book is episodic, as FSJ deals with various groups though a period corresponding roughly to 2006. We see him dealing with Apple engineers and executives, with lawyers and government prosecutors, rock stars, silicon valley plutocrats, and politicians. With the exception of Larry Ellison, who appears repeatedly, and some fictional lawyers, most of these people get one scene with FSJ then depart the tale. The funniest parts of the book, in my opinion, relate FSJ's interactions with Hillary Clinton, Yoko Ono, and a fictional retired chip executive named Misho Knedlik. These exchanges all involve nasty insults being launched by characters against each other (FSJ is typically delivering the rockets, though he is sometimes their target as well). Author Daniel Lyons has a gift for amusing nastiness.
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8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than Fake!, November 10, 2007
As an occasional reader of the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog, I picked up this book thinking that it was a collection of the "best of" entries already published. Instead, I was totally surprised to find a coherent novel that is even more engaging and hilarious than the blog that got it started. I couldn't help reading whole passages out loud to my amazingly patient wife while trying not to laugh. While the satire gets more ramped up with every chapter, a lot of the outrageousness is especially funny because it seems so close to the truth. While I doubt that Steve Jobs has ever had Sting spoon him on a dirty floor while both tripping on ayahuasca, it's not hard to imagine Jobs ping-ponging between believing he is an under-appreciated genius and wallowing in self-doubt and isolation, not just as a reflection of El Jobso, but as one of our cultural obsession recapturing a lost sense of "childlike wonder."
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