On September 13, 1998, John Scalzi sat down in front of his computer to write the first entry in his blog Whatever--and changed the history of the Internet as we know it today.
What, you're not swallowing that one? Okay, fine: He started writing Whatever and amused about 15 people that first day. If that many. But he kept at it, for ten years and running. Now 40,000 people drop by on a daily basis to see what he's got to say.
About what? Well, about whatever: Politics, writing, family, war, popular culture and cats (especially with bacon on them). Sometimes he's funny. Sometimes he's serious (mostly he's sarcastic). Sometimes people agree with him. Sometimes they send him hate mail, which he grades on originality and sends back. Along the way, Scalzi's become a best-selling, award-winning author, a father, and a geek celebrity. But no matter what, there's always another Whatever post to amuse and/or enrage his readers.
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded collects some of the best and most popular Whatever entries from the first ten years of the blog – a decade of Whatever, presented in delightfully random form, just as it should be.
* Winner of the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book
* Introduction by Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
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“This book captures everything I love about blogging. In the vernacular of the damn kids today, this book is made of EPIC WIN.” –Wil Wheaton
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
About the Author
John Scalzi won the 2006 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and his debut novel Old Man’s War was a finalist for science fiction’s Hugo Award. His other books include The Ghost Brigades, The Android’s Dream and The Last Colony. He has won the Hugo Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for science-fiction, the Seiun, The Kurd Lasswitz and the Geffen awards. His weblog, Whatever, is one of the most widely-read web sites in modern SF. Born and raised in California, Scalzi studied at the University of Chicago. He lives in southern Ohio with his wife and daughter.
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More About the Author
John Scalzi writes books, which, considering where you're reading this, makes perfect sense. He's best known for writing science fiction, for which he won the John W. Campbell Award (2006) and has been nominated for the Hugo Award for best novel (2006, 2008, 2009). He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to astronomy to film, and was the Creative Consultant for the Stargate: Universe television series. He enjoys pie, as should all right thinking people. You can get to his blog by typing the word "Whatever" into Google. No, seriously, try it.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
By Marko Kloos
Format:Hardcover
"Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded" is a collection of blog posts from John Scalzi's long-running blog, "Whatever". Scalzi is a very good fiction writer, but he's also a terrific essayist, and his blog posts often turn out to be thoughtful, well-reasoned, humorous, and sensitive essays on subjects as varied as entertainment, current affairs, religion, politics, world history, and parenting.
(Scalzi is also a goofball of the first order, so all those gems are interspersed with application of pork products to household pets, and the inventive utilization of Photoshop skills. Sadly, the print version leaves out much of the Photoshop goodness.)
"Hate Mail" is sort of a "Best of..." collection from Whatever, the distilled essence of the blog. Scalzi routinely knocks the ball out of the park when it comes to "big" blog posts, the kind that gets linked on Instapundit and ends up getting emailed to everyone with an email account in the Northern Hemisphere. "Hate Mail" is a whole book full of such gems, and it also serves as an interesting evolutionary record of "Whatever", which Scalzi has maintained continuously for ten years.
Best of all, this blog content now comes on fantastically portable wireless technology that requires no batteries, and no Internet access.
For fans of Scalzi's writing, "Hate Mail" is a handy compilation of some of his best work...and for those who want to see how to write compelling blog entries on a wide variety of subjects, here's a great collection of examples.
(Scalzi is also a goofball of the first order, so all those gems are interspersed with application of pork products to household pets, and the inventive utilization of Photoshop skills. Sadly, the print version leaves out much of the Photoshop goodness.)
"Hate Mail" is sort of a "Best of..." collection from Whatever, the distilled essence of the blog. Scalzi routinely knocks the ball out of the park when it comes to "big" blog posts, the kind that gets linked on Instapundit and ends up getting emailed to everyone with an email account in the Northern Hemisphere. "Hate Mail" is a whole book full of such gems, and it also serves as an interesting evolutionary record of "Whatever", which Scalzi has maintained continuously for ten years.
Best of all, this blog content now comes on fantastically portable wireless technology that requires no batteries, and no Internet access.
For fans of Scalzi's writing, "Hate Mail" is a handy compilation of some of his best work...and for those who want to see how to write compelling blog entries on a wide variety of subjects, here's a great collection of examples.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book caught my eye at the bookstore and ended up coming home with me. If you don't know, as I did not, Whatever is Scalzi's blog, where he has been blogging more or less since the dawn of blogs.
I am grateful for the many belly laughs I got out of this book, as well as the many new vocabulary words. No question Scalzi is a professional writer (if it slips your mind, he will remind you every few pages) and plies his craft well.
For an athiest, he certainly has a lot to say about religion, especially Christianity. For a heterosexual, he certainly has a lot to say about homosexuals. I appreciate very much his viewpoint that it is not imperative that we all agree on anything, that it's okay for all of us to have our views. Not everyone has this viewpoint. I was greatly amused that the things he did not like about George W. Bush are true in shiny spades of President Obama (p. 284).
My enthusiasm for the book waned as the pages dragged on. It became tiresome to me that Scalzi finds himself to be so darn smart about all things, all the time. In the course of the book, he tells you exactly how much dough he makes, exactly how big his rural compound is, exactly what he pays for it, and an awful lot about how his home finances are arranged. Additionally he seems to be campaigning for the Alan Alda "I'm More Sensitive Than You Are" award. Take my vote, please. Toward the end, however, there were a couple of entries about being poor, a condition he emerged from, that helped me tolerate the parts I did not like as well.
I did check out the Whatever blog, thinking it might be pleasant to add to my rotation. What I found is that 10 years of Whatever boiled down to 350 or so pages has about the right signal-to-noise ratio, so I look forward to the next volume in 10 years.
I am grateful for the many belly laughs I got out of this book, as well as the many new vocabulary words. No question Scalzi is a professional writer (if it slips your mind, he will remind you every few pages) and plies his craft well.
For an athiest, he certainly has a lot to say about religion, especially Christianity. For a heterosexual, he certainly has a lot to say about homosexuals. I appreciate very much his viewpoint that it is not imperative that we all agree on anything, that it's okay for all of us to have our views. Not everyone has this viewpoint. I was greatly amused that the things he did not like about George W. Bush are true in shiny spades of President Obama (p. 284).
My enthusiasm for the book waned as the pages dragged on. It became tiresome to me that Scalzi finds himself to be so darn smart about all things, all the time. In the course of the book, he tells you exactly how much dough he makes, exactly how big his rural compound is, exactly what he pays for it, and an awful lot about how his home finances are arranged. Additionally he seems to be campaigning for the Alan Alda "I'm More Sensitive Than You Are" award. Take my vote, please. Toward the end, however, there were a couple of entries about being poor, a condition he emerged from, that helped me tolerate the parts I did not like as well.
I did check out the Whatever blog, thinking it might be pleasant to add to my rotation. What I found is that 10 years of Whatever boiled down to 350 or so pages has about the right signal-to-noise ratio, so I look forward to the next volume in 10 years.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
i can't stand his fiction, but his essays and rants are quite good
February 28, 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've tried to read a few of his novels, and i can never get past the first few pages. Why i ever got this book remains a mystery to me, but i loved it. Scalzi is a clever fellow with enough opinions to wear out a keyboard.
Yes, it's true that all of the content of this book is available for free online. If you're the kind of person who gets all upset about paying for something you could have gotten, in some functional analog, without paying, then by all means, read the blog. As the author notes, though, it's a bit of a scavenger hunt to find all the old entries due to various hosting and format changes.
I've docked one star because there's no index. The entries are out of chronological order, often thematically linked, and that's fine until you're trying to find that one you read a few days ago that you just have to show to your friend/sibling/partner/guy sitting next to you on the subway. All i needed was a table of contents to save minutes upon minutes of my time, but apparently seconds of the publisher's time wasn't worth it.
Yes, it's true that all of the content of this book is available for free online. If you're the kind of person who gets all upset about paying for something you could have gotten, in some functional analog, without paying, then by all means, read the blog. As the author notes, though, it's a bit of a scavenger hunt to find all the old entries due to various hosting and format changes.
I've docked one star because there's no index. The entries are out of chronological order, often thematically linked, and that's fine until you're trying to find that one you read a few days ago that you just have to show to your friend/sibling/partner/guy sitting next to you on the subway. All i needed was a table of contents to save minutes upon minutes of my time, but apparently seconds of the publisher's time wasn't worth it.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
In your face
Whatever your view on the world, this will ignite your passionate side at least once, and more likely, twice or more.
Published 4 months ago by D. Weaver
3.0 out of 5 stars
I love Scalzi and Whatever, but I don't love this book.
I love Scalzi. I love Whatever and all of the books of his I've read. I just can't get into this book. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Gabriel D. Comi
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great writing as always, but...
A ten-year retrospective of Scalzi's blog, the Whatever. This book covers a variety of topics in no particular order, from war to business to parenthood. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Anna N.
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Internet is cheaper and more entertaining.
Like a movie where all the good parts are included in the trailer, this book has anything worth reading on the cover. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Malcomhawk
4.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect for those free moments
I had read John Scalzi as a fiction author. I don't spend as much time noodling around on the internet as hunting and capturing the things I want in quick bursts. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Leprejuan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book
I thought that this was a great collection of Scalzi's greatest hits of the decade. Although not all of the stories are zingers (Scalzi discusses things other than hate mail), it's... Read more
Published on February 3, 2011 by cakedec48
2.0 out of 5 stars
zzz zz zzzzz z zzz
Oh, pointless I could deal with. I was hoping for a completely random assortment of witty, caustic social commentary. Read more
Published on August 25, 2010 by J. Laydbak
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointment
I have read and enjoyed several of Scalzi's sci-fi novels; they were well-conceived and held my attention throughout, which most sci-fi does not. Read more
Published on July 30, 2010 by G. E. Mullin
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not the entertainment I was hoping for.
My experience with Scalzi only goes as far as "Old man's war." I was hoping for many examples of hate mail that Scalzi would in turn grade and make humorous notations and remarks. Read more
Published on July 16, 2010 by William Ward
3.0 out of 5 stars
A fun read
There are some real gems in this book but there is also a great deal of dirt to dig through to get to those gems.
Published on May 5, 2010 by Joseph Zipay
