I enjoyed the other two Whatever collections so much, when I saw this was out, I just bought it. Checking blogs on the regular isn’t a habit yet for me, and so it makes me happy when they’re collected in books. I figure that makes me sound like a Luddite, but hey, I bought it for my kindle. So there. Scalzi writes so often about contemporary issues, and I like to read what he thinks, so I still have good intentions of working Whatever into my daily routine, but this collection was recent enough that nothing felt too over. Except for the last presidential election. Sigh. I wish he’d been right in his predictions there.
I’ve read a little of Scalzi’s fiction, and I really like it. The military sci-fi books are not so much my bag, but I still love the way he writes. In his fiction, you can tell he’s a smart, funny guy. In his blog, he reveals more—about his childhood, his writing process, his family, and his thoughts on the issues of the day. It’s still a public version of himself, and he says as much in some of his entries, but it makes me like and appreciate him on a different level. He’s a good egg. He writes reasonably and intelligently regardless of topic, and I appreciate the open-mindedness and fairness at the heart of what he writes. I put one of my favorite quotes from the book in a status update, but I’ll repeat it here.

Life is one long process of discovery about just how little you know about pretty much everything, and that includes people and the insides of their heads.

This is the type of thing that rings so true to me, I highlight it, along with things like his repeated assertion that “the failure mode of clever is ‘ass-hole,’” which doesn’t have quite the same ring as the first quote, but is no less true. He does have a knack for the memorable phrase.
His posts about his wife and daughter are incredibly sweet. Although my life experience is very different from his, I think the fact that we’re about the same age and have been married for the same number of years makes me relate more to him.
Recommended whether or not you’ve read his fiction. ( )