S.

This book/experience is one of the neatest experiences i have ever had. The finished product, in it's physical form, is amazing. It looks like a really old library book, down to almost every detail, inside and out. This is so much more well done than I could have imagined. The feel of reading the book is exactly what I wanted it to be. The actual story of the book is a very literature based one. It isn't immediately clear, even after finishing, the clear digression of the tale. The book requires analysis, thought, and consideration. The story itself has light-scifi/fantasy elements to it, though it is not overt through the book, and only when considered literally. Otherwise, it is a drama action tale, or maybe a tale of exploration, or maybe a spy thriller, or maybe something else entirely. The "Margin story" has elements of all of these as well, and would be much more clear and straightforward if it weren't for the method by which it is communicated. I want to be clear to define that the way I read the story was thus: I read the entire printed story straight through, including the footnotes, and I also read the pencil notes. I then went back and read the pen notes one "set" of colors at a time all the way through. I feel, for me, this is the superior method. My reasoning has to do with the Ship of Theseus itself. By reading it in this method, you take the "ship", in this case the book, and experience it 5 separate times. Each time you go through it, you experience different parts of it, even though it is the same book. When you get to the end of it the final time, you really can consider if it is the same book that it was when you started. I enjoyed reading it this way very much, and I think if I had tried any other method I would not have gotten the same experience. I like things linear though. Pros: This was a neat experience. The finished product is beautiful and amazing. The story is captivating and lovely. The inserts are interesting.This was a memorable experience I will remember for a long time. Cons: The inserts get really annoying on subsequent reads, falling out at bad times. There is a lot of this experience that can be found online, and for some this may make the book itself feel incomplete. The pen markings in the book are not chronological, so you might here about something that is happening "In real life" but not find out why for many chapters and then find something that comes before that event later in the book. Production con: Some of the pen mark in my book is faded in places. I honestly don't know if this was on purpose or a defect: perhaps it was indicating that actual pens do run out of ink? Overall, this was a great purchase, an interesting book to read, and something I may come back to in the future to try reading it again.

Reading The Ship of Theseus felt like embarking on a grand and mysterious adventure. I’ve already read it twice and I’m starting a third time, simply because of the multiple intertwined stories and the fascinating time jumps it contains. Each read reveals new insights that are truly incredible, making you feel like a detective piecing together hidden clues. It’s a book that challenges and rewards you, offering layers of meaning that keep drawing you back.

If you enjoy Secret History of Twin Peaks, the Pale King, Crying of Lot 49 you will love this, and if you love this definitely investigate those. Somewhere between Gravity's Rainbow and Invisible Man or Notes From the Underground, with mixed media components that rival anything I've witnessed assembled. The layered complexities of mystery and diversity of components and source material are reminiscent to classic visual novels series such as Higurashi or Umineko, also much in similar vein of the television series Strange Angel and the Lodge, innovative, unique and unforgettable, so glad a dear friend turned me on to this contemporary classic!

Like many reviewers before me, describing this story is a challenge. I'll cut to the chase: I gave it 5 stars because the story telling and packaging is ingenious. For an avid reader, it's especially fun to be presented with such a creative book. The reader is getting 3 stories at once: The Ship of Theseus written by fictional author Straka, the story of a pair of college students as handwritten in multi colored pen in the margins, and last the story of the real parties and their dubious purposes as revealed by Straka, which is the focus of the students' handwritten exchanges. And then of course you have 22 tangible items neatly tucked between the pages to add to those stories (e.g., photos, postcards, hand drawn map on a paper napkin, newspaper clippings, letters, and even a decoder wheel). I suggest printing and using as your bookmark SFiles22's webpage which identifies each of the items and the correct page they are to be read, just in case any slip out while you're immersed in the story: [...] List of Book Inserts I enjoyed the adventurous fictional tale, Ship of Theseus, which from time to time reminded me of The Odyssey and Gulliver's Travels, and I love stories where the characters' friendship/relationship grows via correspondence which in this case it is done in the exchange of handwritten messages in the margins. There is plenty of discussion among readers about how best to approach reading this multi layered and multi colored story and the end result I believe is that there is no correct way. For my reading pleasure I would quickly review each page to determine a stopping point, whether it be at the end of a paragraph or where I would find distinct annotations (e.g. underscoring, arrows, comments in the margins). The different marginalia colors were created by the pair of students at different times, so whenever possible I would first read the gray, black & blue handwriting because those were made earlier than the red and yellow/orange annotations, the latter providing me with a bit of foreshadowing. The decoder "Eotvos" wheel was an interesting trinket. I learned in advance that it was to be used in the final chapter so I dutifully kept it tucked in the back of the book for the two weeks I was reading. However upon reading that final chapter I didn't see any hint on its use so I did a quick Google and not only did I learn how to use the code but the message was prominently displayed on the website. And you can't unsee that and I was disappointed in what I read. I won't reveal the message here in my review but after having read such a huge saga, the message in my opinion was too flowery for this type of story. So the wheel is an interesting souvenir but in my opinion it's not needed and doesn't add to the story. Typically a book of 450 pages with 2" margins would get absorbed within a week by my eyes but this book required blocks of undisturbed time so that I could concentrate. I also needed good lighting because some of the marginalia was in pencil or faded orange/dark yellow. And, last, I needed some reserve of energy to pay attention to the details. So at the end of the work day when dinner was finished and the kitchen cleaned, THEN I could treat myself to reading and that's why it took me two weeks to read this story. I can see myself re-reading this story again in the future.

Though not great, this book is certainly a fun read. It takes a largely original approach to story telling, weaving the novel's story together with the intrigues of the readers who are corresponding within its margins. The bits and pieces stuffed between the pages add an interesting bit of texture to the plot(s), although a lot of readers may find these frustrating, as they will easily fall out and lose their places. I found it relatively easy to keep them in place, since, knowing they were there, I could watch how I handled the book. A few aspects of the book bothered me: Since the book inside (Ship of Theseus) is far from a literary masterpiece, the "insights" of these supposed literary scholars are either completely manufactured or laughably simplistic. They're either pointing out that something like a dark cloud is possibly foreshadowing something going bad (or some other middle school level analysis) or that some brilliant stylistic shift (which doesn't exist because, though he's not a bad writer, Dorst's style is consistently flat) has some hidden meaning, and you just have to take their word for it. It also fails to balance the intriguing and mysterious with the mundane. As quite a few reviews have pointed out, it all comes down to some pretty ordinary and uninteresting realities, which brings me to another problem, common in Abrams's plots. He has never learned to end a story. Consistently, his films (and now this book) gripped me throughout and let me down horribly at the end. It's a problem of building suspense and mystery and then, rather than solving those problems or answering those questions, telling the audience none of it mattered after all. However, I knew as I read this book that I was reading something concocted by a pop film producer, not a literary master (I don't know Dorst outside of this book), and so I enjoyed it for what it was: a diversion. I love the semi-experimental format, although this will probably annoy some readers, and I found the mystery about the fictional author a fun puzzle, although it only really works sometimes.

This is probably the most unique reading experience I’ve had in a long time. Rather than a traditional novel, S. is presented as an old copy of the fictional book “Ship of Theseus” by “VM Straka” from 1949. The book has a period appropriate cover design, and is faux-aged to look like an old library book, complete with old stamps, yellowed pages, and even fake stains. The margins of the book are filled with the “handwritten” notes of two previous readers, Jen and Eric; the ink colors change with time, and there are even smudges and cross-outs. Tucked into the pages are various documents including photocopies, photos, letters, postcards, and (my personal favorite) an actual napkin with a “hand-drawn” map. The attention to detail is absolutely amazing, and the story is pretty good too. “Ship of Theseus” itself is the meandering, surreal story of a man, “S”, who find himself washed up in an unnamed city with no memory or knowledge of his identity. He is soon shanghaied aboard a creepy ship with no apparent captain and a strange crew whose members have sewn their mouths shut. When S. tries to escape the ship, he is then caught up in a struggle against the corrupt Vevoda, a business magnate with an unstoppable weapon of mass destruction. The margin notes tell the story of two readers trying to unravel the mystery surrounding the reclusive author VM Straka, and his apparent involvement in major historical events. Jen, a college senior, finds the copy of “Ship of Theseus” left behind in the college library by Eric, a disgraced graduate student. Seeking an escape from her impending graduation and recent breakup, Jen begins delving into the Straka mystery, corresponding with Eric in the margins of the book. As the two uncover more information about the mysterious Straka, they find themselves possibly drawn into a conflict decades and maybe even centuries old. Jen and Eric’s story jumps around a bit, as the notes are not always in chronological order. Some details and events are also only alluded to, leaving the reader to fill in some of the gaps. There are, however, additional codes in the book to solve, and in-universe websites, so the story doesn’t necessarily end with what’s in the book. The reading order is completely open, but I found it easiest to start by reading through “Ship of Theseus” on its own, then going back and reading the margin notes. The ink colors denote different time periods; Jen’s notes start out in blue ink, with Eric’s responses in black. The second set are in orange and green, the third in purple and red, and the most recent all in black. It’s probably best to read all the earlier, blue and black notes first, then going back and approaching each set in turn. The inserts are mentioned in text by Jen and Eric at their appropriate points in the story; it helped me to make a list of the insert locations beforehand, so I could easily find the appropriate document. S. is just a lot of fun, and is a must read for anyone who likes unique, experimental reads.

Very interesting boo, I suggest googling a guide on how to read it

I had to give this book FIVE stars. Read the other reviews. Ditto for most praise and criticism. S. should win top honors everywhere because, mainly, it shows a path to save the printed book industry. S. is an ode to the English language. Author Dorst fires up all possible synapses to create linguistic art reflecting a near-bottomless knowledge base. However... My bottom line: A better book would be a fictional update on the Kennedy assassination with annotations by two interns that worked during the Warren Commission days. Why better? The reader will care about the content and care to keep track of all the players. In this book, S., I found it not only difficult to keep track of the players from different decades and multiple stories, I struggled to even care about most of them. For a book to be worth the reader's scrutiny, i.e., reading the entire book as many as two or three times, the reader would be best left with some usable education from real data and real people - at least realistic data and relatable people. But the concept is so good that just imagining the new wealth of take-offs staggers me. For example, at the least commercial level of self-publishing, imagine family authors creating "old books" with wide margins for current and future generations to share notes. Picture the items stuffed inside the books like newspaper clippings, postcards, love letters, and more. I'm dreaming right now of handing out copies to all attendies at my funeral. I have to say something about the handwritten notes. Know that I get off on handwriting like art collectors do on Picasso. The artists who chose the various handwritten forms are geniuses. Being better would be a stretch. However, reading all that handwriting was work, often put me to sleep. Add the craziness of codified footnotes, multidirectional issues and timelines - well you get the picture? The author and production crew over-indulged. Spoiler alert. In the rest of this review, I will tell why I am terribly disappointed in the storytelling. No, I won't give away the story, but I have to talk about the endings in terms of how they felt to me or, better, how they didn't. So if you are eagerly starting the book, don't read the rest of the review until you've finished. The story and the characters are universally creepy and geeky. On the positive side, they search, research, connect, care about details, persist and stay committed. Yet the negative darkens the entire multiple-storied novel. Our geeks (in no particular order) are angry, vindictive, violent, platonic, suspicious, non-touching, conspiratorial, power-hungry, sadistic, masochistic, unrequited, lost, lonely, secretive, icy, blatant, capable of lying, snarky, paranoid, and anal-retentive. The journeys end as loose ends, i.e., nobody wins. Happy endings, for anyone in the entire universe, exist no more. The reader in this god-awful dark world must be content with meager resolutions and even be comfortable without any resolution at all. You have to face that evil is real and cannot be conquered - ever - for long. Sadistic bullies and cults abound on all scales - from global arenas to the few square blocks of a college campus. Do not waste your time trying to keep track of the players and organizations in any of the stories. Focus more on how they feel about each other and what they do to each other. If you don't want to make the planet a better place to live in after reading this, then the author wasted his time. As the reader, you hope to God that intelligent, positive, joyful people end up taking hold of the reins of power here, there, and everywhere.