Didn't know it was an academic book about cats. Took me right out of it as I was expecting fun things about cats.

DNF

An ARC was provided to me via Netgalley in return of an honest review.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I felt misled by the cute cover of the kitty on it. This book is more of a text book for people who use the internet for a job.

The Internet Is for Cats by Jessica Maddox was an unexpectedly in-depth read about the internet. Like other readers, I had also expected a higher ratio of cats to text, but I suppose This Book Is Not For Cats but the internet certainly is.... I think this will make a great read, years from now - as a bit of a nostalgia throwback.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sorry to say I was disappointed in this book but I suppose that's more due to my expectations than the book itself. I love all the cat (and dogs too) videos online and thought the book would be about them. I wasn't expecting a textbook that was more about the workings of the internet. I'm sure it's an interesting book for people looking for that information. The cover and even the title seem misleading.

Don’t be misled by the funny cartoon on the cover. This is a serious academic book from a field called digital ethnography, full of curious scientific terms such as “cute economy” and “‘aww’ factor”. It gives memes and funny videos that all of us like and share a broader cultural and anthropological context. It will be interesting to people who are dealing with internet culture more professionally.

Thanks to the publisher, Rutgers University Press, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Thank you, Rutgers University Press, for the advance reading copy.

This book didn’t turn out to be what I was expecting but I can also understand what the content turns out to be.

The information given is quite compact and dense I would say. I appreciate the references given for each information mentioned.

Expect a read that would be quite detailed. Go for this book if you are someone who’s interested in digital work which involves requirement of such information.

I would suggest you to read the blurb thoroughly before you actually plan to pick up this book.

I am so unfortunately disappointed with this one.

I was so so excited to dive into the internet meme culture with the exploration specifically of cat memes and animal memes in general. I for one, use them all the flipping time, and with the explosion of the internet within recent (my lifetime) years, I was thrilled to explore the origins and hype surrounding 'meme culture'.

HOWEVER. I know nonfiction is a lot more dense than fiction, and as someone who doesn't often dip their toes in, I know it has tenancies to read more like a textbook. But holy crap this one was boring. This is very much like someone's thesis where they combine hours and hours of clearly well researched facts and themes, but it's no fun to read at all. :(

I can appreciate how hard Jessica Maddox clearly worked for this novel, and how much time she undoubtedly spent putting this all together, it just didn't read the way I was expecting and hoping it would.

The Internet Is For Cats is set to be published on October 14, 2022. Thank you to Rutgers University Press, NetGalley and the author for the ARC.

Pictures and memes of cats on the internet are what I live for! There are so many great ones out there. I had hoped this would be more of a collection of them and while a few are mentioned and there are some pictures, this is someone's thesis not a fun book about cats. While I appreciate the work that went into this, leave it to an academic to find a way to take all the fun out of a frivolous topic. The fact that sentences like this "To do so, I situate this visual culture within a particular temporal juncture" exist show just how scholarly this book is. I just wanted some cats.

This was much more academic than I expected from the cover and the blurb. I'm definitely interested in the topic of animals on the internet, but midway through reading this, I realized I wasn't quite interested enough to want to read the equivalent of multiple academic research papers on the subject. I did finish, but I had been hoping for something a bit more accessible.

It reminded me of the books I read in grad school (some of which were even cited in the text, like Goffman), and if the intent is for this book to be used in academic settings in graduate level courses, I think it achieved its purpose. However, I would not recommend this for an average Internet user with only a mild interest in how animals are used socially online.

I did learn a few things here and there, but the content in this was so dense that I had sometimes had difficulty following the author's point.

I think my favorite (and perhaps the strongest) parts were the sections that focused on the interviews the author conducted while doing research. I found these quotes and tidbits of information to be immensely fascinating and would have loved to see more of this throughout the book.

The title of the book, book cover, and description is what initially drew me in to pick this book up, but unfortunately this book did not meet my expectations.

This book is about the study of animal images on the internet and social media. The book starts out very dry, boring, and failed to keep my attention.

I would not recommend the book. Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

I liked the idea of this book and the premise genuinely excites me. It really examine pet and animal images on social media as a specific type of visual culture and I appreciate what this book is trying to do. However, this book just read like a textbook to me and the jargon used were confusing me a lot of times. This definitely not what I expected on a book discussing about pets and animals on social media and I think that really affected my expectations and enjoyment of the book.