...Addie LaRue was a wonderful book!
Which book are you reading now? Volume XIV
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EnglishEdward
Deity
I have read:
Provenance
by
Ann Leckie
Copyright 2017
It is space opera with regular characters, and some amusing aliens.
She has some good ideas, but it left a few loose ends unanswered.
I am not quite convinced that it is as good as
her books about sentient space ships.
Provenance
by
Ann Leckie
Copyright 2017
It is space opera with regular characters, and some amusing aliens.
She has some good ideas, but it left a few loose ends unanswered.
I am not quite convinced that it is as good as
her books about sentient space ships.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Finished Through Siberia by Accident by Dervla Murphy, an account of a trip around Lake Baikal which was originally planned to be done by bicycle(!), but amended at short notice due to a knee-injury sustained during the train-journey to her starting point. Was an interesting look at a part of the world (and its Soviet- and post-Soviet history) that I knew very little about. My wife also has Full Tilt, by the same author, which chronicles another bicycle journey (as a much younger woman) from Ireland to India.
I will borrow that once I finish Why The Germans Do It Better by the British journalist John Kampfner, a relatively brief look at the rebuilding of Germany and the reconstruction of German society from 1945 to (almost) the present day.
I will borrow that once I finish Why The Germans Do It Better by the British journalist John Kampfner, a relatively brief look at the rebuilding of Germany and the reconstruction of German society from 1945 to (almost) the present day.
Roughly 6/8 into the Goedel-Escher-Bach book.
It is such a nice book
I like how the author constructed it with a plan which he gradually reveals (by this point, it is almost all revealed). An example, above, of his planning to construct a semi-parallelism between formal logic systems and cell handling of dna. A "Henkin Sentence" is a sentence in a formal logic system which states that itself (the sentence) has a proof, so is a theorem. The parallel the author makes is with the E4 phagoi (viruses) that require the cell to use its own machinery (enzymes) to build the copies of the virus. Hence it can be said to be a parallel to an "explicit" Henkin sentence, while a different type of virus could include self-assembly orders for the copies, not needing any enzymes from the cell.A parallel to the "implicit" Henkin sentence would be a simpler virus, such as the tobacco mosaic one.
In the same line of parallels, the author presents the Goedel sentence (this sentence cannot be proven in this system) as a parallel to foreign dna that cannot be used in the cell and leads to destruction (eg of the virus, if it is picked up as containing alien dna).
Also started this one.
Inspired by a video by Ferocitus.
I read roughly 1/9 of this book, it is a biography so it's just an introduction. Myself being more of the type to like personalities like Goedel or Kafka, I am a bit unsure about the mood, but already there were some interesting stuff (and some which I can't like ^_^ ).
Inspired by a video by Ferocitus.
I read roughly 1/9 of this book, it is a biography so it's just an introduction. Myself being more of the type to like personalities like Goedel or Kafka, I am a bit unsure about the mood, but already there were some interesting stuff (and some which I can't like ^_^ ).
Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" and "Shadows of the Mind" may be interesting for you.
They are mostly philosophical, about AI, human consciousness, Turing machine, algorithms and Goedel theorem, etc.
There are some heavy math stuff, but the author says it can be skipped without losing the idea.
Similar to Hawking books by spirit, but Penrose is not afraid of using formulas.
EnglishEdward
Deity
I have read:
Shadow Captain
by the great Welsh author
Alastair Reynolds
Copyright 2019
Fortunately it was written in English.
The background is the future after the eight planets in the solar
system had been broken up to create a congregation of 50 million
planetoids many with singularities inside to provide artificial gravity.
It is good space opera and follows on from his Revenger.
If you haven't read already that, I suggest you read it first.
Shadow Captain
by the great Welsh author
Alastair Reynolds
Copyright 2019
Fortunately it was written in English.
The background is the future after the eight planets in the solar
system had been broken up to create a congregation of 50 million
planetoids many with singularities inside to provide artificial gravity.
It is good space opera and follows on from his Revenger.
If you haven't read already that, I suggest you read it first.
I certainly plan to read some books by Penrose in the future. I have watched a few of his lectures.
Ajidica
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The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam.
I'm about a quarter to a third of the way through the book and enjoying it, though it feels a little unfocused. It starts off with a collection of battlefield experiences of US soldiers; before moving into a character study of MacArthur and power struggles between MacArthur, Walker, and the European Front generals; a digression into the uncertain American foreign policy stance and demobilization immediately post war; before shifting into the domestic bureaucratic maneuvering in the Truman administration and then sliding into the right-wing "China First" crowd and how that developed into McCarthyism with the interesting aside that the McCarthyists were pressing for a harder line against Communism while also pushing for demobilization.
The book is well written throughout and the author does a good job of keeping things flowing nicely and logically. Apparently it was the last book written by the author before his death and it feels like the book an old foreign policy journalist would write. Full of insights and eye catching facts as concepts begin to layer on each other. Perhaps the author is just spending a lot of time setting things up, but so far a more accurate title would be "The Birth of the American Empire".
So far a solid recommendation to anyone interested in the Korean War or the start of the "American Empire".
I'm about a quarter to a third of the way through the book and enjoying it, though it feels a little unfocused. It starts off with a collection of battlefield experiences of US soldiers; before moving into a character study of MacArthur and power struggles between MacArthur, Walker, and the European Front generals; a digression into the uncertain American foreign policy stance and demobilization immediately post war; before shifting into the domestic bureaucratic maneuvering in the Truman administration and then sliding into the right-wing "China First" crowd and how that developed into McCarthyism with the interesting aside that the McCarthyists were pressing for a harder line against Communism while also pushing for demobilization.
The book is well written throughout and the author does a good job of keeping things flowing nicely and logically. Apparently it was the last book written by the author before his death and it feels like the book an old foreign policy journalist would write. Full of insights and eye catching facts as concepts begin to layer on each other. Perhaps the author is just spending a lot of time setting things up, but so far a more accurate title would be "The Birth of the American Empire".
So far a solid recommendation to anyone interested in the Korean War or the start of the "American Empire".
670/800 pages into GEB, and I am again in some chapter which is just not interesting to me. General ideas about how to make AI sufficiently mimic modes of thought which are there in a human. I think that the book could have been better if it instead focused on Goedel more (which it easily could have done).
I do plan to reread it when it's over. Anyway, it is a good work to read, if you like the core part of the topic (formal systems and ties to arithmetic).
I do plan to reread it when it's over. Anyway, it is a good work to read, if you like the core part of the topic (formal systems and ties to arithmetic).
EgonSpengler
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Long Bright River (2020) by Liz Moore
A drama about two sisters, one a drug addict and the other a police officer, in a struggling neighborhood of Philadelphia. Well written. It uses flashbacks very well. I always kind of brace myself whenever a storyteller starts using flashbacks. It often feels like a crutch to me, kind of a version of 'telling rather than showing' the characters in the story's present. But she did it well here. The author lives in Philly and clearly tried to make the neighborhood stand out. As someone who's only visited Philly a couple times, if there were any discrepancies or inconsistencies, I didn't notice. The main characters are all kinds of screwed up, but they remain likeable enough to stick with. Antiheroes are another tempting trap authors and screenwriters fall into. Sometimes those characters just end up coming across as jerks, and I can't deal with a story with a protagonist I don't care about. But again, the author managed to pull it off.
I note that Amazon lists the novel under "mystery, thriller & suspense" and the description makes it sound like a serial-killer story. It isn't, really. That's a "B-plot", at best. Most of the book is about the two sisters and their relationship, and about one of the women and her son. I saw a negative comment about that misrepresentation that docked the review of the book itself. Rule of thumb: Read a book or watch a movie or listen to a music album for the story it's telling you, not the story you think it's going to tell you. It's harder than it sounds, and sometimes the advertising will throw you. I'm reminded of the Ryan Gosling movie Drive, which was badly mis-marketed as an action-thriller, when it's more of a character drama. If somebody tells you Iron Man is a character study about an emotionally-stunted man grappling with adulthood, don't get mad at the movie.
Also, the author here doesn't use quotation marks for dialogue. I don't know why. Either I missed the point of that or it's just an affectation. There's another author who does that, but I can't remember who. Irvine Welsh, maybe? Anyway, it didn't bother me, but I know it aggravates some people.
A drama about two sisters, one a drug addict and the other a police officer, in a struggling neighborhood of Philadelphia. Well written. It uses flashbacks very well. I always kind of brace myself whenever a storyteller starts using flashbacks. It often feels like a crutch to me, kind of a version of 'telling rather than showing' the characters in the story's present. But she did it well here. The author lives in Philly and clearly tried to make the neighborhood stand out. As someone who's only visited Philly a couple times, if there were any discrepancies or inconsistencies, I didn't notice. The main characters are all kinds of screwed up, but they remain likeable enough to stick with. Antiheroes are another tempting trap authors and screenwriters fall into. Sometimes those characters just end up coming across as jerks, and I can't deal with a story with a protagonist I don't care about. But again, the author managed to pull it off.
I note that Amazon lists the novel under "mystery, thriller & suspense" and the description makes it sound like a serial-killer story. It isn't, really. That's a "B-plot", at best. Most of the book is about the two sisters and their relationship, and about one of the women and her son. I saw a negative comment about that misrepresentation that docked the review of the book itself. Rule of thumb: Read a book or watch a movie or listen to a music album for the story it's telling you, not the story you think it's going to tell you. It's harder than it sounds, and sometimes the advertising will throw you. I'm reminded of the Ryan Gosling movie Drive, which was badly mis-marketed as an action-thriller, when it's more of a character drama. If somebody tells you Iron Man is a character study about an emotionally-stunted man grappling with adulthood, don't get mad at the movie.
Also, the author here doesn't use quotation marks for dialogue. I don't know why. Either I missed the point of that or it's just an affectation. There's another author who does that, but I can't remember who. Irvine Welsh, maybe? Anyway, it didn't bother me, but I know it aggravates some people.
Synobun
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WRITTEN IN RED by Anne Bishop, 5/5. A surprising result, as I was very tempted to just drop this book like a hot potato in the first act. The world is "alternate," but with pretty obvious connections to reality. In particular, the settlers crossed the "Atlantik Ocean" (gee...) and met an indigenous population (gee...) and these natives were savage man-eaters (gee...) and peace was struck after the humans gave the indigenous "warm blankets." (Gee...) C'mon. This new continent is not named America, instead it is called Thaisia. And in this instance, the indigenous aren't Indigenous, and not human at all, instead being things like werewolves, vampires, elementals, shapeshifters, and so on. Also, the warm blankets really were just warm blankets this time. Woo.
So my initial problem was twofold. First, the writer completely erases Indigenous people from history. Wiped. Gone. Second, she uses the replaced history as the backdrop for the so-called alternate reality, utilizing the anti-Indigenous propaganda (they were indeed labelled as savage cannibals once) and turning it into truth for these "Indigenous but not Indigenous" peoples. I guess it's okay because the shapeshifters and such rule humanity in this alternate reality?
It really rubbed me the wrong way. I forced myself to keep going and the worldbuilding did come to be compelling, as was the plot, but even after its miraculous recovery I'm still kind of faced with the viewpoint that I don't think it was necessary to just erase Indigenous people. Their existence was not incompatible with the lore, and the behaviour of the fantastical creatures would have still worked.
So my initial problem was twofold. First, the writer completely erases Indigenous people from history. Wiped. Gone. Second, she uses the replaced history as the backdrop for the so-called alternate reality, utilizing the anti-Indigenous propaganda (they were indeed labelled as savage cannibals once) and turning it into truth for these "Indigenous but not Indigenous" peoples. I guess it's okay because the shapeshifters and such rule humanity in this alternate reality?
It really rubbed me the wrong way. I forced myself to keep going and the worldbuilding did come to be compelling, as was the plot, but even after its miraculous recovery I'm still kind of faced with the viewpoint that I don't think it was necessary to just erase Indigenous people. Their existence was not incompatible with the lore, and the behaviour of the fantastical creatures would have still worked.
Synobun
Deity
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Check out the Look Inside on the book's Amazon page. It includes the introductory "history of the world" which goes into it.
https://www.amazon.ca/Written-Red-Novel-Others-Book-ebook/dp/B008RD34VO/
GEB ended :/ Roughly 20 pages turned out to be bibliography and related notes, so a day sooner than expected. But I know I can read it again in the future, after first some of the books mentioned in the bibliography.
A promising one of those is A Profile of Mathematical Logic, by DeLong.
A promising one of those is A Profile of Mathematical Logic, by DeLong.
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tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Just finished The Fifth Season by N.K.Jemisin. Really good (took me only a couple of days). Have the sequels as well, so they will no doubt be consumed at least as fast.
The Crocodile, by Dostoevsky (have read it before, many years ago).
Continuing A Profile of Mathematical Logic. It is pretty impressive how the author, who was an academic, wastes no time to present the crisis with geometry that led to the non-euclidean versions. Certainly the tone in this book is a million times more austere than in GEB (which may end up not being as great a thing as I originally felt ).
Continuing A Profile of Mathematical Logic. It is pretty impressive how the author, who was an academic, wastes no time to present the crisis with geometry that led to the non-euclidean versions. Certainly the tone in this book is a million times more austere than in GEB (which may end up not being as great a thing as I originally felt
).
Josu
Emperor
Just finished Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom by David Wingrove
It is not a bad book, it has a good premise for dystopa, original, however the main plot is heavy and waffly.
I bought the second part, but not going to read it in short term
Starting Klara and the sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
It is not a bad book, it has a good premise for dystopa, original, however the main plot is heavy and waffly.
Spoiler :
I bought the second part, but not going to read it in short term
Starting Klara and the sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
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