What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.
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JimOfAllTrades
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I've been working my way through The Uplift Universe books by David Brin. I liked the first three books in this series quite a bit, I think it's one of the best series I've read in a while.
I just finished the second series of three books. These are written about 10 years after the first three. They pick up the story about the dolphin crewed starship from book two of the first series. This is the ship that had started all the fuss when they accidently stumbled on what may be old spaceships and actual remains from the race that presumably started the practice of Uplift and set the mold for civilization in the Five Galaxies at least two billion years ago.
The first book in this set is Brightness Reef, which I didn't care for. It just dragged on way too much.
The next book in the second trilogy is Infinity's Shore. Much better! Better at telling the story and moving the plot along. I liked this one quite a bit.
I've finished the last book in the series Heaven's Reach. It follows directly on from the previous book and continues the stories of those characters and introduces a couple of more. The stories of the various characters split, recombine, take off and eventually involve all the Five Galaxies. Like the previous books, impressive world building, some genuinely different and interesting alien races, and overall good characters. Like the first series, I thought this last book was also the best of the set.
The author has supposedly said there is one more book to come in the series (beside the couple of stories and one novella already published) but it's been over a decade and as far as I can see nothing has shown up. I'll definitely be reading it if it comes to be.
I just finished the second series of three books. These are written about 10 years after the first three. They pick up the story about the dolphin crewed starship from book two of the first series. This is the ship that had started all the fuss when they accidently stumbled on what may be old spaceships and actual remains from the race that presumably started the practice of Uplift and set the mold for civilization in the Five Galaxies at least two billion years ago.
The first book in this set is Brightness Reef, which I didn't care for. It just dragged on way too much.
The next book in the second trilogy is Infinity's Shore. Much better! Better at telling the story and moving the plot along. I liked this one quite a bit.
I've finished the last book in the series Heaven's Reach. It follows directly on from the previous book and continues the stories of those characters and introduces a couple of more. The stories of the various characters split, recombine, take off and eventually involve all the Five Galaxies. Like the previous books, impressive world building, some genuinely different and interesting alien races, and overall good characters. Like the first series, I thought this last book was also the best of the set.
The author has supposedly said there is one more book to come in the series (beside the couple of stories and one novella already published) but it's been over a decade and as far as I can see nothing has shown up. I'll definitely be reading it if it comes to be.
Lennart Hyland
Muse
Anyone here read Tolstoys War and Peace? I recently read that it is based on Napoleons invasion of Russia, a part of history I'm fascinated of. But in what way? Is it only an event in the background or does it contain any details about the battles, is Napoleon a character in the book?
Its a fairly big book so I would like to know before I give it a try
Its a fairly big book so I would like to know before I give it a try
Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
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It's an account of the war through the experience of a number of aristocratic families. It places these fictional characters among real people and in situations which give quite a good insight into historical events, for example, Borodino.
Different characters are used to explore different aspects of life and culture. I did find myself groaning inwardly each time I realised I was starting what would be another Princess Maria chapter, but overall it's a great story. The bewildering variations on names of characters is initially confusing but I eventually just let it wash over me and assumed I'd work out who was talking about whom eventually.
PS Napoleon is not a character in the book but his Russian opponent generals are. Oh and there's a discussion after the story concludes when Tolstoy awards himself another hundred or so pages to tell you how clever he is and how stupid historians are. I imagined he thought you'd be bound to read it just so you could tell yourself you'd read the whole book. Maybe that's just me.
Different characters are used to explore different aspects of life and culture. I did find myself groaning inwardly each time I realised I was starting what would be another Princess Maria chapter, but overall it's a great story. The bewildering variations on names of characters is initially confusing but I eventually just let it wash over me and assumed I'd work out who was talking about whom eventually.
PS Napoleon is not a character in the book but his Russian opponent generals are. Oh and there's a discussion after the story concludes when Tolstoy awards himself another hundred or so pages to tell you how clever he is and how stupid historians are. I imagined he thought you'd be bound to read it just so you could tell yourself you'd read the whole book. Maybe that's just me.
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The Library at Mount Char.
Elevator pitch: "The Necromancer's House meets The Laundry Files."
Elevator pitch: "The Necromancer's House meets The Laundry Files."
Lennart Hyland
Muse
Trying some short stories by Tolstoy, The Death Of Ivan Ilyich and How Much Land Does a Man Need?
dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
Princess Mary turned out to be one of my favorite charecters.She grows on you.
And Napoleon is a charecter in the book, though a small one.
Brainster
Penultimate Amazing
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Anyone here read Tolstoys War and Peace? I recently read that it is based on Napoleons invasion of Russia, a part of history I'm fascinated of. But in what way? Is it only an event in the background or does it contain any details about the battles, is Napoleon a character in the book?
Its a fairly big book so I would like to know before I give it a try
Told solely from the standpoint of the aristocratic Russians. I do not recall any actual battle descriptions or any actual physical appearances of Napoleon, although of course he is a central character in every other character's life. Here's the opening:
'nuff said. Highly recommend the read if you like Russian fiction and you can deal with the chapters where Tolstoy drifts into philosophy and history. One of many novels from this era that benefits from being abridged.
Just finished Safari from Hell, an account of a member of the Danish minority of Northern Schleswig, who was picked to crew a German blockade runner disguised as a Danish cargo ship in the early phase of WWI.
The mission was to supply SMS Königsberg trapped in the Rufiji River of Tanzania, where it was kept at bay by the Royal Navy, in the so-called Battle of the Rufiji DeltaWP.
Having made it to German East Africa/Tanzania, the blockade runner was caught up in the battle and eventually sunk, resulting in the subject of the book becoming part of von Lettow-Vorbeck's East Africa Campaign, where he eventually became a POW after trekking through most of the country.
The mission was to supply SMS Königsberg trapped in the Rufiji River of Tanzania, where it was kept at bay by the Royal Navy, in the so-called Battle of the Rufiji DeltaWP.
Having made it to German East Africa/Tanzania, the blockade runner was caught up in the battle and eventually sunk, resulting in the subject of the book becoming part of von Lettow-Vorbeck's East Africa Campaign, where he eventually became a POW after trekking through most of the country.
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The Great Zaganza
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Capital and Ideology by
Thomas Piketty
,
Thomas Piketty
,
Lennart Hyland
Muse
Thanks for your comments guys! I will try the unabridged version maybe later this year. It seems to be quite a long book and I have a lot of other ones I want to try before
The first three are great. I read them in the 1980s when they first appeared. I don't remember if I ever got past Brightness Reef, which was a disappointment.
Any good?! I have read Das Kapital a couple of times. The ideologies criticized in that one, i.e. the ideologies of capitalism, aren't very different from the prevalent ideologies today.
xterra
So far, so good...
The Ascent of Gravity: The quest to understand the force that explains everything. Marcus Chown, 2017, Pegasus Books
I began reading thinking that I would learn about gravity. However, the first chapter talked about Newton and the (mythological?) apple, and left me wondering if I had merely a history of discovery.
The history is there, but now about 3/4 of the way through the book, I am struggling to understand space-time, special and general relativity. Next is quantum theory. I hope I don't drown.
Worth reading, if, like me, you thought of gravity as the thing that holds us down.
I began reading thinking that I would learn about gravity. However, the first chapter talked about Newton and the (mythological?) apple, and left me wondering if I had merely a history of discovery.
The history is there, but now about 3/4 of the way through the book, I am struggling to understand space-time, special and general relativity. Next is quantum theory. I hope I don't drown.
Worth reading, if, like me, you thought of gravity as the thing that holds us down.
JimOfAllTrades
Master Poster
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I was sharing an apartment with my younger brother when the third book of the first series came out and he loved them and talked about them quite a bit. I had always intended to read them but for some reason never got around to it until now.
I almost gave up on the second series because of Brightness Reef but instead just skipped about ten chapters and didn't seem to miss much. The next two books were definitely better.
catsmate
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That's a good sign. If you start thinking you *do* understand them you're probably wrong.
Just finished reading To Live by Yu Hua. Highly recommended.
The story of a single man's life, and suffering, as this ordinary person is confronted by the overwhelming force of events in China through the 20th century.
The simplicity of the language combines with the matter of fact outlook of the characters to give an even deeper power to the suffering that they face through things like the revolution, Great Leap Forward, the cultural revolution, etc. But it's a simple, and very personal story, of a man and his family that doesn't dwell on politics but is rather influenced by them as though by the weather.
Gripping throughout. (it's also a short book, can be read in one or two sittings).
Currently reading Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. Which, while extremely different, is actually in some ways a fitting read after Yu Hua's novel, as it is an attempt to understand such tragic policies. The subtitle is How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, and Scott here is attempting to understand both why large utopian projects have been undertaken, and why they failed to achieve their aims.
He gives a four criteria that must exist before such schemes (as, for instance, The Great Leap Forward) are likely to be undertaken. The first is simply the reordering of society in such a way as to make it legible to administrators at the state level. This is things like a census and tax code, a common language, legal surnames, etc. that allow the state the ability to understand what's going on within society at a relatively fine level of detail.
The second he calls "a high modernist ideology", which is basically the view that society can be ordered from above, like a machine whose parts can be well engineered to some specific design specifications, toward some useful purpose.
On the third, I'll let him speak himself: "Only when these first two elements are joined to a third does the combination become potentially lethal. The third element is an authoritarian state this is willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring these high-modernist designs into being. The most fertile soil for this element has typically been times of war, revolution, depression, and struggle for national liberation. In such sitionars emergency conditions foster the seizure of emergency powers and frequently delegitimize the previous regime. They also tend to give rise to elites who delegitimize the past and who have revolutionary designs for their people."
The forth is the weakening of civil society. When a diversity of voices are delegitimized, the opposition to (and thus tempering and accommodating to local conditions) of such plans is equally weakened, thus the potential for tragedy arises.
Scott's view seems to be that natural systems (he uses an analogy to ecosystems here) like human society are too complex for top down design, and thus require a more complex bottom up development. One reason that such tragedies tend not to arise in democracies is that even as high modernist policies are implemented in a democracy, the many voices each have some impact on the final implementation of said policy, and so an initially simple top down approach becomes buttressed by many bottom of amendments that take into account local conditions.
Anyway, it's an interesting book. I certainly don't agree with everything, but it's worth the read. I've been hearing about it for a while but finally decided to pick it up after an 80,000 hours podcast that talked about it in some depth.
The story of a single man's life, and suffering, as this ordinary person is confronted by the overwhelming force of events in China through the 20th century.
The simplicity of the language combines with the matter of fact outlook of the characters to give an even deeper power to the suffering that they face through things like the revolution, Great Leap Forward, the cultural revolution, etc. But it's a simple, and very personal story, of a man and his family that doesn't dwell on politics but is rather influenced by them as though by the weather.
Gripping throughout. (it's also a short book, can be read in one or two sittings).
Currently reading Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. Which, while extremely different, is actually in some ways a fitting read after Yu Hua's novel, as it is an attempt to understand such tragic policies. The subtitle is How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, and Scott here is attempting to understand both why large utopian projects have been undertaken, and why they failed to achieve their aims.
He gives a four criteria that must exist before such schemes (as, for instance, The Great Leap Forward) are likely to be undertaken. The first is simply the reordering of society in such a way as to make it legible to administrators at the state level. This is things like a census and tax code, a common language, legal surnames, etc. that allow the state the ability to understand what's going on within society at a relatively fine level of detail.
The second he calls "a high modernist ideology", which is basically the view that society can be ordered from above, like a machine whose parts can be well engineered to some specific design specifications, toward some useful purpose.
On the third, I'll let him speak himself: "Only when these first two elements are joined to a third does the combination become potentially lethal. The third element is an authoritarian state this is willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring these high-modernist designs into being. The most fertile soil for this element has typically been times of war, revolution, depression, and struggle for national liberation. In such sitionars emergency conditions foster the seizure of emergency powers and frequently delegitimize the previous regime. They also tend to give rise to elites who delegitimize the past and who have revolutionary designs for their people."
The forth is the weakening of civil society. When a diversity of voices are delegitimized, the opposition to (and thus tempering and accommodating to local conditions) of such plans is equally weakened, thus the potential for tragedy arises.
Scott's view seems to be that natural systems (he uses an analogy to ecosystems here) like human society are too complex for top down design, and thus require a more complex bottom up development. One reason that such tragedies tend not to arise in democracies is that even as high modernist policies are implemented in a democracy, the many voices each have some impact on the final implementation of said policy, and so an initially simple top down approach becomes buttressed by many bottom of amendments that take into account local conditions.
Anyway, it's an interesting book. I certainly don't agree with everything, but it's worth the read. I've been hearing about it for a while but finally decided to pick it up after an 80,000 hours podcast that talked about it in some depth.
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
Blood Meridian, a re-read following Cormac McCarthy's death last week.
Sparse and stark, epic and wild.
Sparse and stark, epic and wild.
Armitage72
Philosopher
Normally when I get Cthulhu Mythos books, I stick to anthologies of stories by multiple authors instead of single author books, unless I'm familiar with the author, generally through anthologies. For example, I have Brian McNaughton's "Throne of Bones" and the collections of David Conyers' Harrison Peel stories because I had read some of their stories in various anthologies. Based on the short stories I've read in anthologies, it's highly unlikely I'll buy a book that's entirely Poppy Z. Brite. With multiple authors, I'll probably like something in it, and I probably won't hate everything.
I broke that rule with Cthulhu's Reach - Lovecraftian Horror on the Ocean Floor by Sean Benoit, and I'm regretting it. It's only 119 pages, which is good, because I'm less than 20 pages in and it is painful. Based on the credits, it's self-published, which shouldn't surprise me.
In the first two pages of the first story, there's an "as you know" exposition dump and a paragraph that both tells and shows something. The leader of a diving expedition says "let's go over our roles once more" and then names everyone in the group and their specialty, because they may have forgotten who they are. "As the descent continued, Amelia revealed her past trauma to the crew. "I know this mission is risky, but I need to do this. I lost my brother on a previous mission, and I've been haunted by his death ever since. I need to prove to myself that I can handle this and that his death wasn't in vain."" If you have dialogue in which she reveals her trauma, you don't need to say that she's revealing her trauma. Her brother is never mentioned again, by the way.
The characters "can't shake the feeling that ______" four or five times in a dozen pages.
The characters are on a submarine exploring an ocean chasm and find ruins and an underwater city, but the writer can't decide if they're underwater or if they're somehow in an air-filled area that is never mentioned. They find a "faded journal" left by a previous expedition in the city. They're underwater!! It would be a lot more than faded. At one point they walk across a treacherous bridge while strong winds are blowing, and then immediately swim to the surface. Then when they reach the surface, they look around at the ruins of the underwater city, that was supposedly down in the chasm.
The entity they encounter is defeated ... somehow. Something to do with the marine biologist's equipment. It's never really said. Several times situations are explained using references to objects that the characters found earlier, but they were never actually shown finding those objects. "As they continued to search for a solution, they stumbled upon another shocking discovery. Dr. Rodriguez had uncovered a journal that belonged to the underwater city's founder, and it contained information about the entity's origin and plans." I wonder how they were even able to read it.
The dialogue is stilted, at best. It's often different characters saying the same things in slightly different ways. "We have to hold on. We can't let it take us down." "We have to fight back. We can't let it win."
"We need to warn others about the dangers that lie in the depths of the ocean. The entity may be gone, but there are still other threats out there, waiting to strike."
And that's just the first story. If I'm never seen here again, the book killed me.
EDIT: The second story has characters being pulled underwater, while in an underwater temple!! This is almost "Eye of Argon" territory.
EDIT 2: Either my previous edit unlocked the secret of this book or I've gone mad. Either is possible. I'm now laughing out loud while reading it. It is a Cthulhu Mythos version of "The Eye of Argon". The stories are so bad they loop back around to hilarious.
I broke that rule with Cthulhu's Reach - Lovecraftian Horror on the Ocean Floor by Sean Benoit, and I'm regretting it. It's only 119 pages, which is good, because I'm less than 20 pages in and it is painful. Based on the credits, it's self-published, which shouldn't surprise me.
In the first two pages of the first story, there's an "as you know" exposition dump and a paragraph that both tells and shows something. The leader of a diving expedition says "let's go over our roles once more" and then names everyone in the group and their specialty, because they may have forgotten who they are. "As the descent continued, Amelia revealed her past trauma to the crew. "I know this mission is risky, but I need to do this. I lost my brother on a previous mission, and I've been haunted by his death ever since. I need to prove to myself that I can handle this and that his death wasn't in vain."" If you have dialogue in which she reveals her trauma, you don't need to say that she's revealing her trauma. Her brother is never mentioned again, by the way.
The characters "can't shake the feeling that ______" four or five times in a dozen pages.
The characters are on a submarine exploring an ocean chasm and find ruins and an underwater city, but the writer can't decide if they're underwater or if they're somehow in an air-filled area that is never mentioned. They find a "faded journal" left by a previous expedition in the city. They're underwater!! It would be a lot more than faded. At one point they walk across a treacherous bridge while strong winds are blowing, and then immediately swim to the surface. Then when they reach the surface, they look around at the ruins of the underwater city, that was supposedly down in the chasm.
The entity they encounter is defeated ... somehow. Something to do with the marine biologist's equipment. It's never really said. Several times situations are explained using references to objects that the characters found earlier, but they were never actually shown finding those objects. "As they continued to search for a solution, they stumbled upon another shocking discovery. Dr. Rodriguez had uncovered a journal that belonged to the underwater city's founder, and it contained information about the entity's origin and plans." I wonder how they were even able to read it.
The dialogue is stilted, at best. It's often different characters saying the same things in slightly different ways. "We have to hold on. We can't let it take us down." "We have to fight back. We can't let it win."
"We need to warn others about the dangers that lie in the depths of the ocean. The entity may be gone, but there are still other threats out there, waiting to strike."
And that's just the first story. If I'm never seen here again, the book killed me.
EDIT: The second story has characters being pulled underwater, while in an underwater temple!! This is almost "Eye of Argon" territory.
EDIT 2: Either my previous edit unlocked the secret of this book or I've gone mad. Either is possible. I'm now laughing out loud while reading it. It is a Cthulhu Mythos version of "The Eye of Argon". The stories are so bad they loop back around to hilarious.
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