Reads
Books that I have read and my thoughts on them.In reverse chronological order, updated periodically.
Ratings:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Fantastic: Exceeded all expectations.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Good: New, unusual, or thoroughly enjoyable.
⭐⭐⭐
OK: Worth a read, but nothing groundbreaking.
⭐⭐
Meh: Some good ideas, but did not meet expectations.
⭐
No: Severe flaws, and little of interest or value.
2025
I, Robot
Isaac Asimov
⭐- Science fiction
- Classic
- Did not finish
- Book club - February
In the first chapter, the wife is a stereotypical manipulative "nagging bitch", but the husband "loves her so much, poor thing", so he has to give in to her demands. In subsequent chapters, all of the male characters (astronauts, who are supposed to be level-headed) hurl insults at and often threaten violence against robots. And as for the robots themselves... First chapter says that at some point New York City forbade robots on the streets at night, just like a sundown town. (In case you don't know, many US towns used to not allow "colored people" to be present in the town after sunset, often under the threat of death) To make this matter worse, older robots address humans as "master". These blatantly obvious parallels were not addressed anywhere in the first three chapters, which makes me question whether the author was being obtuse, or considers such treatment of robots acceptable.
Robot science and technology is all backwards too. In the stories, all robots, old and new, are metal humanoids with positronic brains and nearly-infinite power sources. Somehow, they know how to walk, run (!), perform human-like manual labor (!!), see, hear, and recognize speech (!!!). But older model cannot speak, or speak very poorly. There appears to be no other method to communicate with the robot other than speech, not even radio. And none of the robots have overrides or emergency shutdown switches. Some also have emotions and religion. So yeah, functionality-wise, these are just uneducated metal humans who do unpaid labor. That's pretty terrible.
Story plots revolve around the three laws of robotics, but the problems are rather contrived, easily addressed by having aforementioned overrides, shutdown switches, and well-defined commands. Or not using humanoid robots to begin with. Seriously though, one of the problems happened because the human issuing the order did not put enough emphasis, or used the wrong tone when giving a command, so the robot did not interpret it correctly. I realize that it sounds like I am nitpicking, but in the 50s, we already had radio for communication, some automation, purpose-built machines, and even computers, but it seems that all of engineering knowledge (of the time) was dismissed to make metal men do stupid things.
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Julio Vincent Gambuto
⭐⭐⭐- Self-Help?
Books Of Blood - Book 1
Clive Barker
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Horror
Book of Blood: The introduction that serves as the source of the rest of the stories.
Midnight Meat Train: Investigation into a serial murderer on the New York City subway uncovers a much deeper (literally) ancient conspiracy. The movie is great, too.
The Yattering and Jack: Minor demon is sent to psychologically torture a man, who is strangely unfazed by all of demon's antics. The reversal (and contrast) of an irritated demon and a very patient and determined human is rather entertaining. There is some absurd humor in the story, too, specifically the part with the turkey.
Sex, Drugs, and Starshine: Sleazy director is more concerned with getting his dick sucked than with running the last play in a theather that is about to close. But certain otherworldly forces demand a good final performance and take over. Some morbid humor and a brutal finale.
In the Hills, in the Cities: Two englishmen travel through the Balkans and discover twin cities in a remote area, both of which are getting ready for a once-in-a-decade festival that involves every single person. All I could say is "What the fuck?! How does one come up with this?".
You Are Not American
Amanda Frost
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Politics
The first infamous case is Dred Scott vs. Sanford, on whether a freed slave is a US citizen. The answer was no.
This decision has been retroactively changed by passing of the 14th amendment, which established birthright citizenship. But it wasn't so simple. The wording of the amendment was vague, intended to exclude subjects "outside of US jurisdiction", including foreign diplomats, occupying military forces, and Native Americans (until 1924). United States vs. Wong Kim Ark case was specifically about recognizing citizenship of a person born in the US to non-citizens.
Even that did not help with anti-immigrant sentiment and legal discrimination in the form of Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited many people from China from immigrating, and those who were allowed, from becoming US citizens (until 1952!). Wong Kim Ark has been repeatedly harassed at the border, required to obtain witnesses to prove his citizenship.
Then it gets really strange. Historically, when a woman in the US got married she essentially gave up her personhood, and her citizenship was automatically assumed to be the same as her husband. Which made it so a woman could both acquire and lose (!) citizenship through marriage. Then the Cable Act protected women from losing citizenship... But only if they married white men who were eligible for naturalization in the first place. So blatant systemic misogyny and racism.
In 1942, US carried out one of the largest denaturalization campaigns against German immigrants who were members of the American Bund, an organization with ties to the Nazi party in Germany. The legal argument here is the Oath of Allegiance, which states "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;".
At the same time, Japanese Americans were rounded up into camps and given a "choice" to renounce their citizenship and be deported to Japan, a country many of them have never been to.
Other infamous case is Alfred Renton Bridges, a union leader who led a general strike in San Francisco. He was accused of being a communist, tried, and attempted to be deported multiple times, all unsuccessfully. Ironically, the documents released in the 90s after the fall of the USSR revealed that he did collaborate with the Communist party.
Emma Goldman, Russian-born anarchist, who immigrated and has been active in New York City, was denaturalized and deported.
By the end of 20th century, US denaturalized 22,000 people.
The last chapters are about recent events - the "birthers" movement that questioned Obama's citizenship, suspect birth attendants - medical staff suspected of signing birth certificates for people born outside the US (across the border in Mexico), and Operation Janus - denaturalizing US citizens for mistakes made on immigration forms, looked at with extreme scrutiny.
Jennifer Government
Max Barry
⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
- Dystopia
- Satire
The book has several converging plots, the pace is fast, the satire is heavy-handed, characters are varying degrees of sketchy, and although it shows that the book was written in early 2000s, it is still entertaining.
Some of the absurd or ridiculous quotes:
"It's not the whole Government," he said, disgusted. "It's just Jennifer. The bitch never quits."
"A man came to talk to us today," Kate said. "He said some companies are bad. Do you work for a bad company?"
"What?"
"He said the bad companies ganged up on the good companies and they are going to fight."
"US Alliance and Team Advantage?"
"Yes!"
"This is what they teach you?"
"The good companies are... I forget"
"Me too," Buy said.
She saw two men fighting over a VCR in the window of a Sears.
It was amazing how much more sleep he got now that he was unemployed. He was starting to feel bad for all the people who had to drag themselves into their drone factories by nine. They didn't know what they were missing.
The Police had mounted a machine gun on the Burger King counter and it was chewing up McDonald's store. Shreds of red and yellow plastic spiraled in the air like confetti.
Tyranny of the Minority
Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Politics
The book describes how democratic society is intended to work, and many ways in which the democratic process could be compromised, allowing a minority to wield power over the majority opinion. Sometimes, this is due to unequal representation, such as both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. Sometimes, the processes are flawed, such as a filibuster, which transforms a simple 50% majority requirement into a 67% supermajority requirement in order to stop an inevitable filibuster. Sometimes, it is simple self-interest leading to embracing anti-democratic actions and movements if they are somehow beneficial. And sometimes, it is intentional malice: voter suppression, abuse of the constitution, and selective law enforcement. And for each, there are many well-explained historical anecdotes from around the world.
For me, it was interesting to learn how the US constitution, revered by some today, at the time of its writing, was very much a compromise. Slavery states claimed their slave population as "represented" people, leading to things such as the three-fifth rule, the electoral college, and the House Of Representatives itself. At the same time, smaller states demanded more representation for themselves, and that is why each US state has two senators, regardless of its size.
Some of the described historical events are uncannily similar to recent ones. Particularly, the unrest on Feb 6, 1934 in France immediately reminded me of January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. And the 1930's political motto "Better Hitler than Blum" reminds me of the recent "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat".
2024
The Employees
Olga Ravn
⭐⭐- Science Fiction
Overall, felt like piecing together parts of a story based on disjointed police reports.
Hermetica
Alan Lea
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science Fiction
Memorable quote:
People see what they want to see
The Forbidden Stars
Tim Pratt
⭐⭐⭐- Science Fiction
Less Is More
Jason Hinckel
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Non-fiction
- Economy
1500s is the beginning of the capitalism-as-we-know-it, which starts with the enclosure movement - taking away the common (shared) land, and employing former commoners as low-paid laborers.
GDP, currently a common measure of economic performance, has interesting history, overshadowed by WWII, yet even its creator warned that it is a bad metric.
Nice shout-out to FairPhone, as a more long-term solution to endless upgrade cycle of smartphones.
Very interesting summary on how "human" and "nature" became separate concepts on the cultural level, from Christianity's view of humans being superior to other living things (via God's will), to Descartes' views on thought process being unique to humans. Both of these conveniently played into the worldview where both nature and human body (because the real human is the mind) are resources that have to be utilized to the fullest
In the last chapters, there are several cases in which nature was legally represented as a person.
Остання Війна Імперій (Last War of the Empires)
Ірина Грабовська (Iryna Hrabovska)
⭐⭐⭐- Science Fiction
- Ukrainian
Spoilers follow. Some of the things that were left unexplained (from both books) or are just baffling:
What happened to the original Edward Jablonski is never explained. There is only a guess that he "disappeared" when Danylo appeared in Leoburg, but that still leaves many questions, especially why everyone just accepted Danylo to be Edward.
Some of the characters' decisions are incredibly stupid. Going into the woods at night during a war to have a private conversation? Not killing the big bad when given the chance? Or the other way around, going rogue during a well-planned heist? Hollywood-level.
Leila. I understand that she is driven by revenge and for good reasons, but her desire for male attention via sex or other methods, sowing jealousy, and personal hatred towards Jackie does not seem to be founded on anything. Also, she somehow avoids any consequences for her actions.
Which brings me to the ending. Not sure if it was rushed or intentionally ironic. The city government proclaims free and fair elections to the city council... but give Agnessa an automatic seat (so much for fair elections). The court decides that Leila should not be executed, but, instead, exiled from the city. Doing the exact same thing that was done to them by the previous government. And what do our heroes do after nearly dying to save Leoburg? They decide to leave. What.
The Worm Ouroboros
E. R. Eddison
⭐⭐- Fantasy
- Book club (November)
- Did not finish
Tis writ somewhat crabbedly, and most damnably long.Just guys being dudes, plotting and murdering each other over... something. Parts of it feels like playing a D&D campaign, with action, absurd deaths, and not much else. Parts are discussing military maneuvering and politics, which I could not get into. Characters appear, die, and then re-appear again.
The plot starts with Gorice, King of Witchland, claiming that Demonland is his. Demons challenge him, and Gorice agrees to a wrestling match. He cheats, but gets brutally killed anyway. Being a manly man of honor, Gorice's successor (also Gorice) uses magic to destroy Demons' fleet. But the main Demon characters survive and are rescued by deus ex machina in a form of a friendly Goblin lord. Then Demons and Goblins immediately try to attack one of Witchland's castles, and get taken prisoner. But suddenly, a lord from some other land (friendly to Demonland) arrives, and forces Witches to release the prisoners. Then Lord Juss (of Demonland) has a dream about a mountain, so him and his forces set off on an adventure to search for it (reason: "trust me, bro"). Most of them die, but the few that live do find the magic mountain. After a stupid move by a not-important third wheel character, Demons are then told to return home. Then the story shifts back to Witchland, their plots, maneuvers and politics. More castle sieges. Characters somehow come back to life. At this point, about halfway, I lost track of everything.
The book is written in old-timey language, has long descriptions of everything, and is very slow (and at times, difficult) to read. You really have to be in the right mood to get through it. Everything that happens is so over-the-top, the speeches have so much pathos, and some of the descriptions are so absurd it is pretty entertaining. Some of the ridiculous or funny passages:
Corund leaned on the parapet and shaded his eyes with his hand that was broad as a smoked haddock
His cloak was woven of the skins of black cobras stitched together with gold wire
Art not thou and I finger and thumb?
I hold this burg of Eshgrar Ogo as a nut betwixt the crackers.
why, there's a proper man indeed: weareth a shaven lip too, which, as experienced opinion shall tell thee, far exceedeth your nasty mustachios.
As the fool thinketh, so the bell blinketh.
...had our army smashed like an egg that is dropped from a watch-tower on pavement of hard granite.
"Filth, unhand me," said Spitfire, "else shall I presently thrust thee through with my sword, and send thee to the Tartarus of hell, where I doubt not the devils there too long await thee."
Fifteen ships, and every ship as full of men as there be eggs in a herring's roe
Остання Обитель Бунтарства (The Rebel's Last Resort)
Ірина Грабовська (Iryna Hrabovska)
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Ukrainian
The story starts with Danylo, who inherits a castle in a remote Ukrainian village from his missing and presumed dead uncle. The castle, as odd as it already is, holds an entrance to an alternate dimension, into a bustling steampunk city called Leoburg. After accidentally entering this portal, Danylo is dragged into the politics of the city and his alternate-reality family drama, all while trying to find his uncle there. Meanwhile, in our world, Danylo's best friend Fedia, and castle's only remaining resident, Jackie, are searching uncle's documents, dealing with angry locals and sabotage from a stranger.
I enjoyed the slow reveal of the history of Leoburg, from the optimistic founding of the city, to a multitude of conflicting political interests, to its slow descent into authoritarianism and oppression. Uncle's backstory and conspiracies are interesting as well.
The romance plot between Fedia and Jackie was quite irritating, honestly. It's two adults acting as insecure teenagers. While Jackie had a rough childhood and and has difficulty trusting people, Fedia just has his head up his ass.
Overall, some parts are really cheesy, there's plenty of action, Danylo solves the murder "mystery", becomes a hero, and exposes the villians, although that starts a whole other chain of events for the sequel.
Something Wickes This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
- Book club (October)
Will's father, just a side character at first, plays an increasingly important role throughout the story, and ultimately saves the boys. Conversations between Will and his dad turn rather philosophical - what it means to be a good person, what it means to be happy, and whether to fear death.
Some of dad's wisdoms:
Too late, I found out you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.
Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.The Illustrated Man is a very classic villain - intimidating, with no known past, and vague goals outside of inflicting suffering. His implied immortality and animated bright tattoos add to the otherworldliness of his character. If he and people like him are powered by human misery and fear, they sure would enjoy the modern hyper-connected world.
Although this is not a horror story, some moments stood out as rather disturbing: resurrecting Mr. Electrico, house of wax, and old man reflections in the labyrinth.
How To
Randall Munroe
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Humor
Good Omens
Terry Pratchett
Neil Gaiman
⭐⭐- Fantasy
- Humor
- Book club (September)
- Did not finish
The book got an occasional chuckle out of me, but many jokes did not land, and felt awkward or forced, like a dad trying to use slang. Just like the dad jokes, there are some bad stereotypes. A man from Papua New Guinea must be a headhunter. Tibetans say omm, wear red robes, and drink coffee with... rancid yak butter? Seriously? This is just stupid. And yes, shitty stereotypes are my pet peeve.
Some paragraphs I did find oddly humorous, like how Newt never believed in anything, or how having nice weather is an anomaly. Some paragraphs I skimmed or skipped since they did not matter.
The plot consists of a multitude of converging storylines: Azaraphale, Crowley, Anathema Device, a group of kids called the Them, Newt Pulsifer and his witch-hunting commander, riders of the apocalypse; and the book switches between them very quickly, a lot, and sometimes skips time, and leaves things unexplained. The action picks up and the plotlines converge in the Saturday chapter, but then, there is a sudden and an anticlimactic end to all of the buildup. If a red herring fell out of the sky at that point, that would be very appropriate.
The Stone Sky
N. K. Jemisin
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Fantasy
Memorable quote:
But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them - even if, in truth, their victims couldn't care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.
Review of the entire Broken Earth trilogy
Venomous Lumpsucker
Ned Beauman
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Satire
The plot revolves around the venomous lumpsucker, a fish, and one of the most intelligent remaining species on the planet. But even its intelligence cannot save it from the mining company. Trying to find the last surviving lumpsuckers are the two main characters: Resaint, a researcher, who never cared for conservation, but is fascinated by animal intelligence, and Halyard, a middle-level corporate manager who embezzled a lot of money and fumbled a get-rich-quick scheme, so he needs to prove that lumpsuckers are not extinct to cover his ass. Their quest takes them to the for-profit preserve, a camp in Finland filled with refugees from the "hermit kingdom" of Europe (i'll let you guess what country that is), a floating independent city-state with rebellious geneticists, and a grand finale on the last preserved wilderness owned by an insane billionaire. The ending is not happy... but realistic.
Memorable quote:
In the course of her job, Resaint had met people like Megrimson, executives who went into work and sat down at their desks and made decisions that ravaged the world. They didn't seem evil to her. They seemed more like fungal colonies or AI subroutines, mechanical components of a self-perpetuating super-organism, with no real subjectivity of their own. That said, she would have happily watched any of them die.
Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide
David Bergman
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The Obelisk Gate
N. K. Jemisin
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Fantasy
Review of the entire Broken Earth trilogy
Life, The Universe, And Everything
Douglas Adams
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Humor
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
First few chapters about scientists themself are dry, and often provide facts about their personal lives, instead of how they advanced science. If history of science is your thing, Leonard Mlodinow's The Upright Thinkers is great, and provides a more connected picture.
Once the book gets to the actual science instead of history, it gets much more interesting. Some things I remembered from school and other popular science books, but there were still many interesting facts and stories.
- Leavitt invented the measurement of a "standard candle" by observing Cepheids pulsing.
- A single inventor, Midgley, invents both tetraethyl lead and CFCs, both of which had disastrous, long-term effects on the environment and people. And it completely disrupted lead-based dating for minerals.
- There is an unfinished Superconducting Supercollider in Texas.
- Manson, Iowa has an enormous crater that is 3mi deep and 20 mi across. Due to its size, it is difficult to perceive as such.
- Ashfall Fossil Beds Park in Nebraska is one of the few spots in the world, where a combination of weather and events preserved the fossils extremely well.
- A chapter on tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes was quite relevant after reading the Fifth Season, including some infamous eruptions.
- Women cannot bear children above 5,500m.
- Clear-air turbulence is lesser-known and dangerous phenomenon.
- Bathysphere and first deep-sea exploration
- Orange Roughy (the fish) has a very long lifecycle of 150 yrs. Puts the overfishing in a wholly different perspective.
- Biologocal classification has always been full of drama. The info on early humans is very ambiguous info outside of a few findings. Australia was settled 60,000+ years ago. There are even theories that humans forgot how to make tools.
- Chapter on mosses and lichens was interesting as well. I never realized there are so many species until I started using Seek and iNaturalist apps around my yard and in parks. Sir Joseph Banks on expedition with Cook discovered over 1400 new species of mosses. And lichens live on all continents, including Antarctica, even though they can take hundreds of years to grow.
- Evolution wasn't a new concept when Darwin went on the Beagle expedition.
- Book shows its 2003 views on climate, such as "we are in an ice age". Which I read during the hottest summer on record.
Babel
R. F. Kuang
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Alternate history
- Book club (May)
Young boy is kidnapped from China by a British professor, and raised to become a translator for Babel, one of the departments at Oxford, in order to improve the magic-industrial complex of Great Britain. In this world, magic is powered by language and silver. In this position of relative privilege, he attemps to fight the system that uses and abuses people like him, both here and back home. As an immigrant, some of Robin's experiences are relatable, especially coming back to the hometown and seeing it as "just a city" because it has changed so much. The professor's attitude of "stop complaining, start appreciating how good you have it" is familiar as well (which, generally, is the "yet you participate in society" type of argument). Anti-colonialist and revolutionary views are communicated through a single person, Griffin, Robin's contact within the secret society. Which, at first, seem manipulative or misleading, but, on the other hand, outside of his trip to China, Robin's worldview does not go beyond Oxford.
Some things in the novel are a bit odd: Robin talks about forgetting his native language, but I have never heard of a person who emigrated as late as a teenager, to forget or lose their language. Although it is implied that the silver magic that Britain uses is critical and all-permeating, the actual effects are described as simple +1 to a stat, such as a carriage with a specific affixed silver bar can go a little bit faster, or a boat can somehow catch a bit more fish. Yet at the same time, there are inscriptions that spawn and fire bullets at the robbers. The Chekhov's nuclear bomb is announced front and center around the first quarter of the book.
The Fifth Season
N. K. Jemisin
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Fantasy
- Book club (April)
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Douglas Adams
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Humor
- Book club (March)
Some of my favorite parts: (SPOILERS)
- Convincing the bulldozer driver to lay in the mud in front of his own bulldozer.
- Vogons, whose "evolution stopped once they climbed out of the sea", and that no one takes seriously.
- The loudest band in the universe (related to Dethklok?) and its lead singer who is temporarily dead for tax reasons.
- Planet that constructs luxury planets, but has been in stasis due to a recession.
- Crash-landed colonists that held hundreds of meetings yet have not discovered fire (hello, corporate)
The Design of Everyday Things
Donald Norman
⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Did not finish
Acceptance
Jeff Vandermeer
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
Mediocre
Ijeoma Oluo
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The author herself occasionally slides into bottom-grade insults (the stereotype of an antisocial white guy living in mom's basement was brought up at least twice, amongst others). And Stalin was not "another white man" by any measure (Stalin was Georgian, and, at least in modern Russia, there is plenty of racism toward people from the Caucasus, including Georgians).
Phantastes
MacDonald
⭐- Fantasy
- Book club (February)
The man walks into some lady's cottage, is told not to open the door, opens the door, gets a shadow demon attached to himself.
The man asks a girl to see her crystal sphere, is told to be gentle, breaks the sphere and releases some shadows that pursue the girl.
The man visits an old lady's house with inter-dimensional doors, is told not to open the last door, opens the door (AGAIN?! You have a shadow demon already), nearly dies, gets rescued by the old lady.
The man walks into the fey palace, lives in quarters furnished specifically for him, and is being served by fey. There is no explanation about why. (Is this some weird old-timey/racist notion of being served by "others"?)
The man lusts after a marble woman and her feet (explicitly metioned multiple times).
The man tries to disrupt a KKK rally (literally described as knights and wizards in white robes), and dies at the hands of a... werewolf???
I realize this is one of the first books that can be called "fantasy", but the insolence of the main character is astonishing, and the plot is non-existent.
A City On Mars
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Space
Radiance
Cathrynne M. Valente
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The story is about a famous producer's daughter who disappeared under mysterious circumstances while filming her own documentary. Throughout the book, the style changes between a documentary, a detective mystery, and a drama. In a way, the events of the book are stages of father's grief.
The End of Everything
Katie Mack
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Physics
2023
The Gunslinger
Stephen King
⭐⭐- Fantasy
- Western
- Book club (January 2024)
Overall, I have a similar feeling as I did with Cryptonomicon. It was fun to read, but looking back, there was no point or reason to much of the story. If Cryptonomicon was a teenage hacker fantasy, The Gunslinger is a teenage cowboy and knight fantasy.
Death's End
Cixin Liu
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
(Mild spoilers ahead)
The difficult peace results in a dramatic betrayal and a turn of events where first, the entire population of Earth is forced into a concentration camp, and later, the entire Solar system is threatened with destruction. Faced with another crisis, the humans start planning how to save themselves, this time, their only options being grand space projects and altering the laws of physics.
The only things I did not like about the story are the cringey "unrequited love" plot between two main characters, and more recurrences of the boomer-y "future men are too feminine and weak".
Overall, the proper conclusion to the series. Despite multiple hints at the opposite, being compassionate does pay off.
The Dreaming Stars
Tim Pratt
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
Authority
Jeff VanderMeer
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (October)
Power Struggles
Michael Brian Schiffer
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
- History
The Midwich Cuckoos
John Wyndham
⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (September)
Alien ship visits a town and impregnates all the women. The born Children (or Cuckoos) grow up to be a hive-mind of 58 fast-growing, smug, overreacting, sociopathic, mind-controlling megalomaniacs who outright say “we will dominate you” to humans, yet don't really do anything for 8 years. Meanwhile, humans, being the idiots that they are, keep the whole thing quiet and put the Cuckoos in a special school. Then, an accident gets quickly escalated to an attempted murder and then a riot, leading to several deaths. It ends quite anticlimactically with a suicide bomber killing all of the Cuckoos. So much for being all-powerful and dominating the world.
The story could be engaging, but most of the book reads as a dull government report. Most characters are just background. Men speak with many words and little substance. There are some attempts of discussing interesting topics, such as how to prepare for an alien invasion and how the law should apply to non-humans, but they quickly get overshadowed by bad stereotypes, racism, denial of evolution, and political strawmanning. Not a word on abortion, which would have solved this problem in the first place.
Emotional
Leonard Mlodinow
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula LeGuin
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (August)
- Re-read
The Tangled Web We Weave
James Ball
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Software
House on the Borderland
William Hope Hodgson
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Horror
- Book club (July)
The Dark Forest
Cixin Liu
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
There are desperate global projects, such as giving unlimited power and resources to several people, hoping that they can mislead and outsmart the omnipresent alien surveillance and the cult. There are debates about which direction the technology and humanity should go, conflict, and sabotage. Further in the future, there is environmental collapse, a technological breakthrough, an encounter with the alien probe, and spaceships escaping the Solar system. There are also several elements that resemble time-travel stories.
It all ends with a rather depressing realization about the humans' place in the universe. At the same time, humans discover the ultimate weapon to deter the invaders.
Overall, the book has great ideas and realistic scenarios. If you are OK with the characters existing simply to be the observers of unfolding events, ignore occasional boomer-like complaining about future humans being weak, and tolerate the mail-order-bride situation in the first part, read it.
Humble Pi
Matt Parker
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Engineering
The Wrong Stars
Tim Pratt
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (June)
The Upright Thinkers
Leonard Mlodinow
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
- History
Out of the Silent Planet
C. S. Lewis
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (May)
Toki Pona
Sonja Lang
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Language
https://tokipona.org/
Inhibitor Phase
Alastair Reynolds
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein
Fabien Sanglard
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Software
Starship Troopers
Robert Heinlein
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (March)
Off The Books
Venkatesh
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Poverty
His Majesty's Dragon
Naomi Novik
⭐⭐- Fantasy
- Did not finish
- Book club (February)
The Three Body Problem
Cixin Liu
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Book club (January)
(Mild spoilers ahead)
First contact is conducted in secret, and there was no spaceship arrival or broadcast from the aliens, just the news that slowly leaks decades later. To assist their mission, aliens communicate only to the select few humans, who, of course, establish a cult (complete with a ship floating in international waters). Another way to "prepare" humans is a virtual reality "game", simulating the alien homeworld, where the goal is to survive as long as possible.
Alien world, physiology and technology are all creative and fascinating. Their world is inhospitable and unpredictable. Aliens can enter suspended animation at will and can organize into biological computers. Their technology can manipulate dimensions and create intelligent particles. However, I found their attitude to be way too human-like, and the level of technology they possess does not explain why they are still stuck on their homeworld.
Later on, the book turns into more of a techno-thriller, with main characters trying to get the only copy of alien communication transcript from the cult.
Overall, good, somewhat reminiscent of older sci-fi where aliens are exotic humanoids, but not as good as the sequels.
Racing The Beam
Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Overall, if you are fascinated with retro technology, read it!
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
⭐⭐- Science fiction
Cryptonomicon is 900 pages of nerdy, tech-bro fantasy that has:
- World War II! Brave young American Marine Bobby Shaftoe kills many Japanese soldiers (except one), survives almost everything, and fucks a lot. His main contribution to the plot is his bastard son, Doug, father of Amy.
- Nerdy genius! Lawrence Waterhouse, a kid from Bumfuck, Nowhere, who is too smart for school, too obsessed with organs (the musical instrument), studies with Alan Turing, and becomes a top cryptographer for US and British intelligence. Then he becomes obsessed with organs (his reproductive ones), talks about masturbation, ejaculation, and theories on post-nut clarity a bit too much, but gets married and finally builds a digital computer.
- Cryptocurrency! Randy Waterhouse establishes two scammy companies and collaborates with an authoritarian government in an attempt to create the world's first digital, gold-backed currency. And to distribute the new "anarchist cookbook" to prevent the next genocide.
- Engineering! Goto Dengo builds an intricate vault with a lot of planning and forethought, and then escapes the execution squad by using the structures he just built.
- Dream girl! Amy Shaftoe, a badass (!) Asian (!!) virgin (!!!), who doesn't mind Randy being a one-pump chump (described in detail in the book). Every nerd's and incel's "ideal".
- Encryption algorithm explained using a bike chain and a sprocket.
- Inner workings of Bletchley Park and how they break encrypted messages using brute force by having multiple clerks re-typing the encrypted messages using different encryption keys on their typewriters.
- Mind games between Allied and Axis intelligence agencies, "inflating the probabiliy curve" by running fake missions to conceal the fact that Allies broke encryption.
- Solitaire cipher that Enoch teacher Randy. I don't know how good it really is, but it's a neat idea to use an everyday item for secret communication, and I could see it being used by spies.
- Randy's strategy of decrypting messages in plain sight using spacebar and keyboard indicator lights to interact with his PC using morse code while scrolling through pages of documents on screen. It's ridiculous, but it might just work in real life.
- It's long. The key plot of stolen gold is stretched very thin and most chapters feel like tangents and have nothing to do with the main storyline.
- Some chapters feel like a cheap play on lame stereotypes. Qwghlmian language, which is written in latin script and has very few vowels, feels like a parody of Welsh. The cannibals Goto Dengo encounters wear grass skirts and a bone through the nose. Shaftoes, being "country boys" are absurdly protective of their family, and dismissive of cities and chain stores to the extreme.
- Ridiculous plot armor. Bobby Shaftoe survives Guadacanal, Nordic wilderness, freezing as a stowaway, being torpedoed on a ship, multiple Japanese aerial attacks, and fighting the Japanese on the ground in Manila, while being shelled by the Allies. Goto Dengo survives his troop transport being destroyed, cannibals, malaria, penal colony, and a severe case of the bends.
- Talking about jizz, thinking about jizzing, making theories about jizzing. Throughout the book. Jizzus Christ, that's too much. Was this written by a teenager?
- The passage about Athena and Ares was interesting, but then the stupidly patriotic statement "we won the war because we preached to Athena" made me roll my eyes, especially as in one of the subsequent chapters, the allies are indiscriminately shelling Manila, with civilians and all, and Shaftoe is murdering Japanese soldiers en masse.
- The ending is a rushed mess. The Dentist suddenly fades into obscurity to be replaced by big bad General Wing. Andrew Loeb pops out of nowhere, now trying to outright kill the protagonists. And what do protagonists decide to do with all the gold in the Vault? Melt it. Because that makes sense.
- What was the purpose of Epiphyte, Randy's first company? Laying cables? That is done by specialized construction companies. Surveying? That is done by locals like Shaftoes. Building a microwave network in the Philippines? They never get around to that. The only thing they ended up doing is making Pinoygrams and making an under-the-table deal with Shaftoes to split any found treasure.
- What was the purpose of Epiphyte(2) also? The vault is owned by the Sultan and is being built by Goto Engineering. In the book, Epiphyte(2) never gets to do anything either.
- Why is the Dentist supposed to be the bad guy? If I invested into a tech startup and found out that they are paying locals to dig up treasures without splitting profits, I would sue the shit out of them too. Oh, it's the classic "lawsuits are evil" trope.
- Randy, the champion of privacy and secrecy, puts his current GPS coordinates (!) in his email's signature. And even though he is said to encrypt nearly every email, most important ones are saved in plaintext on the server.
- The EMP that fries the server, a bunch of company's hardware and Randy's laptop, magically leaves his hard drive intact. Hard drive controllers must be EMP-proof in that world. Sure, this sounds nitpicky, but for a book that claims to be as technical as this, come on.
- At the end of the book, with the gold cache found, one of the characters claims that they don't need to move the cache to be able to use it for currency backing. But just a few chapters ago, they couldn't use another pile of abandoned gold deep in the jungle.
2022
Eating Animals
Safran Foer
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The Every
Dave Eggers
⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
- Satire
Mexican Gothic
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Horror
The Happiness Industry
William Davies
⭐- Nonfiction
The Circle
Dave Eggers
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
- Satire
Memorable quote:
First of all, I know it's all people like you. And that's what's so scary. Individually you don't know what you're doing collectively.
Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid
Thor Hanson
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Nature
Antarctica
Kim Stanley Robinson
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Universe Within
Neil Shubin
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
Recursion
Blake Crouch
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Year's Best Science Fiction
(28th annual collection, 2011)
- Science fiction
- The Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String by Lavie Tidhar
- Libertarian Russia by Michael Swanwick
- Sleeping Dogs by Joe Haldeman
- Chicken Little by Cory Doctorow
- Again and Again and Again by Rachel Swirsky
- Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi
- My Father's Singularity by Brenda Cooper
- The Starship Mechanic by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
- The Sleepover by Alastair Reynolds
Junk DNA
Nessa Carey
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The Book of OWA: For Tomorrow, a Better Tomorrow
Daniel Izadnegahdar
⭐- Science fiction
Corruptible
Brian Klaas
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Stiff
Mary Roach
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The Waste-Free World
Ron Gonen
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The Witcher
Blood of Elves
Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire
Tower of the Swallow
Lady of the Lake
Andrzej Sapkowski
⭐⭐⭐- Fantasy
You're Paid What You're Worth
Jake Rosenfeld
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
2021
Something Deeply Hidden
Sean Carrol
⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
Binti
Nnedi Okorafor
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Evolution of Useful Things
Henry Petroski
⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Tales of H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Weird fiction
Palaces for the People
Eric Klinenberg
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Critical Mass
Steve Martini
⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
Subliminal
Leonard Mlodinow
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
Machine Man
Max Barry
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Bird Way
Jennifer Ackerman
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Flatland
Edwin Abbott
⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
The Hidden Half
Michael Blastland
⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
Turquoise Days
Alastair Reynolds
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
- Re-read
Diamond Dogs
Alastair Reynolds
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Epigenetics Revolution
Nessa Carey
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Genetics
American Gods
Neil Gaiman
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Fiction
Quiet
Susan Cain
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Neuromancer
William Gibson
⭐⭐- Science fiction
Utopia for Realists
Rutger Bergman
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
The Andromeda Strain
Michael Crichton
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Poison Squad
Deborah Blum
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- History
Ancillary Justice
Ann Leckie
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
How to be an Antiracist
Ibram X. Kendi
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
Elysium Fire
Alastair Reynolds
⭐⭐⭐- Science fiction
The Hacking of the American Mind
Robert H. Lustig
⭐⭐⭐⭐- Nonfiction
- Science
Red Rising
Pierce Brown
⭐⭐- Science fiction