Erik > Recent Status Updates

You know you've gone too far if writing a book review requires consultation of a relativity textbook...

Decided to write my next review (for the last book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy) in text adventure/RPG form. Gloriously absurd.

A much stronger showing in the second half of the book. I feel satisfied as to its Hugo win, and I look forward to writing a worthwhile review!

However, I found the next two chapters to be immediate improvements. The discussion of the actual three body problem was the first real foray into hard science / math. Helps that I'm fairly obsessed with the metaphysical implications of the numerical vs. analytical dichotomy, especially since I realized that morality, insofar as it can be said to have a mathematical solution, would be numerical, not analytical.

I'm about halfway through and enjoying it. But nothing about this makes me think Hugo. Very basic science so far. Characters made out of cardboard. Glacial plotting. And the translation effect, if you will, gives the prose a stilted quality. Have the Hugo awards become less about storytelling and more about politics?

Hrm. If I speed-read The Three Body Problem in two days, I'll hit my reading challenge for the year! ...Don't think that's gonna happen :#

Three reviews to write...! Need to get crackin'

Just finished this up, and I have to say... I'm super impressed by my review of The Last Good Kiss. In it, I came up with a system for understanding noir there, and it worked perfectly here!

Slow going, unfortunately. The PoV characters just aren't doing it for me. I was okay with how amateurish and blundering they felt in the first book - but we're in the last book now. And yet they STILL feel amateurish and blundering. I genuinely don't know Kaden is trying to accomplish. Valyn became an S&M sex junkie I guess. Adare became a cliched mother. Even Gwenna comes across as a bully. Where's the heroes??

"Why?" She demanded. "Because I'm just some stupid slut? Because I couldn't possibly have any insight or agency on my own?"

...lol what? This feminist anachronism comes out of nowhere.

I'm finding this last book hard to read, because of how bad Adare's character is. The author writes her super seriously, but everything she says and does comes across as a teenage girl in a rebellious phase. It's quite off-putting.

I wish Goodreads had a little [digression] html tag that functioned much like the [spoiler] tag. I tend to go off on lots of tangents, and I wish I had a way to hide/mark them. For purposes of keeping the core review sleek-looking, as well as giving those reading the review better control over whether they want to follow the digression or not.

Six? six-word stories, let's go! // The mirror's reflection was not me. // Don't look! Behind you, a ghost. // We watched, unimpressed, as God raged. // Never before had the toaster spoken. // In space, I found only eyes. // Deep in the ocean, a temple?!

Two books behind! Oh #*&@! Engage review writing mode!! (I was working on my book - it's finished! Fist pump. Jk. I started it five years ago. It's terrible. But I love it. Because it is bitter and because it is my heart.)

I'm a little tempted to delete my Ancillary Mercy review. Every time I get some likes on it, it reminds me how much I despise that book and how shook I am that it has a 4.2 average. Yeah, yeah, taste is subjective, etc. But 4.2!! That's like if Twilight had 4.2 average rating. Then we'd truly be in the Twilight Zone.

Coming from the Nexus series, I've had to adjust to this. For better or worse, Nexus possessed ZERO subtlety. So here with Senlin Ascends, I've liked the writing, but been a little cold on the more studied pacing. But then I read the last couple of lines in part one and wow, genius. Brilliant ending. After I read it, I spent hours thinking about it. Now I'm totally on board and can't wait to keep reading.

I need a clone of myself whose sole purpose was to do Goodreads stuff. I wish I could read everybody's reviews and make comments and the like... but I just don't have the time :(

This book has escalated from merely being tiresome to actively pissing me off. Enough with the one sentence paragraphs. And the dumb escalatory list structure: "He was ten thousand minds, a hundred thousand minds, joyous minds, exulting minds, transcendent minds." This prose has the complexity of a ten year old girl's Tumblr poetry. Also its depiction of Buddhism is true cringe.

..."cores ready, thousands of times colder than the cold of the vacuum,"

This reminds me of this throwaway piece of dialogue from the film The Fifth Element. This navy man on a ship is describing the Evil Star and says, "The thermoanalyzers have jammed. One reads a million degrees. The other minus five thousand."

Minus five thousand you say!?

So, I'm utterly fascinated by Goodreads profiles. Especially the box explicitly labeled 'about me.' Because so many 'about me' boxes don't actually contain anything 'about me.' Instead, we'll get, say, "hey I don't do reviews of self-published books, so stop asking" or, my favorite, "don't friend me if you're not interested in interacting with me." I think that's kind of ironic, in a deliciously meta way.

I spend ages writing every review. Ironically, much of the time is spent with simplification edits, so the review is easy (easier, anyway) to read and SEEMS effortless. In my latest review, I had this whole side essay on how rapid technological paradigm shift causes people to feel disenfranchised from larger society and even connected that to Fermi's Paradox! It was a thing of beauty. Nope. Deleted. Too digressive.

What is up with the male bashing in the spider sections of this book? E.g. "...and Portia is not sure how capable [males] are of finer levels of thought and feeling." There's a comment like this every other paragraph.

I wanna be like, you know bringing up a natural matriarchy doesn't actually help the cause of feminism, right? Suggesting gender dominance is natural doesn't help...

I'm trying to choose the last books I want to read for this year and I'm started to get annoyed. Why the f*@# does every sci-fi and fantasy book have to be a trilogy? (rhetorical question, I know the answer)

But really, I'm reading synopsis and thinking, Yeah this sounds cool. And then 'first of a trilogy' BRZZT!

Gotta finish 9 books in two months to complete my (very modest) challenge of 24 books in a year! Can I do it?! ...Probs not. Also have an AI & Machine Learning online class to complete; part three of my novel to revise & polish; and a D&D campaign to write. Life. *shakes fist* Always getting in the way of reading.

Here's an interesting article: How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy?

tl/dr: Fiction reading increases empathy both short & long term *if* the reader is emotionally transported. Elsewise, it actually *DECREASES* empathy.

So rejoice! No need to feel bad about writing negative reviews about bad books! It's a moral act!

I feel super jealous when I see other people have read like 70+ books this year. How do you manage that?!?!

So pleased my summer work schedule is drawing to an end. Practically foaming at the mouth to return to all my writing: goodreads, the D&D campaigns I write, finishing my book, revising my short stories. Sci-fi makes me so jealous with its depictions of the future, in which automation has freed us from the mundane banalities that devour our time and prevent us from pursuing the interests closer to our hearts.

Probably the greatest science fiction book I've ever read. At least within memory. It's like Greg Egan wrote this exactly, precisely, for me.

Alas, this is such a monumentally challenging book, in terms of mathematics & physics required. I don't know anyone else I can recommend it to...

So far, probably my book of the year. Surprising considering it's so far very light on plot - but the authority and confidence with which it's written... Wonderful - but not for those who won't appreciate explorations of science & math.

Also helps that it's the first sci-fi I've read that uses non-gendered pronouns in a way that actually makes any sense.

Two more reviews incoming as soon as I can write them... and lots of other people's words to read...! Gotta catch up!

The difficult review (for the first book) is out of the way. I feel like I have to share some opinion on enjoyment, some indication of plot for first book in a series. But with sequels, it's like pssshhh imma write what I want. And I want to write an essay on psychopathy and morality, war and evolution.