Erik > Recent Status Updates

Methinks Radiance is going to become my new Tale of Two Cities (people posting on there, telling me I'm just a hater and my review came straight out of Club Wundersuxxxxxxx). At least with Tale of Two Cities, they are right! That review is total garbage, hahaha. But it's cool, it makes sense for people to react negatively with opinions they disagree with.

Fffffftttttxxxxxxxsss. I am not even sure where to begin in reviewing TLtL. I understand its architecture, its velluminous skeleton, the mechanisms by which it moves, but the architect's heart??? A mystery! What were Ada Palmer's intentions? What effect did she intend?

At last, I've again encountered a book worthy of being reviewed, and I am certain of only one thing: we're gonna need a bigger teapot.

Just had horrible flashbacks about Ancillary Mercy. *shudders* That book is definitely in my top 5 for biggest gap between quality & critical acclaim.

One day I'm going to encounter a book made entirely out of cheese. I'm gonna have a brief moment of existential crisis. But then I'm gonna eat the hell out of that book, probably by slicing it up and putting it on crackers, but possibly by melting it and spreading it over some pasta shells.

Almost 200 pages into this book, and its core "soul" yet eludes me. Can't decide whether I'm a fan or not, either. Got a lot going on: Philosophy, liberal gender ideas, extravagant description, naive characterization of heads of state, meta-narration, mystery-style plot hooks. Feels like Night Circus combined with Leckie's Ancillary series combined with Socrates.

Almost 200 pages into this book, and its core "soul" yet eludes me. Can't decide whether I'm a fan or not, either. Got a look going on: Philosophy, liberal gender ideas, extravagant description, naive characterization of heads of state, meta-narration, mystery-style plot hooks. Feels like Night Circus combined with Leckie's Ancillary series combined with Socrates.

I sometimes worry about the influence of a well-written review and to a lesser degree, 'liking.' For example, when I wrote my negative review for The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, it had a rating of over 4, and 90% of the front page reviews were 4 or 5 five stars. I published my review and liked most of the negative reviews. Now the rating is down to 3.66 and there are many more negative reviews on the front page...

Soon I shall return to glorious fiction! Soon! To once again be swaddled within the comforting crib of a book written by a person who understands that drama is the heart of humanity...

This book has convinced me that serious AI literature attempting to assess and perhaps ameliorate the existential threat of super artificial intelligence is premature. This is all so abstract and vague that I struggle to even assess the cogency of what he's writing. It's all so obvious. Like... an ASI will probably seek to accumulate resources and increase its intelligence. Gee, really?

I'm such a snob: after I finish/post a new book review, I scour the existing reviews to find people who seem fun or educational to interact with. I'll send a friend request to those who do. But any time I read a review that doesn't use paragraphs, that's an automatic no go. RED FLAG!

Srsly. Use paragraphs.

Spent all morning reading up on the intelligence of crows. Conclusion: crows are super smart! If you have never had the chance to do so, I recommend you also do a bit of research. Fascinating stuff.

Bostrom writes, "As of 2012, the Zen series of Go-playing programs has reached rank 6 dan [a good amateur] in fast games. ...[AI] might beat the human world champion in about a decade."

March, 2016: AlphaGo beats a world champion 4 games to 1 and achieves honorary 9 dan rank (highest possible).

This seems like a divisive book. Gonna be fun to write a review! Be nice to talk about immortality and how utterly troubling it is to conflate human mortality with human greatness. If you are such a person, I invite you to ponder for a moment the *actual* effect of stating & believing that DEATH is what gives meaning to our lives.

A town has two shoemakers. One of them goes missing. A police officer goes to question the other shoemaker and finds him at dinner.

"Do you want to join me for dessert?" asks the shoemaker.

"Maybe," says the officer. "What are you having?"

Upon hearing the shoemaker's answer, the police-officer arrests the shoemaker and charges him with the murder of the other shoemaker.

What was the shoemaker having for dessert?

Whoops. This last review was at the actual max (20,000 characters). Long reviews are so much harder to write. The requirement that they be interesting and/or entertaining throughout becomes greater as the length grows. People ain't got time or patience for long, boring stuff.

While reading about Bias Response Teams (look it up) this morning, I suddenly realized that if our society doesn't yet qualify for a dystopia, it's certainly on its way.

The mistake authors of dystopian works have (apparently) made is the assumption that dystopia will be caused by centralized authorities. It turns out, however, that a mass of uneducated, fearful, immature persons can democratically cause it as well.

I'm always a little curious why people post (angry) comments on my reviews telling me I'm wrong. And I don't just mean this in a general sense. I mean, specifically, with me. My reviews tend to be rather intellectual and thorough, and the comments disputing them are, well, not. So it's like... why take an angry, argumentative tone with me? Do you really think you're going to come out on top of this debate?

Takes me like a month to write one book review lololo. It's tough to convert complex ideas into simple words. Sometimes I'll write a whole page, only to later reduce it into a single sentence. The WORST part is that if I've done it properly, that one sentence seems so OBVIOUS. It's just like the magic trick conundrum. Once you know how it's done, it doesn't seem so magical anymore.

Next three books: all AI reads. Time to learn bout some AI!

"No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives."

I needed these books badly.

I've had a year of disappointing sci-fi/fantasy reads. The bipolar Sorcerer of Wildeeps, the cliche-driven YA Uprooted, Parker's boring Engineer trilogy, Valente's indulgently postmodern Radiance, and the inexplicably well-received Ancillary Trilogy.

Editing old reviews... and all these double spaces after periods: MADNESS!

Solid modern noir. Not able to live up to the master, Raymond Chandler, however.

Though I find it amusing whereas Chandler had a real fetish for describing interior decoration, Crumley appears to have a similar fetish for describing outdoor natural landscapes. Some beautiful descriptions for sure.

Lawl, my review for Ancillary Mercy is 5,000 characters too long. 5,000.

"...honestly, Lieutenant, I'm not sure I know what's true anymore, or what to expect from one moment to the next. I keep thinking none of this can be real, but it keeps happening."

"I hate that feeling." Sincerely. Seivarden knew what that felt like.

Yikes. This book's dialogue is, um, not good. Even amateur writers know better than to write out the subtext of all your dialogue. Not a Hugo winner, apparently.

"Tisarwat was upset enough to get out of bed, pull her jackets and boots on, and come to my quarters to speak to me."

Upset enough to GET OUT OF BED and put on some clothes? *gasp*! That's pretty upset!

What is she upset about? Oh just someone getting murdered, execution style. What is even going on in this book.

I am in the serious minority in here in that I find this book not only not good but outstandingly bad. That it has such a high rating and even got nominated for a Hugo is utterly confounding.

Still. I'm determined to finish it and give it a fair shake. Just gotta get past these incredibly uninteresting sections where Breq creepily invades her officers' lives and then plays relationship therapist. Yawnnnn.

Still waiting for a plot to start. And this book was kinda ruined by a review of the previous one that compared the characters on Breq's ship to little girls at a summer camp (or something like that). It's SO TRUE. And every time they start talking about tea or wearing gloves or worrying over whether the polite thing they said to another was ACTUALLY kinda mean, I burst out laughing.

Weird comment: Too obsessed with my new girlfriend to read. But possibly it's been the ginormous 30 pages of awkward info dump that's slowing me down...

Incredible decline in quality from first to second book.

I am so amused how 'one-dimensional' and 'two-dimensional' character means the same thing.