Silver > Recent Status Updates

I've bogged down. The premise is interesting: the ability to direct the growth of plants to create a living city. But the Yakshas and earthrages make no sense to me. I find the dive into new agey states of consciousness a turn off, and the marital issues between the main characters are annoying and creepy.

The story is entertaining and well-written. I'm especially enjoying the descriptive passages. However, I dislike that, instead of creating new cultures for the story, the author simply renamed ethnicities with fantasy names. Thus, the Ashkar are the ghetto magic users, the Hindish wear bright colors, a blond man has "Northern blood." It's lazy and dissonant.

The beginning of the novel absorbed me, but by the third incarnation of the main character, I just couldn't keep going. Returned to library.

Absolutely adore the characters and setting! Love that there are so many strong female characters.

The device of Isla continuously blacking out isn't great, and the villain is just a psychopath. He really should have been named Oswald.

This is a strange book to read while I experience my marriage unraveling. The stress of losing one's entire family to plague, the psychotic raiders, the uncertainty about the future all feel like they're adding to my stress. But the novel is about the bonds between people, and that gives me hope.

"How do you convince a boy born to a deadly combination of poverty and the endless scorn of those labeled his 'betters' that his real worth is infinitely above that of the savage, twisted spawn of kings? How do you explain a world that gifts evil men with privilege and wealth and looks the other way while they torment and abuse the weakest members of society?"

I'm just not enjoying this book. Struggling to finish it. I can't get into the mindset of the narrator, and I could see the plot twist coming from miles away. None of the characters act like real people. Feels stilted and clunky.

Having trouble getting into this one. Not thrilled with the gruff characters or accounting being absurdly described as a "useless" profession. Premise is unbelievable. Was also hoping the hidden town would be full of escaped women, and this is apparently not the case. I'll give it a chance because of the myriad positive reviews.

Prose is obvious, clunky and desperately needs editing: "The mobile phone attached to his arm vibrated. Every time he went out running he tried not to take his mobile with him, but always did. And it often rang." London weather is described as, "cold, windy, cloudy and rainy."

Why is the font miniscule?! The pages are large enough - did the ink cost too much? I'll probably donate it to the library sale.

So entranced with this book! The daemons, jinn, gogols, zoku randomness, creativity, AIs, coding, VR, world-building, storytelling, yes, even dragons! The mysterious primes, and the Oortians singing matter into being. I want to gobble it up, but I don't want it to be gone.

I think he captures the feeling of being a pawn-child in a parent's chess game very well, the loneliness and striving for attachment or escape.

Nasty remarks about "haggish" middle-aged women and "trannies." Men work in fields while women babysit - dystopia! Female characters each murder an animal - why? Amy suddenly transforms from girl to woman, neatly avoiding teenage conundrum. Final chapters are indeed full of drama, perfect for film CGI. Peter is as bland as ever.

I'm having difficulty caring about these myriad nobles, especially considering their persecution of the Huguenots. I must have been very young when I read The Three Musketeers. The passage where Moret grows excited by the "nubile" and "virginal" young woman, surely "less than eighteen," are just revolting. None of the fault lies with the translator. There's a reason this one never appeared in English.

Jaynes has this idea that language developed in Europe during the Ice Age. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he completely ignores African cultures, given his (biased) perspective. He also asserts that spearpoi are way more important than pottery, as if being able to carry water or store food was not a major innovation. It reminds me of my anthropology classes 30 years ago: meat and weapons. Might abandon.

I take issue with Jaynes' theory of memory: I don't see myself in the third person, and I do recall perceptions and sensations. However, his theory gives me insight into why some people invent experiences that never actually happened. I used to think they were lying out of some ulterior motive. Perhaps they simply don't remember what they experience and therefore create a false memory.

I was looking at some of the other reviews, and my feelings about the blandness of many of the characters are echoed by other readers. I find most people pretty bland, so I thought I was just being hypercritical. I really didn't like the part of the story that takes place in the Colony. I soldiered on and am almost finished. The story was compelling enough that I wanted to know what would happen with the 12.

The Passage is an absorbing, well-written novel. The female characters are strong. There's something that bothers me, yes, even in a dystopian novel: if there's an animal, it's going to die horribly. Some of the people live and some of the people die, but ALL THE ANIMALS DIE. So don't get attached. Just skip over those parts. Also, a small quibble, but I have never "heeled" a horse. Maybe it's a Western thing?

Also, this is yet another reference to The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, coming on top of Ian Cheng's Emissary in the Squat of Gods. I'm going to have to put it on my reading list for next year. The Metaverse wills it.

A little disturbed by a female character's dissociation during the sex scene, though I understand how it was central to the plot. The Zoku LARPers made me giggle. I enjoy the character details, like the Silence's kitchen full of anachronistic cooking implements, reminding me of the primitive technology movement. This book is a genre-spoiler for me: I will no longer be content with "just add spaceships."

I wish I had gevulot. I think a woman would experience gevulot differently.

I appreciate that Rajaniemi doesn't explain everything: he allows the reader to experience the world as an immigrant, bolstering the feeling of uncertainty that permeates the story. I was glad that I just finished a psychology course and got a firsthand dose of inattentional blindness. How much have I missed?

“A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.”

"You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change. And that's precisely what our society is doing! And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of good minds submitting to stupid ones.Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Our society is sick! You know it."

I like that they begin the chapter on gender and sexuality with the story of a trans person.

Chapter on group psych an accompaniment to dreadful election. Rural white Americans - are they homogeneous? I'm going to have a difficult time overcoming my prejudice after overexposure to my unabashedly racist rural relatives. Is their behavior dispositional or situational? Discuss.

Textbook is horribly biased toward extraverts; fails to mention positive aspects of conscientious neuroticism as health-protective (Turiano, 2012). Resolution to self: never accept a job with a company that uses personality tests in the hiring process.

Super slow beginning. Dislike reading about Julia's addictions. She's bland. If I were visiting my murdered sister's apartment, I'd reflect on the meaning of her life by describing about what she left behind instead of talking about my suburban angst. She says nothing interesting about photography. Plot starting to pick up, but not credible. The affair might be more interesting if it were more ambiguous.

Why am I not surprised that the authors used the cliché of an English student unable to do a physics problem to illustrate Piaget's overestimation of logical ability in adults? Let's use the bully pulpit to perpetuate the myth that liberal arts majors are incompetent! It's really sad that this text may be many students' sole exposure to the field of psychology.

Book mentions Terman's IQ study finding correlation between IQ and height, strength and health, but fails to mention anything about the socioeconomic status of the children or other reasons these factors are linked. Am also feeling annoyed at their insistence that musical ability is unnecessary for survival. Is intelligence merely the ability to survive, or does creativity and cultural influence count?

Sick of the harping about aggressive behavior and video games in the observational learning chapter. Why isn't there a box about the depictions of women, lgbt people and under-represented groups in media and how this affects viewers' attitudes and behaviors? Why isn't there a box about how many people play video games and DON'T go out and murder other people (or even zombies)? No mention of SCOTUS case.

I don't like any of these theories about dreaming. They don't account for the importance of dreams in human culture and history. My own dreams don't *feel* like random brain firings or reflections of mundane daily activity, any more than my waking thought processes, memories and experiences are random electric garbage. I think dreams are necessary to integrate memories, experiences and learning.

Reading abt strategies for pain relief right after having a panic attack about how much I need to get done by Thursday for my class, my lack of any of the prerequisites for getting into a graduate program, the woman who is still texting my husband, & dearth of essential dinner ingredients. Positive self-talk has always struck me as falsely cheery. It's probably NOT all going to be okay, but gotta keep going?