Reviewing this review…fun times. This book was interesting, fun, and overall an enjoyable read. I generally like listening to John Green muse on his various Youtube channels and podcasts over the years. My wife is a big follower of his, and I have been exposed to him quite a bit secondhand. I had never listened to the Anthropocene Reviewed podcast though, so this content was all new to me.
It is an easy read, and again, was just sort of fun. I would recommend it to anyone who might find random musings and obscure facts interesting. I give the “Anthropocene Reviewed” 4 stars.
It’s been a while, but I started reading the “Liveship Traders Trilogy” by Robin Hobb right after the last one. I took me about 2 months to go through them and I finished near the end of August, beginning of September. A good fantasy, pirate-y, adventurous series.
They were good and entertaining, but kind of tiring reading them all in one go. There is some nasty stuff that goes on that I think Hobb did a really good job of illustrating through her writing; better than I’ve seen other authors do. Things like physical and sexual abuse. It hit pretty hard in the stories and although I’ve read scenes like that in other series like “Game of Thrones” and whatnot, her read very differently. My wife said it hit her similarly in that you really feel how that trauma affected the characters. For that alone, I’d say it was memorable read.
I wouldn’t say I enjoy reading things like that, but when reading a scene makes me sort of gasp internally for fear, disgust, and sympathy/empathy, I appreciate that the author has a great skill in writing.
Anyway, I am currently more than halfway through the first installment of the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan, “The Eye of the World” and I’m liking it so far. I am expecting to read this entire series straight through unless I desperately need a change of pace at some point, which is likely going to be the case. So posts may be sporadic while I go through these.
I’m currently taking in Maurice Leblanc’s Arséne Lupin, Le Gentleman Cambrioleur . To be exact, I’m listening to it as an audiobook. I haven’t used my french much in the past few years, so this is helping me get it back. If you like Sherlock Holmes, you’ll like Arséne. You can get it in english translation, of course.
Before that, I tried, I really tried to listen to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Boy, did it push my buttons. I got a few chapters in and I had to stop. I have stopped reading books before, for many reasons. Either I didn’t like the story, the writing, or just wasn’t engaged. This case is the opposite. I found the writing compelling and the themes seductive. There’s a selfish libertarian hiding inside me, and that book was shouting at him with validation and encouragement! I know there’s an agenda and a purposeful message in Ayn Rand’s writing, and I thought I was ready to wrestle with that. Perhaps not!
I will try Atlas Shrugged again some day. Preferably at a time that I am not surrounded by a host of loafers and technocrats. Oh no - the propaganda’s already seeping through!
I think I would like that Lupin story. I recently watch the Lupin series on Netflix which I liked a lot. I also used to watch the Lupin III anime series when I was a kid. It’s on the list!
So I am still in the midst of the Wheel of Time series. I’m just about finished with the third book and I’m liking the series a lot. The 2nd book felt sort of slow and I was waning a bit, but the 3rd has picked me back up and I’m going full speed now.
On a tangent, I watched the new Dune movie on HBO, and I am very thoroughly disappointed. I have been so excited for this movie since it was announced, years ago. It was a big let-down for me. Dune being one of my all-time favorite book series I had pretty high standards, but my hopes were way up there with what I had been reading about this movie. It really sucked though in my opinion in so many ways. I’m not going to go into a whole movie review here, but I am hoping that Part 2 finds a way to redeem this one somehow.
I only saw that one once and I don’t remember much beyond the need to never watch it again lol.
I thought the 1st hour was ok, though kind of slow. The 2nd hour was excruciatingly rushed with a lot of focus on weird details and only a glossing over of really good/important details of the original story.
I have a big hang-up over what the did to Lady Jessica. They made her seem very fragile, where in the books she is such a badass. I also didn’t appreciate how they portrayed the Bene Gesserit as a whole. The whole movie just jumped from one exciting event to the next with weird visions and symbolism to somehow connect them rather than an actual story. The books really made you feel like the characters were living lives in between the big events that take place. It also relied on “visions” and dreams to give a lot of explanation as to what was going on. Me being a fan, I knew what they were getting at, but my wife for instance needed a lot of pauses of the movie so I could explain things to her that wasn’t made clear in the scenes.
I’m not suggesting they needed to film every meal and bathroom break that would’ve taken place, but it felt like they were trying to make the whole thing crazier than it needed to be.
My take on the new Dune movie is that it is akin to The Fellowship of the Ring for Lord of the Rings. When I first watched that movie - I hated it. It moved too slow, had a lot of details I didn’t understand, and ended with a terrible lack of closure. I disliked it so much I refused to go see the next two movies in theaters - and did I miss out! After finally watching The Two Towers years later on a whim, I was floored. It was amazing! I quickly watched Return of the King - and then re-watched Fellowship. After seeing the next two movies, I actually enjoyed it!
I’m giving this Dune movie a lot of leeway based on that experience. I haven’t read the books, though I can appreciate the way they are trying to set things up in this movie. I actually plan to watch it a couple more times to see what I may have missed - I generally gravitate towards sci-fi/fantasy movies, so I’m admittedly a bit predisposed to enjoy it.
@SuperSalad Your opinions reflect those of my wife. She was as disappointed as you, and for many of the same reasons. Knowing the book rather well myself, I did not notice many holes. Not until after did I realize that I was filling in all the blanks. There are the gaping holes in the plot that you could fly a "thopter through.
One big mistake: The movie omits any use of the spice to demonstrate its value. It doesn’t define the Mentats or the Bene Gesserit (nor the Tleilax for that matter). The true role of Thufir is unclear. With these power struggles being the main driver of the plot, skipping them leaves out the motivations of most characters.
If there was one fantastic performance in the old Dune movie it was from Prochnow’s portrayal of Duke Leto. The stoicism and cunning that almost could have pulled it out of the fire is what I remember from that movie. But we don’t get that from Oscar Isaac here. Leto just seems depressed half the time. I know Oscar can do it, so why we didn’t get that in this movie is a mystery.
My wife was also annoyed by the time wasted on useless details like the palm trees, rather than develop the community just outside the gates. If that’s where the plot is going, and most people in the audience already know who they are, then what we really needed in this movie were Fremen. And not just a few Fremen slaves and a raiding party in an empty bunker. We need to see them as a civilization.
In defense, the performance from Timothee is great. The swap done on Kynes made sense, and Sharon D-B is good. Momoa was a good casting choice because Momoa didn’t have to act to be like Duncan. I spent most of the movie enjoying the visual effects.
So somewhat related, but not a book review per se. I attempted to watch the new Wheel of Time tv series on amazon last night. The key word being attempted.
What…absolute…trash. I’m so utterly disappointed.
I got 20 minutes in and had to turn it off, I just couldn’t take the absurdity. I understand you can’t match a book one for one when adapting story to tv or film, but holy hell! The characters, their back stories, the timing, the settings it is all completely different. The only things that were consistent with the book series was the names of the characters.
It is so obvious amazon wanted a Game of Thrones of their own and are just trying to shoehorn the story-type into this series.
Like, there are whole story arches about how the main characters are awkward 14-16 year olds who are kinda prudish and nervous about even talking to girls and boys they like, and yet, two of them are having sex with each other in the first 15 minutes of the show and another one of the kids is married with a baby on the way! WTF?
The final straw was where they took a kid who is supposed to be a sort of prankster but nice kid with a loving and pretty wholesome family into a thief who steals from his friends, his mother into a drunk, and a womanizer for a father. That was the last thing I could take before I turned it off. Too much overhanded effort it making it “gritty” like GoT was.
Maybe others will like it, but I absolutely hated every one of those 20 minutes I sat through. I must have confusedly said “What?!” out loud, to myself, once every two minutes during the time I had it on.
After that review, I couldn’t resist. Like staring at the road accident as you drive by…
My wife was actually watching it in earnest, but I knew what to expect. It was unintentionally funny. The narrative at the beginning - it almost sounded like Cate Blanchett, but the script certainly wasn’t. That’s an awful gaudy ring they’re using for the WoT but I remember LoTR those rings where very well made.
Plenty of lines in WoT sounded so familiar, and I almost shouted out the other half from either Harry Potter, StarWars, or GoT or LoTR. "You need to leave (you need to hide) and so on. Some cinematography attempted to recreate scenes from GoT but couldn’t hold it together long enough to do justice.
Like you I didn’t last long, and wandered in and out of the room as the show dragged on.
Bell labs basically invented the 20th century as we know it. The underlying technology of semiconductors was created, developed, and improved by them for decades until the world caught up. In fact, if you want to know how a transistor really works, and the thing you got in school about “holes” and “doping” left you a bit cold, this book builds the technology in the chronology of its invention. Oh, and some lasers, satellites, and cellular phones, long before their time… maybe they’ll be useful some day.
There’s so much more to it that you can learn about fostering invention and creativity in your organization - if you value these things.
Some very important (and controversial characters) in the story of Bell Labs, like Claude Shannon and William Shockley. Those two people couldn’t have been more different!
So I took a break from WoT to read the last installment of the Expanse series and oh boy that was a good finish. The pacing had me questioning it for a little bit, but as usual for those books, the finish was a whirlwind or action where I couldn’t put it down. I’d say it was a good one for sure and I liked the ending. The final season of the Expanse TV series was also great and continued to be one of the better book to TV adaptions out there.
I’m back to the Wheel of Time now though; about halfway through book 6. At this point my feelings are that this is an awesome story and a great fantasy, but the writing itself is leaving me wanting. If I had to describe it at this point I’d say Robert Jordan was a great story teller, but a poor writer; but that’s just, like, my opinion man.
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
The book also has many other fascinating moments, such as a description of a primitive computer built without any electronics, the complex orbital dynamics of the aliens’ home planet (with 3 suns), and an attempt to “unfold” the 10-dimensional string of a proton, that will stagger the imagination.
Also note that this is available in Audible audiobook format, and when read by Luke Daniels, it’s also excellent. The reviews for other narrators are not so good.
So I’ve been taking another break from the Wheel of Time as of about 2 weeks ago. My wife was behind me by 8 books in the series and she wanted to catch up. So I stopped at book 10 of the WoT, and picked up the first book of the Dune prequel series: House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, given to me by my sister in law this past Christmas.
I just finished that first book last night and it was pretty darn good. I wouldn’t say it is quite as good as the original Dune series, but it is about as good as I could imagine it being without Frank Herbert himself writing it. It was good enough that I bought the other 2 books of the prequel trilogy, House Harkonnen and House Corrino and I’m planning on finishing this series before I return to book 10 of the WoT.
Hopefully my wife will be close enough behind me in the WoT that we can discuss those books together a little better. I was having a hard time remembering exactly where in the timeline she was to really have any discussions without spoiling things for her.
So she is still a ways behind me in WoT. I finished the Dune prequels and overall they were good. Again, not as good as the original series, but it sort of satisfies an urge to get more Dune.
I’m on to Hail Mary by Andy Weir now. So far so good.
You should have mentioned the Dune prequels before diving in. I would have warned you that the writing is bland though the plots are still of interest to fans of the original series. You’ve got the underlying story of Duke Leto down now, which is good, and in Harkonnen the most valuable parts are about who Gurney Halleck really was, and the machinations of the Bene Gesserit, not the Harkonnens. I remember nothing of interest from Corrino. After those, it is fun to go back to read the original Dune with all of that context in mind. Consider the “what ifs” based on the power plays you now know about.
I am about halfway through Way of Kings… Umm the story is not that original, although the environment certainly is.
I am excited for my next go around with the original Dune series now that I have all that backstory.
And yes, the Stormlight world is certainly one of the more interesting environments. Reading the Wheel of Time series I am finding a lot of similarities between them and the Stormlight series with regards to the overarching storylines and characters types. I think if you continue with the series you’ll see some…not unique ideas necessarily, but plotlines and ideas that would seem out of place in that story that end up pushing it in a good direction.
I can’t recall if I ever mentioned it but I attempted tog et my mother to read The Stormlight series and she absolutely hates it. She finds all the characters to be exceedingly immature. So I know it isn’t for everyone.
