Alex
If a book is an expression of an idea, the heart of Babel is: Every translation is flawed because there is always a gap between the meaning of the source material and the meaning of the translation. In that gap, there is power because there is a choice to be made about whether to stay true to the original or to optimize for the new language. What if that power were somehow to manifest physically in the world?
Other books have been written on the principle of power of words. Much of the fantasy genre features spellcasting with spoken or written forms of magic, but I can't think of any that specifically leverage the idea of translation as a magical system. This is so cool!
As Kuang builds on this idea of the power (and flaws) of translation, we end up seeing how language contains and reflects the hierarchies of society. During the Georgian and Victorian era in England in which this story unfolds, the languages of the West (Latin, French, German, and especially English) came to dominate the world, while those of the East or the South (Haitian Créole, Urdu, Cantonese) are subordinate. The stratification of the globe and the violent redistribution of resources that was colonialism is reflected in the languages spoken by all who participated in the system, whether they chose to or not.
England's rise to global dominance was fueled by the extraction of resources from poorer countries but can you really draw a clear separation between a people's work output and themselves? In extracting the tea, rubber, textiles, and porcelain of a place, weren't the masters of the Empire also stealing the souls of the people who made those things?
This isn't a perfect book. The main character is almost unbelievably naive, the politics of colonialism are presented too simplistically, and the ending is truly disappointing. But despite its flaws I think this is one of the best pieces of genre fiction I've read in the last decade.
The author of the book Rebecca F. Kuang is an academic. She has spent her career working with some of the most elite scholars in the world at Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale where she has studied Chinese literature and culture. She is one of those scholars herself. When she writes a story set in that world, with all of its territorial division, hubris, and naive (there's that word again) ambition, it feels true.
For the foreign scholars who star in this story, there is a tension between their love of learning and their identities as outsiders in a racist and sexist institution. Kuang does such a great job of showing that tension at all points; from the genuine love of the academic work to the moments of alienation and othering that happen when they are told they don't belong. The primary question faced by the main character of the book is how exactly does he resolve that tension. Can he somehow keep a foot in both camps or does he have to choose? And if he chooses, what does that mean for his relationships with his friends and the people around him?
Another great installment in this series. I don't want to retread ground better covered by other reviewers, but I will say that I really like the way that Riordan covers Jackson's adolescence in a way that is realistic, including crushes and confusion that most of us probably remember from that time. It serves as an excellent excuse to talk with my own sons about love and relationships.
This series is so good, and I kind of can't believe that the author is still writing it. After all, the premise of the first book (and the series) is that a guy named Bob uploads himself into a Von Neumann probe and goes out to explore the galaxy. At most, I'd expect to maybe get a compelling short story out of something like that. Maybe a great author like Andy Weir could string into a full novel along the lines of Project Hail Mary.
But Dennis E. Taylor has somehow taken what should be a throwaway premise and shaped it into an epic fictional universe that rivals Star Trek. What's even more amazing is that fully half of the characters in the story are clones of (and kind actually) one person... Bob. Despite that, the characters are compelling, diverse, and sometimes challenging. The dialogue is nerdy but never stale, and I truly am so happy I found this series.
I understand that not every book is a winner. To hit a home run you need to swing at a lot of pitches. To marry a prince, you've got to kiss a lot of frogs. Fair enough. The thing I don't understand, and I refuse to accept, is how NOBODY involved in this dumpster fire of a novel ever spoke up in defense of the readers.
This book is bad. But it's not just bad. It's lazy, thoughtless, and ultimately a slap in the face of fans.
Eruption is exactly what you think a collaboration between Michael Crichton's ghost and the uncredited writer currently piloting the James Patterson money printing robot would look like. The hero, Mac, is the Alan Grant of volcanologists. He is a pure-hearted misanthropic cowboy in the style of all of Crichton's best protagonists. There are two (!) one dimensional love interests to pick from that creates some tension that is clumsily resolved when the author(s) summarily kills one off. There is military technobabble, a healthy heap of scorn for bureaucracy, and of course there's a techy douchebag billionaire and various villains that highlight the best in our hero.
To be honest, I like Crichton's books. I like them a lot. I take a certain guilty pleasure in indulging in the masculine fantasies of might and right, of chivalric rogues solving the world's problems and winning the girl in the process. There are probably reasons to push back on these narratives, but that's not the point of this particular review. Let's just accept that this is a genre that appeals to me, and that's partly why I am so upset at how little effort was put into the actual product here.
As an example of what I'm talking about, let me offer a spoiler-rich anecdote: Towards the climax of the action, our hero (remember that he's a volcanologist) turns to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and says that the only way to save the world is for him (yes, the volcanologist) to get into a fighter bomber gunner's seat and shoot the lava off course. Absurd!? Of course, but not quite as absurd as what happens next. To justify this statement, the author/clunky writing AI responsible for this travesty of a book inserts an anecdote about how Mr. Hunky Scientist used to be really into jets and therefore was qualified to do this AND they introduce a straight-from-central-casting Top Gun-type pilot out of nowhere to fly the damn thing.
Here's the thing: When you are editing a book, you are actually allowed to go back in the text and change things. So, if you really want to pursue this inane plot point about shooting the lava flow you could go back into the character development and add a line about how he used to be in the military, or that he flew crop dusting flights for his dad's cotton farm back home, or that he's really really into Microsoft Flight Simulator. I don't care how you do it, but there is NO excuse for not setting this up in advance. For that matter, you could have had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs be from the Air Force and not the Army and HE could have been the pilot instead of throwing in a critical character at the last minute. But no.
Time and time again, the team behind this book knew that they didn't need to make it good. They were quite rightly confident that the kinds of people who would pick this up would do so because they like Michael Crichton and/or James Patterson. Those names would pop out to them on the shelves of the airport book kiosk and they'd plop down $15 for the pleasure of being disrespected and (sadly) probably come back again. Let's hope that they hire editors next time.
Another day of summer vacation, and another excellent romp through Greek Mythology brought to us by Peter Johnson. Or... Percy Jimsuch. Whatever his name is according to Dionysus.
Some authors know how to do series well, and Rick Riordan is clearly one of them. Each book can by itself, but taken altogether there is a richness to the characters, relationships, and worlds he sets before us. I read somewhere that he started writing these books as a way to help his son learn mythology, and that loving care is so clear in the way they are written.
I'll have to wait for my kids to finish book 4 before I can start, but I'm excited to see where all this is headed!
Like many 7-10 year olds in my corner of the world, my kids have fallen hard for Percy Jackson and friends. I can see why! Rick Riordan has done an excellent job of retelling these age-old stories for a modern kid audience. We have all learned so much about the Gods, heroes, and epic stories from Greek mythology.
This second book remixes elements from the Odyssey and Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, as Percy and co. (now including his cyclops half-brother) must face the Sea of Monsters and Polyphemus in order to save Grover and the camp! Exciting!
Imagine if someone follows you on Twitter, and likes your posts so much that they decide to write a book about them. That's what this is. Naval is very clearly a thoughtful person, and I actually got a lot out of reading this, but I'm not sure I love the precedent here. Then again, there is actually a lot of wisdom shared on ephemeral platforms like Twitter so maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is the modern equivalent of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations?
You know, I thought I knew where this series was going after finishing book one, but I was wrong. I thought this was Buffy meets Dead Poets Society but it seems to be turning into some kind of comic book supernatural superhero show set in the Ivy League. It's still eminently readable, thrilling even, but a very different flavor of fun than I thought it was going to be.
The second book is entirely concerned with rescuing one of the gang from Hell, and unfolds over the course of multiple attempts that don't get quite as planned, along with the new threats that each aborted mission invites into the mortal world. It's pulpy, fun, and again is screaming to be made into bingeable teen TV. I ended this book hungry to read the next but sadly I will have to wait until publication.
I spent a while avoiding this series because the cover reminds me of Sarah J. Mass' [b:A Court of Thorns and Roses 50659467 A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1) Sarah J. Maas https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1620324329l/50659467.SY75.jpg 21905102], which I really didn't like. There are some similarities, in that this stars a teenage girl in a magical world, but that's about it. There are very small romantic tensions, but it does not fall into the softcore Twilight-fanfic category.Imagine if Lorelei Gilmore was a little spacier, never reconnected with her parents, and lost Rory to the paranormal but still somehow ended up at Yale. That's what this light gothic horror coming of age story feels like to me. And frankly, I loved it. There are a lot of hooks here, maybe too many: Ghosts are real, Yale secret societies, political intrigue, the occult, manic pixie goth girl, and more.Somehow all these elements come together in a way that feels fresh and thrilling. If this doesn't end up as a TV show, I'll be shocked.
Required reading for all humans alive in the 21st century. This book does an excellent job articulating the dangers of what critics call “surveillance capitalism” and the rest of us simply experience as being online. As anyone who reads my reviews will remember, I really like thinking about structure and systems when it comes to pretty much everything. What I love about this book is that Hari's journey is one of slowly realizing that his personal problems re: attention are rooted in much bigger, much scarier, systemic changes to how the world is organized. In other words, what initially appears to be a self-help book becomes a wholesale critique of the modern attention economy, with all the dots connected to help us readers follow along.In summary, this is what I took from this beautifully written and thoroughly researched book:1. Everyone in the world feels more stressed and less able to pay attention to things now. It's hurting our relationships, our health, and making it harder and harder to be happy.2. This is a choice, made by the most well funded companies in the world like Google and Meta. They hire the smartest people in the world to spend their time figuring out how to get us to spend more time using their software so they can sell our attention to advertisers.3. There are very few things we can do to protect ourselves from this attention pollution. We need a popular movement to force regulation and government protection.4. Without change, it is very unlikely that our politics will get less toxic or that we will be able to solve massive collective action problems like climate change.For further reading on the subject, I highly recommend: Christopher Wylie's [b:Mindf*ck 55381894 Mindf*ck, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Targeted Hardcover 3 Books Collection Set Christopher Wylie https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600571853l/55381894.SX50.jpg 73625651], where he chronicles his role in building the tools that Cambridge Analytica used to manipulate the elections that brought us Donald Trump and Brexit. These issues are more than personal, and while Hari does go into this a bit I want to reiterate: A failure to control these forces will cause more chaos and suffering.
This series features 16 published in 6 years, and it feels like it. It's as if a bad AI was issued instructions to replicate the structure of [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413706054l/18007564.SY75.jpg 21825181] (something goes wrong, it gets fixed, something else goes wrong, ad infinitum) but without saying anything actually interesting. There are functionally only two characters in this series (at least so far), and they are a pastiche of a humble but lucky Sergeant and a snarky AI channeling the least original parts of Bender from Futurama. Every chapter seems to follow the following formula: - Something happens to thwart the progress of our heroes- It's a disaster! We know that because the narrator tells us it's impossible to resolve.- Someone comes up with a dumb idea. Again, we know this because someone tells us it's stupid, dumb, insane, or unlikely. It works out.- RepeatI'm a fan of cheesy scifi, but this is truly thoughtless inanity. If you're looking for something like this that doesn't feel like repeating the same awful Star Trek episode over and over again, may I suggest you check out the following alternatives:- [b:Project Hail Mary 54493401 Project Hail Mary Andy Weir https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597695864l/54493401.SY75.jpg 79106958]- [b:We Are Legion (We Are Bob) 32109569 We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1) Dennis E. Taylor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1474344826l/32109569.SY75.jpg 52752877]- [b:Old Man's War 36510196 Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) John Scalzi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509467059l/36510196.SY75.jpg 50700]- [b:All Systems Red 32758901 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) Martha Wells https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631585309l/32758901.SY75.jpg 53349516]
I've written reviews for all of the previous 4 books in this series so I'm not going to break new ground here. This really is how people should learn history, in a dramatic narrative. And I think there's an argument that the novel is the correct form as opposed to TV or film.
The full Julius Caesar series was around 2,000 pages. For me, that's somewhere between 30 and 50 spent living with the characters and world of this man. For comparison, Spike Lee's Malcom X biography was a little over 3 hours. That is simply not enough time to really get to know a person and the context within which they lived.
It took me three loans from the library to get through this, but not because it is a bad book. It is, I have learned, a book that simply requires reflection. Rick Rubin's discography is absurdly impressive. He is the co-founder of Def Jam records, has won 8 Grammy Awards, and has produced award winning work across almost every musical genre. If there is a more qualified person to speak to how anyone - yes, anyone - can produce great art, I can't imagine one.
To be clear, that is the premise of this wonderful book. Rubin's premise is that making transcendent art starts with being an artist. Occupying that role means committing to curiosity and expressing your truest self in the moment. There's so much more to it than that, but there's no way I can relate his views in this review better than he can. So, I'll share a few quotes that have stuck with me during this past 6 months of slowly absorbing his message and encourage you to read the full thing yourself.
Meaningful quotes from The Creative Act:
“To create is to bring something into existence that wasn't there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.”
“All art is a work in progress. It's helpful to see the piece we're working on as an experiment. One in which we can't predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment.”
“To dismiss an idea because it doesn't work in your mind is to do a disservice to the art. The only way to truly know if any idea works is to test it. And if you're looking for the best idea, test everything. Ask yourself as many “what if” questions as you can. What if this were the first painting anyone saw in their life? What if I removed every adverb? What if I made all the loud parts quiet?”
“When working through ways of solving a puzzle, there are no mistakes. Each unsuccessful solution gets you closer to one that works. Avoid becoming attached to the particulars of the problem. Widen your field of view.”
“Maintain the momentum. If you reach a section of the work that gives you trouble, instead of letting this blockage stop you, work around it. Although your instinct may be to create sequentially, bypass the section where you're stuck, complete the other parts, then come back to it. Sometimes solutions to these difficult pieces will reveal themselves once the overall context has emerged. A bridge is easier to build when it's clear what's on either side of it.”
“Much of art's greatness is felt on a gut level. Your self-expression allows the audience to have their own self-expression. If your work speaks to them, it is of no consequence if you are heard and understood. Set aside such concerns about whether your work will be comprehended. These thoughts can only cause interference, for both the art and audience. Most people aren't interested in being told what to think or feel.”
“If you've truly created an innovative work, it's likely to alienate as many people as it attracts. The best art divides the audience. If everyone likes it, you probably haven't gone far enough.”
“Releasing a work into the world becomes easier when we remember that each piece can never be a total reflection of us, only a reflection of who we are in this moment. If we wait, it's no longer today's reflection.”
The challenge with reviewing series - especially series I devour quickly like this one - is that I don't know what to say in the reviews of the individual books themselves. This ought to be understood to be one long 2,500 page story and read/reviewed as such.
This book covers the final phase of his life, in which he finally defeats all of his enemies and comes to think of himself as a God. Absolute power and all that...
“This sword is made for only one purpose, to kill. It will only be as good or evil as the one who wields it.”
Redwall is the series that made me a fantasy reader, as many other reviewers have echoed. It is, for me, the template for a medieval-style hero story and I devoured it as a child. I'm reviewing it now after re-reading it in my late thirties with my own two children and I have to say the magic is still there.
The narrative engine of this story is strong. The characters are well constructed, even if they are generic: The wise old gatekeeper, the anointed warrior, the practical damsel, etc. And those characters are embedded in a solid and time-tested plot in which evil comes to town to conquer and is, after some ups and downs, soundly defeated by the hero.
If this book had just the plot and the characters, it would still be a very good one, but what makes it so special is the writing. I've read many books with my kids, and while there are other books that are just as exciting - Harry Potter, City Spies, etc. - almost nothing I've read with them are as richly rendered as Redwall. Here's an example:
“The new day dawned in a haze of soft sunshine. It crept across the countryside suddenly to expand and burst forth over all the peaceful woods and meadowland. Blue-gold tinged with pink, each dewdrop turned into a scintillating jewel, spiders' webs became glittering filigree, birdsong rang out as if there had never been a day as fresh and beautiful as this one.”
It goes without saying that juvenile fiction is written for children, but there are too many writers in the genre who simplify their prose to the point that it almost seems as if their works are written by children. We become great readers only when authors challenge us with complex metaphors, rare and specific vocabulary, or obscure references. Sometimes those challenges require resolution, as when my kids ask me for the meaning of a word, but sometimes they can just wash over us and context fills in the meaning. This is how we learn new words and the beauty and complexity of the English language.
Not only are Jacques' descriptions beautifully written, but he manages to write character dialogue in such a way that each character truly has their own voice. The patterns of speech are widely varied, from the long-winded Abbot to the terse Sparra Queen. The author also manages to perfectly walk the fine line that is writing phonetically so that accents come through clearly. This will of course be personal to ever reader, but I challenge anyone to read Ambrose Spike's lines without a Devon accent! Or Basil Stag Hare as anything but the classic voice and accent of an English officer trained at Sandhurst.
There is always so much more to say about a great book (and series) like this, but I'll leave it off for now. I'm not yet sure if I'm going to be reading the next book with my kids or not, but I hope I do because I remember how much fun I had with these stories way back when.
When I look back on this book a few years from now, there's a chance that this may have been one of the most important ones I've ever read. It may have genuinely changed my life with well-articulated and (seemingly) well-researched health advice. Or it might just be something interesting I read once.
As I looked back over my notes to write this review, the first thing that struck me is that I made 221 highlights! For information dense nonfiction books like this, I do a lot of highlighting but this is a ton for me. And it makes sense, because there really is so much in here. Attia seems to have done his very best to distill everything he knows about health and longevity into a very readable 500 pages, and it's clear that every chapter was ruthlessly edited to make sure that every page was full of value.
The primary thesis behind this book is that modern medicine is too narrowly focused on treating disease to really do much about health. Because health is so much more than “not being sick,” he proposes an alternative approach which he calls Medicine 3.0. This is a proactive and holistic approach to living a long and healthy life. If the previous era is taking you from sick to baseline, his goal is to help his patients and readers to rise from baseline to thriving.
The book is broken into 5 sections: exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and drugs/supplements. Each of these is important and he goes into detail on all of them. Personally, I found the sections on exercise and nutrition to be most practically applicable, but I'm sure different sections will resonate more deeply with different readers.
I'm not willing to attempt a complete response to the book here in this review (there are many great YouTubers who have done that), but I will share what insights stood out to me:
1. Metabolic dysfunction (a larger category of conditions that includes diabetes) is incredibly common and very hard to avoid living a standard American life and eating a standard American diet. It is very important to do everything we can to keep our metabolism functioning well, which primarily comes down to eating fewer sugars and exercising regularly.
2. The bodies sugar/fuel system is incredibly precise. At any given moment, we have only about 5g of glucose (the thing that powers our cells) in our blood going to feed the body. The amount needed is exact, and the liver modulates this by the second. If that number is 7g instead of 5g, you have diabetes! The margin for error is tiny.
3. If we have eat more energy than we need, it gets stored in our muscles as glycogen and in our liver. After that it gets stored in subcutaneous fat, which is great, but only if we have the genes to store it there. Fat is effectively an energy buffer.
4. He recommends tracking uric acid, homocysteine, inflammation, and ALT liver enzymes to keep an eye on metabolism, not just blood glucose.
5. Dietary cholesterol is apparently not a thing we should be worried about, because pretty much all the cholesterol in our bodies is actually produced by our own cells.
6. To gauge the risk of heart disease, we should regularly do a blood panel that includes apoB, Lp(a), and LDL-C. We can't lower these enough and “normal” numbers are still too high.
7. Cancer treatments for metastatic cancers almost never work, and even when they do “success” just means extending life for a few more years. Prescreening (he advocates a lot) is the way to fight cancer, though it sounds like there are some promising treatments being developed.
8. Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases seem to be far less likely with regular exercise to keep the vascular system strong and avoiding metabolic dysfunction. Again, exercise.
9. Exercise is aerobics, strength, and stability. All three matter and each support the others.
10. It seems like there's very little evidence for anything conclusive about diet. We should “eat healthy”, but what that means isn't exactly clear.
Good Gods, I love this series. There are things in these books that are made up, but the big milestones are accurate and when you lay out the story of Caesar and the late Roman Republic in this thrilling kind of personal history, it's hard not to get swept up. That kind of absorption is so important for learning history because it makes you care about the people in that time, which makes it real.
I have a degree in history, which probably speaks to a predisposition to being able to imagine the narratives that connect the dates of battles and lists of dynasties, but for those people who don't have that – there are a lot of them, considering how many raised eyebrows I get when I confess my degree – authors like Iggulden are essential. History is life, it's human ambition and pain, and it's wonderful.
Well, that was fast! Just a month ago I hadn't heard of this series and now I've read (ok, mostly listened to) 1500 pages of it.
My reviews of the other books in this series offer some more nuance that is worth considering but my overall takeaway is that I really like them. The heroes of the series are proactive, resourceful, and act with empathy. They have insecurities and worries, but they largely do what's right and act in support of each other. They're the kinds of kids I would be proud to see my own kids emulate and that's really what I want in a YA novel. Plus, it's genuinely good fun!
Book 4 introduces Cairo, which adds a very interesting wrinkle to the team dynamics. I felt like the subplot around the British expropriation (OK, theft) of Egyptian artifacts was interesting but ultimately not all that compelling. This is a book for kids after all, and the moral reasoning in this and throughout the series does tend to err on the side of black and white clarity rather than really dive deep into the gray.
I continue to be happy my son introduced this series to me and we are immensely enjoying talking about it, so I'm excited to move on to the 5th and final one.
I'm in a race to keep up with my older son who is devouring these books at an alarming rate. My prospects are not looking good. Unlike the first two in the series, I couldn't find an audio version of this and so I lost a few days waiting for him to finish this and to remember to share it with me. In that time, he'd already moved on to books 4 and started number 5.
That's the kind of series this is. It races along, gleefully jumping from little character moments of tension, teen drama, and international intrigue. As I mentioned in my review of book 2, this series does NOT get bogged down in the complexities of what it means to have (now) legally adopted a bunch of traumatized kids and turned them into state employees. Actually, now that I've written that, I don't think they ARE employees at all. I guess they're slaves. Child soldier slaves.
But... they're having fun!! And they bake treats from all over the world. And dammit, they're all just so charming and lightly flawed in a predictable way that... oh man this is going to be such a hit TV series.
I can see why this series has so taken over my son's life, as well as all the kids in his class. It's fun, exciting, and very much the kind of fantasy I would have loved at age 10. As an adult, I still think it's pretty sus that these adults have trafficked a bunch of tweens and trained them to be child soldiers, but that's me thinking too much!
On to the next one!
Wow, wow, wow. They say truth is stranger (and more thrilling) than fiction but when it's written by a great historical fiction author like Iggulden, that promise truly comes to life.
I know that there are details in here that can't be verified or are made up for the sake of the story but even if you only focus on what IS documented, the life of Gaius Julius Caesar and his historical moment is truly epic. The portrait that is painted by this series is one of a brutally effective genius. He is uncompromising and clever in a combination that – we all know now – leads to one of the most impactful moments in history.
As someone who has always been drawn to history and the way we organize ourselves, the end of the Republic is a fascinating case study. And while I often talk about the ways in which we overemphasize the importance of particular people when looking back through time, Caesar does feel like an exception to the rule.
This was recommended to me by my son in 4th grade, and I can see why this series is EVERYTHING right now in his class. This is some Tom Clancy/Michael Crichton quality thriller writing, but for a kid audience.
Because it's for a kid audience, there's some oversimplification and technobabble handwaving about hacking that I wouldn't tolerate in a more mature thriller author, but that doesn't really matter. These kids are heroes you want to root for and the plot is pacey as hell. My son devoured this first book in 2 days and I did the same as an audiobook.
I truly can't wait to read (or listen to) the next in the series and I'm incredibly envious of whoever has the TV rights to this, because it's going to be a smash hit.