Eva
Freedom [..] really is the tension of the free play of human creativity against the rules it is constantly generating.
A fascinating look at the bureaucracies and structures in our world, that are simultaneously stifling yet also upholding the societal systems in our world.
We send the most successful and innovative academics in their fields higher in the hierarchies towards dull tasks of administration. We write books with grammar rules and monitor their correct usage, despite language being a perfect examples of slow and continuous adaptation. We've created bureaucratic systems of ‘fairness' that have turned oppressive. If we don't send the needy through an obstacle course of forms, how will we tell which of them is the most in need of help?
Graeber perfectly documents the hate-love affair we have with rules and the bureaucracies that uphold them. Games are perfect utopian systems of everyone adhering to the same rules. Play is free of rules, and potentially poses danger. Until children free-play and create their own rules. Even the fantastic escapist utopias we create for entertainment are full of celestial and magical hierarchies.
Super thought-provoking.
Setz weaves great uncanny and nerdy anecdotes into this novel about a mysterious syndrome that gives children an aura that's harmful to other people. Elements of this novel reminded me of [b:When We Cease to Understand the World 53972214 When We Cease to Understand the World Benjamín Labatut https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1596817309l/53972214.SY75.jpg 84341168] in the way that I wasn't sure if his references of scientists or scientific stories were real or made-up. Made-up to leave you a feeling of uncertainty, of mystery and of scary horror. All placed into a location that's very familiar to me, which just amplifies the uncanny.
A fictionalized biography of Thomas Mann, who's own novels had many autobiographical elements. While this well executed, and a great source of information about Mann and his family, my attention often drifted while the novel lost itself in too many details. It's written like a biography with an insight into Mann's mind. We hear so many conversations, and so many details about their different emigration routes, I would have wished for more magic.
The Austrian empire is holding on but it's past its expiration date. Alongside the long life of emperor Franz-Josef I. run the life of three generation of Trotta men. It's a time where fathers are respected, and in control of their sons occupations. The first Trotta saves the emperor's life and is granted the status of a national hero, the second Trotta resembles the emperor in his strive for tradition and strict protocol, while the third Trotta is demoralized by his military career in an army that's listless, purposeless and waiting for the looming downfall.
Roth's writing is quite exquisite, full of details, mixed with a very fine humor.
Mieville's world building is simply intense! At the heart of the novel is New Crobuzon, a seedy overcrowded steampunk kingdom of a city, teeming with life of all sorts, creatures from various species; bird people, insect people, people recrafted into ‘remades', beings from this plane and those from beyond; criminals, artists, scientists, rebels, politicians.
It's hard at first to dig your way through the onslaught of details about this weird-fantasy victorian horror London, full of vivid, dark and grotesque elaborations, alchemy and madness. But then a villain emerges and a rag-tag-crew sets off to fight it and suddenly the plot just catapults and pulls you along.
Une autobiographie sur l'experience immigration d'une famille Chilienne a Montreal dans les annees quatre-vingt. L'autrice parle des difficultes d'integration dans un pays avec une langue differente, une culture different et un climat different. Les parents ont occupe plusieurs boulots et ont sacrifie beaucoup pour permettre a leurs enfants une vie normale.
En particulier, Dawson peint un portrait de sa mere, qui a travaille comme femme de menage pour les Quebecois plus riches, et qui n'a jamais echappe l'attitude d'appartenir a une classe inferieure.
Les chapitres courts etait parfaits pour ma lecture lente en francais. En principe, j'ai aime le recit, mais elle raconte une experience et une culture tres quebecoise qui n'est pas connue par des etrangeres, et parfois la narration semble plus stylistique que realiste dans les sentiments. Occasionnellement, la voix d'autrice sonne aussi un peu trop comme une victime, ce qui c'est ne pas une bonne chose a dire, je sais.
Yes, this is a good yarn, but for something plot-driven like this (twist! twist! twist!) this could have profited from some major trimming. Once the reader is in on the twist and clearly understands the character motivations, there's clearly no need for scenes stretched this long.
Also possible that the highly accented voices in the audiobook caused me to get rather annoyed at some of the characters.
A good reminder that progress in equality isn't just a natural evolution, and will never be initiatited by those that are in power. Every step in the right direction is the cause of a brave fight led by those discriminated against. And mostly they can't even reap the benefits of their win, but have to pass it on to those that come after them.
Half a century ago, and we're still not there.
It's a good story, even if the book sometimes reads too much like a historical document trying to list everyone and everyone's credentials.
The Russian accent of the audiobook narration is perfect and puts you right into the story. Which is time-travel, in a future gone cold, and from the perspective of a 70year old teacher who is a ‘pilot' sent back to the past attempting to fix things.
There's a stage-play precision to the almost-novella, with its limited set of characters and its tight focus on the plot, which I appreciated. Some stories need world building, others shine through a reduction to the essence. And despite the mechanical nature of the plot, there's still a lot of humanity in it, which comes from the first person perspective and the unique relationship at its center.
Un roman pour l'epoche de #MeToo - ou #BalanceTonPorc comme le mouvement ete marque en France. La famille au centre dl'histoire se compose d'une celebre journaliste puissant de la vielle ecole, sa femme qui est auteur et feministe et de plusieur decennies sa cadette, et leur fils qui est une jeune etudiant prometteur. Au milieu de debats tendus sur le sexisme, les abus sexuels et les immigrations, un viol se passe, qui met le famille au centre d'attention.
Le premier part du livre sont l'evenements qui se passent peu avant le viol, and le seconde part du livre est un peu comme un transcript du proces au tribunal.
Je pense la France es un pays tres interessant a produire du contenu #MeToo, car il est connu pour ses nombreux cas de harcelement sexuel, et s'est egalement distingue pour ses reactions plutot controversees au mouvement #MeToo.
This was quite exquisite. A young girl with royal blood is banished to an impoverished abbey, to become the new prioress. First she feels insulted and ready to rebel, as she knows she's meant for greater things. But then she sets out on a path of conviction and stubbornness, to strengthen the abbey, widen its power and create a life for herself and her nuns that is safe and influential, unorthodox, yet full of grace. I loved the basic story, but it felt a bit style-over-matter on occasions. A good companion piece to [b:The Revolt 51828695 The Revolt Clara Dupont-Monod https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571456112l/51828695.SX50_SY75.jpg 63811828], as Eleanor of Aquitaine plays a quite prominent role in this one too.
At some point while reading these stories of scientists gone mad on the destructive and existential quandaries of their discoveries, I was totally spellbound by the increasingly insane tale of this mathematician I'd never heard of before, I remembered the sleeve text mentioning that this book exists between fact and fiction, and I started to question if he even was real.
He was. And this book was exquisite.
Though, I would have also gone willingly on this journey if everything had been made up.
At the end of the 21st century humanity is co-existing with bots that do all the work. Humans work ‘gigs' where they watch over machines, Amazon Mechanical Turk style. Or they down various pills - some with nanobots, some only chemistry - to enhance their mental or physical abilities. The economy is controlled by the pill-makers - the ‘funders' - who race to develope newer and better enhancements, while most of humanity scrambles to earn a living. Then a seeming human-bot hybrid terrorist group appears on the scene demanding personhood for machines.
A lot of smart-to-scary concepts in play here. Smart materials, reconfigurable apartments, supportive A.I. agents, a tipjar economy of constant surveillance and performance... Sometimes there were even too many ideas happening at once, and sometimes the protagonist's insistence on being the only savior was a bit too much, but all in all this was a great scifi read.
A middle-aged man who dives into his midlife-crisis by ending his longtime relationship when he falls in love with an unpredictable young woman. I started this audiobook laughing along with the very good and funny narration (by the author himself) and ended it almost as a chore. The characters are very unlikeable and so it becomes rather tedious to follow along in the protagonist's head.
A successor to [b:Die Bagage 50263388 Die Bagage Monika Helfer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1578075846l/50263388.SY75.jpg 75181259], this time with a focus on the author's father. His ambitions, his passions, his trauma, his war injury, his family. Helfer's voice still feels unique, especially in the way she writes dialogue, and I very much enjoyed listening to her audiobook narration. But in comparison I liked Die Bagage more, I formed more of an emotional connection to its characters. Possibly I shouldn't have read the two books in such a short timeframe, some distance might have helped in keeping them apart.
The potential of cyberwar - where countries turn off another country's electricity in the middle of winter, attack the internet infrastructure of hospitals to render those hospitals dysfunctional in the middle of a pandemic, break into voter registration and election count system to mess with foreign election data - is very real. All of this has already happened. Yet somehow it still feels distant, like the plot of a thriller movie. It fits in well with the threats of the [b:New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future 36696533 New Dark Age Technology and the End of the Future James Bridle https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512132962l/36696533.SY75.jpg 58496642]: systems that are so complex that we've lost oversight. And it's not the layers of technology that are complex, it's the politics tangled up with it. A lot of this underground war of cyber criminals and cyber mercenaries is enabled and funded by governments - the US, Russia, China, Iran being the biggest players. They exploit vulnerabilities in internet software (so-called “zero-days” - called for the fact that you only learn about the vulnerability on the day it is already exploited, day zero), that they use for spy operations instead of alerting the software companies to its existence. Often they even pressure the software companies to NOT FIX THE BUG, in order to be able to keep on using it. Perlroth's book is a wakeup call for the general public. Alerting everyone not just to update their software with the latest security patches and to smarten up about phishing emails, but also to be aware that governments are putting our crucial infrastructure - our power grid, our health system, our elections - on the line, if they keep on insisting on playing the spy game. Reads like a thriller.
Today's long count date is 13.0.8.17.1 in the Mayan calendar system. Dec 21st 2012 was 13.0.0.0.0, the end of the supposed last cycle of the Mayan calendar, by some believed to be the end of the world. On that day in The Actual Star a young woman follows her inner voice and descends into an ancient Maya cave. Her story will bloom into a new world order and religion centuries later, in the futuristic world that emerges after climate catastrophes. The novels follows three timelines millennia apart (1012, 2012, 3012), connecting from royal siblings at the collapse of the Maya civilization to a tourist in present day following her ancestral roots, to an utopian civilization of travelers who survive on a strict ruleset forbidding them to settle and to amass property. The complementary forces and dualities of twins, inspired by the Maya Hero Twins, are at the heart of the story. This is a story about power, sacrifice, ritual trance, the underworld, belonging, and belief systems. This novel toys with mysticism and reincarnation AND YET I loved it! This goes to Byrne's wonderful, immersive storytelling and complex, smart world-building (in fact the extensive glossary for the future world at the end convinced me to round this 4.5 read up to 5). Absolutely worth the long wait since [b:The Girl in the Road 18297954 The Girl in the Road Monica Byrne https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1379897131l/18297954.SY75.jpg 25782502]! In addition, the acknowledgement section at the end is full of intriguing and inspiring book recommendations, which I will have to all look up now.
Wherever there is judgement, there must be noise.
Judgments are human measurements. We predict if a tumor is benign or not, we decide how long the appropriate prison sentence for a certain crime should be, we choose who the best hire for an open position is. And we want these processes to be consistent and fair. We want the sense of security of receiving the same prognosis from different doctors, we want a crime to receive a similar sentence even if judged by different judges, we want the confirmation that the best candidate always receives the job.
But, obviously, this is not the case. Human judgements are clouded by biases and noise. Biases are easier to pick out, easier to attack, easier to take as the scapegoat. But Kahneman & Co show that noise is equally to blame for large variabilities in human judgement.
System noise ... noise observed in organizations that employ interchangeable professionals to make decisions
Level noise ... when some judges are harsher and others are milder, due to the ambiguity of the judgement scale.
Pattern noise ... variability due to each judge's individual opinions and experiences.
Occasion noise ... if the same person judges different based on time of day, mood, or external influence.
Important to note that this book deals with noise in systems where there should be no noise. There are many other domains of judgements where diversity in opinions is welcome.
Interesting topic, going too much into detail for me though. I would have preferred for it to be a bit more concise. But it's probably eye-opening for someone who deals with reproducible human judgement every day.
A portrait of a little rural town with a dark past, on the border between Austria and Hungary. Small events on the precipice of the fall of the iron curtain lead several inhabitants of Dunkelblum to unearth secrets and lies that the older generation seems to have agreed upon to take to their graves. Like in a mystery with a huge cast of characters, the narration sweeps across time and families, lays out the story in puzzle pieces that you're meant to fit together, before sweeping by again to help you along the way.
I had a good time listening to this. Yes, there were a LOT of characters, and it was tricky remembering who is who, but the way Menasse circled back on people and storylines made it seem that you don't necessarily needed to keep track of everything. That one could just go with the flow. Enjoy the narration, enjoy the masterful language, the dark humor. And Menasse for sure has a way with words.
The audiobook narration by the author was wonderful, she obviously perfectly communciated the wry humor of her text.
