Eva
This was a bit of a disappointment, as it is less a love-letter to books but more a memoir of a person who happens to also love books. The problem being that her life isn't that interesting. Partially there was too much over-sharing on her personal life (about exes, about her father's death) and there was also something slightly off-putting in the tone she described some of her adventures, as if she's waiting to hear praise/appreciation. Some of the chapters are also just muddled, like when she talks about the rise of terrorist attacks in Paris and then swerves to talk about what Victor Hugo had to say about a transforming Paris back in the day. Ending that chapter with a short anecdote about a Les Miserables actor reaching out via Twitter and taking her and her daughter backstage after a production of the play. I'll rather recommend Anne Fadiman's [b:Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader 46890 Ex Libris Confessions of a Common Reader Anne Fadiman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435782351s/46890.jpg 1468318] which is a charming collection of essays on bibliophilia.
This seems to be the only up-to-date book out there giving an overview of the discipline of Machine Learning, but nobody seems to be quite happy with it, and I can see why.
Domingos goes in detail on what he calls the “five tribes” of machine learning:
- Symbolism / Logic with it's decision trees and inverse deduction
- Connectionism with its multilayer perceptrons and backpropagation
- Evolutionaries with their genetic algorithms
- Bayesians with probabilistic inference
- Analogizers with their support vector machines
The level of complexity of his explanations and examples isn't well balanced, some are easy to follow, while other's are just too high-level and would require more hand-holding. Nevertheless you get a decent overview of the field.
The book fails where the author tries to insert himself, his opinions and his quest for the “Master Algorithm”. Or when he tries to add creative analogies, as when he describes the 5 machine learning strategies as boroughs of a city. And then spends multiple pages riffing on that analogy.
Giordano definitely knows how to write and how to pull you into this story of love, friendship and ideals, in southern Italy. There is the secrecy and dizziness of young love, teenage experiments of lust and tragedies, and the constant search for meaning and one's truth, taking shape in religion and environmental fundamentalism. Yet the main characters were really hard to like. Bern, a stand-in for [b:The Baron in the Trees 9804 The Baron in the Trees Italo Calvino https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344432724s/9804.jpg 865256], the supposed romantic hero and driver of most action, was so uncompromising in his convictions that it made him unattractive. And Teresa, the narrator and his counterpart, was too passive, seemingly only following other people's wishes.I rolled my eyes a bit at the boys' escapades with Violalibera, and the added unnecessary jealousies between the circle of friends. But I still enjoyed lots of it.
I quite like the world setting (in a frozen world all survivors live on a perpetual-motion train with 1001 wagons, forming their own cruel hierarchical society that can only be traversed along 1 dimension) but the graphic novel fails in so many other ways for me: There's only one female character who immediately (and inexplicably) starts up a romance with the hero, and all the other women in the background are whores/sex slaves. The drawing style sometimes made it hard for me to distinguish characters. And the writing and plot development isn't that great.
I took home the bound volume that had all 3 Transperceneige volumes, but now won't read the other two.
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.
With an artsy protagonist (a fictional or not-so fictional representation of the author?) that's obsessed with polar expeditions and explorations of the void and snow crystals, this felt like a book for me. The book itself is an interesting experiment, mixing research notes and non-fiction fragments and diary entries. It mostly succeeded I'd say.
In a note before the Index Ransmayr states that the “Flattersatz” - the ragged margin - the “flying” sentence - does not only belong to the poets. And then he goes and writes a novel that looks like verse form, yet reads very fluidly. In long sentences that are grammatically correct (mostly, I think?) yet give you the freedom to read them like a poem. Another Austrian novel about the scaling of an Tibetan mountain, and like Glavinic's [b:Das größere Wunder 18339138 Das größere Wunder Thomas Glavinic https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1377606335s/18339138.jpg 25892158] I really enjoyed this one too. Two brothers, bonded by Ireland, a lost mother, a rebellious father, the ocean, the cliffs and the mountains. One of them has the ambition to explore the last white spot on all the maps, a missing piece in the Himalaya, the supposed location of The Flying Mountain. The other tags along, in support, and because his big brother's desires tend to take over. Their journey and the told story jumps between the past and the present. Between the simple life of sheep and nomadic tribes, and the tech-enhanced world of the modern world (“Flüssigkristallschirme”!). Between the different aspirations that send us out into the world, and the different attainments that make us stop searching.
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.
After WWII a French woman marries a Moroccan soldier and moves to his homeland. The clash of cultures, the struggle of women in a strict muslim society, and a nation that seeks independence from its colonizers. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on, but the storytelling felt a bit uneven. I was happiest when the narrative stayed with Mathilde and her daughter Aïsha.
My first Slimani that I didn't read in French, and possibly also her first one with a historical setting? Unsure if those are the reasons I liked this one less, but possibly.
La couverture du livre promet l'enfant sauvage Zazie, et vous obtenez ca. Elle jure tout le temps, ne suit pas les regles et est prete a se lancer dans n'importe quelle aventure. Ce a quoi je ne m'attendais pas, c'est que le monde parisien dans laquelle Zazie se lance, devient de plus en plus absurdist et bizarre, presque surrealiste, avec des nuances tres sombres.
C'etait un aventure pour moi aussi a lire ce texte qui utilise l'argot parisien et epelle phonetiquement de nombreux mots. C'etait drole et moins difficile que anticipe - oui meussieu.
J'aime que Laverdure et Turandot ont change de role a la fin :)
- Tu causes, tu causes, c'est tout ce que tu sais faire.
What a storyteller Granach was. In episodic-style, the theater- and early-film actor tells about his life. From his upbringing in a poor jewish family in Old-Austria now-Ukraine to vagabonding, apprenticing at various bakeries and working at brothels. From discovering his love of theater, travelling to Berlin, to undergoing surgery on both legs for a better presence on stage. From fighting in the first world war, to being held captive in an Italien prisoner camp, to escaping home through the Swiss mountains. All his stories are full of humor and empathy, and most of all they are all instilled with a deep love for humanity.
Besides his stay in Berlin, where his story-telling is shortly interrupted by him gushing about his love of theater, this is a perfect compendium of a life in stories, that should be consumed at slow pace, to properly cherish them.
A nesting doll story involving three women across time. All of whom stand out in their otherness, may it be through intellect, autism or artificiality. One invents the mechanism (Ada), another helps build the bodies (Ling), and a third breaks the boundaries (Iris).
Even though this could be classified as scifi, this is probably more poetry. The narrative voice and the characters are detached, lightweight. The text layout often splits into word fragments, deliberately slowing down your reading process. Like Clavadetscher wants you to pause, and consider with more attention, what's behind the lines. And what's there is philosophical and ethical questions about ownership, identity, female exploitation, the breaking of rules.
Interesting, but a bit too ethereal for my taste.
I also think Ada Lovelace (love her) has already been overused in literature.
Russia's story of the first half of the 20th century - participation in WWI, the revolution and civil war, followed by Stalin's reign of fear and violence - is told through the protagonist's life story. Of course Filipenko writes about the terrors of the Russian regime, its culture of interrogation and denunciations, leaving it up to the reader to draw direct comparisons to today's Russia. And for that reason I would have liked the book to be a bit more straight-forward, maybe leaning heavier on historical facts. Instead of making me question the narrator's reliability by structuring the story in interweaving segments of interrogation transcripts, diary entries, and official reports.
I must have misheard something in the beginning of the book, because what I thought was a given, didn't actually come to happen. And while I kept waiting for it, the story took a turn, and ended ultimately in what I felt was a a cop-out.
There is a lot of potential in this, it's a critical look at how you seemingly never can run away from a religious conflict if your whole culture is drenched in it. But, we're too in the main protagonist's head and I increasingly came to dislike her.
A little collection of articles, interviews and project spotlights all centred around data and data representations, its power and its fallacies.
Les blessures compliquees d'un pays colonise, qui se transmettent de generation en generation. On retrouve ici l'histoire de trois generations d'une famille algerienne. Le pere qui a combattu pour la France lors de la premiere guerre mondiale, ce qui le rendre un traitre pendant la guerre d'independance algerienne. La famille a fuit vers les camps d'immigration en France dans les annees 1960s, et le fils a grandi dans un pays peu accueillant. Par consequent il se referme sur ses origines. Et enfine, la petite-fille, qui s'interroge sur son prope identite, embarque pour un voyage a la decouvert du passe de sa famille.
Un livre interessant avec ses destins compliques, beaucoup a apprendre sur l'Algerie.
Ma seule critique est que les quelques scenes avec de contenu sexuel semblent totalment deplacees.
The young Mary Boleyn is the object of affection for King Henry VIII. Her family separates her from her husband and pushes her in an affair with the king. The king is unhappy in his child-less marriage and his greatest hope is to produce a legal heir. Mary bears him two children as his mistress. After his desire disappears the family assigns her sister Anne to pursue the king. Anne catches his affection and understands to keep it by refusing herself to him until they are legally married. A church revolution makes the king's divorce possible and they get married. Yet Anne only bears him Elizabeth. Several miscarriages follow. Anne commits incest with her brother George in order to overcome the king's inability to produce an heir. She and several followers are arrested, and executed for treason, adultery and incest. Mary manages to escape the royal court by marrying a lower situated man out of love.
This has been a journey! The first 200 pages are very dense and slow. You're immersed in a universe, that's evidently much larger than just the focus of this novel. And Cherryh does not hold your hand and explains - neither the politics nor the scientific innovations that run this world. There's talking and scheming, so much politics, and everyone is very careful and eternally suspicious about every single bit of communication. So, a bit of slog. But, then it gets more human, our heroine is young and you grow into the story with her. The world is exciting, as you slowly grasp it. Training with ‘tapes', the ‘azi' and their focused mind states, ‘specials' and their protected status, being able to ‘Work' others and always watching out from getting ‘Got'. And then, the last 200 pages are a pure rush, of elements coming together, and Cherryh turning up the action to 100. So you speed to the end, to discover ... OMG there's no clear ending to so many plot points!! You're mad but you're also stimulated because the story tickled your brain in just the right ways, and then you're on the way to the library on a rainy Sunday afternoon, because you discovered Cherryh wrote a sequel 20 years later!!
Claustrophobia, heat, hunger, violence, madness. 18year old Andrea arrives in 1940ies Barcelona to study and moves in with her extended eccentric family into a crammed oppressive apartment. Poverty and past conflicts, that only partially unfurl, are weighing on all family interactions. A stifling unease, coupled with a curiosity peaked by an enigmatic mysterious uncle, gives the novel a dark gothic mystery feel.
Long overdue, therefore not full of surprises, but very solid and still endlessly interesting. He starts with a 101 on music and sounds (pitch, timbre, tempo ..) and then tells us why our brain prefers certain harmonies and melodies over others. Why the church banned the ‘chord of evil' from music (Tritone), why our neuronal feedback loops get hooked on rhythms, and why Pinker was wrong in calling music “auditory cheesecake”. It don't think there has been or will be a book that had me singing out loud that often.
Pretty sure her last graphic novel made me cry too. About family reunions across the Korean divide, for the last generation that lived through the war.
Wise and media-savvy 20 year olds examining romance. Really didn't need the fake-dating trope.
Mira works in the diplomatic corp of the United Nations. From a first person perspective we peek into her head while she travels through her memories of past missions. From Genf to Burundi, to Den Haag, to New York and the Kongo. There are no clear plot lines, what we get is more of a understanding for the complexities and frustrations of working in the aftermath of political atrocities. The pool-side life of expats in their bubbles in war-ridden African countries. The detachment one needs to develop when you need to negotiate with suave political players, who might or might not have been involved in genocides. From former child soldiers to human rights experts, almost everyone we meet has developed a cynical or disenchanted attitude. It's the Schutzzone they need in order to survive or to be able to even engage.
Doing this in audio was probably a good decision. The long sentence structures that a few reviewers criticized, dissolved into a hypnotic stream of consciousness in the audiobook. And Constanze Becker did a great job in the narration. Still, I would have preferred a stricter plot line, to give the intriguing content a bit more structure.
A cautionary tale of a people so tied down with complex politics and social conventions, that rumors become so oppressing that no truth can break them, should one even have the strength left to fend them off.
Frustrating at times, because of it's very meandering nature, but also very moving and brilliant at times, with its stream of consciousness and its lists and repetitions. It definitely could have been a bit tighter though.
I loved all the more cheerful side characters, with their names like wee sisters, third brother in law, maybe-boyfriend. And I am very happy the book didn't end where it almost ended. That would have been too depressing.