Eva
Remote sensing techniques are revolutionizing the field of archeology, by enabling the discovery and basic analysis of sites before any dig has to happen. Satellite imagery, LiDAR scans and ground-penetrating radar give scientists a basic idea on the materiality and structure of what lies beneath. All of that was super exciting, and I would have preferred to get more technical details. But then the majority of the book turned out to be about the more standard field of archeology. The excavations, the discoveries, the complications due to wars, the looters and the collectors willing to pay anyone - also interesting, but not exactly what the cover promised.
I liked when the author talked about a fundamental shift in archeology - how before, what was most exciting was finding tombs with treasures and golden masks, whereas now the focus of archeologists has shifted towards discovering relics that tell us about people's everyday lives back in the day.
Frost bites, hypoxia, summit fever, Man's ego and a series of unfortunate events lead to the deaths of several climbers attempting to reach Mount Everest in 1996. What remains is this extremely suspenseful and harrowing account of the event, transmitted with a certain level of guilt by the author. It reads like a thriller.
My mind is stuck on what those Japanese climbers said, about passing other climbers in clear distress, while on their way to the summit, without administering any help. “We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality.” And you can't even fault them.
Sadly, what this book didn't accomplish, is to slow down the commercialisation and exploitation of Everest.
A multi-generational family story showing the impact of WWII on Jews in then-Czechoslovakia. We meet Mira, a little nine year-old rebel who loses her family due to a typhus epidemic, and then needs make a new home with her quiet, strange aunt Hana, who is a living shadow of the atrocities of the past. We then travel back in time and learn how the previous generations acknowledged the neighbor country's warning bells too last. How can you leave a place that has been your home for your whole life? Living peacefully alongside others, never suspecting they could turn on you? Eventually Hana's path leads to the Theresienstadt camp and eventually Auschwitz.
Intermingled family fates, love stories, and one of the darkest histories there is.
This book has two great, intriguing and plot-driven first two chapters. And then it fizzles out into multi-perspective, multiple timelines, too detailed and yet fuzzy studies of characters, whose emotional connections to others is what is driving most of the plot. And yet, the book didn't make me like those characters, nor convinced me their motivations are what should be the focus here. Mainly I was just longing for the straightforward narrative structure of the book's beginning to return.
So much is kept vague (seriously, a drop of blood does it? and who's the ‘kind one'?) for poetic mystery purpose I suppose, but it just annoyed me. Or was I so bored that I missed crucial details?!
The writing is good. This is once again one of those review where I am mad at a book, because it started out good, and then let me down :/
A look at a New York one-percenter family where the younger generation grapples with life and love, while questioning their parents' money-above-all attitude. It's not really satire, as the characters are shown with great compassion, but there's a lot of dry wit and bite in portraying their ingrown elitism.
Goes down smoothly, the storytelling is good.
An attempt at subverting the genre by peeking behind the scenes of a dating show. Very UnREAL, but not as good. I could blame the protagonist who - even though it's made clear she's the perfectly malleable girl for the producers - felt too zombie on occasions. It was hard to root for her to break out of her own prison. Still, some of the wording, the subtle digs at the industry, were worth it.
In her intro Moon mentions Ursula K. Le Guin (<3), Marlen Haushofer's [b:The Wall 586852 The Wall Marlen Haushofer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435260852l/586852.SY75.jpg 573687] (<33), and [b:Two Old Women 127810 Two Old Women An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival Velma Wallis https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348013323l/127810.SX50.jpg 528604] (which I don't know but obviously now need to read). So naturally, this felt like a book for me right from the start. While in Haushofer's novel the protagonist is forced into isolation, Moon's Ofelia craves solitude. She is old and cranky, and just sick of having to conform to other people's rules. When she tricks everyone and stays behind after a forced evacuation of their planetary settlement, she flourishes in her newfound freedom and so did I. Tending her vegetables, shedding all unnecessary clothing, and simply following her own rhythm without interruption and restrictions. Paradise! But then, a new set of newcomers arrive. They are different, and also won't leave her alone. And I was shaking with laughter at Ofelia's first reactions. Perfect scifi niche - feminism, social utopias, exploring language and communication with other beings, a focus on small moments, but also there's stuff happening. Plus it has a unique heroine.
I'm gonna sort this with [b:Dark Matter 27833670 Dark Matter Blake Crouch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472119680l/27833670.SY75.jpg 43161998] into the category “Scifi books for the masses that make proper scifi lovers mad”. It didn't take its own metaphysical mysterious seriously, added melodramatic character back stories that felt out of place, and then took some really goofy turns in the end. My original grievance with the book was that it chose to tell its story in the form of letters. We are to believe that someone in the middle of the most dangerous and mindblowing and sleep-depriving adventure of his lifetime, sits down while freezing in a tent on snowy cliffs to write hours and hours of polished detailed prose???
It takes a bit to find your footing within this books, because you're smacked right into the chaos of a race-scandal set in postcolonial-academia. So many thoughts and conversations about racial identity and race theory, in all forms (tweets, radio interviews, blog posts, hallucinatory conversation with Hindu goddess Kali). Sometimes there's too much chatter, and you wish you could just spend time with Nivedita and Priti and their friends, without having to think so hard. But, this book is definitely educational (note the footnotes at the end), and does well in showing you all the conflicting emotions and evolutions associated to racial identities. Ahem, identitties.
I was quite impressed by the fact that most of the online reactions in the book are associated to their real-life personae who gave their permission to be represented. I thought I recognized one name, excuse my ignorance. I imagine reading this book must be quite a ride if you're at home in that specific scene.
This is wonderful. From wholesome human whale interactions, to studies in animal communication, bioacoustics, and new analytical breakthroughs in the domain thanks to machine learning.
If/When we succeed in decoding whale speak (go! Project CETI! go!), what shall we tell them?
That we see them, and that we care <3
I've encountered orcas once on an Alaskan glacier cruise. If I had known of happywhale then, I probably would have tried to get good photos of their fins or flukes. To maybe identity them, and then be able to track their journeys :)
Un jeune coder a Montreal apprend des lecons de vie lorsqu'il se fait scamme par son premier employeur des benefices de l'application utile il a developee pour lui. Y a-t-il des morals dans le developpement des affaires? Probablement pas. Mais que se passe-t-il s'il y a des amis impliques? A sa deuxieme tentative il a plus de success. Il encaisse et se repose un moment sur ces lorelles. Et quand une vieille amie lui propose a travailler ensemble sur le chatbots francaises, il dit oui. Un enterprise est inaugure, un bureau trop chic est loue, et les investisseurs sont cherches. Mais l'idee principale ne decolle pas comme prevu. Jusqu'a quelqu'une insert une nouvelle pensee qui fait changer le direction d'entreprise. Si vous pouviez parler aux gens qui sont decedees, le feriez-vous? Le public did oui. Mais, evidemment ca produit plus beaucoup des querelles morales. Un roman sur la culture startup en general, et aussi au Quebec, avec quelques coups divertissants contre la culture et la polique locals. Au debut il parle de la culture ouvriere de Montreal (qui m'a rappelle le lavage de vaisselle dans [b:Le Plongeur 31931045 Le Plongeur Stéphane Larue https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1477758722l/31931045.SY75.jpg 52585160]) et il termine dans une plus douce versione du Black Mirror. Tout en lisant comme un melange de journal intime et de TED talk. Tres techy et amusant.
Very inspiring. Who doesn't want to be an online sleuth to help solve crime, assist human rights watch initiatives, and combat authoritarian governments and their misinformation-spewing propaganda media houses.
I appreciate the level of detail with with Higgins describes how he and his team of investigative journalists follow crumbs through the social media dataverse to extract useful information. They meticulously browse google-earth to geolocate sites of crimes, calculate the sun-shadow angle in images to verify dates and locations, and sift through tons of Russian dash-cam footage to find the exact id number on a missile in transport. All this with the open-source ethic of transparency.
Inspired.
An Argentinian family saga about a cult worshipping the god of Darkness. A father and his son, both very alluring to others and in possession of supernatural powers, try to escape the cult and their demands on them. Occasionally the book picks up and then there are mysterious, slightly gory rituals, but the rest is a meandering coming-of-age tale. I was okay with the story and the characters, but I can't understand why so many on here praise her writing. I found her style - hyper verbose, spelling everything out, even meaningless stuff - really maddening. So many passages could have just been edited down. The book is way too long. So long, I almost forgot how annoyed I was at her earlier on for including the phantom limb mirror therapy and David Bowie.
A love story set in British private schools and across the battlegrounds of WWI. Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt, dashing dapper private school boys, constantly reciting poetry and reading Greek epics, are secretly in love. When one of them feels pressured to enlist for England before his time, the other follows shortly behind. What follows are many heartbreaks, of what war does to young bodies and minds.
I feel like I read several books with different tonalities. First we're experiencing the angst of forbidden gay schoolboy crushes (honestly kind of shocked how accepted sexual abuse between the boys seemed to be at those times) with lingering fears and dreams of heroics on the battlefield. Then the cruel No Man's Land reality of WWI is pure tragedy and heartbreak. Followed by suspiciously jolly adventures of a few of the former schoolmates attempting to escape German prisoner-of-war camps while rereading Adam Bede again and again (I had to laugh out loud several times at the continuous Adam Bede jokes). Followed by a final sombre act that makes it very clear how war produces broken men that never can fully heal.
Tonal differences asides, I enjoyed them all, and didn't mind at all how expertly they toyed with my emotions. Winn's writing of the schoolboy charm made me chuckle a lot, and the audio narration was quite excellent as well.
Another Austrian tale of growing up on a Bauernhof, but quite a different one. Provocative, magical, grotesque, nightmarish, full of trauma, youth rebellion, set in a lyrical style that's playful and wicked, full of fun little references, but often borderline exhausting. There's an episodic nature to the chapters, yet occasionally even those fall apart. I would have wished for a more narrative strand throughout it all. One that helps with the question, of what we're supposed to take from all the shocking elements of the story.