Adam TikTok test
Ok, this is pretty much Harry Potter. In an alternate history, Librarians secretly rule the world, dishing out misinformation and shaping the world. Upon reaching his 13th birthday, Alcatraz Smedry is met with an interesting gift – a bag of sand – which draws him into this world of lies, odd abilities and glasses that have special powers.
A fun, short read meant for kids, but still a lot of fun. I love the idea that the main good guys all have special powers that all seem to be awful at first glance. Alcatraz's ability is that he can accidentally cause things break things. Not good when you're burning down your foster parents house, but rather useful when you break the gun that someone is point at you. His grandfathers ability is to arrive late has similarly useful applications, but listing too many would spoil things. It's fun to see how Sanderson takes these “useless” powers and makes them useful.
After Ringworld, I liked Nivens Sci-fi concepts, but not so much his characters. The same could be said for Mote, which lacks any strong women characters, but makes up for it with a gripping tale of first contact. After seeing this one on NPRs top 100 SciFi list, and always being interested in first encounters, I knew I had to check this out. The story kept me interested – keeping things a mystery at times, and at other times giving you the information and watching to see if the correct decisions were made. I wouldn't recommend this one for everyone, but if you like entertaining sci fi and an interesting alien race, it's worth a read.
After winning this years Arthur C. Clarke Award, and constantly seeing it on Goodreads, I knew I wanted to give this one a shot. I appreciate the storytelling and literary side of this book more than the characters and the story. The narrative jumps time, focusing on a world before a pandemic, then again years into the future. The focus of the story is around a traveling symphony making their way around the Great Lakes. I liked the characters and the post apocalyptic world, and especially how the characters were connected, but was distracted by the Station Eleven storyline – a comic book created by one of the characters – which didn't add much to the story for me beyond it's symbolism.
The first book in the Wheel of Time series. I've heard numerous people say to skip this one - and I can understand why. It was extremely slow, and monotonous at times. For a series that I always hear touted as one of the most amazing, must read tales, I was completely underwhelmed by it. I can see how the bigger world is being built up, but this story was more about a call to action without much else (besides some running around). I didn't feel attached to the characters or care too much about the weight on their shoulders. Ironically, I did feel that way for the Sword of Truth series – which was released after Wheel of Time and shares a VERY similar narrative. I'm not sure if I'll have the dedication to complete this series, but still aim to try a few more.
This short story is a prequel to Mystborn, introducing Kelsier new to his powers, learning the basics of allomancy. It was apparently released in the guide to a tabletop game. It's meant to both be entertaining, and give the entire backstory to the world in 22 pages. Not something to be read on it's own, but an interesting backstory.
Very much a young adult book, but still a lot of fun. This one reminded me of a cross between Elantris and Steelheart in a Harry Potter setting. The magic mechanic for this one focuses around a world where “Rithmatists” (think wizards) fight the worlds battles against a vague evil. Rithmatists fight by drawing figures in chalk that are effectively wards against evil, or offensive. The somewhat short story was entertaining all the way through, with great characters, a good magic system and just overall fun. Not the amazing, tell everyone you know fun, but an entertaining story. I'll surely read the next one in the series when it comes out.
When the movie came out, I couldn't help but hear people comparing it to the book. I hadn't realized the book was much more of a short story than a full novel. The movie touches on a number of even more emotional deep moments, including the inclusion of the dog. The book much more humanizes the vampires, as well as going deeper into the science side of things. By having a main character who also isn't a scientist, it helps show the passage of time more as he learns what he needs to learn. The endings are of course drastically different – even from the alternate ending.
Focusing more on getting back to our roots on asking questions than about a specific question, “A More Beautiful Question” focuses around how to return to place where we question the world around us. From an early age we're asking questions about everything around us, but somehow we stop doing that. I enjoyed the very “growth mindset” approach to questioning, but many of the examples given were more focused around innovating and entrepreneurship than more practical examples.
After hearing this one recommended everyday on Reddit, being a fan of first contact stories and seeing it on the Hugo nominees for it's year, I decided to give it a shot. It's what a lot of people consider “hard sci-fi”, but I'm slowly realizing is really just “hard to read” sci-fi. The story is very slow moving, with very little happening, and most of the exploration taking place in the descriptions of events, the types of beings and awareness.
There were a number of interesting ideas presented as well as some interesting characters, but in the end I wasn't able to connect with the story.
If Mistborn is Avatar, then The Allow of Law is Korra. Taking place many years after the events of the first trilogy, Alloy starts a new series more focused on allomancer/pharochemist characters, which opens up an entirely new world of skills not previously explored. Being able to slow down time + heal? Yeah, that sounds useful. The story itself is more of a detective story, with some likable characters. I worried it would be too much driven by the period it was set in, but the characters were the main focus.
I'm a sucker for stories where the main characters is stuck in a time loop. Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow stand out, but this one took it to an entirely new level. The title itself is a giveaway for the time loop – an entire lifetime. The concept of replaying your entire life sounds interesting, but the complications that come up when you (and perhaps others) can do this were problems I hadn't seen explored in Sci-Fi before.
After enjoying the first book in the series, I dove into the 2nd. It didn't hurt that it was nominated for another Hugo award, on a number of short lists for great sci-fi. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as interesting as the first in the series. Many of the concepts explored in the first one were put aside to tackle a case of discrimination on a subset of people on a space station. Still great sci-fi, but I didn't get the same level of enjoyment out of the story as the first one – which might have set my expectations a little bit too high.
It took a while to get into this one, but by halfway through I was hooked, and even impressed. I loved the idea of an AI that was limited by it's ability to control human subjects – each of which still maintained a slightly unique brain, motivation and mindset. The concept of “I” starts to be a fuzzy concept once “I” becomes a group. The gender ambiguity was also interesting – referring to each character as “she” throughout the book.
XKCD in book form! Hilarious all the way through. Monroe takes questions that anyone could have asked and goes into them in extreme detail. If getting to the answer to a question doesn't prove to have a funny conclusion, Monroe continues upping the ante until things get interesting. I'd say it's a combination of Mythbusters and a comic – which is basically XKCD anyways. So what kind of questions? What would happen if the moon went away? If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce?
One of the top recommendations by Aaron Skonnard, I knew I had to read this one. The premise is that great leaders lead by asking why to get to the bottom of something. I hadn't realized it before, but I'd already seen Simon Sineks TED talk. His talk focuses around working from the outside in, asking questions more tied to emotion than to superficial results.
When I first heard about “Lock In”, I thought it was just another pandemic book based on the descriptions. I was completely wrong! This book is much more of a combination of “Surrogates”, “I, Robot” and “Caves of Steel” – a detective novel with a sci-fi touch in a world facing a pandemic. The pandemic is different than the usual ones though. Instead of killing those affected, it locks them in, making them unable to communicate or move their bodies. This is where the ‘Surrogates” comparison comes in. The government develops a way for those affected to control robots which act as proxies for these people in the real world.
I enjoyed the world building in this one, as well as the main characters. The dynamic reminded me a lot of Caves of Steel, but without quite as much “Ohhh, of course that's it!” to the story.
“Unlocked” is the backstory of the world created in Scalzi's Lock In. Rather than starting the story off with hundreds of pages of background, he jumps directly into the narrative, hooking you into. If the book had started with Unlocked, it would've been more difficult to hold my attention. Reading it after the fact as background on the world was just right though.
I'd rate this one a 1 in character development, but a 5 in some of the later sci-fi themes discussed. Almost any discussion of this book could be a spoiler, but I would say that it unravels in interesting ways I hadn't ever seen before. This one was actually translated from the Chinese version and is the first in a trilogy. I'm looking forward to the others in the series coming out to figure out where they take the story next.
“Follow your passion” has always been the advice given to people that I've run into. If you love what you do, good things will follow. This book goes completely against that, and I love it for it. The alternate route to passion is following what you're good at, and what you can make a living at, and let passion follow. The premise is that passion follows expertise, and as you get better at something, your passion for it will increase.
The anecdotal stories told by people who “followed their passion” leading them to change their lifestyle only to realize it wasn't their passion after all were compelling as well. For example dropping everything to join a Buddhist Monastery only to realize it's the wrong life path. I could see a lot of amazing advice in this that could counteract the prevailing culture of bad advice on this same subject.
After hearing Amanda's Ted talk, I was excited to hear she had a book out that elaborated on the topic. The title of the book makes it sound like it's in the self help genre, but actually this is a memoir using asking for help as a unifying theme throughout her life. The openness of the memoir, and the issues she faced were refreshing to hear. An optimistic story that left me feeling good and wanting to read more by Neil Gaiman (her husband).