Eva
Instead of fear-mongering like many recent A.I. books, this one takes a more practical future-facing approach and asks us how we'd like our future co-existence with A.I. to look like.
First, Max Tegmark takes us expertly by the hand and explains the basics of of the field and all the recent good and bad influences of artificial intelligence on our lives. Then he extrapolates into the future and lists a variety of intriguing scenarios of how humanity and technology/superintelligence could co-habitate. From a benevolent A.I. dictator, to an enslaved God A.I., to Zookeeper scenarios and Self-Destruction. I really enjoyed these chapters (and they are probably a great resource for scifi writers). He then follows up by discussing the definition and pursuit of goals in A.I., how consciousness research plays into it, and the finishes with the industry's recent consensus on the necessity of safety principles in their research.
A good thought provoking read, reminding us that we're still (mostly) in control of what we want our future to look like.
A young nurse, a thief, a sapper (bomb defusing specialist) and a burn victim spent time together in an abandoned Tuscan villa towards the end of WWII. We follow their days, in small details, from multiple perspectives and memories, and we slowly get to know their past and uncover the mystery of the English patient, all executed in beautiful language. The book wasn't as moving as I remember the movie having been, back in the day. 3.5
Claudia is a historian, a war correspondent, a loud and stubborn child, a red-haired beauty who turns heads, a socialite, she's before her time, she's vain, she knows how to get what she wants, she's adventurous, she's competitive, she's strong-headed, she's enamoured with history, she's eccentric, contemptuous, she dislikes her only child, she's in love, she grieves, she's British, she's on her deathbed, she's writing a kaleidoscope history of her life.
We follow along and get to know her life in fragments and memories and encounters, that are mostly out of order. This is a novel about history, not only WWII in Egypt, but also the writing of history, and the mementos we gift, we keep, we build to hold on to and to preserve our stories. And this is a novel about the different kinds of love one can encounter. And here I have to say, that I found Claudia's youthful and narcissistic “aristocracy of two” with her brother Gordon surprisingly delightful and way more interesting than her desert love story with Tom. The novel didn't give us enough time with Tom to appreciate Tom, while Gordon is introduced as a mirror to Claudia, which gives us all the context we need.
I was a bit irritated that the last chapters were spent on a new character (Laszlo) and Tom's letter, but else I was always delighted and occasionally entranced by this book.
Loved the visuals, his fluid way of drawing bodies. The collection of small and sometimes disturbing moments definitely reminds me of [a:Nick Drnaso 14056321 Nick Drnaso https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. But it needed at least double the length, the make the stories less fractured and the characters more impactful.
Pinker's grand tour to prove to all of us that our innate negative recency-bias is deceptive and that our world has indeed progressively been getting better and better and better. He shows and explains detailed stats for humanity metrics like life expectancy, wars, safety, knowledge, happiness and all curves are (and always have been) climbing upwards. The connections he ties, between countries turning into democracies, and them consequently showing improvements in all other aspects of life, are obvious yet good to see in numbers.
All the stats are impressive and convincing, even though they maybe could have used a little less detail in the end, as it starts to get repetitive. But his last section, three chapters on reason, science and humanity, is really inspiring again, where he tries to entangle why factions of society (religion, politics,..) sometimes try so hard to combat reason/science in its quest to improve humanity. And how politicising of any causes to improve our quality of life (or nature) is counterproductive in today's society.
Obviously this is a direct response to Trump's slogan of returning to better times, and he doesn't shy away from occasionally addressing his followers and claims head-on. But even though it's a lot US/elite-countries based (mainly because there's a limited amount of countries that have been collecting all these statistics over time) it does try to make a point to keep it global, which I appreciated.
I needed a fluffy audiobook interlude and this fit that requirement perfectly. A fun very-chick-lit modern day reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice. And while in Austen's time 22-year old girls counted as old spinsters, this one has Lizzy and Jane at the end of their 30ies, which felt very appropriate. Some of the modernisation of the plot twists worked well, others felt a bit too over-the-top.
I won't rate it high, but it was fun to listen to, if you tune your expectations to what this is.
I feel this was sadly overhyped to me. Nevertheless, it's a beautiful little book, talking of love and friendship, about dreams and regrets, about the prisons others put us in, and about loss and grief. It jumps in time, with a gentle introspective narration, sketching slight mysteries about how our main protagonist Ellis ended up where he ended up. We spend time with him in the here and now, as he's living a quiet life full of sadness, slowly making new connections to people he's shut out for long. And we get to know his past, by visiting moments of his youth and adolescence and early adulthood, happy years he spent with his best friend Michael. They become lovers, yet were not meant to be. A lot of this feels very [b:Call Me by Your Name 36336078 Call Me by Your Name André Aciman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1519203520s/36336078.jpg 1363157] - which is probably an unfair critique, as a lot of gay romances have to deal with similar themes, the secrecy, the self doubt, the escape to a happy else-where, the return to reality. But, why did this book also have to mention so many peaches?! :) Hard not to read it as a nod to Aciman's novel. I was all sold on the book in the first half, the melancholy, the quiet moments, the hint of an epic love (or two), but then I feel it somehow lost it's stride in the 2nd half. The different narration style, when it came to Michael's side of the story, didn't fully blend in. Also, it all became a bit too sentimental (that ending with the photograph, It was a moment in time, that's all, shared with strangers.) for my taste. Or maybe it was too slim, not giving me enough time to fully attach to the characters, to actually grief them. 3.5
This is a book about grief and about writing. It reads like a novel, and feels like a memoir, and the lines blur even more when the protagonist behind the protagonist mentions that she's giving a class on fiction as autobiography. I loved the writing style, it was very fluid and seamlessly blend between plot elements and ruminations on writing, writers and death. Going from the grief and depression of dogs to a deep friendship that got sex out of the way early, to meditations on suicide to describing the plot of the movie Lilja 4-ever.
At the heart of it all, a first forced cohabition of dog and human that quickly turns into touching yet never soppy love story, where the lines blur of who's there to cure the other's grief. Or as Rilke says, “two solitudes which border, protect, and greet each other.”
4.5
I have now googled pictures of great danes and am frightened by their size
A wild ride in the mind of young Joana who's intense introspection brandishes her to a life somewhere between a metaphysics philosopher and a mentally tormented. She feels intensely and then not enough, she questions everything and delights and despairs in acknowledging her ignorance, while her mind detaches herself from the people around her.
I liked the first half of the book a lot more than the second. Discovering Joana's wondrous way of thinking while she navigates coming-of-age, was intriguing to read. It had these beautiful moments of pause, of intense mindfulness, of intense sensations. But in the second half, which was more of the same with grown-up Joana, reading her mind's ruminations got a bit more tedious, and I kept wanting the book to end.
I find it hard to read/judge the book without the context of its age and place within the literary world in mind. I very much appreciate the book, but maybe one has to read all revolutionary, introspective, stream-of-consciousness novels at a certain point in one's life :)
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.
We spent an evening with Peri, who has an eventful night in modern-day Istanbul, from getting mugged in the streets to attending a fancy dinner party with the business elite. She's slowly unravelling as an incident triggers her to remember her past. We learn about her upbringing of being confused and torn between her mother's unquestioning Muslim faith and her father's cynical secularism. And we learn about her experiences as a student at Oxford, where she meets the two other “daughters of Eve” - Shirin and Mona - who are also Muslim, but represent polar opposites. They are drawn together by a controversial yet charismatic Professor, who's seminar on God challenges students of different faiths to engage in a dialogue beyond religion, by focusing on the elemental question of God.
I really enjoyed some of Shafak's writing about the dynamics, the violence, the wealth, the hypocrisies .. of modern day Turkey/Istanbul. But then it maybe got too plot focused, and fell a bit apart towards the end. It built so much towards a reveal at the end, but then didn't spend enough time in Oxford to really convince us of the professor's allure, or the bond between the three girls. Some elements also felt unnecessarily dramatic (the brother, the ending). And the praise of uncertainty, of being in the middle, and confused, felt a bit too over-designed.
The story of Japanese “picture brides” as they arrive in California during the early 20th century to meet their unknown husbands. The story of many are told as one, in parallel, which was a very interesting narration style. We follow the abstract mass of brides through the hardships of marriage and demanding work, cultural differences, neighbourly racism and finally deportation/internment during WW2.
The style was unique, and the book is slim, a few times I found it quite touching, but it didn't fully grip me. 2.5
Alluring and entertaining first person narrative by Circe, daughter of god of the sun, Helios. We follow her live's story, from her lonely childhood of being shunned by the other gods, for missing their qualities, to her fascination with mortals, the discovery of her sorceress skills, to her banishment to the deserted island Aeaea and the many characters of Greek mythology she meets on the way.
The first half of the book was my favorite, as we discover the wonder and the cruelty of the world of gods, together with Circe. From the eyes of a naive child, that's longing for love and a sense of belonging that she never receives from her family. My critique of the second half then would be that the story tried to encompass a few too many famous characters. It could have benefited from a slight trim, maybe by dropping her encounter with Jason and Medea? As the allure of the story is not her appearance in other famous stories, but Circe herself, her inner life, her grappling with her divinity and her inner humanity.
The audio book narration was perfect, as Perdita Weeks's voice has this british, drawn-out, slightly lofty quality that seemed the ideal fit for Circe's frail and yet also proud and stubborn goddess demeanour.
This is a good book, depicting the helplessness and the burden of living with a permanent mental condition like bipolar disease or schizophrenia. How family members or loved ones of someone afflicted live in constant fear of a re-emergence of the condition, and how their constant worry and tutelage brings ill-will into those relationships. And this is also a book about the unexpected bonds you make with people, forged in shared misery and love for others.
I haven't encountered many fictional tales about the reality and the strain of dealing with mental health issues, so I really appreciate this book. It was well told, yet I wished it would have taken a path a bit bolder, by being more experimental, or more dramatic in its writing style. There's something about a lot of the contemporary English-language literature these days, that just feels slightly too clean, too detached.
Le suite de l'histoire des jumeaux Lucas et Claus. La preuve est un epreuve pour voir s'ils peuvent survivre quand ils sont separes. L'histoire est remplie de caracteres lateraux qui capturent tout le spectre de la tristesse. Le simplicite et la franchise de l'ecriture d'Agota Kristof est tout a fait parfait pour mon niveau de francais.
This book looks at “algorithmic culture machines” - all the ways algorithms and computation steer our everyday, our knowledge systems, our culture. How they shape us and also make us shape ourselves in order to accommodate them. Drawing upon all the usual suspects, like Netflix, PageRank, Uber, Bitcoin, Gamification ... but looking at it more from a Media studies and humanities perspective.
The text is approachable yet still reads so very academic in its structure and in how it weaves in and then is glued to its references and metaphors. Which was mildly entertaining (hey, I remember texts like these) and then also mildly annoying (namedropping Bush's memex, sure, but do we really need to draw a long analogy between it and today's knowledge culture). Also, partially it felt the author was more concerned with making a clever metaphorical statement, than to get all the details right. But, still worth it though.
Told in lush and lyrical words, full of colors and sensory perceptions, this is the story of a family in India, of twin siblings Estha and Rahel and their beloved mother Ammu, and the tragedy that befell them all. The story is told by drawing circles through time, closing in on that one terrible thing that broke everyone apart.
I am sure this structure is what contributes to the allure of the book, as you know what's coming, and so tints everything with ominous tones, but at the same time it was also slightly frustrating, because it kept withholding the details for so long. I also felt it went on tangents towards the end of the book where it should just have focused on the main event. I am also of the mind that that reunion between the twins wasn't necessary.
Nevertheless, this was a beautiful book and I'll miss hearing stories about the two-egg twin ambassadors, ambassador Elvis Pelvis and ambassador stick insect. The language was so playful it worked really well for being consumed in audio-form, especially with all the children's singsong rhymes.
