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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
all some variation on “this guy (a guy, a man, a dude, by the way) did too much math and went cRaZy—just like the world during the first world war.” but 16-year-old tubuncular muses aside the facts about these thinkers and their discoveries are stranger than the fiction, and also richer in theme. and really, what a boring way to talk about math and its implications. you don’t have to be a tortured genius to do math. you can even be—gasp—a woman!
dark
informative
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, War
Moderate: Cursing
In a way, fiction and reality are woven together throughout this book like wave-particle duality: there is no deep-seated Truth with capital T, no absolute reality outside the bookends of dreams and science (of scientific dreams and dreamy science), and no metaphysics of the world that's entirely derivable from the iron laws of Newtonian physics.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Maybe more like 4.5 but this was what dark academia WISHES it could be. I’m not smart enough to understand the humor in this book. I’ve immediately forgotten everything I’ve read. Excellent.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
dark
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
"and to whom do we owe this magnificent inferno if not to you, to people like you? tell me, professor, when did all this madness begin? when did we cease to understand the world?"
benjamín labatut, no one is writing these heavy philosophical, poetic, existential, and scientific novels like you. i cannot believe how much is packed into this book that's less than 200 pages. one of those books where you quote the whole page in your notes. oh, quantum physics, you love being you. by you, i mean being scary as shit.
"'one ghost succeeds the others like waves on the illusory sea of birth and death. in the rise and fall of material and mental forms, while the unfathomable reality remains. in every creature sleeps an infinite intelligence, hidden and unknown, but destined to awaken, to tear the volatile web of the sensory mind, break the chrysalis of flesh, and conquer time and space.'"
the hunger for knowledge will be neverending. there's things in this world that we can only explain so much. mathematics rule this world. and yet, math only takes you so far. this book has more of a focus on the pre wwi/wwi era than labatut's other book, the maniac, which focuses more on the atomic era. this novel strings the horrors of war together with scientific discovery. there's something so human about wanting to know 'why', then reckoning with the consequences of finding out.
"even immersed in the chaos of war, the singularity spread across his mind like a stain, superimposed over the hellscape of the trenches; he saw it in the eyes of dead horses buried in the muck, in the bullet wounds of his fellow soldiers, in the shadowy lenses of their hideous gas masks. his imagination had fallen prey to the pull of his discovery: with alarm, he realized that if his singularity were to ever exist, it would endure until the end of the universe...unlike all other things, it was immune to becoming and doubly inescapable: in the strange spatial geometry it generated, the singularity was located at both ends of time: one could flee from it into the remotest past or escape into the furthest future only to encounter it once more...'i don't know how to name or define it, but it has an irrepressible force and darkens all my thoughts. it is a void without form or dimension, a shadow i can't see, but one that i can feel with the entirety of my soul.'"
labatut's writing style is so uniquely his. walking into a book largely about quantum psychics is intimidating if you don't know what you're getting yourself into. he finds a way to poetically tie in these huge theories with self-discovery and degradation of the self. cyanide. prussian blue and pesticides. poison inflicted upon others. trench warfare. poisoning one's self as an act of cowardice. isolation. maniacal lectures. black holes. festering disease. singularity; an ouroboros. haunting dreams. haunting yourself. a shadow reigns.
benjamín labatut, no one is writing these heavy philosophical, poetic, existential, and scientific novels like you. i cannot believe how much is packed into this book that's less than 200 pages. one of those books where you quote the whole page in your notes. oh, quantum physics, you love being you. by you, i mean being scary as shit.
"'one ghost succeeds the others like waves on the illusory sea of birth and death. in the rise and fall of material and mental forms, while the unfathomable reality remains. in every creature sleeps an infinite intelligence, hidden and unknown, but destined to awaken, to tear the volatile web of the sensory mind, break the chrysalis of flesh, and conquer time and space.'"
the hunger for knowledge will be neverending. there's things in this world that we can only explain so much. mathematics rule this world. and yet, math only takes you so far. this book has more of a focus on the pre wwi/wwi era than labatut's other book, the maniac, which focuses more on the atomic era. this novel strings the horrors of war together with scientific discovery. there's something so human about wanting to know 'why', then reckoning with the consequences of finding out.
"even immersed in the chaos of war, the singularity spread across his mind like a stain, superimposed over the hellscape of the trenches; he saw it in the eyes of dead horses buried in the muck, in the bullet wounds of his fellow soldiers, in the shadowy lenses of their hideous gas masks. his imagination had fallen prey to the pull of his discovery: with alarm, he realized that if his singularity were to ever exist, it would endure until the end of the universe...unlike all other things, it was immune to becoming and doubly inescapable: in the strange spatial geometry it generated, the singularity was located at both ends of time: one could flee from it into the remotest past or escape into the furthest future only to encounter it once more...'i don't know how to name or define it, but it has an irrepressible force and darkens all my thoughts. it is a void without form or dimension, a shadow i can't see, but one that i can feel with the entirety of my soul.'"
labatut's writing style is so uniquely his. walking into a book largely about quantum psychics is intimidating if you don't know what you're getting yourself into. he finds a way to poetically tie in these huge theories with self-discovery and degradation of the self. cyanide. prussian blue and pesticides. poison inflicted upon others. trench warfare. poisoning one's self as an act of cowardice. isolation. maniacal lectures. black holes. festering disease. singularity; an ouroboros. haunting dreams. haunting yourself. a shadow reigns.