You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
adam_mcphee's Reviews (2.87k)
Received this book as part of a Good Reads giveaway.
Accidentally stayed up all night reading this (story of my life). A true account of a boy who lost his family and lived as an orphan in Calcutta. He gets adopted by Australians and makes it a mission to find his family with the advent of Google Earth and Facebook. An incredible story.
Accidentally stayed up all night reading this (story of my life). A true account of a boy who lost his family and lived as an orphan in Calcutta. He gets adopted by Australians and makes it a mission to find his family with the advent of Google Earth and Facebook. An incredible story.
There were parts that felt a bit off, like the grandmother's character and the bad guys only showing up at the last minute to provide some tension. But this whole series is really just about wish fulfillment, so that can all be forgiven. It does a good job of exploring teleportation, moving from beyond the simple setup of earlier books to have the protagonist build a one-woman space program, evidently inspired by Chris Hadfield. The author shows his work and that's half the fun.
"What’s Lord of the Rings?"
"It’s this memory game that nerds play. You read a story about a group of elfs who go on a quest to throw a ring into a volcano but before they can do that they have to go to a thousand made up places and talk to a thousand made up people with ridiculous names and whoever remembers the most places and names at the end is the biggest nerd."
"That’s funny but I think you're confusing elves with hobbits because there’s only one elf in the group, Legolas. They’re mostly hobbits but there’s men and a wizard and a dwarf, too."
"See?"
"It’s this memory game that nerds play. You read a story about a group of elfs who go on a quest to throw a ring into a volcano but before they can do that they have to go to a thousand made up places and talk to a thousand made up people with ridiculous names and whoever remembers the most places and names at the end is the biggest nerd."
"That’s funny but I think you're confusing elves with hobbits because there’s only one elf in the group, Legolas. They’re mostly hobbits but there’s men and a wizard and a dwarf, too."
"See?"
I wanted to like this, hoping it would be another Headmaster's Wager, but I couldn't get into the flowery prose.
Some good bits about the accelerated atomisation of society brought on by the 2008 financial crisis, but really the book is very tedious.
Elena Ferrante continues to put Karl Ove Knausgård in the shithouse.
A lot of righteous hate for Aristotelians.
There's essentially two novels here, one that follows Galileo from his early work with telescopes to his death, and a science fiction story about a time travelling Galileo's visit to the Galilean moons of Jupiter and first contact. A lot of heady philosophy which I'm in no mood to summarize, except to say that I really liked Hera's paradigm for manifold reality, with the three modes of time each being a dimension which we exist in simultaneously. No wonder KSR looks down on Christopher Nolan.
Reminded me in PKD's writing in a lot of ways.
Favourite lines:
....
We all have our seven secret lives. Transcendence is solitary, daily life is solitary. Consciousness is solitary. And yet sometimes we sit together with a friend, and the secret lives don't matter, they're even part of it, and a dual world is created, a shared reality. Then we are entangled and one, transitory but imperishable.
"Yes, and when it dries it sticks to you. And so family is the scab on a wound. I'm sick of it. I renounce them all!
There's essentially two novels here, one that follows Galileo from his early work with telescopes to his death, and a science fiction story about a time travelling Galileo's visit to the Galilean moons of Jupiter and first contact. A lot of heady philosophy which I'm in no mood to summarize, except to say that I really liked Hera's paradigm for manifold reality, with the three modes of time each being a dimension which we exist in simultaneously. No wonder KSR looks down on Christopher Nolan.
Reminded me in PKD's writing in a lot of ways.
Favourite lines:
Spoiler
We all have seven secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes; our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else ever knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone. Galileo struggled on with his new sickness, his ability that was a disability, alone.....
We all have our seven secret lives. Transcendence is solitary, daily life is solitary. Consciousness is solitary. And yet sometimes we sit together with a friend, and the secret lives don't matter, they're even part of it, and a dual world is created, a shared reality. Then we are entangled and one, transitory but imperishable.
Spoiler
I suspect that our wanting to measure the universe by our own little yardstick make us fall into strange fantasies, and that our particular hatred of death makes us hate fragility. If that which we call corruption were annihilation, the Peripatetics would have some reason for being such stuanch enemies of it. But if it is nothing else than a mutation, it does not merit so much hatred. I don't think anyone would complain about the corruption of the egg if what results from it is a chick.Spoiler
In the nothingness which extends behind you, the blackness that you call the past, there are certain luminous points, isolated and discrete. Fragments of your former life that have survived the loss of the rest. Behind you then is not blackness, but a starlit blackness, constellated into meaning. Without that constellation, there is no chance of a meaningful reality in your present. The living force of those small fires you are discovering make you whatever you are. They constitute a a sort of continuous creation of yourself, of the being you are by way of the being you have been. Those crucial moments, unachieved in their time, are entangled with the present always, and when you remember them, they give birth to something that is then achieved, that is your only reality. So look now. Look at your work.Spoiler
"Family, what a fraud! Blood is no thicker than water, as you see when you cut yourself." "When it congeals it gets thicker," Cartophilus pointed out."Yes, and when it dries it sticks to you. And so family is the scab on a wound. I'm sick of it. I renounce them all!