Drew > Recent Status Updates

This is the kind of book I can really get excited about.

Very interesting so far. My background and interest in journalism makes me even more intrigued by this story but I think anyone who enjoys a good international thriller would love this story.

Very intriguing so far. I saved a couple excerpts (potential spoilers) which I’ll make public.

Liking What You See: A Documentary ***** Chiang redeemed himself to me with this final story, the finest one in the collection, in my opinion. The author explores what it would like for people to see everyone without the distraction and prejudices of their relative attractiveness. This new procedure “doesn’t interfere with one’s visual perception, only with the ability to recognize what one sees.”

Hell Is The Absence of God: Nonsensical and bleak. This book is really starting to annoy me. *

The Evolution of Human Science: What does the future hold for ordinary humans when metahumans have far surpassed our ability to understand their discoveries? ***

Seventy-Two Letters: Strange and esoteric, frustrating for me. **

This went off in a strange direction.

Story of Your Life: Two stories told simultaneously, a woman
/mother interacting with an alien species and reminiscing to/about her daughter. This story is an absolutely fascinating discussion on the nature of time, communication, memory, and love. *****

I’m enjoying this novel more than I expected even though I’ve been a robot geek since reading my first Asimov robot story many years ago. The author wraps social commentary about misogyny and what it means to be human in a fascinating novel of friendship and freedom and adventure.

Division by Zero: An impossible and devastating mathematical proof leads to the ultimate test of a relationship. ***

Understand: A first person narrator describes the event that destroyed his brain, then his recovery and enhancement that made him a superhuman with no peers…until he meets another both like and very different from himself, and the inevitable literal battle of wits…to the death.

Tower of Babylon: Hillalum and his band of miners joins a team of men scaling the impossible heights of the Tower of Babylon to penetrate the Vault of Heaven and (spoiler alert) finds that it’s a round trip.