Jackson Wolf > Recent Status Updates

This book was crazy good. The bank robbery turning real, Four's death BECAUSE of what the narrator (three? they never named him) told him to do, Two's death to Three's hand, and the hijacking of the private jet - all to be more like Robert de Niro. This is the second best book I've ever read - only topped by House of Leaves, which is admittedly a pretty high bar. Three's descent into madness was amazing to watch.

The book is still fun, but the narrator has gone from fun crazy to insane. Letting the cats die, re-enacting gang shootings THREE TIMES, making people work 24/7, and now (fake) robbing a bank... it feels like it really shows his descent into madness and demonstrates what has to happen to him to fall this far. The book is still incredibly good, but I can't stop worrying that he will run out of money.

This book is a lot like House of Leaves. The unnamed main character's struggle with his memory and his vision for the building feels so familiar (dejá vu) but also very new. I would like to see it from the actor's perspective though - an eccentric millionaire hires you to live in his building and cook liver? I like the book so far, even though the first few chapters were absent of direction.

The book got significantly weirder. The pictures, Navidson's return to the house, Chad's and Daisy's drawings, the letters to Truant from his mother. It is still the best book I've ever read - the plot runs so deep, and I feel so connected to each character. I want to reread already, despite Truant's incessant horniness (a weird departure from the book itself but also consistent with Truant's character).

The book is insane - half of it I can't understand, whether it's been redacted, blotted, burned, or something else - footnotes lead to and from nowhere, and the layout gets increasingly screwed every time the "minotaur" is mentioned. The book is amazing - the tangents that Truant goes on and Zampano's style work well to create a theme of disaster and disorder. My theory for the monster in the labyrinth - entropy.

So far, the book is very interesting - the juxtaposition of Zampano's composed writing and Joel's frantic, visceral comments creates an environment of jerking back and forth from setting to setting and style to style. The plot is fun too - I've never found myself in this position of actually having zero idea of what is even possible to happen next. It doesn't feel long either - I actually want to read more.

The book is good so far, and it interesting to see what was considered profound knowledge for a general back then. To me, a lot of seems like common sense. Things like "give your armies food, foraging isn't very reliable" and "soldiers must want to fight, they can't be given no reason". I think it is pretty obvious that he is dealing with emperors that don't know how to run an army and think they know everything.

- when he said that a Chinese pun existed between the word sophon and the word proton. Sophon is a word made up for these books, after all. I enjoyed the book and might try the second in the trilogy, but it moved too slow and there wasn't enough action to keep me consistently interested.

This book ended well - Ye Wenjie got a peaceful ending atop Radar Peak, and the repeated text between Wenjie responding and receiving the "Do not reply!!!" message as the Trisolaran's reception of Wenjie's transmission and his response worked very well. I especially liked how well it contrasted and the detail put into the description of how the Sophons were built. I didn't quite understand what the translator meant-

The planning for the nanofiber destruction of Judgement Day was very entertaining, but the actual destruction, due to the limitations of a book, was not nearly as fun as the TV show. It was just description of what Wang Miao could see from the forest and none of the entertaining chaos inside the ship. I don't hate it on the whole, but it was just a little boring.

Mike Evans being introduced as a character is exciting, but I don't fully understand his point of view. He has $4.5 billion but refuses to use it to save species because "wealthy countries have the same problems as poor ones". He's not wrong that wealthy countries do have problems, but he could still do good by spending his money to save dying species.

The book is getting interesting with the reveal that Ye Wenjie is the leader of the Adventists and the Redemptionists, but I don't see how a payoff is going to be created in 140 pages. I want to keep reading, and I am seeing the parallels between the book and the show, but I don't know who Pan Han is in the show or what purpose he really serves in the book.

I enjoy the plot, but the book isn't really heating up. Nothing has really happened, no major conflict has been introduced aside from "wow, this game is so advanced". I am wondering what "Adventist" and "Redemptionist" mean in the context of either the Frontiers of Science or possibly the PLA? The writing is still hilariously choppy - things like an entire sentence just being "He did", or "We built that part".

The book is still interesting, but keeping track of who characters like Xu Bingbing and Shen Yufei are is getting harder - the cast keeps expanding and remembering names that mean nothing to me is significantly harder than if the names were like more American. The introductions are still clunky - "I'm Leonardo da Vinci" and then saying what exposition needs to be delivered is getting old.

Two issues I have - in the game CALLED "Three Body" Wang Miao has no clue what the mysterious reason for the Chaotic and Stable Eras is. If he was some random person grabbed of the street, that would make sense. However, Wang Miao is one of the most advanced scientists in ALL OF CHINA. He is doing things thought impossible even today. Secondly, the Frontiers of Science are just so obviously evil it hurts.

The main change since the previous update: the writing is getting better. It feels more natural, and each sentence seems to flow into the next. During Da Shi and Wang Miao's lengthy conversation after the blinking universe, it was very hard to understand who was saying what - it could have gone either way, so I am still left a little confused. cont.

This book is very interesting, but the grammar structures that are created when translated from Chinese are odd - things like characters introducing themselves as "my log-in ID is Hairen" instead of just "I'm Hairen". Comparing characters to their counterparts in the TV show is interesting, and watching how the book develops characters differently and puts much less emphasis on Wang Dong's character and her role.

The book is getting very interesting, especially in the way that it reveals the technology that is present in this world (V-Suits, nanofibers, etc.). Pan is an interesting character, and even though he was just introduced the book did a good job of describing how he is and what he believes. One thing I am having trouble with is understanding exactly what the Frontiers of Science is and Shen Yufei's role in the story.

The writing is strange, and the fact that everything just starts with a meeting and action is fun, but jarring compared to the slow pace of the historical beginnings. I am enjoying the mystery of what the 'war' is and why the scientists are killing themselves, but the writing's basic nature is hampering my excitement.

Up to this point, it's basically been a fictional retelling of history, meaning that while it is interesting it has been moving extremely slowly. I am excited for when it gets closer to sci-fi, but the background is written well.

I finally finished - the end was a very large section on stocks and the workings of the market and depressions, which was very interesting but most of it went over my head. I tried to apply what I learned with PE rates to real life stocks, but the numbers were wildly off what they were supposed to be, so I might try in the future.

Started the last topic, which is on the stock market, and while it is very hard to understand a lot of what he says it is very interesting as to how different theories work. I'm not 100% sure I understand PE values, because he talks as if high is good, but it's also bad and you want to buy at low and sell when it gets too low.

Insights into how predictive science works, with discounts for companies and magic tricks on stage are very interesting. I would like more examples though, as it seems to be trying to speed up and rush as the book is ending.

I've never heard of the "hot hand" theory, but the fact that we prefer streaks in human subjects and underpredict streaks in mechanical subjects does make sense - we see machines as "random" and we are horrible at truly understanding randomness. The law of small numbers was very funny, especially in the way it was phrased.

Seems like some information would be dated, especially considering password research and the newfound speed at which machines can break them. Learning about Benford's law is absurdly weird, and it's hard to wrap my head around why it works, although I do understand that $2,000,000,000 is much harder to reach than $1,000,000,000. Nigrini's research on the topic is also interesting, but I have yet to see where it goes.

The book gave me some interesting thoughts about my own lack of randomness -- I follow a pattern in a random setting and now I can fix it. I didn't think that such a large percentage of "all of the above" answers on tests would be right, but the explanation that those answers basically need to built around makes a lot of sense - the statistic that scissors is picked first in a game of RPS 29% of the time is also fun.

Finally finished the prologue - interesting how predictable humans really are. The anecdote about the man and his pregnant daughter in Minnesota really showed how disconnected from reality we all are.

Odd history so far, interesting to see how revolutionary the machine was at the time... not seeing where it is going and how it will help me "outguess" other people, as the cover claims.