Michael > Recent Status Updates

I hate this book....

4 hours in, and there's still no plot. Feist is resorting to world building details, character introductions, allusions to past books, scene setting, dialogues..... But no action or adventure. I think the author of Magician has lost his muse.

Good so far, but he's only addressing big picture flukes, like missing a train or not missing it, getting bombed or not getting bombed. Maybe he'll get there, but he needs to address that there are more alternatives to missing the train - there's missing it with your hand at your side, with your hand up, with your hair blowing in your eyes, or only slightly blowing in your eyes. Etc....

Ok, I just looked it up, and the author's commentary is footnotes, not in the text itself. Unfortunately the audiobook puts the notes in the text, and it's jarring. But knowing that, I should be able to mentally set it aside. But still, it's very simplistic historical and social commentary. Perhaps Kuang is writing for a YA audience who don't know much about history.....

After continually inserting her own social commentary, the author now has a character complain about a translator of Arabian Nights inserting his own social commentary. I can't tell if the author is trolling me or really that oblivious.

"... and injects 'cultural explanations' whenever he feels like it. Tell me, how would you like to read an epic with a doddering Frenchman breathing down your neck-"

What's with the author inserting author's notes into the narrative? They feel patronising and jarring, especially when she makes sure the reader know that certain books back then for 'problematic'. I don't need the help of explicit commentary!

A lot of the anecdotal cancellation 'horror stories' are merely other people's criticisms

Not what I was expecting.... So much anecdotalism, without ever empathising with opposing viewpoints in particular situations. I have more to say on this.....

Still good, but a few too many analogies without mining them first for insight, and a few too many opportunities missed to elaborate on the impossibility of the alternative - indeterminism - or the incoherence of what a 'free' will could even be.

Free will is just 'free will of the gaps'. I think he's getting to that point, he just hasn't quite explicitly said it yet. Nor compared it to the old 'god of the gaps' issue.

Good.... But I think he should have mentioned by now that the alternative to 'determined will' is not 'free will' but 'un-determined will', which means there's no 'control' over it. There's determined will, or random will, but not this free magicky childhood wonder type of will. This links with his turtles analogy.

Good so far. He talks about punishment, and overall I think he's on the right track, but he doesn't quite clarify why rehabilitation for the drunk driver is ultimately the same as rehabilitation for the person who has a seizure and causes an accident. We want both of them to either stop driving, or get treatment so that they can be a safe driver. The treatment for each will be different, but the goal the same.

Struggling with this.... I can see how it would be validating for TCKs to read, but it's a lot of armchair theorising, and a little preachy too, tbh....

Just logging how bad this is......

I'm a couple hours in, and a bit confused... I might need to start again and concentrate a bit more. It was not at all clear from the audio book that the 'forward' was part of the book. And the book's format is confusing, I don't really understand what's happening, which isn't a criticism of the book.

Oh dear, the irony - British guy laments the boats coming to his homeland to steal his wealth....

This is a hard, boring slog.....

Frustrated by how post-hoc it is..... Great tools for explaining the past, but not much help for thinking in the present.

Gildart Jackson's narration is superb.

Ugh..... Hard to track with. It's one of those

He's wrong on many things. He's wrong about controlling events and timing, in a black swan kind of way, and wrong about screwing people over, because life is a series of iterated prisoner's dilemmas, not single shots. Tit for tat is better than always defect, bastard.

Not sure I want to admit I'm reading this.... On the one hand it's insightful, on the other hand it's sad and disturbing.