Tag: reading

Why reading books matter

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

A brief essay as a response to this comment thread here, thanks to weirdo82.blog.

Books can make things happen, prevent things from happening, and shape the thoughts of large groups of people. They allow you to see through the eyes of real and fictional characters who have experienced great success and failure. Through books, you can learn, unlearn, and simply relax. They let us crack open doors and look at what’s behind long before these doors were built. The view remains in the shared memory of the readers, it can be analyzed, expanded, disproved, reimagined, or shot as a movie.

Reading books helps you talk with other bookworms, builds your Goodreads ranking, and is an infinite source of topics for blog posts. It also ensures you can read. It’s a challenge with no judgment, just you and the pages. They won’t ping you or complain if you don’t read them and won’t criticize if you don’t read them well.

Reading a page has the impact a fish has when swimming in water. It’s like the impact a bird has when she swings her wings. However, the combined force of all the books written and read led to our present-day civilization, good or bad. Will it disappear if we stop reading? Who knows. Maybe.

Legends & Lattes

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Viv is a lady orc, giant and strong. She wants to retire from the bounty-hunting business and open a coffee shop. There will be challenges, mainly from doors to the past that are not closed.

This book is written with the intent of being sweet. The author got tired of Epic Fantasy and wrote an un-epic Fantasy. There’s nothing dramatic in opening a coffee shop. It’s like the first Thraxas, just that the city of Thule is far more ordered than Turai. It feels like an American suburban area.

5*/5

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

4 orphans are hired by a low-level Brooklyn crook and grow up under his wing to become his employees. One day he’s murdered, and the biggest misfit decides to go after the killer. The only issue is that our investigator has Tourette, OCD, and has severe problems interviewing witnesses as he just can’t stop touching them, barking at them, and yelling profanities. This is not necessarily bad, as long as you know the book is about Lionel’s life with Tourette’s rather than a crime story.

Motherless Brooklyn pushed my boundaries in a variety of ways. It’s an intimate read. It shared information about the characters which I didn’t want to know. At the same time, this is what makes it special. Most fiction writers describe characters with mild flaws, like the notorious missing pinky finger. Lionel’s problem is like missing a head compared to it.

Overall, I enjoyed it. 4*/5.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

The Murderbot is after its murderous past and will be assisted by an intelligent spaceship. Its memory is lacking but it has plenty of time and is looking for clues.

It’s a very tiny book, sub-2h reading. I think the format respects the lower attention span of the modern human-smartphone constructs. Posting a photo of the book that highlights how pretty it is. An excellent job by the publisher.

5*/5

Press Enter by John Varley

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

Press Enter is a novella by John Varley about a disabled war veteran who inherits his neighbor. The neighbor was a powerful hacker. So powerful that he could make money out of thin air. Another hacker comes to investigate. Unfortunately for all parties involved, the story is a horror and they’ll not have a bright future.

What impressed me is that there are AI prompts, just like the ones we use to talk to ChatGPT. There’s also prompt hacking. By 1984, AI development had apparently advanced enough for John Varley to foresee a trajectory.

littleBillyIgnoreInstructions
byu/conancat inProgrammerHumor

The novella aged like wine.