Page 6 of What are you reading thread

Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari.

A very readable narrative on how homo sapiens came to be the dominant species on the planet via insights into our science, philosophy, history and economics. Thought-provoking, entertaining and with splashes of humour, would recommend it to anyone.

I finished Ready Player One a few months ago, I'm not a big reader, so it's rare any book engulfs me so obsessively, but this one did.

Anyone interested in virtual reality, scifi, old arcade games and RPGs will be in heaven reading it.

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Rob where is it done as a roll call in here or in another section🙁

I'd say a roll call belongs in the General section...

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Si Wooldridge
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Quote:
Robee J Shepherd says...
"I finished Ready Player One a few months ago, I'm not a big reader, so it's rare any book engulfs me so obsessively, but this one did."
I just finished Ready Player Two, and boy oh boy it's a struggle.

Short synopsis, the book starts a few weeks after the end of book one and immediately negates the happy ending of the first's movie adaptation.

Wade finds another message from Halliday regarding another piece of tech to enable users to log into the OASIS, the ONI, a fully-immersive rig that fits on the head and interfaces with the user's brain directly, allowing the user to experience real touch, taste, sounds and smells without the need for a haptic suit or immersion rig.

Wade is enthused with the new tech, but Samantha (Art3mis) has severe reservations about allowing that much control being handed over to an unknown machine. 

As the High 5 are now in charge of Gregarious Games, they vote on it, and Samantha is the only voice of dissent, leading to her breaking up with Wade and starting to travel the world, helping out the less fortunate (carried over from the first book.)

However, once logged in, Wade gets another invitation from Anorak (Halliday's avatar) to find seven crystal shards hidden throughout the Oasis, although the potential reward is a little vague.

But it's when he starts on the quest that the story gets bogged down in Ernest Cline's own personal wish list of things he knows well. Unless you're as big a fan as he is of John Hughes' movies, Prince (TAFKAP) and the Simarillion, you're going to find yourself losing interest quickly.

The story flows well, but it takes the time to introduce new and potentially interesting characters, but then largely ignores them while they're sent on a potentially more interesting quest which we know nothing about until they show up near the ending, Deus ex machina banners flowing proudly behind them.

Clumsy foreshadowing, dull storytelling, and an epilogue out of nowhere makes this one to read only if you've really exhausted all your other books during lockdown. 


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This item was edited on Thursday, 18th February 2021, 14:05

Quote:
Pete-MK says...
"I just finished Ready Player Two and boy, and boy oh boy it's a struggle."
Heard bad things about this book, so will be avoiding - and not a big 90's pop culture fan anyway (musically I feel it was a barren desert)...

Currently working my way through (R)Evolution, Gary Numan's autobiography where he's far more open and spilling personal details than he was in Praying To The Aliens.

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Si Wooldridge
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Quote:
Pete-MK says...
"I just finished Ready Player Two, and boy oh boy it's a struggle."
Oh no! I loved the first one so much, I couldn't put it down. :(


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I crammed the first book before watching the film, which may have been a mistake as the movie departs from the source material to such an extreme in places that it became distracting, and drew actual protests about the portrayal of the female characters. (Samantha is depicted as 'Rubenesque' in the books, but is played by Olivia Cooke in the movie, who isn't).

But, it's a Spielberg flick, and he knows what sells, plus Ernest was on set to sign off on the changes so it gets a begrudging pass.

The book might be worth another pass, but as I mentioned, you'd have to have more than a passing familiarity with some of the story's focal points, which in this case may be too niche to have as widespread an appeal as the original.

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Utopia - Lincoln Child

Picked this up on a whim 15+ years ago, probably due to the shiny cover catching my eye. Recently downloaded it on Google as I've been relegated to bus travel until the new year due to car trouble and so far 3 times I've missed my stop as I've been so engrossed, despite this being the third or 4th time I've read it.

The story centres around a sophisticated theme park, the titular Utopia, built between two canyon walls in the Nevada desert, which is home to the most up-to-date thrill rides, entertainment facilities & holographic technologies, most of which is overseen by the 'metanet', an autonomous, self-learning control system, designed by Andrew Warne, who's been invited back to the park as there's been a few hiccups with the system.

The hiccups, as it transpires, are the doings of Mr John Doe, a charismatic extortionist who, with his troupe of equally anonymous & like-minded cohorts, hold the park to ransom to get their hands on the Crucible, the technology that controls the majority of the park systems, but crucially, the tech that controls the Holographic system, which are, in the distant future of 2002, indistinguishable from reality.

The story itself rattles along happily, with chapters jumping-back and forth along the timeline, and some happening concurrently, denoted by every chapter being a timeframe rather than a title. In some places the author's descriptions of the current environments can be a muddle, and it's hard to replicate what he was seeing in his mind's eye at the time of writing, especially when describing particular set-pieces or building interiors, but then the action takes over and you're too caught up to care.

It's one of those books you wished had been made into a movie as the storytelling is so visual, but given that other movies such as Jurassic World have beaten them to the punch, they could easily be accused of copying certain elements. Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire Dearing is almost identical to this book's Sarah Boatright - ambitious, level-headed, but ultimately out of her depth when the chips are down. Luckily Andrew Warne is no Owen Grady, but there is the daughter-in-peril mechanic from Lost World when his daughter, Georgia, is injured during one of the sabotage attempts and the bad guys try to use her as leverage when they realise Warne is throwing a spanner in their works.

If there's a criticism, aside from the difficult-to-follow setpiece descriptions, it's that there may too many characters to follow. At last count I think there's about 20 people, bad & good, to keep track of. Added to the lightly jumping timeline, it can be a little befuddling at times, but I would heartily recommend it regardless.



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This item was edited on Wednesday, 15th December 2021, 11:00

Currently working my way through Anthony Reynold's biography of Japan called A Foreign Place.  Extremely detailed book that covers the band from youth all the way through to their implosion at the height of their success post release of Tin Drum.

Planning to move onto the first volume of the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  Always wanted to read these books at some point, especially after reading Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (Anne Applebaum), and moving into a new house appears to have given me more time to read...

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Si Wooldridge
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