Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Reading The Stand TV shows I was just listening to the last few chapters of The Stand and thought about how the ending of the 2020 TV show was better than the novel because it didn’t drag on so much. It ended nice and clean after the stand in Vegas.
Boy was I wrong. There’s apparently an entire episode that we missed.
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Podcasts Reading For the past month or so I’ve listened to almost no podcasts, instead making my way through audiobook after audiobook, finishing four books I’d started in the past1, starting and finishing one2 and starting and soon finishing one3 and I feel great about it. I’m seriously considering deleting all podcast subscriptions, maybe even the apps as well.
If I listen to a lot of podcasts during a day while doing small chores around the house I often end up with a feeling of not accomplishing anything, wasting my time and my brain power. Doing the same chores but listening to books makes me feel like I’ve done something. Maybe I haven’t done the greatest thing in the world, but I’ve done something I enjoy and want to do more of.
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Reading What do other people use as ”canonical source” for books, movies, and such? By that I mean if you blog about having read a book or watched a movie, what is the site you link to for the book/movie?
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Neal Stephenson Reading Seveneves Last week I finished Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. In short I loved it. Best book in quite a while. I’ll write a more in-depth review soon, hopefully.
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Neal Stephenson Reading Seveneves I’m 236 pages (just started Part 2) in to ”Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson and I’m absolutely loving it. This is the kind of nerdy topics, full of even nerdier digressions that I love.
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Neal Stephenson Reading Seveneves The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated +0.0.0, or simply Zero.
That’s a great opening to a book.
(The lawn needed mowing today, so I bit the bullet and started listening to this one.)
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Ameristan Fall; or Dodge in Hell Neal Stephenson Reading 
Today I finished listening to Fall; or Dodge in Hell. It was quite a thrill ride but I wouldn’t mind if it had been just half or 2/3 as long. Longwinded digressions and extreme detail seems to be a hallmark of Stephenson and a lot of times it does help build the world but at times it gets tedious.
Before I make it sound like I didn’t like it, let me make it clear that I did. I liked it very much. Parts of it was great.
In Stephenson’s own words it’s two books in one. One is a near future techno-thriller and the other one a high fantasy novel. The techno-thriller is about the unexpected death of Richard ”Dodge” Forthrast whose brain gets scanned and ”rebooted” in a digital afterlife called ”Bitworld” and the goings on in the physical world around that afterlife. The high fantasy part is what takes place in ”Bitworld”.
With that out of the way I’m going to dive into specifics about the plot so stop reading this blog post and start reading the book if you want to avoid spoilers.
The techno-thriller part is simply amazing. Here the details and wordiness is nothing but positive and results in a believable and interesting near-future. I especially like the parts with the alleged nuking of Moab and the adventure into ”Ameristan”, rural parts of America where the idea of truth and science has more or less disappeared completely in the wake of what we today call fake news. That seemed like the premise of one truly great 350 pages book. Honestly, I think everybody should read the book at least for this first part. If it doesn’t work for you, stop once Dodge’s brain is ”rebooted”.
That’s the next part, the part where Dodge is ”reborn” as Egdod and creates ”Bitworld”. It’s a grand creation myth that is at times entertaining and at parts indulgent. The first stream-of-conscience part where Edgod emerges from the noise of the simulation though is great writing.
Later comes the part that I didn’t care for at all, the part about Adam and Eve. That is where I stopped the book for quite some time and felt a lot of resistance to taking it back up again. I imagine that’s where @jack got stuck, 500 pages in. The good news is that if one pushes on, it get’s better. Once the Lord of the Rings-esque tale of Prim begins I was hooked again.
I was wondering how a book like this could conclude. How does one end this kind of story? In the End Stephenson managed to wrap it up in a suitable way, without it feeling too contrived.
So that’s it. Again, you should all read this book. It’s not the greatest book, but it’s very interesting, quite topical in the world today, and entertaining.
Side note: If you, like me, read the parts about Moab and the road trip through rural America, and watch Folding Ideas’s ”In Search of a Flat Earth” video more or less simultaneously, you will see the dystopian fantasy of Ameristan doesn’t seem at all like a fantasy.
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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and tagged it with Fall; or Dodge in Hell Neal Stephenson Reading The reading continues. After finishing Life 3.0 I resumed my listening of Neal Stephenson’s Fall; or Dodge in Hell. This one is a wild ride. Such an interesting premise and great start, then kind of slow for while and now (Prim’s journey) it’s great again.
@MrHenko I love the way he writes, but his books are too chewy for me.
I did love Anathem even though it took me four tries to finish!
@MrHenko my first listen on Audible was ”Snow Crash” – lengthy but very enjoyable @cheri
@Cheri “Fall” is only the second Stephenson book I’ve read, but I’ve gathered that brevity isn’t exactly his thing. But I do like both “Fall” and “Snow Crash” a lot.
Have you read “Fall”? I seem to recall you posting a photo from Moab a few weeks ago, and that place quite a big roll in the first part of the book.
@MrHenko I loved the first 300 pages of Fall, but stopped at about 500. The further they got into ”bitworld” the less interesting it was to me. I liked ”Seveneves”. It’s especially great if you’re interested in orbital mechanics as a main character. (My goodness he can drone on about stuff). Also enjoyed ”Reamde” and ”Anathem”. Didn’t finish ”D.O.D.O”.
@MrHenko I have a copy of Snow Crash that I’m nibbling at. But I saw how thick Fall was and my internal reaction was: Ha ha ha nooooooo. 😂
@jack I don’t have my physical copy of ”Fall” at hand, but the page numbers probably corresponds well to my impression of it. You should have pressed on because it did get a lot better again once the time of Adam and Eve had passed. The ending was genuinely good, something it seems based on other reviews isn’t Stephenson’s strength.
And yeah, he does drone on, and on, and on. I think ”Fall” would have been just as good, probably even better, if condensed to half och 2/3 the length.
”Seveneves” is the next audio book in my queue, but I think I need something shorter before embarking on another 30+ hour journey.
@Cheri I’ve just now finished ”Fall” and while in the end I liked it a lot I think it would have been just as good, probably better, if it had been edited down to half och 2/3 the length.
Keep nibbling at ”Snow Crash”, it’s a really good one.
@MrHenko I’ve listened to ”Cryptonomicon” – it’s an amazing tale interwoven amongst several generations, with all the threads falling in place at the end. I remember telling myself ”so that’s how it’s all connected”! Quite a long listen but worth it
@kirschen I’ll add that one to my list of books I might listen to. I see a possible Neal Stephenson binge coming up. :)
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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I did finish reading Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 earlier this week and as I wrote the other day I don’t know if it was a great book or a quite tedious one. Probably both. The questions Tegmark discusses are really important ones for the future, and he does it in a well informed way. The problem is that it just goes on. I think you could get the same points across just as well in half the amount of words.
It is possible that it’s a problem with my attention span. A few weeks back I rewatched CGP Greys video ”Thinking about attention” and just as the first time I watched it, it did made me think about my attention a bit more. I think it’s quite possible that rewatching this was what got me to listen to an audiobook (The Drawing of the Three) when mowing the lawn last week instead of listening to a podcast, and this was certainly what made me keep listening to books. So maybe I’m out of practice. The argument agains this is that I very much enjoyed Norse Mythology even though that one has felt like a slog when I was out of practice. So if that one didn’t make me lose interest, maybe the problem is Life 3.0 and not me.
Though ”losing interest” isn’t the right way to put it. I was interested in Life 3.0 all the way through.
I think this is a long way of saying that this is a book that most people probably should read or listen to, because it’s a really important one, but it’s likely not to be the greatest book you’ve ever read.
Henrik Carlsson posted this
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Moreover1 it discusses a lot of similar topics, and based on similar sources, as Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s interesting to nod along to things I already knew from Kurzgesagt, while it’s also tedious to be told things I already know from Kurzgesagt.
As you can tell, I’m really mixed on this book so far. Currently I have a little over two hours left on it.
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Replies and comments
jean
7 juli, 2021 23:54@MrHenko I’ve become very devoted to audiobooks. I
still listen to my favorite podcasts, usually after I’ve finished an audiobook as a palate cleanser. I think I’m averaging 2 books a week.
MrHenko
8 juli, 2021 00:02@jean Wow, that’s an impressive amount of listening. I thought I listened a lot. :)
The idea of podcasts as a palate cleanser is a good one. I might try that, but I worry that the thing that’s managed to keep me away from podcasts and in to audiobooks this past month is that the podcast listening has been almost zero and that the more I listen, the bigger the risk is that I slowly creep away from the audiobooks. Podcasts tend to be so much more ”instant gratification”.