Saturday, February 16, 2019

Bookshelf Part 7

Photo by Anthony from Pexels
It's been a while I've done it, but on an incomprehensibly quavery Saturday like today, this might actually help. The Sun is shining, the sky is blue and yet something's not right.
Like +13C in the middle of February.


Here goes nothing.

Elizabeth Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction. 
This book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. 

A very personal, straightforward narrative about 5 great extinctions in Earth history and Anthropocene happening the sixth one. Not very difficult to follow (in terms of the scientific context), however the Author gives an ample amount of species that either died long time ago or are now heading into oblivion. Poor froggies and poor bats.

Ian Stewart - Nature's Numbers: The Unreal Reality Of Mathematics

Surprisingly light, but I do fear that Author forgot from time to time what he was writing about. The book would greatly benefit from more examples of the symmetries or patterns. 

Nancy Kress - Crucible (Crossfire, #2)

The first book was interesting, setting a background of human exploration of a distant system supporting life on a planet and First Contact. However the second book just went off the rails and honestly, I really couldn't care less if anyone survives or not. People and not people alike.

Kelly Creagh - Nevermore (Nevermore, #1)

Ah, and I thought once there could never be book written even more terribly that The 5th Wave. Oh how wrong was I! I rarely write reviews on Goodreads but here I had to. To quote myself (I wonder, will that uppen my h-Index?): "It reads like a badly written fanfic. Nevermore."
Ad that would be all I can say that is even remotely neutral about this something (because I refuse to call it a book).

Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur #1) 

I couldn't finish it and I rarely do that to sci-fi. Maybe I'm too old now and I don't like randomness and post-structuralism that much. And the language... My gods, I thought Dadaism died long time ago.

Peter F. Hamilton - The Dreaming Void

The verdict is still out on this one. I like sci-fi, I like hard sci-fi. And I also like military elements in it, and this book had parts of greatly written narrative mixed with a total snag. I guess I have to read the second book in the series, because the first one could be only the stage setting. A 600 pages long stage setting.

Yi Jengmyeong - The Investigation 


 I really liked that one. OK, so the style was airy a bit and maybe it was thought out as a form of an emotional blackmail, but in overall, WWII in East Asia was something that cannot be comprehended and written in normal terms. 
Also, he's the author of Deep Rooted Tree, in case anyone's interested.
Book was borrowed from a lovely Joanna Malita-Król, so a big thank you!