Recent Books -- Three Body Problem, Dune, Escape Room
17 September 2020
- The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. This didn’t really float my boat, I suspect the difficulty of translating from Chinese is significant, it is not just the straight translation but all the cultural references that are hard to carry over.
- Dune by Frank Herbert. Read ~45 years ago (BTW: I am old), upcoming movie motivated me to reread (Chalamet was born for this role). The book is still good but not perfect. Herbert’s imagined world is fascinating. He rushes thru the story – in today’s world, “Dune” alone would expand into 7 books à la Game of Thrones. Some very topical themes. The last scene is just goofy and off, let’s hope that gets a better treatment in the movie. But overall still a very interesting book.
- The Escape Room by Megan Goldin. Eh. Too much deus ex machina.
- The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis. Fun tale of alternate history with clockwork robots. Very different set of guiding principles than Asimov’s.
