Wool, by Hugh Howey. I’m sorry, I’ve given up. I read up to one forth and then decided that this book was not for me. The book tells the story of the inner politics of a Fallout style silo where people sealed off to escape a world that is — apparently — not habitable anymore. It has all the elements of a book I would like and I picked it up because I know it was a huge self-publishing success. I expected something different and Wool did not hit the right notes for me. (C?)
Queer Eye. A wholesome show. It started as a guilty pleasure but ended just as a pleasure. I particularly loved how the Fab5 decided not to shy away from some of the toughest conversations with people that did not share their views. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried multiple times. (A)
Nailed it. Same same but different? It’s a very low budget and very smart show. Also: a quite mean show if you stop and think about it. Three home-bakers are challenged to rebuild in an incredible short amount of time crazy complex cakes. It’s a lot of fun: the bakers and the judges don’t take themselves too seriously and everything ends up in a crazy over the top show. Would watch a second season tomorrow. (A)
Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig. A very delicate and powerful movie. I liked it a lot (A)
The Dark Forest, by Liu Cixin. I was not 100% satisfied with Liu Cixin’s first book, The Three-body problem. I really liked the ideas it played with but the plot left me unsatisfied, because it seemed to steer toward classic sci-fi tropes. Few people on Twitter simultaneously recommended picking up the sequel to The Three-body problem, The Dark Forest. I’m so happy I did: this book is so packed with interesting ideas:
– a menace that hangs above humanity but in a vague and inconsequential way for the timespan of a human life
– the idea of a war where the enemy can see everything you are doing but is unable to understand bluffs
– Wallfacers! Wallbreakers!
– Casting a spell on a star!
– COSMIC SOCIOLOGY.
Two things I particularly liked: this book treats space and time seriously. Space is enormously vast and star wars are nothing like Star Wars. Being a book and not a movie, The Dark Forest can dig deep in hard science fiction and make the war feel true and different. Time is a direct consequence of how vast space is: going from A to B takes hundreds and hundreds of years. Liu Cixin decided that he wanted to tell a story that spans hundreds of years from the prospective of the same characters and introduced hibernation as a fact in the narrative, giving the story the possibility to span across time somewhat freely. I wrote it already on Twitter: The Dark Forest manages to do what Nolan tried — and failed, in my opinion — with Interstellar. Telling an interesting but believable story about the vastness of the universe, a story that can only be told on a new timescale compared to traditional storytelling. (A)
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