The MANIAC

Having read When We Cease to Understand the World first, I am even less sure I like Mr Labatut's writing style. At least when it comes to narrating the life of well-known scientists like John von Neumann. I guess I am torn in two. On the one hand, I am happy that books like The MANIAC exist as they help more readers become aware of people and events that I believe enrich one's knowledge. On the other hand, I do not like how much of the text is based on speculation and, even worse, exaggeration to the point that may be harmful for the academic development of the younger generation. My biggest quarrel with the book lies in the way Mr von Neumann's intelect is exaggerated. By that I do not mean to deny that John von Neumann was a genius, but I do want to make clear that anyone has the potential for greatness—including, of course, academic greatness—and that John von Neumann was not as unique as the book tries really hard to convince the reader that he was. People, especially young people, might be misled into believing that one has to be born a genius, and may be discouraged to put the necessary effort to achieve great scientific discoveries. Furthermore, Mr Labatut's never ending insistence on delivering high praise for John von Neumann gets really tiresome and makes for a difficult read.
  Fortunately, even though the vast majority of the book is dedicated to John von Neumann, the short last part of the book brilliantly pivots to another topic: the boardgame go and AlphaGo. Mr Labatut's writing style is perfect in this last section of the book. Mixing mythology and fact in a way that the line between those two is never blurry, which consequently made me confident that I was learning new things without the need to worry that I might be misled into believing that fictional parts of the book might be real. The last part of the book was so compelling that I read it in just one go, as I was unable to stop reading. That was a refreshing change, especially after the tedious litany on how great John von Neumann's intelect was.

First Love and other stories

An excellent collection of three short stories:

2. First Love
1. Spring Torrents
3. A Fire at Sea

  In order of appearance, and indexed in my personal order of preference. This book should have really been called "Spring Torrents and other stories". Not only because Spring Torrents was the main short story, but also because it was my favourite. Although, I was happy to read First Love. It reminded me of my younger self and the way I used to think about love and of the behaviour that I thought that being in love implied. It will not come as a surprise when I say that I was too childish, and that I am somewhat embarrassed by my past behaviour. I am less embarrassed by my way of experiencing love in my twenties, perhaps because I am much closer to those years.
  I wonder if we should be taught in school what love is. By that I mean that maybe we should have a class dedicated to thinking about what our feelings mean to us and how they are perceived by others in society, and maybe our teachers could give us some friendly advice.
  Maybe I should read more about the theory of our emotions and how to deal with them. I would really recommend this book to anyone who might want to spend some time thinking about being in love.

Moby Dick

 What a beautifully written book. I really like when you can tell that someone has put their heart into creating something they love, and this novel is one such piece of art. One can learn so much about whaling! And I really never thought I could be interested in whaling.
  Now that I am done reading it I am reminded of two thoughts that my friend Michael Young shared with me some time ago, and that somehow seem to apply to this book. The first one is about suspense. He mentioned how great the movie Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) was in creating suspense by having so few scenes where you can actually see the alien. Indeed, we see so little of Moby Dick but when we do it is so worth the wait. The second has to do with a certain type of anime. There are some anime that are so focused on one topic, say playing the violin, that it may not be an exaggeration to say that entire episodes are dedicated solely to a character putting all their heart on a single violin execution. That may also be the case with Moby Dick. Yes, it is so nice when someone is unapologetically enthusiastic about one topic. I am happy that Herman Melville was a whaling geek. Yet I wonder if having a more complex plot would have been beneficial for the book, instead of having just one extraordinarily epic moment at the very end.
  I highly recommend this book. It does live up to its reputation, and people who love art for art's sake will particularly enjoy this read.

American Pastoral

 What a boring read. The first third of the book was decent, but afterwards it quickly spirals down into a tiresome repetition of a story that could have been told in far fewer pages.

When We Cease to Understand the World

 My heart is really torn. On the one hand, the first three short stories were amazing. I learnt so many interesting things, things that are somewhat related to science, I learnt about the life of interesting mathematicians and their quirks. It was great! But then the second half of the book turns more... imaginative and speculative, in a way that I did not really like. Speculating in crude terms about the sexual behaviour of certain scientists was not in line with the first half of the book, and its contrast was therefore more jarring. What I liked about the first three stories was how non-fictional they were, and you could tell that the second half of the book was so blatantly made up. I was really disappointed. But yes, I would definitely recommend that people read the first half of the book. It is really worth it.

Red Dragon

 An extremely quick read. I read its 455 pages in three days. I know there are people out there who can probably read them in a single day. Very skillfully written, several of its passages perfectly conveyed the extreme cruelty Dolarhyde had to go through in his childhood—successfully scaring me. Also, I never thought a literary equivalent of a film's "jump scare" existed until I read chapter 46 of this book. Ralph Mandy's death really did come out of nowhere and scared me. In that sense, this book made me feel things no other book had ever made me feel, and that was a great new experience.
  This book really left me wishing I could read even better horror stories. I have only read one Stephen King: "Dreamcatcher" but it was not nearly as good as this one. I am open to recommendations. If you feel like you have never read a decent scary novel, I would recommend starting with "Red Dragon".

To the Lighthouse

 Quite painful to read. It was basically a collection of sentences that had little relation to each other. It was very difficult to follow the many seemingly disjoint ideas contained in a single paragraph. I could not even tell you what the story was, despite my just having finished reading the book. I am as clueless as if I had only read the title.