Review: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not sure how much time I actually want to spend elaborating on this (lately I've not been in a mood for thinking through longer reviews), but my personal takeaway on this book is that it's got a lot of good thought provoking ideas, particularly when it comes to the historical focus...

But the presentation of said ideas, or rhetoric, what have you, is a bit lacking-- and this is coming from someone who is already inclined to agree with the arguments and ideas proposed here. Harari has a tendency to make rather sweeping statements (free will doesn't exist! machines can understand you better than you can!) as if his conclusions are already a given, and even when he goes backwards through the evidence to explain what he's saying... it somehow doesn't come across convincingly enough for me?

A better writer than me can probably expound on the details here more clearly, but I'll just say that the people who would need to be convinced by Harari's insights are likely not going to come off from this book with their minds changed, not with the attitudes that he's bringing to the table. In addition, the future-facing material requires more suspension of disbelief to accept given how much more speculative it is by nature (I found myself rolling my eyes internally at some of the writing on wearable device tracking... although disclaimer, I work in that industry).

All of that said, I think this book is overall a step in the right direction of thinking, but there are gaps in its arguments that become more apparent in light of events that have happened since it released in 2016 (pre-USA election) that cause it to not age as well even just a few years since its release. Most notably, I think the final chapter needs an update to account for recent developments around Q-Anon and misinformation, as that puts a major damper on a lot of the potential suggested around Dataism.

I would recommend reading Sapiens first if you want to get a feel for Harari's writing and its strengths. I had similar criticisms of that book back when I read it (if anything this book suffers from the same criticisms but worse), but the much more history-centric focus of it means that it doesn't suffer as many of the same burdens as a speculative work would in convincing people and as such I think the overall product is stronger. I'm looking forward to eventually revisiting that book in comic form also.

(Side note: this is one of those areas where I prefer my nonfiction to be less "pop" and more dry/technical, almost to a fault of it own of boring-ness. But of course, I imagine most people motivated enough to read this book will probably be fine with it as is.)

Review: 2666

2666 by Roberto Bolaño
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A semi-disjointed 5 part epic where the true connections between the parts aren't really fully clear until the final ~20 pages or so (out of 900).

The central subject that connects each of the parts in setting (perhaps less so the first and last parts at first glance) is the femicides of Santa Teresa, in turn inspired by the real-life femicides of Ciudad Juarez that took place during the 90's and 00's. The true meat of these incidents is not really addressed until the 4th part of this book, but until then you have to wade through 3 loosely connected sub-novels (themselves split across multiple narratives/viewpoints) that tend to digress and meander a lot on their own accord and are tonally distinct enough from each other that they each could've been their own novel as Bolano apparently intended before he died.

The prose isn't difficult to read compared to other similar-length long form works (I'm thinking Naked Singularity, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, etc). It is however easy to lose focus when the digressions happen and without a clear or immediate sense of why they're happening. That said, there is an overall pessimistic, cynical theme of degeneration that could be seen as a constant here, with unresolved tension; relational connections missed; social and political incompetence; dream-like moments that seemingly amount to nothing in reality; and then of course the violence itself; although not all of it is hopeless especially towards the end.

The Part About the Crimes is particularly senseless in the way it clinically recounts each of the individual murders that takes place, describing the crime scenes and victim accounts in gruesome clinical detail. I think after the 10th or 15th murder I was already starting to feel desensitized (when you think about the reality that actually happened, how much more tragic it was), and then it just kept on going for another 200 pages of death. Such tonal whiplash compared to the first part with its almost mocking accounts of the hedonistic critics.

Almost every storyline in this book is never completely resolved within the plot itself -- thematically, perhaps yes, but not in actual climactic detail. It felt weird to end a 900 page journey feeling unsatisfied in that sense, even though in retrospect I can see why things are left the way they are (apart from the obvious fact that Bolano himself died before this was published; I have a feeling not much would've changed plot-wise even if he had survived). Given the subject matter and the fact that most of the real-life murders themselves were never actually solved, it makes sense.

I feel like I've already written a lot here while barely touching an inch of what 2666 actually covers or means; one could probably get lost reading up on the discourse over this book as much as the book itself (adding to my list of "books to read up on after reading"). There are so many ideas and thoughts here, almost to the point where it can feel like Bolano just decided to throw everything that was going on in his head at the kitchen sink and then some, debatably for better or worse.

Honestly, I feel like something as reductive as a "4-star" rating on goodreads is disingenuous here, because at the end of the day, ratings barely convey everything there is to unpack about a book like this (where I haven't even fully figured out how much of it I truly "liked" or "disliked"). I don't regret reading this book by any means, but I do find myself at a loss wondering how much of it I truly "enjoyed" given the subject matter. But perhaps that isn't the point of reading a work like this in the first place.

Review: Notre-Dame de Paris

Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of those rare cases where I find that I prefer the adaptations over the original, although I don't regret reading it.

Some aspects of the story haven't aged well (really not a fan of Esmeralda's characterization in the book) and were thankfully changed by the time Disney's adaptation came around. And Victor Hugo probably could've used an editor here cause some of the rambling digressions can get a bit much (...doesn't inspire me to read Les Mis anytime soon).

The strengths that make this story stand out though are still there: the focus on preservation of Gothic architecture (which honestly wasn't a thing till Hugo called it out here); the role that architecture plays in society and persists through pivotal human events; the chilling nature of villain so high up in the church like Claude Frollo; and the final sequence in general.

Now excuse me while I go searching for clips of the stage musical that got robbed of a Broadway run.