Just finished The Three Body Problem, which I think has been discussed here before. It’s not really the sort of thing I read much (it was a gift) and I liked it OK but didn’t love it. Was just wondering if anyone has read the sequels and if, in their opinion, they’re about the same (or better, or worse)?
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I thought the second and third books were better than the TBP. I liked the third the best. I think he built on his ideas well over the three.
I was curious - GoodReads ratings match that - Book 1 is the lowest scored. But of course that’s because there’s some group of folks that didn’t like Book 1, scored it lowly, and then didn’t continue the series.
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I started Leave the World Behind - I heard the author interviewed on Fresh Air. A white family is staying at an AirBNB, one night the African American owners of the house show up, saying that NYC had a power outage and slowly everyone suspects some larger problem.
The writer is pretty cringe-y with descriptions of teenage bodies (seems like a freak and a very weird dude), but he’s really effective dropping hints about what happened and damn if I’m not turning the pages quickly. The well off white folks self assessing their own initial gut reactions about a much richer black couple hit the mark pretty well, I think.
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i thought it was ok and stopped there as well, i was definitely expecting it to be better than it was
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I also thought TBP was just OK. It went into excrutiating detail about really basic scientific principles, then hand-waved away the leaps it took into what I thought went beyond speculation into near absurdity.
Ball Lightning wad even worse in that regard, so I’m probably bring a little harder on TBP than i should be.
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Finished ready player 2 audiobook. My god what trash
If you read book 1 and liked it and feel the need to continue the story.
Don’t
I read 50 ish books a year and it’s one of tbe worst books I’ve read in the last few years.
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Yeah I’ve read the book and listened to the audible version - which the narrator has a really weird robotic voice. But I got used to it.
Read both.
His other books are pretty good too, particularly This Game of Ghosts, but others as well.
The daftest thing to me was that the main character supposedly progressed in the game so well that he was recruited to the secret organisation, something that only a handful of others managed. But the only thing he ever actually did there apart from watch was figure out that there were three suns. But the name of the game is “Three Body”!
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Three body is basically world building for books 2/3
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Sweet I’ll check it out. Suzzer probably already read it heh
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If you like this genre, I recommend the following two books by Australian climber Greg Child:
Mixed Emotions: Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child
Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas (Bonus: One of my friends is on the climbing team for his climb of Gasherbrum IV)
I find a lot of mountaineering writing to be boring and dry, but this guy has a real talent imo, like Joe Simpson also does.
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Snow in the Kingdom by Ed Webster might be an option, too, I haven’t read it yet. Have it here somewhere, I ran into him at Kittery Trading Post. Reviews looks good.
I think I need to quit listening to nothing but mountain climbing and war disaster books. I’m listening to Blackhawk Down now and can feel anxiety rising. They’re great for getting through workouts or hard hikes, but I might be overloading my brain with life or death drama.
It was fine. One of those books that was definitely a page turner but I don’t think I would recommend to anyone.
spoiler:
Not a great payoff, but I guess that’s the point. The emergency is unknown.
I try to rotate between fiction and non fiction. I can only take so much reality at a time.
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Interesting guy. Put in a ton of first ascents in NH and out west. I’ve done some easy climbs in NH that were first done by him and, get this, Billy Squire lolz. (He met him in the Himalaya and they became friends and climbing partners.)
Webster went to high school with 3 other prominent NH climbers and adventurers: Jonathon Waterman, (himself an author of adventure/climbing stuff in Alaska and the arctic), Jeff Pheasant, and Andy Middleton. Lots of talent in one school at the same time.
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You talked me into starting the book, hopefully he can write.
I haven’t read that book myself. I think he’s a bit of a dry writer based on reading a ton of his articles from decades ago in various climbing magazines, but I have heard this book is good.
He was a bit of a “hero” to me when I first started climbing 25-30 years ago. So it was weird when I started climbing with some of his friends and ended up meeting him at the cliffs and at parties a few times. I had to pretend I wasn’t gushing like a groupie.