I think the ending made the overall experience a lot worse for me. I just love big ending. A big welcome back. Something that works in a movie. Once he detected what the problem was with the taumoebe I could have lived with the decision to help his friend if he decided to go back to earth then.
Btw: I hated it that in the Martian they made Chastain the hero who grabbed Whatney after him playing Ironman rather than going with the book. Its a fine line between enough and utterly unrealistic. I think thats what also made me suspicious while reading that they always found a solution and everything was easy to manufacture as well as having an unlimited supply of materials.
I read a third of Project Hail Mary and stopped. I didnāt think it was bad or anything. More like I already had my fill of Andy Weir after The Martian and didnāt need any more. idk if that makes sense.
Finished the most recent Steven King called fairy tale. Not a banger but solid. Hope he can keep cranking out content for another decade, reading his stuff is like putting on cozy clothes for me.
About Oleg Gordievsky, who was a senior KGB agent who spied for MI6 for a decade.
Real life James Bond stuff. I couldnāt stop listening (the audiobook).
Some extraordinary stuff where MI6 were feeding preperation materials and briefings to both sides in a summit between Thatcher and Gorbachev to make the summit a success.
Read The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports.
Iām a very casual soccer fan, so this covered a ton of fun little stories that I didnāt know much about. Diehards of the Premier League History may not pick up a ton of new stuff, but it was perfect for me. Non-Fiction page turner.
I just finished Project Hail Mary and feel exactly the same as you did. I found the main character extremely unlikeable, and the audiobook narration did not work for me. I disliked the ending as well.
I was ready to stop halfway through the book but felt compelled to find out what happens in the end, and hence my disappointment with the ending.
Just finished the Andrew Roberts bio on Churchill. I give it maybe an 8.5 out of 10.
Itās long (very long) and detailed. Thereās not a lot of that stuff I hate in history books like āCaesar must have been upset by this developmentā and āNapoleon must have thoughtā¦ā Man it gets old when a book is filled with that.
Churchill was making speeches all the time, and writing letters, so we know exactly what he was thinking. It seems everyone else was writing letters and keeping notes, and keeping a diary too. So all the political machinations are laid bare. Thereās heavy reliance on speeches, letters, diaries, etc.
Churchill was a hardcore imperialist, and a racist (maybe less racist than his peers on average though). He was, if not a warmonger, then a war enjoyer. His judgment was pretty suspect sometimes, as he was an egotist who would get fixated on his own ideas. And yet he probably saved Englandās ass, and helped get us in the war sooner, which was a good thing. He was one of the few that had Hitler pegged from the start.
I am not big on arguing historical alternate hypotheticals. Some people say Churchill didnāt matter as much, since the US was inevitably going to get into the war, and develop the bomb first, and Hitler didnāt really want to invade England, and anyway Germany couldnāt beat Russia and the west, and anyway Stalin was just as bad. But I donāt know. Attlee probably would have accepted peace terms if it had been up to him. Hitler would have had a lot more time. Who knows what would have happened.
Anyway I was very impressed by Churchill during the war, whatever his other failings were. The guy had no quit in him
Iām excited for you. First read it when I was about 14 and itās a huge part of why I ended up in Japan. Reread it at least a dozen times since then. No idea what the audible is like, but hopefully itās a good narration.
If any of you wish to take on Lex Fridmanās reading list Iād like to humbly suggest removing The Brothers Karamazov, which isnāt funny at all, and substiuting this, which is freakinā hilarious: https://www.simplystreep.com/projects/1974-the-idiots-karamazov/
I read this obsessively as a teenager. My martial arts teacher instilled in me that Musashi was one of the greatest swordsmen who ever lived. He would reference parts of the book and demonstrate the techniques and how to use them in a ārealā swordfight.
There have been lots of adaptations of the swordsmanās story, but the one to watch is the trilogy that started in 1954 with Samurai 1.
If you really enjoy the book and movie trilogy, guessing youād love (or have already seen) Lone Wolf and Cub.
