Travel

Milquetoast Time Travel Sea of Tranquility reads like an extension of a Chiang short story—minus Chiang’s good-natured acceptance of the inexplicable. It’s all premise, little awe. For me at least, the “casual time travel” genre is already familiar. Tranquility is closer to Blackout/All Clear than Cloud Atlas. The problem isn’t prose but premise: if time travel were possible, would society’s first instinct really be “historical research?” The novel gestures vaguely toward the simulation hypothesis, with the logic of: “there’s something we can’t understand, therefore we live in a simulation.” If that were how science worked, we’d have proven the simulation theory already. ...

** Middle Book Syndrome ** It doesn’t feel like that much happens. Characters grow, but I also want some plot! Glokta starts and ends in the capital city. Logen Ninefingers and his crew start and end without the Seed. The Northmen and the Union start and end the book on the front foot. To quote the Navigator, it’s the journey that counts. ** 22nd book of 2025 **

This is not a book, it is a screen saver. Sure, manipulating causality could be clever, but in the end every world visited is intentionally left so vague as to be useless towards my understanding of either events or characters. Our protagonist’s lives of memories, of (presumed) love and loss, are discarded to keep the focus on anachronistically 21st century love letters. If these letters are the through-line, what is a line that connects no points? I don’t understand who these characters are their relationships outside of one another, their true worlds or experiences or memories. Each experience is just a disjointed dream. ...

The only thing that seemed unique to me in the book was the plot twist about 20% of the way through. So short that there’s no harm in picking it up, but nothing that sticks with me.

Not a book about China. This is a book about what it is like to be a foreigner in China, and Hessler nails it. I spent 20 months in Beijing hell-bent on learning Chinese, and I would recommend this to anybody who wants to understand people like me. I really think that Hessler has the right attitude towards China. Unlike [a:James Fallows|11573632|James Fallows|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Evan Osnos|6810849|Evan Osnos|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1412556895p2/6810849.jpg], Hessler is vividly aware that he is not a neutral observer of China, and takes pains to understand his own position from a different perspective. ...

Refreshing. Picked up this book on a recommendation from Jason ([b:Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter|15824230|Blocked on Weibo What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (And Why)|Jason Q. Ng|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1371519351s/15824230.jpg|21555036]), and I was not disappointed. The combination of stories from Americans and Chinese locales was jarring at first, but I think in the end made this book much more powerful. I didn’t feel like there was any theme to the book, but there was the ability to see the world through the author’s eyes, and get insight into village life on either side of the pacific. Unlike many American books on China, I felt like the author understood enough of the context to convey in a neutral manner what life was like, rather than add layers of American culture into the translation. (Such as [b:Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China|18490568|Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China|Evan Osnos|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1418113377s/18490568.jpg|26174286] or [b:China Airborne|13151308|China Airborne|James M. Fallows|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333577776s/13151308.jpg|18329333])

this book = his dark materials + origin of the species + the sum of all fears. although it is less enjoyable than any of those books. I’m not sure why the characters went on their journey, where the nuke came from, or what the point of the whole book really was.