Category: Reviews

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The Dutch House

I don’t understand how a book like The Dutch House can be so captivating. There are no overarching villain, nor fantastical world building or gimmicks. The sole driving force lies in the ability of Ann Patchett to deliver a soulful story stemming from the Cinderella-esque expulsion of two siblings, Maeve and Danny, from their family “home,” the Dutch House.

The two trudged into the future, with Danny obtaining a medical degree but ultimately eschewing it by becoming a real estate investor while Maeve became a successful CFO figure in a frozen vegetable company, while never letting go of the past, returning to the edges of the Dutch House time after time; partly out of habit, and partly to reminisce. It was in those quiet times where the author really shined and captured my attention, and drove me to keep on reading. Turns out, I have been and will always be a sucker for good prose.

I know I am facing a lot of personal issues  this quarantine, and the following quote resonated:

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.

I am at a crossroads in my life with finishing up my degree. I’ve just been through a tough breakup. I will land on solid ground though. I need to focus on not what I have lost, but rather what I can achieve:

I’d never been in the position of getting my head around what I’d been given. I only understood what I’d lost.

 

 

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Celeste Ng; Switch Switching

  • Recently finished reading Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You in some five days while in Florida. I’ve never read a book written by an Asian-Americnan author before, nor one where Asian-American issues are discussed at great details.  A central tenant of a character, wanting to fit in but couldn’t, resonated with me. The issues I faced when I first moved here were less significant than the ones in the book (which took place in the 60s), but this concept of wanting people to figure out one’s differences from something else besides my skin color still holds today.
  • The left controller stick of my Switch has been suffering greatly from drift recently, and I finally managed to fix it.   The parts were quite cheap, with the tools included from Amazon. It felt quite nice again to work with my hands and really made me want to go do some small projects in the Brown design lab.
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Three-Body Problem Series

I finished this series relatively quickly, probably in the span of a month total for three books. Looking back, the best book was probably the first two. There was just an air of mystery surrounding the nature of the invading aliens. Who are they? Why are they coming? What kinds of technology do they have? These questions really drives the first novel into a satisfying conclusion.

In the second and third books, where time skips anywhere from one to a few dozen years, a bleak picture of the universe is painted by Liu (the author). To no surprise, the universe of the novel is populated with lifeforms who mistrust each other and seek to destroy one another. Everything is explained quite thoroughly, but sometimes a bit too much. I wish he left some deduction for the readers to make ourselves rather than spoon feeding all the details.

There are a few more criticisms I have of the second and third books:

  1. The character development falls mostly flat. I really didn’t care about any of them but rather the state of humanity as a whole. In contrast, the first book contained a fascinating historical overview set in communist China which helped build the characters.
  2. Liu is really quite imaginative in the types of weapons that an alien with far superior technology can employ.  Unfortunately, some of them seem quite farfetched. I just think if they posses the power to alter reality, there would be better ways of waging war.
  3. Multiple times, Liu thinks that society as a whole would “agree” on an idea. As we see in our current political situation, this really doesn’t make any sense.

 

 

 

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The Goldfinch

What a weird novel. It gradually crosses the line from a coming-of-age story (a Bildungsroman apparently) to a crime novel.

The first portion was beautifully done, with the main character characterized in-depth alongside his partner. The novel began with a tragedy befalling our young protagonist, and a quick introduction to all the relevant main characters. Chekhov’s gun really applied in this case, where a girl described within the first some 30 (?) pages becomes the overarching love interest.

From here, the character moves to Las Vegas and probably the best part of the book. There, the character really developed and really solidifies as a character. Another tragedy befalls our little teenager and he is forced to move back to NYC.

The final act of the book is really lackluster. The author introduces far too many characters and plot points which I didn’t understand (or care to for that matter). It was just too much and an abrupt change in pace. Overall, an incredibly lengthy novel which I just don’t think is that good…

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Furi

What a fun little game. I finished this game before I traveled to ICOSAHOM and France, and didn’t get a chance to write about it. To preface this, the only reason I bought this game is because of Dunkey’s video.

The soundtrack is actually the best part about this videogame. I’ve been listening to it before I even picked up the game on Steam, and it… just drives you on. Undoubtedly the best part of the whole experience.

In terms of the actual game itself, it is quite short (with an alternate ending). The bosses’ also have varying difficulty levels which makes some levels incredibly frustrating, and others a simple grind once you find the trick. I really hated the level with the poison gas, and didn’t appreciate how easy the second-to-last boss was (who apparently trained his whole life for our battle).

Other than that, the story line has some quirks. The non-skippable cutscenes really are the main character development, plus some quotes from the battles themselves. TBH, I had to look up the story because I didn’t pay attention most of the time.

Overall, a fun game to pick up for a weekend or two.

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Gentleman in Moscow

No, this post isn’t going to be mainly about Trump. I must say it is ironic that the title of the book I chose contains the capital of that mysterious country (and somewhat premeditated). The politics of the situation honestly scares me a little, with massaged information (to put it lightly) being tossed around.

But the book was a delight. The disappearance and death of a few characters really dampened my mood (but what does one expect of a story set in Soviet Russia?), with N’s being the most tragic. Even the ending is bittersweet with a certain tree promising to meet wisdom, with an uncertain outcome as the novel came to a close.

One shouldn’t dwell on the sorrows of life though; at least that’s what Rostov would’ve done, and boy was he a wise man.

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Amid the Shadows

It seems anytime I’m changing time zones, the second night will always be a restless one. It was true during Japan and Europe. It held true when I came back from Seattle.

During that restless night I managed to read a whole book “Amid the Shadows” by Grumley. I really wish I could take that time back and invest my time into a different novel. It really did a good job of reeling me in: there was interesting plot points starting on page one, but then it just crescendoed and never stopped. For such a long build up of intricate plot points, the release of tension was woefully inadequate.

To spoil the book a bit, it turns out God has been sending being down to guide humans. One came during WWII to prevent Hitler from getting the A-bomb for example. Apparently, one of these beings got pissed at God for not giving it a soul (because it failed its task) and hence intended to kill everyone by plunging the world into atomic warfare.

I don’t understand why he was afraid of Sarah. There’s no reason to spend that much time going after her, nor was it worth it. I don’t understand how he got banished (sent back?) at the end. I don’t understand how the Israeli guy is suppose to do. There’s too many… bad points in this book.

Gretchen recommended me the Queen’s Poisoner as some quick read… and so on it.

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Rochard

Some a year ago, I spent around ten dollars and bought the sixth Humble Bundle. Now I officially played more than a quarter of the games in that bundle with the completion of Rochard.

It’s a simple game, with intuitive mechanics. The idea is that the series of barriers, lasers and gravity control will pose moderately hard puzzles for the player. It was a rather simple puzzler though, with only one which took me a moderate amount of time. The expansion pack is suppose to remedy this by providing 4 supposedly hard levels for the player.

Mechanics-wise, it was a smooth experience. My only complaint was aiming the gun was mildly rough. It was a line-aim type of experience, which is fine for “grabbing” various objects, but quite tough to aim accurately fast.

Speaking of fast, this is a very fast game. The entire thing took me under 5 hours to complete. It seems that the producers ran out of budget for animation at then end: the story was extremely unpolished at the end.

It’s an almost Epcot-like experience, where the beginning and middle parts where quite pleasant, but the ending has no… end? They just swept everything under the rug.

Overall though, fun game but terrrriiiblleee story near the end.

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Notes: SSD edition

Some notes from the past week:

  1. It is incredibly easy to be an impostor in a more academic party. First of all, most of the people will be already intoxicated to the point where bullshit science can’t be discerned from actual science. This is good as I can just say random facts I remember from Popular Science.Another acceptable thing to do is to just ask questions upon questions. “What’s your research? … Oh that’s so cool! Tell me more about it! … So does this connect to insert scientific news here? Wow.” That’ll burn around 5 minutes minimum.The main problem comes when you run out of questions in the initial barrage. It also fails when the person is laconic or can’t speak English.

  2. Installing a SSD is extremely easy, but installing operating systems are hard. Right now, I have around 8 entries on my GRUB menu before I migrate everything over to my new distro.I followed the mount guide provided here, which seems intuitive enough on where to put mount points. I’ve also learned that 
    mount

    and

    df -h

    are my friends. There’s also that good GParted software.

  3. The Lloyd Trefethren numerical linear algebra book is quite good for a quick overview of the subject. It doesn’t get bogged down with the analysis, and generally refers to other books (mainly the Van Loan) throughout.
  4. Holy shit URF mode.
  5. I need to be more brave in a certain subject….