Hernando

I believe this book is misunderstood in some way, as people expect it to be a love story of some sort or took it as a chore due to it being assigned as an English class task.

It's slow, a tiny bit complex, and not as relatable as a story of today as it was written for another epoch.

But even more, it reflects the tragedy (or beauty) of the flow of time and the nostalgic longing for better times in the past.

The book rests on an interesting hypothesis that aims to reconcile the traditional creationism account from Christianity with the account of evolutionary science regarding Adam and Eve , common ancestry and human evolution.

Joss tries to focus in three creationist premises:

• We all descend from a pair of ancestors.
• These ancestors (Adam and Eve) were de novo created.
• These ancestors are recent, 10.000 to 6000 years ago.

On the surface, his conclusions seem fully compatible with the mainstream science of evolution and common ancestors, which states that we arise as a population (not a couple) in the distant past and through an evolutionary process.

How so?.

He bases his assumption on the fact that both accounts are talking about different things. 

While the creationist account focuses on Adam and Eve, who were a couple created de novo by God in a specific place (the Garden), there were actually other people before them, who were living outside this Garden, and are the ones that evolutionary science is referring to.

As long as you can accept the assumption that the creationist account "could" be true, then I would definitely agree with him that you can in fact make that hypothesis altogether with the one accepted by evolutionary science. There are no conclusions for or against it. So a genealogical ancestry approach instead of genetic ancestry is a good way to make sense of this. 

There are more details to it, but everything comes down to a set of established prepositions we have to accept beforehand. For example, what is the actual definition of human? For philosophy, theology, and biology, it could mean different things, and where they draw the line in the evolutionary process in which the first "human" really appeared is also different.

I like the author's willingness to accept the evidence while also trying to find (if any) common ground between his Christian faith and science regarding evolution, especially when he (as a computational biologist) understands the latter is a very solid, widely accepted, and hard-to-disprove theory.

The main problem I have with this book is actually the writing and not the hypothesis. Though I understand the author is not a writter , there are just too many repeated words in a single page and even in the same paragraph.

A book about the lives of the first emperors of Rome, plus Julius Caesar. Written by Suetonious, a historian who, at the time, had access to Emperor Hadrian's library.

It has been framed as a historical book and some other times just like a gossip account about the emperors.

Suetonius describes their most famous achievements, some disgraceful actions, and even how they look physically. Though the very first characters get more time, I guess mainly because he was not Hadrian's personal secretary anymore before finishing the book, or because there was not much interest in the later ones, or maybe it's just that they did not do much in Suetonius's eyes. For instance, Julius Caesar and Augustus will get more ink pages than Vespasian, Titus and Domitian combined.

A good accompanying material for this book is listening to the first 30–40 episodes of the podcast Emperors of Rome by La Trobe University, roughly up until episode XL or so, where they talk about Emperor Domitian. In this podcast, Rhiannon Evans talks in detail about other significant events during this period of Roman history, including commentaries on not only Suetonious work but also Livi, Tacitus, etc. 

What's a better way of reading about Rome's conquest of Gaul than reading from the man himself? Julius Caesar.

This, of course, is not an exercise in getting the facts of the event. Lots of propaganda from the author. Instead, it is an exercise in getting into the mind of one of the most famous historical figures.

I liked this book for what it was. An inaccurate but personal account of Julius Caesar and his troops during their time fighting, living, and conquering Gaul.

A preambulatory event of the civil war.

If you have never come across the Fermi paradox then this book has a fantastic way to explain one of its solution. The dark forest hypothesis.

I consider this one of those slow but great books in speculative fiction. Much better than the previous one in my opinion due solely to its sheer scale.

The aliens found in the previous book, called Trisolarans, are coming and will reach the planet in roughly in 400 years. They become substantially dangerous as they are able to send subatomic particles that allows them instant knowledge of all human information, leaving us with barely anything to protect us as everything we can think of is already known by them and therefore end up sabotaged. The only thing they cannot know is what is inside peoples mind.

How do humans deal with Trisolarans with just that is the main plot of the book .

There are too many things here that are utterly insane. Reading the book for the first time was quite an experience. If you like mind bending ideas, plot twist, don't care much about the characters and are fascinated by old school Sci Fi, then this book is a must read.

The first installment of the acclaimed trilogy. This set the tone of the upcoming books, but the scale here is much less.

This is not the most strict Hard Science Fiction by all means, but the author tries his best in doing everything possible with the modern understanding of the laws of Physics....... more or less.

The title of the book and focal point is about the problem described in physics and orbital mechanics about finding the subsequent motions of three celestial bodies using Newtons Law of Motion.

There is a bunch of surprises here as we get to look over some very well known historical figures and an alien culture trying to survive to the catalyst effects of their start system

With its flat but ok characters, the Chinese setting makes the story even more engaging.

Comencé a leer este libro simplemente porque estaba basado en los inicios de la vida pública de Julio Cesar y desde hace mucho había querido leer a Posteguillo.

Al inicio mientras leía me tomó desprevenido el uso de onomatopeyas, no me lo esperaba, pero no influyó en nada mi apreciación por el libro en general.

Es un libro elegante, en el cual creo que la forma de contar la historia que realiza Posteguillo es lo mejor. Quizás se deba a mi parcialidad de mi interés por la Roma antigua, pero en esas 700 algo páginas el libro nunca se hace aburrido, aun siendo del tamaño que es.

No hay mucho en los libros de historia sobre Julio Cesar cuando era abogado, por lo que el hecho de que el libro vaya contando los eventos desde esa perspectiva es algo que en lo personal me gustó.

Aquí también se encuentran interacciones interesantes entre Silas (Sulla), Mario, Dolabela, Cinna, la familia de Julio Cesar y hasta un joven Cicerón.

El único pero (que muy mínimo) que le encuentro es que hay un suceso específico (relacionado con Dolabela), que se describe como algo sobrenatural, algo que no esperaba ya que todo lo acontecido había sido sin ningún tinte fantasioso.

En términos generales, excelente libro.

Note: There is finally an english-translated version of this book called 'I Am Rome'.

It is quite surprising that at this point there has not been english translation of any of his books, considering that he is a best selling author.

Here is hoping for more to come.

A very good book with plenty of cool ideas.

We got a berserker AI trying to eat whatever races it encounters, a planet of peculiar species of group minds and an interesting take on Singularity.

A galaxy divided into Zones where its laws of physics determine the intelligence their inhabitants have, even for artificial beings makes the book even more intriguing.

Similar to Gateway by Frederik Pohl, I read the Spanish version but in this case the way they translated the name of some species put me a bit off.

Read the Spanish version of this book directly on my phone while commuting everyday during the final months of that 2018 Hong Kong summer. During this time was when I thought about tracking all the books and get an E-reader. I remember this and A Fire Upon The Deep quite fondly because of the memories of those days.

The book has an obvious old school SciFi tone where things happen very quickly and the big idea, in this case the first contact with alien artifacts, obfuscates partially the characters development. In this case though, they were interesting enough to maintain the plot's consistency.

Everything revolves about some left behind devices by an alien race and how humans are trying to make sense of them. The main artifacts being a few startships that gets you anywhere and/or everywhere. Eventually they humans go on missions with this ships and get money when they come back. The most interesting part is what actually happens during these trips.

There is a major violent event between the main characters that may put some people off. Like some other classics, this did not have any major impact back then.

Tried this book just for the sake of wanting to dig a bit more into fantasy stuff.

Well, I enjoyed the writing style, and that was most of my takeaway. No idea what's happening until way past the middle of the book. Very cool.

The plot is not very deep. It is basically a tale of a mercenary band full of unusual characters going places. Places not so easy to spot by the reader. You literally don't know where these guys are until you see some hints here and there.

Also, even though the scope is not huge, the world-building (from what you can understand) is good enough.

I am not an avid fantasy reader, but in summary, the puzzle writing and the diverse cast were the best here.

Not sure if I want to continue the series, though.

Superb!. TMoD is a very unique and different book. It’s a neat SF with massive chunks of philosophy. It has also some sort-of-poetic lines, i.e :

“As was my habit, I followed the afternoon to the ocean and ended up lounging on a shore of corroded boulders. The waters golden, the horizon blood. The squawking of mindless seagulls. Alone, leering at passersby, I grinned as Saturn brightened and watched feral waves swallow the fireball, savoring the taste.”

“Come midnight, a turquoise aurora hung over the land. Not as a fragile drape gliding down against the stars, but as a slow whip to bleed the firmament of its mysteries. A though out of those celestial wounds she would divine the whereabouts of the men she hunted.”

Often times the author is more straightforward:

“Even though we have more time, it’s the wrong kind of time. Everything moves so fast, and there’s barely a moment to stop and think and-“ “And people don’t understand each other at all, and we have wider but more superficial knowledge, and good ideas get lost in the noise”.

“We had lived in a present built on tomorrows. Wasted tomorrows.”

And sometimes existentialism fills the void:

“-Do you think we have free will?. -I think about it. I don’t think about thinking about it.”

The philosophical stuff is more dense and harder to grasp in one of the three narratives, specially when the character is deep-thinking.

The thing is, you can still enjoy the book even if you don’t care about the philosophical and the different prose and by just following the plot. But it is certainty a much better experience at least trying to understand the “book-in-itself”. It was so good that I was tempted to reread it right away after finishing it.

Among the 7 stories, the most remarkable was the one that gives the book its name.

It is a very sadistic take on what would an AI turned bad could do to humans that are at its will. The concept was indeed interesting, but I got spoiled by knowing basically everything beforehand. Not a fault of the book itself but I could not help to enjoy it more.

3.4 rounded down to 3.0.

The blurb/synopsis of the book is not 100% accurate, actually I would say not even 70% accurate, or did I read another version of the same book?, another manifold maybe?. So just a heads up and don't be mislead by the blurb.

Update: They finally updated the whole blurb.

This guy Malenfant wakes up from coldsleep to find a more advanced world where all the basic needs are covered (health, food, education, etc.), a sort of utopia (for many) and also a creepy world to live in. There is not purpose for the future to come , instead the people just focus in the present as that is what really matters for them.From here until around 150p is worldbuilding, and exploration of this 25th century world, then things start going weird and the book changes completely from what the synopsis actually says.

I could see here Baxter forcing himself from giving loads of info dumps until he couldn't anymore, so this book is not as hard SF as some of his other books and will probably appeal to those who wants something a bit different in that sense, but there are still a lot of Hard SF on it, in the last third specially, just not as much as many are used to when reading him.

This is the first installment of a duology , the second book World Engines: Creator to be published next year, so to describe this first book as a whole I would say it was enjoyable and did not feel I wasted my time.

This is a dry, technical and well documented book/research about all the things that happened on planet earth to support life. Not only just any life but the author makes a strong claim that through the ages , on each singular event (Ice age, Cambrian explosion, etc.) the planet happened to be in the best possible state to support the most amount of life.

The main thesis here is that there are just too many things that needed to happen in order for life to even exist, and that improbability is a strong argument of a Creator.

I like that the book is significantly different than other books with a theistic point of view. Here the author paired with a biochemist try his best to give the readers with a high amount of peer reviewed papers on the origins of life and the evolution of the planet. It has almost 40 of 288 pages only for footnotes.

This is a fantastic account of some deep and fundamental questions that most of us had already asked ourselves before. It is done through multiple conversations between a man and his granddaughter.

I clearly do not believe all the question from the book were literally asked by the child, maybe just a few, but it is to me a very subtle literary device to explain what the author is trying to convey.

In my opinion, this is a much better book than Astrophysics For People in a Hurry by Neil deGrayson. It is more engaging and Although it has some of the same weakness in not going much deeper, I adventure to say that it does the job better in explaining every subject.

The guy is also an astrophysics, but I like how he articulates the ideas better. Some of the questions he is "asked" by his granddaughter are things like what are the stars made of, how can we tell the age of the sun, how distant are the galaxies and one very important, how do we know that is true or not.

The target according to the author is mainly 14 years old teens. In short, this is a very short but good overview of intriguing questions about our universe to pique the interest of young people but also for older ones to have the tools to do the same with their children and grandchildrens when the moment arrives.

This is a Three-Body Problem Paraquel that adds some interesting ideas and reveals a few things to understand a bit more about Yun Tianming and everything that happened during-after Death's End. Here we also confirm how a useless character Cheng Xin is. If you disliked her in Death's End, this book in one page will increase that feeling.
In the other hand, the book leaves the usual SF and Physics approach and plays more with an Ultra Hyper Dimensional Universe of things (some people are considering it Fantasy), and I don't really know how to feel about it.
There is a pretty nice reference to Asimov's Foundation as well.
In a nutshell it's not in the same quality as the original trilogy but it is truly worth a read.

Pd: The English version of this book is coming out in a few months but I'm glad to found out that the Spanish version was already on the bookstores since last year.

First time reading something like this. It is sort of a debate book but with footnotes and without the proponents interrupting each other, and I actually liked the format. It would be nice to find something similar but not only focusing on religious proponents.

About the book itself, Ken Ham's is the guy which most conservative Christians will relate the most as it is basically Christian religion as taught in schools (or were) . I find his essay the weakest of all four, also the guy is quite annoying sometimes as he believes whatever he says is the true because “That is the true”, I later saw him on YouTube and he is even worst. Even the editor of the book had some trouble dealing with him that it made me laugh. Citing the editor:
“The most obvious discrepancy that remains is in the initial essays, where Ham's is noticeable longer than the others. He was unwilling to cut anything further, believing it only fair that he should be given more space than the others since he was the only one defending the young age of the earth and the authority of Scripture vs the authority of the scientific majority”. Quite a guy eh?.

Hugh Ross is an interesting case, as an Astrophysics he believes in like 99% about all the scientific consensus related to cosmic stuff, but he differ in the evolution and origins of life. Researching through his footnotes I see he has an interesting views that few non-religious people also consider, specially that about Fine-tuning of the universe. His weakest point I would say that is that he is actually making the bible to concord with everything Astrophysics find and that is why many people say that he tends to much to Concordism.

Haarsma is a proponent of almost everything that non-religious scientist believe, so most of those people will find her point of view the most compelling of all, but she add God into the equation. So she believes in the Evolution, Origins of life, the LUCA, etc as the scientific consensus says but also that God guided everything in any way. Her weakest point is actually the obvious one, what God has anything to do in all this if all this looked as He was unnecessary. Though Her reply to this opposition is quite interesting. She works for that organization (BioLogos) that is actually run by geneticist Francis Collins which it happens that he is the guy in charge of the NIH in the US and who led the Human Genome Project.

The last guy, Meyer, only based his essay on Intelligent Design so nothing to add to this as even though he has his own position on the age of the universe and origins of life most of his essay is basically explaining everything about ID including why it is not Pseudo-science.

Finally, the editor finish the book saying: “It takes enormous effort, then, on our part to listen to others and consider their critiques of our own positions. But if we're serious about pursuing the truth in the matters, it is important.”

Un libro bastante entretenido, pero nada más.

Pienso en mi yo adolescente cuándo leía todo tipo de relatos mitológicos y creo que si hubiese leído este libro en ese entonces, quizás algunas de las situaciones me hubiesen irritado aún más que ahora.

Ejemplo, Ares, Hades y Poseidón tienen los papeles más ridículos que nunca antes haya visto de ellos.
Ares = guerra, pero resulta que es el más estúpido para la guerra según el libro. Hades comportándose cómo una niña adolescente daba bastante pena. Poseidón, con solo dos líneas de diálogo en todo el libro y un retrato bastante ‘meh'.

Pensé que también le darían más importancia a los Titanes, de hecho, me esperaba algo un poco diferente en esto. Quizás, Zeus ciertamente abatido ó Prometeo y Atlas consiguiendo redención, no sé. Pero lastimosamente lo diferente que tuvo el libro, no fue tan satisfactorio.

Excelente recuento histórico de la era pre imperial de Roma. Desde Rómulo y los primeros reyes hasta las conquista de Grecia en las batallas macedónicas, alrededor de unos 140 años antes de cristo.

El libro relata de manera entretenida las diferentes guerras que enfrentaron los romanos desde sus inicios, pero no solo eso, sino que también nos brinda una detallada descripción de su armamento y estilo de combate en aquella época, como también de alguno de sus primeros hitos de ingeniería y de la estructura social que gobernaba a la ciudad.

El tiempo abarcado incluye además de su legendaria fundación, y las intermitentes guerras con alguno de los pueblos inmediatos como los Etruscos y Samnitas, las de Pirro y su imperio helenístico, como también el periodo de guerra contra Cartago y Aníbal.

Lo más decepcionante que puedo decir en contra y que definitivamente dañaba un poco la lectura es que el autor en ciertas ocasiones no usa a.C  o d.C según convenga, sino que, por el contrario, escribe la fecha tal cual, ejemplo,  año 103. En ese punto vas intuyendo que quiere decir a.C, pero se vuelve fastidioso el cambio.

A pesar de eso, el recuento que da Javier Negrete de esta parte de la roma antigua es bastante satisfactoria y elegante.