Book Post: O'Leary, Vonnegut, White, Maxwell, Glukhovsky and Sacks

[bearshorty]

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, 326pp
A woman, Tiffany, sees an ad for 1 bedroom flatshare where the guy, Leon, works the night shift so they can share the flat without sharing at the same time. She is leaving a relationship and it seems a good deal. Tiffy and Leon start leaving notes for each other and get to know each other through notes. They don

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

And now I'm reading "Three-Body Problem" sci-fi book, since it won a Hugo and I meant to read it for a while

Ha, that's an unexpected way to come to that book!

Anyway, I'll be curious to hear what you think of 3BP. It reminded me in some ways of classic Soviet sci-fi -- very particularly of Strugatskys' Za milliard let do kontsa sveta, but also just generally the classic Soviet/Eastern Bloc sci-fi vibe, including stuff by Lem. I actually didn't think much of 3BP as a whole, but there were some neat ideas that I did appreciate. So curious to see what you'll make of it.

This is a Sacks I haven't read yet, and probably will stick to the later books, since you say this one is less engaging.

I never read it as a child. I just knew it was about a spider and that she dies at the end. So it was a chance for me to catch up on a classic book.It's a really cute book! I also caught up on it, in a somewhat odd way -- I read it as a teenager, because my grandmother's ESL class was reading it, and since I like spiders, it seemed like

[bearshorty]

Three-Body is a strange book. It is interesting but a bit weird and also there is a lot of hard core science in the sci-fi, which I haven't read in a while. (for some reason I'm reading a lot of physics this year). The language is also very much Chinese, even though it is in translation - just the intonations and flow. So it feels different. I'm about 40% through. I still think I'm lacking the information about the main plot though.

Your grandmother's ESL class sounds fun.

[hamsterwoman]

The hard sci-fi aspects were definitely my favorite thing about it :)

[coercedbynutmeg]

My sister recommended The Flatshare to me. I didn't like it as much as she did, but it was a good read. I wasn't really sold on the dynamic between the girl and her abusive boyfriend, though.

[bearshorty]

I tend to roll my eyes at the stories where the ex or the other guy is clearly a terrible person and of course the girl should be with the main hero, but I gave it a pass on this one since it was trying to be about abusive relationship. It was a bit weird though since abusive boyfriend broke up with her in the first place but then was making a fuss?

[coercedbynutmeg]

I just couldn't when the boyfriend proposed to her and her friends believed him when he told everyone she said yes. They are the worst friends ever.

[zoefruitcake]

I read Awakenings decades ago and remember enjoying it

[bearshorty]

I liked the case histories - Sacks is really good at those!

[bearshorty]

I might try The Switch at some point then. I'm reading "Boyfriend Material" now by Alexis Hall is it is one of those "fake boyfriends" who fall in love tropes that is very light on my brain.

I'm about 40% into Three-Body Problem and I'm just getting a sense of the plot - it is slightly weird still. But I'm intrigued.