From the Bookshelf of Undead & UnRead Book Club - Frisco Public Library…

Exhalation

Ted Chiang

Start date: January 13, 2021

Finish date: February 9, 2021

Discussion: 2021 Meetings

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 14 topics — 29 comments total

2021 Meetings

December - Bird Box
By Amy · 3 posts · 5 views

last updated Dec 18, 2021 11:44AM

November - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
By Amy · 2 posts · 13 views

last updated Nov 01, 2021 04:54PM

What Members Thought

Feb 09, 2021 Amanda Kratz rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021-undead-and-unread-book-club

Read for the Frisco Undead and Unread book club.

I didn’t have high expectations for this book going into it. Not that I thought it would be bad (it’s actually reviewed quite highly) I just really didn’t know what to expect. I really feels a bit of a mixed bag. I absolutely adores some stories and cried my eyes out, others weren’t as good. Several stories have a real heavy black mirror type of feel to them. If you are a fan of the show you will love these stories.

The first story the merchant and Read for the Frisco Undead and Unread book club.

I didn’t have high expectations for this book going into it. Not that I thought it would be bad (it’s actually reviewed quite highly) I just really didn’t know what to expect. I really feels a bit of a mixed bag. I absolutely adores some stories and cried my eyes out, others weren’t as good. Several stories have a real heavy black mirror type of feel to them. If you are a fan of the show you will love these stories.

The first story the merchant and the alchemist- I kept waiting and waiting to figure out where this series of stories with in a story was going but man when it got there I cried and cried. I loved it.

Exhalation - I still have so many questions that were left unanswered. Who were these people? Why are they in a dome? He is searching for memories and abandons the search? What about the memories?

What’s Expected of us? - Short and depressing. You have no free will

The life cycle of software objects - Super fascination look at AI if it developed and learned in real time. I was okay with it until at one point it tried to justify beastiality. I still loved it if you can exclude its brief paragraph.... but but where’s the end? I need the end. It doesn’t feel complete at all. It just ends so abruptly where is part 2. I need part 2. It ends just before it gets interesting.

Darcy’s Patent Automatic Nanny Meh - I didn’t really connect with this one. Depressing look into terrible father figures.

The truth of fact the truth of feeling - It was a couple of stories intertwined. It was interesting. Very very slow. I’m not sure I liked how it ended but an entertaining read.

The great silence - super short super interesting theory. Told from the view of a parrot wonder why humans keep searching for intelligent life like aliens, when they have yet to try to talk and learn about the parrots.

Omphalos. This one and probably the nanny one are my least favorite. This one is just so religious. And I’m not sure if the hypothesis that the scientist proposed at the end is really the big deal they make it out to be. Imagine the world is what god created it to be there is no evolution. The world is only 8k years old and we know for fact that god created stuff we have the old trees with no rings, we have Adam and Eve without belly buttons. Then we find out our planet was possibly a mistake or a practice planet for what god really wanted to do. Would that change anything?

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom - again I liked this one. This one you could look in a prism and visit alternate reality versions of your self after key decisions split who you would become. You can’t really act on any of the information but you could see the life you would have had.

Overall I enjoyed most of the stories and even the ones I didn’t enjoy as much were still interesting. I’d recommend this series to just about anyone.

...more

2 likes · Like · see review