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Albear Beroz albearberoz — How I Came To Read This Book: I had been recommended it by a few people, with the premise of 'Harry Potter goes to college' being too good to pass on. I nabbed a copy at my used bookstore (which is amazeballs) using my book credits. Summary: Quentin is a genius, but he's also kinda miserable - everything seems so mundane compared to the fantasy world of Fillory he grew up with and he's tired of being the sidekick to his friends Julia & James. Everything changes however, on an afternoon when he's meant to be conducting a college interview and instead ends up at a bizarre examination at what appears to be some sort of magical college. Not-really-a-spoiler alert, but Quentin gets in. About 60% of the book is about his five years at Breakbills, followed by a brief interlude as to what happens post-college (to regular grads too, I might add), and then a magical, mysterious, bloody journey that Quentin had thought he was dreaming of...but is woefully taken aback by. The Good & The Bad: If I had to sum up this book in two words, it would be 'So what?' I spent a good deal of the book - particularly as I got close to the end - thinking those very words. I've been studying novel writing quite closely over the last year and this book seemed to have difficulty adhering to the whole three plot point concept, with the aforementioned 60% of the book containing very little that pertained to the remaining 40%. I was surprised that we flew through Quentin's college years so quickly, yet at the same time in some ways they crawled by slowly as Lev Grossman zooms in extremely closely at some times and then skips over an entire semester at others. It was weird. There were all these little moments and incidents that made me think - okay, so what are we building to? What is the big threat here? (Logically it's the Beast, who does make its appearance right at the first plot point timing, but still, it was such a non-entity for the following sections that it was just kinda like, okay...) Who cares about Welters? What was the point of Quentin and Julia's encounter? That's the one that's niggling at me the most. That and all the sh*t Quentin went through at school (including his recognition of the hill in the mirror, and his Antarctic trek). I also didn't really dig the characters. While I appreciate a flawed bunch of humans, this batch was particularly detestable and arrogant, to put it mildly. I just didn't like them or really care for them, including Quentin and Alice (the latter of which is certainly the most sympathetic character of the bunch). There were some interesting things here so I won't completely pan it, but for a book I'd been looking forward to reading for quite some time (it was #67 on my 500+ to-read list!) I was more than a little let down. The Bottom Line: Harry Potter at college? Not nearly as magical. Anything Memorable?: Not really, although for HP fans there is a Harry Potter reference slid in here. 60-Book Challenge?: Book #1 in 2015

Rémi Bigot _emi_igot — In Which the Emphasis is on Androids Who Grasp the Twin Handles of Empathy "Deus sive substantia sive natura": Spinoza Just as in the animal kingdom there is a continuum between humans and animals, there is a continuum in this novel that incorporates humans, androids and electric animals, the main difference being that the latter two are artificial or human constructs. Here, the androids are organic and sentient. They are not purely electrical or mechanical robots infused with artificial intelligence. They are technically alive, and closer to humans than to electric sheep. The proximity to humans means that a test is required to differentiate them. The test that emerges is based on the capacity for empathy. Predatory animals have no empathy, because they would not eat, if they were concerned about the feelings of their prey. Thus, Dick posits that real humans must either be herbivores, or omnivores who can regulate or turn off their appetite for meat. Because the Nexus 6 androids are manufactured by a commercial entity, the aim is for their product to satisfy the test for human qualities. The more precise the tests become, the more sophisticated and human the androids become. What Nexus 6 cannot achieve, Nexus 7 will. The problem is that the androids can still be permitted or programmed to be predatory. The more they can escape detection, the greater the threat to mankind. Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who is one of the few safeguards between humanity and predatory androids. His function is to identify and kill androids who have returned to Earth from Mars (because they have been deemed to be predatory). To perform his function, he has to overcome his own empathy, which he does on the basis that you can kill something that would be your killer, more or less out of actual or anticipatory self-defence. It becomes more problematical when the android has breasts, even if they are small, she is 18, the rest of her body is relatively childlike and she is seductive in her own right. The challenge for Deckard is whether to terminate or fornicate and, if both, in which order. Needless to say, he adopts a typical curious, but practical, male approach to his predicament. At first, Rachael doesn’t know she is an android, then, when detected by Deckard, like most cyber- or fantasy-women, she denies that she is either alive or human. Hence, like most cyber-relationships, the concern of the novel is to determine the point at which the inorganic becomes organic, and the intelligent becomes human. The novel’s drama lies in the grey area in the middle of the continuum. Despite the fact that they have sex, the question for Deckard is whether, in the absence of sufficient empathy, he must kill his sexual partner. This question arises on most weekend mornings around the world, usually in the mind of the woman (who as at the date of this review is rarely an android). Fortunately for guys, they are able to escape before the female fires a shot from her laser gun. It’s just that here, in the novel, the question is reversed, which means that a common or garden variety of male might procrastinate on the termination option in case he does not have evidence that would stand up to judicial scrutiny. Some reviews of the novel suggest that there is a flaw in the plot, in that Rachael appears to have empathy, even though she has learned that she is an android. My reading is that she is the first of a breed of android who is empathetic. She says she loves Deckard and, when he returns to his wife after killing all of her android friends, she kills his goat (in the absence of a rabbit). This is the vengeful act of a human, not an un-empathetic android. Hence, human constructs have reached the point where, if not “human”, they deserve to be treated as human, the test being whether a male would fornicate with them (although as at the date of this review, this test needs to be fine-tuned in some cities and rural environs). Dick is a profoundly philosophical writer whose novel cautions men to love their woman more than their goat and, if they don’t have a goat, to love them more than their sheep. If your lover is an android and you do the right thing by her, then hopefully she won’t dream of electric sheep (because this would be non-aspirational). Dick is equally concerned with the public and private aspects of modern life. Here, as in the case of Chandler and Hammett, the world of the private Dick is so imaginatively drawn that a film-maker of the profile of Ridley Scott would have enough content with which to imagine a totally different plot that could take place in the same world with the same characters (whether or not he had read the book or the treatment). There is very little resemblance between the novel and the film “Blade Runner”, which is one of my top five favourite films and, on a good day, could knock “Casablanca” from its #1 perch. No matter how much you might enjoy the director’s cut, the author’s cut is superlative, if not necessarily inferior or superior. The progeny of this novel is worth consuming in any and all of their manifestations. SOUNDTRACK: Vangelis - "Blade Runner" (Movie Theme) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VgNoK... Vangelis - "Memories of Green" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBkMVe... "She's a Replicant" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWPyRS... "Tears in the Rain" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU7Ga7... Rutger Hauer Discusses "Blade Runner" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7KYsE... Brian Eno & David Byrne - "Quran" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUh8Ck... White Zombie - "More Human Than Human" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0E0yn... Fear Factory - "Replica" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RJsRQ... "Moments Lost" - Music & Art inspired by "Blade Runner" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFCnJ-... http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/6/507... www.indiegogo.com/projects/moments-lost