I had high hopes for this novel when I started reading it, after having read The Martian and Project Hail Mary. But this isn’t a man-is-stuck-in-space-alone-and-needs-to-go-into-details-about-niche-science-knowledge themed book, so it feels outside of Weir’s really strong toolkit.
I enjoyed the mystery side of things, and the inevitable Weir-esque delves into the science of various processes. It’s like reading Neal Stephenson without the huge slowdown as the novel descends into treacly textbook-style explanations of the physics behind things.
All in all a decent novel that kept me mostly entertained.
My lovely friend Nick recommended this Andy Weir novel to me. I’d read The Martian previously, so jumped PHM immediately. I was in the depths of being frustrated with Shantaram at the time, so jumping onto something fun and interesting was an easy decision to make.
I loved the premise of the book, and the unlikely-hero trope. I found Grace frustrating as a character, but I get the feeling that I was meant to.
I enjoyed the thought that Weir put into the alien non-humanoid design and language, and their scientific limitations.
Largely an enjoyable book, and I look forward to the film.
I couldn’t do it. I don’t give up on many books. But with Shantaram I just couldn’t make it all the way through. I’ve never read a more unbelievable self-aggrandising autobiography. I got to when he’s in Afghanistan, and I completely lost interest.
I think there are things that you can learn about the world from reading Shantaram, but you need to filter out so much trash. The signal to noise ratio is not high enough.
I’m about a third of the way through Shantaram. Lots of people have told me that I need to read it, and that it’ll change my life. I’m always sceptical about bold claims. Especially life-changing ones. But now that I’m a third of the way through, I think that it will have a profound impact on my life. We’ll see. Stand by.
The thing I feel most confident about at the moment about Shantaram is that it’s an exercise in embellishment.
I really enjoyed the book, but I don’t think I understood what was going on while I was reading it, and probably not after I finished it either. But maybe now, a few weeks after, is it starting to congeal into something resembling an “aah…so that’s what was going on!”. Maybe. Probably not.
John’s (because we’re on first-name terms, obviously) writing style feels familiar, and there are several sentences in the book that wouldn’t be out of place slotted into a Mountain Goats song somewhere. This familiarity, though, lulled me into thinking that it would be a linear, and probably obvious, story that made sense. I was expecting more horror. I was expecting to be messed with more, psychologically. I didn’t expect to time-travel (not that the book is about time-travel) between generations, and across the country quite like it did.
I was confused for a lot of it once it moved away from the first story arc of the spliced in footage on the rental cassettes. But the writing style kept me reading, and I’m glad I persisted with it, even if I didn’t understand what was going on.
I reckon it’s a two or three star book. Same writing style with a story I understood and it would be a 4.5-er. I’m not blaming the author for me not understanding it, I should add.
I enjoy playing songs by The Mountain Goats. I enjoy listening to songs by The Mountain Goats. The songs are often deep, and dark, and touch on subjects that most of us have faced, but don’t talk about. Universal Harvester is by John Darnielle. The same John Darnielle who is the persistent (and often only) member, and primary songsmith, of The Mountain Goats. I didn’t realise that Darnielle was an author, but when my neighbour and fellow fan told me about it I really wasn’t surprised.
I’m half a dozen chapters in, and so far it’s dark. Bleak, even. I don’t often read scary books, but this is triggering some very deep fear responses from me, in a similar way to the animal masks in on of the seasons of the Danish/Swedish TV series Broen/Bron/The Bridge. Creepy AF.
