Welcome to Litsy!

#NewYearNewBooks Day 17: This looks like a #SciBreakthrough kind of book. Recent book haul from the Big Bad Wolf book fair in Sharjah. Here‘s the rest of my book haul (at least Part 2 of 3): https://wp.me/pDlzr-pYy

Chen (we are not told his other name) sees his parents killed by ball lightning while celebrating his 14th birthday. He dedicates his life to studying this phenomenon only to find that there are plans to weaponise it.

This is actually part of [The Three-Body Problem] universe, mainly taking place while the Trisolarians are watching Earth. If I'd known that I would have read it much earlier. As it is, I did find it dragged in places.

“What are new-­concept weapons?”

“Well, for example, in the Second World War, the Soviet army strapped explosives onto trained dogs and had them slip beneath German tanks. That was a new-­concept weapon, and an idea that still counts as a new concept even ­today."

??

For those who like a lot of science (even it it's partly made up) with their science fiction. This would have been a good precursor to the Three Body Problem series, but if I hadn't loved those books so much, I might not have been convinced to try this one. I admire Cixin Liu's attempts to answer the question: Just because we can, should we?
This was my #bookspin book for June! Yay! @TheAromaofBooks

Today‘s #audiowalk took me along the railway tracks.

So far, BALL LIGHTNING is pretty standard for Liu; ie, I like the science enough to keep going, but the characterization hasn‘t blown me away.

Finally! Here's my #BookSpin list and results for June! 😃 I've been wanting to read these books for a long time. I just dusted them off again the other day! So I am hoping to get both of them in this month! Yay!

@TheAromaofBooks

PS--I'm secretly glad that it's not 2 chunksters!

another book i read with a tutoring student. didn‘t love it & wouldn‘t recommend it, but it ended up better than i expected — although to be honest, my expectations were not high! 😅

I really enjoyed this story for its ability to write about incredibly complex scientific theories and possibilities in a way that could be understood easily.

The storyline itself was engaging and captivating, and with a little bit more character development it could easily have been a 5 star read for me.

#TBRChallenge #AudioBook #ABookThats

I really enjoyed “The Three Body Problem” trilogy so I had high hopes for “Ball Lightning”. It was fine. I enjoyed the architecture of the story. However, the characters felt very “wooden”. Some of that can be chalked up to the translation, which isn‘t great, but not all of it.

Trying to sneak a few pages in at work. Making the best out of no-shows.

When his parents are killed by ball lightning, 14-year-old Chen dedicates his life to researching the phenomenon. This leads him to military R&D, where he meets a fascinating woman obsessed with developing cutting-edge weapons. Characters are flat and world-building is sketchy, but I loved the hard SF, the far-out ideas, and the musings about entanglement of research and military applications. (Also the segue into TBP.) Reader, I devoured it.

Coffee and science fiction? Yes please 🤗

I picked up “Ball Lightning” because I loved Cixin Liu‘s Three Body trilogy. While this book doesn‘t rise to the rapturous heights of that series, it‘s still a fun little mindfuck. If you like your hard science with a quantum twist, you should check out this story of love, loss and mysterious scientific phenomenon.

If you enjoy hard science fiction with a quantum twist, you will enjoy this haunting story of loss, scientific obsession, science as a weapon, and of course, the mysterious phenomenon of ball lightning.

This is a book where the plot is driven by the science and the social implications come second. So realistic in tone that sometimes it was hard to believe it‘s fiction!

Making my way through this #audio will I put together the voting document for the book club. I am almost done, with only about 2 hours to go. I like parts of it, but it's kind of boring. The science portions are very dense but interesting, but the writing and main characters are so stiff.

I bailed and the only reason I can come up with is I'm just not in the mood for this one. I'll try again later.

"I came here in search of peace and quiet. The world down there is too damn frustrating!"

I'm about fifty pages in and so far I'm enjoying this book.