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A lot of the discussion on this refers to the hazy boundaries between fiction and nonfiction: most of the book's sections focus on a 20th-century physicist or mathematician and become increasingly fictional as they go. So what starts as an almost textbook-like description of scientific breakthroughs for lay persons becomes more focused on the scientists as people, with insanity becoming an occupational hazard as they isolate themselves to work 👇

This looked like a little harmless science biography. Wasn't. Turned dark in a hurry. Never brightened up either. The revered names that have always brought comfort and stability to my musings led bizarre lives that are just horrible to think about. But Labatut also gives some of the best explanations ever of the realities of the quantum world. It is an eye-opening and landmark work on the origins of modern physics. Just don't read it at night.

Troubling concepts & troubled minds, math & physics mysteries. Where does history end & fiction begin? Like WG Sebald, trains of thought. Quantum physics & impossibility of knowing. Nitrogen fertilizer & atom bombs. Night gardeners. Sorrowful, arrogant uncertainty. Trans. 2020.

P159 “When Bohr returned from his holiday, Heisenberg told him that there was an absolute limit to what we could know about the world.”
P176 “We should be wary of plants.”

A really unique read - Labatut seamlessly meshes historical fact and some fiction into a riveting set of stories, each detailing a particular troubled genius who contributed to the golden age (and its dark consequences) of quantum mechanics, with side forays into chemistry, mathematics, religion, and psychology. Eg, what to think of Fritz Haber, who harnessed nitrogen to fertilize/feed the world but also introduced poison gas to modern warfare?

My dear friend @iread2much sent me this book as a gift. I knew I was going to love it from the first paragraph which wove cyanide, Nazis, and particle physics into a magical tale. I was stunned by depth and beauty of Labatut‘s writing. This book cannot be categorized; not quite fiction, history, science, or biography. It‘s something completely novel. Labatut wrote a fractal or Fibonacci swirl into being! Loved it! 🖤

I loved this book - the most interesting and propulsive books I‘ve read in a long time. It goes through the lives and thoughts of famous physicists and mathematicians in the WWI and WW2 time period - Einstein, Bohrs, Heisenberg etc…how their discoveries impacted them, their obsessive thoughts and how their theories changed the understanding of the world and led to unplanned consequences and how they cope.

My favorite boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, are touring Europe at the moment. I‘ve been following Flea on Instagram and I love that in between kicking ass on his bass on stage each night, he‘s reading awesome books.

Today's quarterfinal match at The Morning News Tournament of Books: No One Is Talking About This vs. When We Cease to Understand the World.

I can't get into all of my issues with No One Is Talking About This without getting spoilery, but suffice it to say it ultimately felt scattered and shallow to me, and I am puzzled by all the praise for it. Why is it on so many longlists? I cannot tell you.

Today at the Morning News Tournament of Books: When We Cease to Understand the World vs. The Book of Form and Emptiness.

When We Cease to Understand the World takes the form of a series of vignettes about real-life scientists -- it is about a quest for knowledge and the unhappiness that an obsessive quest can bring. It was massively interesting but sometimes puzzling as to where the line between fiction and non-fiction was drawn.

BOOKMAIL!!!!!!

Don't think I ever move as fast as when the doorbell rings with a book package! 🥰

This unusual book from the #ToB22 list is a fictionalized account of real scientific discoveries. I loved this novel (though I'm not sure it ought to be called a novel), especially the story surrounding Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

5th book finished for the #FabulousFebruary readathon. @Andrew65

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

Labatut himself summaries his book as follows: “This book is about what happens when we reach the edges of science; when we come face to face with what we cannot understand. It is about what occurs to the human mind when it pushes past the outer limits of thought, and what lies beyond those limits.”

The result is an intens, uncomfortable and intriguing book.

#ToB22 #pop22 #ConstellationOnCover

Schrödinger published an article showing that his procedure and Heisenberg‘s were mathematically equivalent. Applied to a problem, they gave the exact same results. They were merely two ways of approaching an object, but his had the immense advantage of being intuitively comprehensible. There was no need to tear out one‘s eyes to look at subatomic particles, as young Heisenberg liked to say: all you had to do was close them and imagine.

I really wanted to like this book. It seems like it should have been right up my alley. I wonder if an audio version would work better for me. The font type kept tripping me up! (That's a sentence I've never said before.) The subject matter was dense and the type was squished together. 25% of the way through I had to stop. I also don't see it going far in the #TOB22 so I was fine with bailing.

In a medical examination on the eve of the Nuremburg Trials, the doctors found the nails of Hermann Göring‘s fingers and toes stained a furious red, the consequence of his addiction to dihydrocodeine, an analgesic of which he took more than one hundred pills a day.

#FirstLineFridays

This was an excellent start to the year!
8 #tob books
2 book club books
7 audiobooks
7 physical books
1 ebook
3 nonfiction
12 fiction

#januarywrapup #januaryreads #monthlywrapup

I HATE spoilers, so much so that I skim blurbs/reviews. I went in blind to this which quickly became “WHAT in the world am I reading!?” Reviews were read, which then helped my comprehension. Never will I ever understand quantum mechanics, but to imagine the fictional lives of the real people whose brilliance changed the world was a transformative reading experience. The down to earth ending was my favorite part and brought it home for me. #ToB22

Interesting and gripping book, I couldn‘t put it down when I began to read it. It is packaged like a bunch of essays narrating the journeys of some of the most important discoveries in physics and chemistry by top scientists in the last century. A couple of the stories were really odd but later did I find out that they are part fictitious.

Oof where do I start? I feel like the fact that I didn‘t like this book is a personal failure. It‘s an NYT top 10 and an Obama pick!! Maybe I shouldn‘t have done it on audio, maybe I‘m not smart enough. It seemed like such a great concept, but it was just not for me. Tagging one more nit as a spoiler in the comments.

Bottom of the #TOB22 list for me.

This book is definitely not going to be for everyone. Personally, I loved being unsure at times what might be fact and what might be fiction. With a background in science, a lot of it I knew was real and other parts that I was unsure about I just let myself get caught up in the madness.

There's a genius to the writing style and I feel if you're going to read it, it's best to go in blind and just let your mind unravel as the story does. #ToB2022

1. I only read on my phone if I'm stuck somewhere without a book. It's a great backup. 😀

2. I won a 7 inch color Nook from my local library's summer reading program in 2012 and I've faithfully used it since. At some point I might need to update, but for now it works. Tagged book is my current ebook read.

#Two4Tuesday thank you for the tag @TheSpineView

Wanna play? @Nute @Nebklvr @TheNeverendingTBR @readordierachel

I knew nothing about this book (other than it‘s on the #tob shortlist) before I started. I had to stop and check that I had the right book. This is fiction, right?

Starting from true accounts of important discoveries in math and physics, the book then explores via fiction the philosophical underpinnings of science. And how madness can ensue.

Unsure about it until the very end, I realized I loved it. It made me understand the world differently.

When I look back, I'm very happy with my reading year, and yet here's my personal reading canon for 2021. Different stories, different fates, different thinking, styles and depictions of the different worlds … but since I read it, my absolutely favorite still remains When We Cease to Understand the World.

This is pretty freaki‘ brilliant. You know that game two truths and a lie…well this is it‘s literary equivalent. I see a comparison to the Lockwood novel Nobody is Talking About This, and I‘m a fan of both. In a world of skewed reporting and all types of social media evils this quiet book has a lot to say buried under all the scientific jargon. While you may feel enlightened by this book you need to stop and wonder, what more do I really know?

What a fantastic, unusual book! This reads as a series of essays about the lives of scientists as they are making discoveries, among other things, all while blurring the lines between fiction and fact. It‘s completely fascinating and I‘m delighted it‘s on the NBA shortlist for translated lit. It belongs there!

Total mind**** for me!

This book takes major scientific discoveries and fictionalizes some stories about their founders. That said, I have done enough science reading over the years to know that some of the more outlandish stories are actually TRUE. So this book had me connecting and processing until I went mad. Perhaps someone coming in cold would enjoy it more. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Interesting but VERY frustrating.

The #audiobook narration is great!

I‘m really enjoying seeing everyone‘s #Top21of21! Thanks so much for the tags @squirrelbrain , @Graywacke , and @merelybookish ! This was REALLY hard to whittle down to 21 ( I started with 53), and I‘m cheating a little, since I‘m not quite done with the tagged book, but it would absolutely be on this list if I were (and now I don‘t have to figure out who to boot off).

@Librariana I‘d love to see your favorite reads of the year!

I think that this has to be one of the most intelligent, challenging and unusual books that I‘ve ever read. There were parts that I didn‘t understand, and didn‘t dare to look up in case I felt even more stupid (!) but I still really enjoyed it.

I can completely see how it has made the #ToBshortlist. It‘s not my ‘favourite‘ in terms of reading enjoyment but I‘m interested to see what it comes up against and how far it goes.

I didn't catch this book when it was on the International Booker list, but when it was named a finalist for the translated lit category of the National Book Award, I finally decided to give it a go, especially once I found the audio in Hoopla and it was under 6 hours.↘️

I listened to this on Hoopla, and although the narrator was excellent, I still would like to reread it in print. The author tells stories of famous scientists and their discoveries. Parts of the stories are true, but other parts are invented. I kept wanting to stop and search for the factual stories. The author‘s method does have much to say about the pursuit of knowledge. Very absorbing.

I wasn't quite sure how to review this book or even explain what it's about. A nonfiction novel? Novelised nonfiction? I have no idea, but it is extremely my shit. The prose is rhythmic and compelling; a jolt to the mind. You follow the unpredictable path of the narrative that takes you through groundbreaking scientists and mathematicians who found that getting closer to the truths of existence also means playing a part in destroying it.

I finally settled down and read this. I rarely agree with cover quotes, but ‘monstrous and brilliant‘ may be a pretty good description!

This takes a mainly-fictional look at the scientists and mathematicians working at the edge of knowledge in the early 20th century; their impact on war and life and death; and the impact of science and war on

Translated lit is alive and well. When We Cease to Understand the World is a clever, moving collection of stories about science, math, and the existential crisis of what it‘s like when we reach the edge of our ability to comprehend the world around us. I won‘t pretend to have understood all the quantum mechanics, but I loved the blurred lines between fact and fiction. These stories captured in a very real way the anxiety of a world in crisis

April was dedicated to the Booker longlist. One book, which was also my doublespin, didn‘t arrived in time ... It was good reading month, and my favourite is the tagged book.
#bookspin https://litsy.com/p/aGpUdGNjamw2

My official #InternationalBookerPrize2021 shortlist before the official judges shows their selection 🤓

The content of this book revolves around quantum physics, mathematics, and complicated minds/geniuses that have pushed the boundaries in understanding the world. The first chapter, about various inventions, leaves a bitter taste - the question of human nature, which manages to turn almost all inventions into something bad. In the following chapters, the focus is on individual important personalities from science and on the birth of ... 👇