FrenchPolynesia

Playground | Richard Powers

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This book is great! The world is a playground and we are all playing. The ocean, friendship, oceanography, AI…this book is so true and what a great cast of characters. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. I‘m so pleased I finally loved a Pulitzer Prize winning book.😏😆 Social media and the internet and all that has changed for not only us but for the entire living world out there.

ImperfectCJ He actually won it for The Overstory, but if you're usually not a fan of authors who've won a Pulitzer, it's still notable. (I enjoyed The Overstory more than this one, although I liked this one a lot...mostly.) 1w

Kboltz @ImperfectCJ Ok so the Overstory won but hey I read a book from a Pulitzer Prize winner! Thanks for clearing that up for me! If I was patient enough to look up past Pulitzer winners I would have saw that!😂😂😂😂. I have that book and was told to read it..on my TBR 1w

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OneCent76

Playground | Richard Powers

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This book was read for my book club. It's a decent book but I didn't love it. It's a lot of short stories, in my opinion. They were good but I'm not sure how they all connected except for the ocean.

Leniverse Yeah, I wasn't fond of that one. I could see how it was all connected, but I didn't like it 😒 1w

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Hilary427

Playground | Richard Powers

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This book will stay with me for a long, long time. I really liked the first 75% of The Overstory, but then it lost me. This book is not like that. I can‘t really articulate all the things it made me think, and feel. And the vote at the end? Every point was valid, and true! So good. (But I do think Rafi kinda sucked). (20)
⭐️: 4.5/5

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Robotswithpersonality

Playground | Richard Powers

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Well, I just found out the thing I'm even less prepared for than an ending which seems to offer no hope or redemption, is one that makes you think it will be somewhat happy and then turns out to be a lie.
If you felt blank after Death of the Author, if you felt angry after Atonement, I don't think you're going to like this ending. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? I can see how Richard Powers wanted this to be a powerful statement about how racism is deleterious to all of humanity, how colonialism and capitalism continue to contribute to global environmental destruction, the current crisis our oceans face, and the threat posed by AI unfettered and managed by those with primarily profit-seeking motives.
Unfortunately, this kind of statement can easily be demoralizing rather than galvanizing, and that's 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 3/? where I'm landing in overall tone.
Powers, you made me care about people that you then kind of threw away:
Maybe Ina managed a full life with her adopted kids though in retrospect there's only one paragraph of a letter to prove it; Evelyne's queer identity is shuttered while she exists in a hetero-platonic marriage that leaves her eternally guilty and her ambition is historically accurately hampered by decades of sexism in her field of (edited) 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 4/? science, only to see her more successful efforts at outreach pale in comparison to the steady decline of oceanic conditions, though I guess she did get to die in a dive as she wished; Rafi is first nearly totalled by the tragedies of his youth and then, likely unable to maintain the connection with lover and friend because of that trauma, dies alone?!, and Todd, so far astray from that lonely 10 year old, with no clear notion whether his 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 5/? life's work had damned mankind, asks an AI to tell him a bedtime story while still missing yet separated from his only friends, in a state of swift decline that is heart-wrenching to read if you've ever had a loved one diagnosed with dementia.
While there's an emotional impact to the way this story is told, how well it is written, now that it has come to that conclusion I just feel sort of hollow. (edited) 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 6/6 This is my second Powers. I was undecided after The Overstory. I think my mind's made up after this one. I hope his writing continues to be beautiful and gets in the hands of those who will take his messages to heart, without simultaneously suffering EMOTIONAL DAMAGE. 😭 I'm done.
⚠️Detailed descriptions of experiences with Dementia with Lewys bodies, domestic abuse, child abuse, child death, mention of miscarriage, animal death, racism 1mo

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Robotswithpersonality

Playground | Richard Powers

And this is why I always eventually find my way back to poetry, because there are those that make me “feel like a comet had just screamed across the sky“...“

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Robotswithpersonality

Playground | Richard Powers