August 2015 Book Club Book: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Discussion in 'TMB Book Club' started by The Blackfish, Jul 31, 2015.

  1. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    [​IMG]

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22816087-seveneves

    http://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Nov...UTF8&qid=1438353885&sr=8-1&keywords=seveneves

    Arkie Proud prerecordedlive Truman
     
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  2. NCHusker

    NCHusker We named our yam Pam. It rhymed.
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    Yeah this sounds sweet. I'm (finally) reading 11/22/63 right now but I'll jump in when I'm done
     
  3. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Nice. Will probably start this afternoon
     
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  4. Arkie Proud

    Arkie Proud The Dungeon Master
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    Stickied.

    THIS IS NOW THE OFFICIAL BOOK CLUB BOOK FOR AUGUST 2015.

    We're back, baby.
     
  5. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I'm about to finish the 4th Dresden Files book on audiobook (1 hour left), then I'm going to listen to this audiobook while I keep reading the Malazan series on my kindle.
     
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  6. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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  7. prerecordedlive

    prerecordedlive Sworn Enemy of Standard Time
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    In. Just gonna finish up All the Light first.
     
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  8. laxjoe

    laxjoe Well-Known Member
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    In. Just about done with my latest book and I'll jump on this this weekend
     
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  9. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

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  10. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

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  11. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    calibre is your friend.
     
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  12. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Yeah I know, was joking. Although I really don't mind reading on iBooks.
     
  13. Gin Buckets

    Gin Buckets Well-Known Member
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    Pretty legit for audiobooks, right? If you're only looking just to pass time/be entertained it's about as solid as there is.
     
  14. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    Yeah I'm really enjoying them. They fly by.
     
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  15. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    KJROD20 I was about to tag you (guess I still did) then I saw that you were viewing the thread so I guess this is a useless post anyway.
     
  16. KJROD20

    KJROD20 the ends will justify the means.
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    Yes I'm in. I'm on vacation this week so I'll finish the Mitch Rapp book I started and jump in Monday.
     
  17. Lorne Malvo

    Lorne Malvo Aces!
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    This sounds fun. Finishing a book now, but will start this after. IN
     
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  18. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    Got excited and went ahead and bought the audio book.
     
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  19. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Too late now, but it's on ipt
     
  20. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I have an audible subscription so I just used my credit. I don't know how to make torrance audiobooks sync to all my devices like I can for ebooks, so I just use audible
     
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  21. Blackterno

    Blackterno Well-Known Member
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    Sweet. I didn't know we were back with the book club. This book looks good.
     
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  22. Arkie Proud

    Arkie Proud The Dungeon Master
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    It happened like 11 hours ago. :)
     
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  23. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Started reading it, very intriguing premise has me hooked. One minor early beef that really isn't a spoiler so I won't spoiler it: you make 2 important, dynamic science-minded FEMALE characters and give them important roles of leadership and then their first bits of dialogue away from the group.... Is catty talk about a wedding and mother in law drama? Really? The moon just fucking exploded and your alpha females turn into sorority sisters?
     
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  24. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Til;dr it's Deep Impact. But without the happy ending got it. Also Dubois is a poor man's NdGT
     
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  25. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    This Luk and Vestibule shit better be super duper important or he just wasted 5 minutes of my life describing the inner workings of something he invented.

    Book is a poor man's The Martian so far.
     
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  26. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    so far very unimpressed with the frequent data dumping. Reading as huge sections of a sci-if encyclopedia. The best sci-fi books give you this info as part of the story or dialogue so you don't get these massive data dumps which are painful to read. Like stop spending 3 fucking paragraphs describing Sean Probst's convertible space ship in pure data dumping unless it's vital to the story. Just bad writing IMO.
     
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  27. Lorne Malvo

    Lorne Malvo Aces!
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  28. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]

    Beginning was good but now I feel like at times I'm reading an encyclopedia, I assume that will get better.

    It's also tough because my last series I just finished was the Stormlight Archives which is phenomenal. So tough to compare.
     
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  29. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    And Dubie = Niel Degrasse Tyson
     
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  30. Gin Buckets

    Gin Buckets Well-Known Member
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    I literally finished Armada a few minutes ago, will go ahead and get this. Encyclopedia comment has me :ohnoes: a little bit though.
     
  31. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    On part two now ~30% in, I'll say that when he sticks to advancing plot and dialogue the book is a much better read. It's when he invents some spacestation architectural structure and describes it over 2-3 paragraphs that my eyes glaze over. That HAS gotten better IMO as he invents less as he goes along.

    It is heavy with real science and pseudo-science (scifi) fwiw. Way less math than The Martian, but much more spacecraft and scifi focused.

    praise the Seven Sisters he jumped forward a year, shit was getting monotonous.
     
    #32 RonBurgundy, Aug 3, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2015
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  32. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Im in line with RonBurgundy . Im enjoying it, but it really does get bogged down in the details. I hope there is a payoff.
     
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  33. Lorne Malvo

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    These types of posts have me questioning if I even want to read this book tbqh.
     
  34. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Dont let that turn you off. As I said, Im enjoying it, and am just frustrated we spend time on minutiae because Im excited to advance the plot along. Im not sure I made it sound any better - but I guess IM just saying the story is good and has me hooked to see what happens.
     
  35. BB3

    BB3 watch our for your cornhole bud...
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    I'm in. Just finished All the Light & Girl on the Train.

    I'm one chapter into Armada. Should I finish or read this?
     
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  36. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Read this so you can participate :twocents:
     
  37. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    It got better.

    Ex-President showing up? Awwwww yeah. Trying to kill Dinah? Awwwww hell yeah.
     
  38. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    But then there's shit like this. Buzzzzzkilll. Right in the middle of an exciting part too.
    “Their orbits, for now, were of low eccentricity, meaning that they were nearly circular. However, the vast number of chaotic interactions within the White Sky had spawned a diversity of orbits. Some of those orbits were highly eccentric, meaning that their apogees might be far away, but their perigees were close to the Earth: close enough to get caught up in its atmosphere or to strike it directly.”
     
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  39. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Trying to read over my lunch break.

    I don't want to discourage people from reading a book club book, but I honestly can't recommend this book. It's not awful but I wouldn't recommend other people read it. No spoiler version but There's a really exciting thing about to happen and the last 13(exaggerated) pages are the most boring shit possible describing this spaceship they are building and discussing the delta vee/ mass ratios/ amount of propellant needed to make the thing work, except not wound into plot or discussed from characters, but rather just the author describing it. It's like The Martian except fucking boring/awful.

    When stuff like this isn't occurring, I enjoy the book.
     
    #40 RonBurgundy, Aug 5, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2015
  40. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Finished part one just now during lunch. I am liking it better than Mr Burgundy.

    It does get bogged down in details, but IM still super curious were we are going with it all.
     
  41. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    See, I will agree it gets more exciting/interesting plot wise, but the incessant details totally take me out of the story. Therefore, it's not engrossing for me. I want to find out what happens but I feel like I'm wading through ponds of cowshit to find a bucket worth of golf balls.

    Now, this is EXACTLY the point of the book club, reading things you dont normally read and why you like or dislike them, so that's why I hope people still read it.
     
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  42. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    At its core, I fucking love this book.

    They, in essence, hijacked a fucking comet with a nuclear reactor and are flying it back to a massive jerry rigged tinker toy starship with the plan to take everything to live in a giant canyon on the face of a chunk of the moon.

    So fucking great, what an amazing plot.

    Old President JBF can Goooo fucccck herself as we'd say on the husker board gbr nfm.
     
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  43. Gin Buckets

    Gin Buckets Well-Known Member
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    I find it hard as fuck to pay attention while listening. It's like I'm in class. That said, I like his prose, but he just talks about shit that hardly seems to drive the plot forward in any shape or form. If it sticks to this shit for the rest of the book, I'll never read another one of his again. It's a bummer, because he's a talented writer, he just needs to focus on the plot more.

    I don't need to be convinced a sci-fi book is realistic. It's Sci-Fi, I got it, no need to get into some of this shit.
     
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  44. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    It's gotten much better and more fun. I just finished Ymir chapter (57%) and there was two synchronous plot lines that were both exciting. It's a great book, just horribly and brutally written at times.
     
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  45. laxjoe

    laxjoe Well-Known Member
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    Finally started it today. About 20% in. I'm so thrown by these long chapters. So many of the books I've read this summer have been made up of short chapters, it's weird having chapters of 80+ pages (on the Kindle).

    But seriously, I'm enjoying it so far. Thanks for the suggestion The Blackfish
     
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  46. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    I hate it, but have gotten use to it.
     
  47. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    This has become a fascinating and enjoyable book.

    holy shit, the 3 year jump and deaths of 90% of the human race has just completely changed the tone of the book. Unreal. Was skeptical about the sudden change, but boy does it really change the entire mood and feel of the book.

    I am just getting to where the remaining Swarm is going to join up, still super nervous about JBF/Aida crew. I think there's something fishy up with them. Why didn't JBF do any talking? What happened to the Mars expedition? Can't wait to finish now.

    Edit - ohhhhh fucccck me Aida's a bad bitch!
     
    #48 RonBurgundy, Aug 7, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2015
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  48. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    On chapter 3. Intrigued so far.
     
  49. RonBurgundy

    RonBurgundy Well-Known Member

    Oh boy, I'm in the A+5000 chapter, we're in some good sci-fi shit now!
     
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