Book Group

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GregP Nov 2020 7:55am, 29 Nov 2020 123,920 posts	0 GregP Bum, sorry. Try again
GregP Nov 2020 7:58am, 29 Nov 2020 123,921 posts	0 GregP I read this waterstones.com last year and on Goodreads I said this: Faintly disappointing. I expected the book to render me better informed, or at least more aware of my ignorance and thirsty to learn. It seems to have done neither of these things, yet managed to leave me feeling melancholy. A wasted opportunity, and certainly not - at least for me - worthy of the considerable hype and buzz that surrounds the book.
Night-owl Nov 2020 2:43pm, 29 Nov 2020 35,054 posts	0 Night-owl j'ai fini
McGoohan Nov 2020 3:05pm, 29 Nov 2020 47,460 posts	0 McGoohan Zut alors!
Bazoaxe Nov 2020 4:29pm, 29 Nov 2020 18,261 posts	0 Bazoaxe I am on holiday from 19th December and so will try to make that the day I start the Christmas book
Columba Nov 2020 5:01pm, 29 Nov 2020 20,569 posts	0 Columba Looking forward to Chrisull's reviews of the two books which have blown his mind.
Night-owl Nov 2020 5:13pm, 29 Nov 2020 35,057 posts	0 Night-owl I already know the book I'm going to read in the new year. Which starts in Jan 2021
Sharkie Nov 2020 5:14pm, 29 Nov 2020 16,955 posts	0 Sharkie Chrisull is probs a lot cleverer or better educated than wot I am. I am finding 'my' physics book quite hard. It assumes rather more knowledge than I have - an O level more than 50 years ago. wordery.com
Sharkie Nov 2020 5:15pm, 29 Nov 2020 16,956 posts	0 Sharkie I refuse to be dimmer than our kid though (astrophysics at university).
Chrisull Nov 2020 7:56pm, 29 Nov 2020 16,980 posts	0 Chrisull I gave up all my lessons in science after GCSE (well excluding computer science), so the physics stuff is quite challenging, the 7 brief lessons apparently "informs", Reality is not what it seems, the latter is the longer book and the author started it before 7 brief lessons and finished it after. The chapters on Einstein and the explanations of the two theories of relativity (special and general) and how they supercede Newtonian physics are fascinating - I was reading it in conjunction with "how the hippies saved physics" which is definitely more technical - asking you to understand Bell's theorem , but both books totally spill over into my latest reading, How to change your mind (the history of psychedelics), because of being linked to consciousness... in fact I took the detour into: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Amanda Harris (because it was and is 99p on Kindle), she's a panpsychist pretty much (panpsychists believe all matter is "conscious" - and to be honest they're quite compelling), the book was good but way too short and not detailed enough. Some tantalising questions were raised, like are plants conscious - which pretty much seems to be yes they are, but the book swerved away from answering them fully, instead it was introduced as "window dressing" to answer the premise "define consciousness". But yeah all this started because of the KLF book and why they burned a million pounds, my choice holiday read when turning 50... and here I am questioning the nature of reality.