Ilya's Updates

Ilya has read 'Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall'

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 15:55:56 -0700

Ilya has read Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux

Ilya added 'The Beach'

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 17:15:07 -0700

Ilya has read The Beach (Paperback) by Alex Garland
terrific voice and narration. unreliable teller. pleasingly, endearingly so. short chapters, good action. loses velocity (for me) in the middle, yet also preserves its integrity. amazing someone so young wrote this.

Ilya added 'Other People's Money'

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 17:12:07 -0700

Ilya gave 5 stars to Other People's Money (Paperback) by Justin Cartwright
A totally engrossing, majorly entertaining book about, of all things, the financial crisis. Delightful to read. Both wry and also sympathetic towards human frailty. How come I'd never heard of Justin Cartwright before?

March 2025 - STILL SUPERB

Ilya is starting Other People's Money

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 17:11:17 -0700

Ilya is starting Other People's Money.

Ilya is currently reading 'Other People's Money'

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 10:01:36 -0700

Ilya is currently reading Other People's Money by Justin Cartwright

Ilya added 'The Da Vinci Code'

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 19:32:19 -0800

Ilya has read The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) by Dan Brown
oddly enough, considering its pulpy reputation, this a novel of *ideas*...a delivery system for the divine feminine, aimed at the broadest possible public. I enjoyed the digressions on early christianity and Leonardo and Newton, and the fast pace of the action, all these elements keep the book rolling along nicely for several hundred pages.

For me, the tale goes astray with plummy, ridiculous, Sir Leigh Teabing, who is the most cardboard member of an ensemble that is already pretty two-dimensional.

The book's greatest failing is highly ironic: there is only one female character of any significance, cute cryptologist Sophie Neveu. The story fails the Bechdel test, abjectly. Brown has little to say about the deeper meaning of the ideas he is offering. How would society be different if goddess worship had not been vigorously stamped out? And how would this book be different if Brown had written some female characters?

Ilya added 'Ordinary Thunderstorms'

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:05:00 -0800

Ilya has read Ordinary Thunderstorms (Paperback) by William Boyd
I really enjoyed this one. Boyd is maybe not the most natural thriller writer, but his sense of whimsy and playfulness propel the story. Lots to enjoy:

- Adam's daydreaming while watching the tiny triangle he soon would call home: "he thought, idly, that such a patch of land must be worth a tidy fortune...and he built, in his mind's eye, a three-storey wedge of a dozen, bijou, balconied apartments"

- Rich pharma exec Ingram Fryzer's attachment to the youngest of his three adult children, the only one who doesn't ask for money, the prematurely bald, burly, Fortunatus AKA Forty AKA Nate

One flaw, I suppose, is that we never find out who commissioned the company that hired the charismatic killer, Jonjo Case, or how they decided Philip Wang had to die.

The protagonist's background in climate science also ends up mattering hardly at all, the title notwithstanding.

The story reflects all the typically Boydian preoccupations: the sense of a life steered by winds and currents not in anyone's control, happy accidents, sex. The working class characters are much more caricaturish than the middles and uppers, somehow, though, at least with me, all that is forgivable.

Ilya has read 'The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between'

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 08:25:54 -0800

Ilya has read The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

Ilya added 'Intermezzo'

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 04:52:01 -0800

Ilya has read Intermezzo (Hardcover) by Sally Rooney

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Ilya added 'Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI'

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 04:37:17 -0800

Ilya has read Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Hardcover) by Yuval Noah Harari
phenomenal food for thought. I listened to the 'Armchair Expert' intvw first, so my view of the book is influenced by that, but whether pod or bound volume it's a delivery system to Harari's ideas about the changing pathways and unchanging nature of information.

more than anything else I have consumed, Harari's ideas about the role of information in shaping society, and the distinct threat of new kinds of information systems (AI)....offers something like an explanation for the ugly, ugly time we are living through.

I recommend.

I might read again. Harari's writing, his style of making an argument is so smooth it goes down almost too easy, I should take my time absorbing it. For example, the key concept of the book is the "information network," but I'm not sure I could explain what that is.