Tremmpleton Family Book Reviews: The Redemption of Time

Hi everyone! Here is another Tremmpleton Family book review! However, this time it is just Michael writing since he is the only one who read this.

The Redemption of Time by Baoshu is an "unofficial" fourth book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past series (or... the Three Body Problem series), which was a fantastic sci-fi epic that won many awards. The first book in the series was the first ever written by an Asian writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. I read it and loved it, though the level of existential dread and/or loneliness it inspired did make it hard at times to get through (but really, it may sound odd but that's what makes it good in my opinion!). The original series definitely has serious problems, which I allude to in relation to the issues in the Redemption of time, which are mostly the same but, in my opinion, more damning.

If you haven't read the Three Body Problem books and you really love hard sci-fi, do it! If you don't like them, it should be pretty clear before you finish the first book. If you fall deep into the story like I did, pick up this book when you are done and give it a read. It doesn't match up to the original trilogy in any positive way, but it does add to it and make for an enjoyable read for anyone invested in this world.



I've tried to make the following review more digestible to someone who hasn't read the series (there are also some minor spoilers!) but this is probably most useful to someone who already knows the Three Body Problem books (and, as I said, this is really who I think should be reading this story anyway).

The Redemption of Time is both an extended epilogue to the Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy and also greatly expands on the details regarding the story of a secondary (though critically important) character, Yun Tianming, taking place concurrently with the original trilogy. In particular, it details his experience as a captor of the alien race called the Trisolarans. These details further contextualize several aspects of the original Trilogy, mostly for the better but sometimes I felt the details cheapened the original story (see below). The story picks up more or less where the original trilogy leaves off, with Yun and his soon-to-be lover, AA, marooned on "Planet Blue". Yun recants his past adventures to AA, and the reader learns about Yun's interaction with the mysterious "Spirit". It ends up that Yun is a part of a Universe-scale war waged since the beginning of time!

The core concept of this intergalactic shadow war waged since the Big Bang is very interesting and I really enjoyed the new perspectives it offers the reader on the ideas explored in the original trilogy (particularly the "Dark Forest" theory). Most of the additional details the reader learns about the adventures of Yun add to the original story positively, though I felt some details were superfluous and really took me out of the story. For example (spoiler here!), there is an alien artificial intelligence in the original story that takes the form of a woman. It is revealed that this form was taken from Yun Tianming's mind so she has the form of the porn star he was obsessed with in his youth. He doesn't say this specifically, but it is implied... and a quick google search shows that she is actually a real life person. I found this detail completely unnecessary and also pretty gross and weird (why did the author make it a real person!?). Details like this take the reader out of the story unnecessarily (as it did me!) and cheapens the overall experience.

The main issue with this story is that, unlike the original trilogy, it is very focused on two specific characters, Yun Tianming and AA. When reading the Remembrance Trilogy, I regarded character development as by far the weakest aspect of the story, but the nature of the story made that a minor grievance. To me, it was Humanity that was the main character and the reader regards their history through the eyes of a few characters. The characters were not dynamic, but that was ok because I felt more like I was reading a book recanting the future history of the Human race. I do not have this feeling about this story. Yun Tianming is clearly the main character, yet as a character he is quite weak. There is little personal development, nor does it feel as if his flaws or personal challenges are driving the narrative at all. Rather, he feels more like a plot device meant to drive the bigger story, which I grant is a very interesting one. Some of the more minor characters felt more developed and interesting by comparison, such as a couple of aliens responding to the destruction of their civilization.

Another shortcoming, which is shared by the original trilogy, is how the story handles female characters (and the concept of femininity all together). Femininity is stereotypically associated with love, caring, and overall weakness. This was a recurring theme in the Remembrance Trilogy and, while it is actually less of an issue all together in Redemption of Time, it is made blatantly obvious. For example, AA has a PhD in astronomy and yet one would ever know this by the way her character behaves. Were it not for a few direct reminders put in for the reader, it really would never have come up. The first half of this story is meant to not only expand on Yun's past adventures, but to develop the relationship between him and AA. Not only does it fail to do this because of poor character development and dialog, but AA as a character feels flat and pointless to the story. Her only role, it seems, is to provide a companion for Yun to be naked with on the lonely Planet Blue, a fact that the reader is repeatedly reminded of for little reason. Many of the interactions between Yun and AA, particularly the intimate ones, ended up taking me out of the story and feeling as if I were reading the fan fiction of a horny college boy (which, given that this was originally fan fiction is probably not entirely untrue). At best these details were unnecessary and at worst they further betray the misogyny inherent in the book and really the entire series.

Overall, I enjoyed this book for the creative concept it put forth for the origin and future of the Universe, and because I was already heavily invested in the world developed in the original Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. Yet there are seriously flaws in the story that definitely hindered my overall experience and would, I think, make it pretty unpalatable to any reader not already invested in the series.

Tremmpleton Family Book Reviews: Becoming by Michelle Obama

Hi Everyone! For this post we will be doing another book review for Becoming, the memoir from Michelle Obama, whom we are going to assume needs little introduction.

We read this book together on Audible, read by Michelle Obama herself. It took us a while (to Carrie's frustration... remember she's been reading >100 books per year lately! She is used to going fast...) because we primarily listen in the car. Without a big trip happening, our listening was confined mostly to the drive to/from work (~15-20 minutes per day) and to/from the grocery story (~30 min total each weekend). Michael also is not quite as good at listening to audiobooks as Carrie, who can go at 1.75x speed or even faster on her own. For this, Michael convinced Carrie to keep it at 1.5x speed, which was still a bit fast for him. The difference in speed preference aside, we do enjoy listening to audiobooks together and will probably be posting about some more in the future!

Keeping in mind that both of us are pretty liberal and fans of the Obama's, we really enjoyed the book, which told the story of Michelle's upbringing on the south side of Chicago through her time as First Lady of the United States and everything in between.  There were a lot of things neither of us knew about both Obamas and things that occurred in the background of President Obama's Senate and Presidential campaigns. Overall it was an incredibly interesting read!

Michelle grew up in a working class family and attended a prestigious high school and college (Princeton). While her educational path does feel somewhat normal for someone of such social stature, her perspective is refreshing, as literally no one writing from her position as a former First Lady also understand first hand the struggles of middle and lower class families of color. The challenges she faced, both externally and internally, are something we all need to recognize (and attempt to empathize) more, particularly those of us coming from positions of more privilege... white people, and white men in particular.


A fascinating aspect of this book is that the reader gets to see Michelle Obama develop and grow as a person. Such a sense of growth can be difficult to achieve in a book about a person like this, but Michelle accomplishes the task with great success, in part probably because of her unique trajectory compared with many other prominent politicians and first ladies. 

Around the middle of the book, after Michelle has become a successful lawyer and has just begun her relationship with President Obama, she faces an internal struggle to align her true interests with her career. This was a part that was particularly interesting to Michael who, similar to Michelle, always had a planed trajectory for his education and career path. In part because of the contrast with how President Obama planned (or didn't plan) his own career path, Michelle questions whether she is truly happy doing what she is doing. The fact that she was able to question this, and even decided to make a huge career shift, was really interesting to Michael, who often finds it difficult to really evaluate such things or even consider a deviation from "the plan". This is something that Michael is constantly trying to be better about and, while he is happy with his career as it is currently, the fact that people like Michelle Obama have had to face similar questions and overcome their own preconceived notions of success was really powerful to read about. 

Another very interesting aspect to Michelle's story is her perspective on Barack's presidential campaigns. The reader gets a look at the role of a (potential) First Lady in the campaign process and the specific challenges Michelle faces because of her race. We often discuss how Barack faced specific challenges and different levels of scrutiny because he is black, but Michelle also faced the specter of racism and in a different way because she is also a women. The challenges and very real fears around raising black children as such a prominent family was also really interesting and not often discussed.

One challenge that Michael faced while reading was his own cynicism. Given that Michelle is involved in politics, though not running for any office herself, it is easy to assume that some things are written in order to develop particular optics for Barack, Michelle, and even the Democratic Party as a whole. While reading Michael often find himself questioning the authenticity of statements, or the motivation behind telling certain anecdotes. In the end, and even as he was thinking these things, Michael believes his cynicism was largely uncalled for, but good to be aware of. If the reader is not careful, such cynicism can ruin the possibility of getting anything out of Michelle's story, and there is a lot to get out of it!

Similar to Carrie and Michael, Michelle and President Obama's relationship seems to thrive in a balance between compromise and determination. We could relate in many ways to the strong willed choices and thoughtful choices made by the Obamas over the years. It was eye opening and quite enjoyable to be able to see the former president and his wife as relatable people, who lived a normal (aka not easy) life before walking through the doors of the White House. 

This book gets a high recommendation from both of us. For learning more about different cultures. for American (recent) history, and for self reflection. The story of the Obama's journey is what so closely connects them to the American people. Life doesn't have to be easy to help you in Becoming something great. 

Tremmpleton Family Book Reviews: Recursion by Blake Crouch

This is exciting! Our first book review on this blog... this is something we hope to do more regularly. Just a bit of an intro, since this is our first one... Over the last couple years Carrie has gotten back into reading voraciously. That means that between audio books, normal books, and graphic novels, she has read 165 books over the course of 2018. But it has been a progression. The year before she read 52 and before that, well, she didn't really keep track. Reading wasn't really a part of either of our routine any more, but a couple years ago between a good friend adding her to an amazing bookish community on Facebook and Michael's encouragement, she dove head first back between the pages of book after book. She warned him that once she started, she may not be able to stop!

Carrie's tenacity for reading is (slowly) rubbing off on Michael. While previously Michael would have been lucky to have read 10 books in a year (obviously we don't count academic journal articles here... but even those Michael admits he often just reads the abstracts and looks at figures!), last year he read 30 books and this year so far he has read 7! No, before you ask, Michael is definitely not jealous of Carrie's ability to read so much so quickly....

You can also find both Carrie and Michael on Goodreads, an awesome site to keep track of your own reading and to find new books to enjoy. You can also follow what Carrie is reading (on a less consistent basis on her Instagram page @booksbrewsandbanjocat!

And this brings us here to our first book review blog post! We hope you enjoy! Any and all feedback is welcome (as it always is). We hope to provide a unique viewpoint on books we read and hopefully give you some ideas for books you want to read yourself!

The Book: Recursion

For this first post we are reviewing a book we both read from one of our favorite thriller/suspense authors, Blake Crouch, best known probably for his Wayward Pines series (recently adapted to a TV show that neither of us has watched). Pines is a fantastic series that we both highly recommend. Another book he has written that we both like is Dark Matter (which we read during our 5 day journey from Seattle to Connecticut a year and a half ago).

So, we have a history with Crouch's work. When Crown Publishing granted Carrie access to an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of his newest book, Recursion, set to be released June 11, 2019, we were super excited! A quick side note about ARCs... Carrie and Michael both have accounts on NetGalley, a site that publishing companies use to distribute ARCs of upcoming books for free in order to generate buzz about them (through, e.g. Amazon and Goodreads reviews) prior to release. Michael is only just getting into NetGalley, but Carrie has been working on building a reputation for herself as a reader and reviewer of ARCs. So, she requested an ARC of Recursion, she got lucky and Crown Publishing accepted the request! Thanks to both Net Galley and Crown Publishing for making this early review possible!

Recursion tells the story of Helena, a seasoned scientist trying to cure Alzheimer’s with a novel invention she has developed over years of research. When on the precipice of losing funding and forced to leave her work behind, Helena finds herself bankrolled by a mysterious, wealthy business mogul, Marcus Slade. Of course, things are not as they appear and it becomes clear that Slade has his own plans and that there are aspects to Helena's work that even she doesn't understand. A parallel story is told about Barry, a divorced and lonely NYC detective, still grieving for a long dead daughter. The stories told side-by-side helps to steady the pace of the story while drawing the reader into the world, as Barry’s story starts out more than 10 years later than Helena’s. Crouch shifts between telling us the origins of the story’s central mechanic/mystery/threat and its effect on the world, which is brilliantly done. To put it simply (and avoid spoilers), the central theme of the book surrounds memories and their connection with our perception of reality. In the book, characters experience false memories of an entirely different life they never lived. The main characters are trying to figure out where these false memories are coming from and put an end to them. Of course, the plot gets much thicker from there, but we will avoid spoilers for now.

Review

Between ourselves and Carrie's fellow bookish community admins, we had pretty extensive conversation surrounding Recursion. Put very simply, we were both completely enthralled VERY quickly and had a hard time getting much else done while reading Recursion, as per usual for us with Crouch's books. Suffice to say, the Tremmpleton's highly recommend Recursion for sci-fi/thriller lovers. If you struggle with reading (or being able to skim) science jargon, you may struggle with this one a bit. Michael enjoyed that science was used to give substance to the plot, but Crouch (mostly) avoided trying too hard to explain things in detail, which often leads to poor representation of science in fiction.  He hates it when people just throw out random quantum mechanics terms used incorrectly. Crouch does just enough to make things believable to the reader.

One of our bookish friends compared Recursion's plot to Chutes and Ladders, which we found to be both amusing and accurate. Each time you might feel confident you know what's about to happen in this plot, you are sent shooting down another course of memory. Told in part from both Barry and Helena's perspectives, you find yourself both jumping through timelines and narrations throughout the 300+ pages of the book. The shifts are subtle at first, then all of a sudden you are grasping to the dates at the top of each subsection to try to orient yourself in the story. It is a literary roller coaster ride through memories, possibly a way to mimic with the whiplash one might feel trying to keep up with someone suffering with Alzheimer's. The research Helena is developing is part of a perceived manic need to help her mother who is an Alzheimer's patient herself. While you work your way through Crouch's various stems of memory for Barry and Helena, you being to realize that something here is not quite right.

One thing Crouch has done in Recursion that was largely missing from his previous books was include a female main character that was not only strong and independent, but also interesting and flawed. Importantly, Helena's character is not only central to the story, but changes and grows as the story progresses. These are the characters we need more of in fiction (and science fiction in particular). Stories need to have women not only in positions of power and with strong, independent personalities, the also need women to be realistic and interesting to read about. So often (as is true in many of Crouch's other works) women characters are two dimensional. They are not developed as much and, even when they are, they are not given flaws or personal challenges to overcome. This was a nice departure from this and the fact that it comes from a male writer is important.

Now, let's get into the good stuff, be prepared if you read past this point, there may be spoilers, so stop now to hold onto your bookish innocence about Recursion.

We felt all of the feels for Barry throughout Recursion, going from his original tortured timeline to eventually growing with Helena to become a brilliant scientist and saving the day. This aspect of the story felt very cookie cutter for Crouch. Despite his work creating a female character determined to first meet her goal, then discover how to counteract her own work, Crouch did not enable Helena to finish what she started. Through discussion and further exploration of the book, we came to believe that this aspect may be an inexplicit reference back to the Alzheimers existent in Helena's family. A "que sera sera" moment to show why messing with time and memories is a bad idea, but come on Crouch. Why couldn't you let Helena figure out how to tie up the mess she made on her own?!

One other aspect of the story that didn't sit well with Carrie was the inclusion of two characters portrayed as drug users (implying they are both addicted). When traveling between timelines and memories, they all of a sudden without any support or treatment were able to live lives independent of their addictions. Now, don't get us wrong, we know that a time-traveling memory chair is not realistic, but in an otherwise realistic world, this felt like a massive plot hole. Slade going from being a self-aware addict in the first timeline, to going back and choosing to build an empire for himself instead is a sorely misguided idea. Addiction is a disease, not a choice. This could have given Crouch a great opportunity to stress the importance of support and treatment for addiction, but instead it is glossed over as something that can simply be corrected with a choice and force of will. In a very small percentage of people with substance use addictions this might be possible but for most it is just not realistic.

Final Thoughts:

 Both Carrie and Michael really liked this book. The story was gripping, the characters were interesting, and the concepts were creative and new. The inclusion of a fully fleshed out female main character was a welcome improvement over Crouch's other books, but still fell into the same old routine of letting the man save the day in the end. There were also some problematic representations of drug addiction that, while trivial to the overall plot, ended up misrepresenting the nature of addiction. Still, despite these problems, Recursion is a great read by an author who has become one of our family's favorites. A solid 5 stars from each of us. We highly recommend picking this book up when it hits shelves in June!

Tremmpleton Family Update

Hi! Wow, its been a while.... but the Tremmpleton Family is back at blogging after a long hiatus! As this is our first post in a while, we wanted to give you all a brief update on our life!

The first thing... We got married! We tied the knot May 14, 2016 (almost three years ago now... yikes! Time flies!). To all of our friends, this is of course old news, but if you only know us from this blog it is news to you! So... Yay! We accept your (belated) congratulations ;)

On the work front, Michael got his PhD in astronomy from the University of Washington in the summer of 2017 and the Tremmpleton's moved across the country to New Haven, Connecticut so that he could start a postdoc at Yale. He is still working on simulating galaxies and studying supermassive black holes, so not much has changed in that regard except for location and quite a bit more travel.

Carrie is working on (and nearly done!) getting her Master's degree in Learning Design & Technology, which she is doing online through Purdue. Carrie has also made a big career change, moving from managing restaurants to full time instructional designer, combining her passion for training and teaching with her design skills. She is working for Aware Recovery Care, an in-home addiction recovery service (or ARC for short) based in Connecticut. ARC is a small, but rapidly expanding company and Carrie has been an integral part of their team these past few months, helping revamp their training materials.

Banjo is happy, healthy, and has a recent addition to his wardrobe: a super handsome bowtie!

With so much going on in our lives these past few years, we sort of let this blog go by the wayside... but no more! We are back! Expect more posts about boardgames, as well as book reviews, recipes, travels, and whatever fun stuff/projects we get into. Hope you'll join us!