THE MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut | Book Review

[@leafyconcern]

This channel seems to have an affinity with mine

[@BooksYouHaventRead]

Ok, you've convinced me. Subscribed!

[@Echoesoflostlibraries]

What a great video. I enjoyed not understanding the world but figured this wasn't something I needed to experience very often, in the sense of having other priorities and never really making a dent in the TBR in any meaningful way, but you've made this a lot more compelling than anyone I've heard talk about this book so far. Your idea of horror and these great minds is very interesting and something I want to think more about. You need better PR people Nate, criminal that you're not up there in the thousands of subscribers.

[@BooksYouHaventRead]

Thanks for the kind words as always Echo! I think we both need better PR. Until then, we grind in the content mines.

[@thatbrianl]

When We Cease to Understand the World really knocked my socks off. While I enjoyed The MANIAC, it definitely feels like a middle book, further developing themes and territory from the first and preparing us for the inevitable conclusion. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Labatut’s next book was a full-on, epic, genre-embracing horror novel about a rogue AI? Unlikely, I know, but that’s the novel we deserve. Great video. I enjoyed your thoughts on this book very much.

[@BooksYouHaventRead]

A triptych at the center of a triptych then? I could be down. I hadn't thought about that as a possibility. I feel like their could be a lot of fertile ground for interesting AI horror explorations, but the horror show I most predict in real life is some kind of scam apparatus that ends up extracting hilariously huge sums of money from humans (grandma's life savings? her house? her whole neighborhood?) Thanks for your kind comments!

[@p-j-y-d]

Actually, his next book is about AI. Not sure about the genre, though. "Labatutian", for sure. 😂

[@nedmerrill5705]

This book is something like an epistolary novel, short fictional essays written by individuals mostly dead. About the horror dimension of _The MANIAC:_ The horror comes mostly from other people watching von Neumann, either they fear of his abilities they could not fathom, or his behavior akin to a child playing with dynamite. Von Neumann's desire to work on the thermonuclear (H-) bomb, or his enunciation of the Cold War strategy called MAD, were horrible to Oskar Morgenstern and Eugene Wigner, Can I get Gnome Chomsky say that the U. S. is a force for good? Would that I could change the real Noam Chomsky's attitudes...

[@kewl0210]

I read this one! That was a pretty good one.

[@BooksYouHaventRead]

Nice, have you read Cease to Understand the World as well? Having read both they really feel like they're part of the same project.

[@kewl0210]

@@BooksYouHaventRead I think I read some of it but never finished it. It's not long though I should really get to it.

[@valpergalit]

Nice review! My biggest gripe with the book is that most of its research on Von Neumann’s life was obviously pulled straight from Wikipedia - the details and anecdotes line up almost 1:1 😂

[@videt7459]

Women write important, compelling, brilliant books too. Sausage party ethos critique aside, Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles is a book most people haven't read but should.