Tournament of Books discussion

space to discuss 2022 TOB contender "When We Cease to Understand the World" by Benjamin Labatut

I would get behind this novel winning the rooster. I loved it in every way. That said it's a little dense to be a rooster favorite and I can't see it getting a zombie slot!

lark wrote: "I would get behind this novel winning the rooster. I loved it in every way. That said it's a little dense to be a rooster favorite and I can't see it getting a zombie slot!"

I think everyone who's talked about it here so far has loved it! I read this over a month ago and I still think about these people and concepts almost every day. One of my two favorites from the list (and with what's remaining I'm sure that'll hold throughout, unless I fall in love with Matrix.)

I'm guessing it'll make it through the first round, although it's probably seeded low so might be up against heavy hitters. After that, this might be the most judge-dependent of the lot.

I just Googled Labatut, and his pictures made me happy, he really looks like he could be one of his characters.

This and The Sentence are the two I'm most eager to read.

Elizabeth wrote: "lark wrote: "I would get behind this novel winning the rooster. I loved it in every way. That said it's a little dense to be a rooster favorite and I can't see it getting a zombie slot!"

I think e..."

I feel like the worldwide number of readers who didn't love this book could fit comfortably in a station wagon ;) I'm one of them - I liked it, but its Sturm Und Drang tone (after the first chapter) never appeals to me. I kept thinking back to The Sorrows of Young Werther (which admittedly I read decades ago) and it's over the top emotionalism.

This was my zombie vote! I've thought of it constantly since reading it a few months ago. But yeah, I don't think it's going to zombie...

This was also my Zombie, I like the way that it is a perfect book. Marrying its perfection with more perfection.

I love books that take me on a journey and this is the only book I've read this year that really did it - it starts feeling like biography or non-fiction and by the end you can tell it isn't but I just felt like "I'm not worthy! I"m not worthy" after finishing. Plus I love reading about math/physics because my brain grasps it just enough to make me feel like I'm a lot smarter than I've pushed myself to be. That may not make sense but it makes this book really work for me. :)

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I love books that take me on a journey ..."

Mona Awad would have taken you on a roller coaster, if you'd let her....

This was beautiful in every way and would have been my rooster pick if I'd remembered to vote!

I forgot to vote too! I'm gonna reread this closer to tournament time, maybe February, along with Whereabouts, and No One...

The appeal of this one is totally lost on me. It was strange to be reading two odd books -- Kindling Cease while Audibling The Book of Form and Emptiness -- and being head over heels in love with the latter and just going through the motions with the former. At least it's done now! Onward with Form and starting The Echo Wife.

What I find, especially when I'm grinding through the tournament list to get my completist badge, is that when I go into books with mismatched expectations or some degree of impatience for the text to reach out to me, the books will fall flat.

It is important to meet a book on its own terms, and books that are different from what I usually read require me to slow down and pay more attention and suspend my judgement until I can get into the flow of the book.

I really enjoyed =When We Cease to Understand the World=, although I'm a little conflicted about parts of it, as I know the history and the theories he takes some liberties with. Still, I read it as fiction and rode along with the author and was intrigued and moved by it.

I mention this because I'm having the opposite experience that you are. I'm struggling with =The Book of Form and Emptiness=. There are things about it I like, but so far the conceit isn't resonating for me. It's still early, I'm trying to find my way into it, and I hope to be won over by it yet....

But I think trying to absorb those two very different books simultaneously would inevitably lead me to quit one of them. They make such different demands of the reader, and my reading muscles aren't strong enough to be able to give myself over to them simultaneously.

I think it’s pretty impossible to say why any book works or not for any reader. I don’t really strategize about my ToB books beyond doing my best to get them all in. For me, this means I start reading from the shorter titles I can get my hands on, and I start listening to the longer titles. I tend not to read many contemporary books except during the tournament, so I don’t have much of a head start and there’s not time to carefully consider my pairings. I doubt I would have liked WWCTUTW under any circumstance, but we’ll never know for sure.

Mindy wrote: "I think it’s pretty impossible to say why any book works or not for any reader..."

Of course it is. But I think it is pretty useful to try to figure out why any book works or not for me.

OMG, this book!!! I’m almost halfway through and can’t imagine it not being a five-star read for me. I’m finding it great to have someone else in the room while I’m reading because there’s so much mind-boggling stuff that demands to be shared.

Meant to add, no clue how it will do in the tournament.

Tim wrote: "What I find, especially when I'm grinding through the tournament list to get my completist badge, is that when I go into books with mismatched expectations or some degree of impatience for the text..."
well said! Loved this comment, all of it.
I have always thought of this as just letting a book wash over me until it starts to click. I almost imagine closing my eyes while I'm reading and just kind of giving into it. I'm doing that with this book and I also did it with No One is Talking About This. I don't have Twitter so the way it was written wasn't really my inner monologue (other people in my book club said it was so easy to read because it's how they think now) but I just kind of closed my eyes and let it wash over me.

Cat wrote: "just letting a book wash over me until it starts to click..."

Yes! I'm with you on this...the problem is when the book washes over you and you feel smothered instead. That's how I feel right now w/ Libertie.

Anyone interested in similar-ish books, I'd recommend the two charco releases of Luis Sagasti's books: Fireflies and A Musical Offering

Bob wrote: "Cat wrote: "just letting a book wash over me until it starts to click..."

Yes! I'm with you on this...the problem is when the book washes over you and you feel smothered instead. That's how I feel..."

Gosh, those look fabulous! (And relating this to a different thread here, I went to Amazon to download samples and saw I already own A Musical Offering on Kindle, but don’t have even the faintest memory of reading the blurb or buying. It must have been during my early pandemic The-world’s-going-to-end-anyway-so-let’s-stuff-my-kindle-to-make-life-seem-not-so-lonely phase.)

I had to double check I was reading the right book, because a third in I was convinced this wasn't a TOB book.

It was short enough I might re-read parts of it since the first read left me feeling a little lost. I'm looking forward to the tournament to better understand why people love it so much.

Wow, nice recommendations, @Bob. I’m ordering Fireflies. Thanks!

Bretnie wrote: "I'm looking forward to the tournament to better understand why people love it so much..."

It doesn't act like a novel. That's for sure. Usually I like that in novels.

It reminded me of Sebald, whom I love, and who is dead, so there was a bit of macabre joy in it for me on that score.

It made me feel smarter by the end of it. This is never something I expect or demand in a novel but otoh I love intellectual books when they come along and it feels like a zone of inquiry that contemporary fiction has ignored for a while.

Bretnie wrote: "I'm looking forward to the tournament to better understand why people love it so much..."

I'm a science nerd, so for me that was part of it, seeing these fascinating discoveries firsthand, and the connections between them. But I also loved seeing how these brilliant minds started to spiral out of control, the growing frenzy...I just thought it was handled so well and was so fun to read. I also thought the ending was beautiful, and wrapped it all up perfectly.

Elizabeth wrote: "...seeing these fascinating discoveries firsthand, and the connections between them. But I also loved seeing how these brilliant minds started to spiral out of control, the growing frenzy..."

And that is exactly what I disliked about this book. I think science and math is fascinating, and I enjoy reading non-fiction about those topics. I love novels and fiction. But this mix of fictionalizing facts (and factionalizing fiction) made me incredibly uncomfortable.

Phyllis wrote: " I enjoy reading non-fiction about those topics. I love novels and fiction. But this mix of fictionalizing facts (and factionalizing fiction) made me incredibly uncomfortable. .."

I agree completely. I tend to think "this really happened" 100%, if a story purports to be about true things, even if the book is labeled "fiction." It's a real danger.

It happens a lot in memoir, too, though, where that "it really happened this way" feeling can be even stronger for an invested reader, and the author isn't always telling the exact truth of the matter.

This is a big tangent, but one of my favorite books on this topic, of mixing fiction with fact, is the book A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction--really an amazing read.

Bob wrote: "Anyone interested in similar-ish books, I'd recommend the two charco releases of Luis Sagasti's books: Fireflies and A Musical Offering..."

Bob, these two books sound like the perfect antidote for what I didn't like about 'Cease' - the sturm und drang emotionalism.

Phyllis wrote: "And that is exactly what I disliked about this book. I think science and math is fascinating, and I enjoy reading non-fiction about those topics. I love novels and fiction. But this mix of fictionalizing facts (and factionalizing fiction) made me incredibly uncomfortable."

Phyllis, have you read The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science? For me, it was nonfiction that brought the scientists and the era right into my living room.

Thanks for weighing in lark and Elizabeth and Phyllis - reading this thread makes me appreciate the book more, even if it left me confused! I read it like non-fiction, so wasn't too thrown off by the fictionalizing of the historical facts (ok, maybe just a little thrown off). I just felt so lost most of the time.

Have you ever listened to an audiobook cd accidentally on shuffle? Where the order of things are confusing and you feel like you missed something before you realize it's not in the right order? That's how I felt reading it.

@Nadine, thanks for the Age of Wonder rec. I have to confess that the sturm und drang emotionalism is what is keeping me riveted in Cease. :-)

Bretnie wrote: "Have you ever listened to an audiobook cd accidentally on shuffle? Where the order of things are confusing and you feel like you missed something before you realize it's not in the right order? That's how I felt reading it. ..."

One variable in readers that I've grown to appreciate after several years on goodreads is how much we as individual readers feel comfortable with confusion, ambiguity, unfinished and/or open-ended story arcs...I seem to be able to read merrily along even if I don't have a clue what's going on. I think it's because I was a German major, and I'm really bad at foreign languages, and after I got tired of looking up words I got used to just powering through without really understanding much to get a reading done for class...

Nadine in California wrote: "Phyllis, have you read The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science? ...

I haven't, Nadine, but thank you for pointing me to it - it sounds wonderful. I think one of the things that many admire about WWCTUTW is that it makes reading about science, math, scientists, and mathematicians come alive in a way that non-fiction most often does not; in other words, it isn't boring. Non-fiction books like this one that you suggest are so important for that very reason, and I'd rather see more of those than historical fiction on the topics.

lark wrote: "One variable in readers that I've grown to appreciate after several years on goodreads is how much we as individual readers feel comfortable with confusion, ambiguity, unfinished and/or open-ended story arcs...I seem to be able to read merrily along even if I don't have a clue what's going on."

It's funny, I usually don't dwell on being confused too much and go with the flow. I'll keep thinking on why this one felt more uncomfortable.

Always so fascinating to me how different each reader's preferences are, especially among people who tend to read the same types of books.

I don't like being confused, and I'm bothered by open-ended books that don't provide answers. But I didn't feel any of that from this book. I think it helped that the first section was so grounded in reality, and as you go on the stories became more and more fictionalized (and more and more frenzied, which mirrored the characters' psyches until we ended in a kind of tarantella.) That helped me adjust my mindset gradually. I came in knowing a lot was fictionalized, and thinking that would bother me, but even though I knew, having that first section helped me just stop caring and go along with it all, without questioning what was and wasn't real.

There were definitely parts that threw me off (primarily the sex scenes, they just felt gratuitous and disrespectful.) But I loved seeing how these brilliant minds developed their ideas, and built on the genius of their predecessors. Then were driven insane by the hugeness and impossibility of what they were discovering, because the human brain just isn't capable and so explodes. It just fascinated me, and hit all the right notes, like it was written for me.

Here's what I just wrote about this book for my review:

I wish there had been more about female scientists and less about the great man theory with women being sexy muses (TB girl being archetype of manic pixie girl) or nurses (lady in inn healing Heisenberg) BUT in the end, the ideas and themes of the unknowability of the natural world, the manic hysteria of scientific discovery, the overabundance of mankind that will lead us on our path towards destruction, how we're like the lemon tree in its final horrifying season of sweet overabundance, how when you truly glimpse what quantum mechanics is saying about reality, how terrified you have to be--the darkness at the nucleus of everything, how the center will not hold, all of these ideas transcend any of my qualms about lack of adequate gender representation. (though this book would have been way cooler if he had done away with the great man theory and let the true chaos and messy collaboration of science shine through...)
But 5 stars anyway!

Cat wrote: "Here's what I just wrote about this book for my review:

I wish there had been more about female scientists and less about the great man theory with women being sexy muses (TB girl being archetype ..."

Fantastic summary here, Cat! This captures why it ended up being a 4-star read instead of 3 stars for me, even though some of it felt like a slog (and this took me over three weeks to read, which is a slow pace for me). I'm not quite as interested in these sciences as other folks here, so that element was a little too heavy for some of my reading, but every time it connected back to the bigger picture, I was sucked back in.

I can relate to all of the reactions posted in this thread. I did feel "my brain grasps it just enough to make me feel like I'm a lot smarter than I've pushed myself to be." as Jenny said, but I also understand why it was too fact/nonfiction-heavy for other readers. It didn't feel like reading a novel to me, which is fine, and sometimes par for the course with the ToB, but I can see how it's not for everyone.

I asked in the other thread how to read this, not knowing how to sort the fact v. fiction, but saw in the Acknowledgments that Labatut explains it, so I should have looked there before starting it (although I'm not sure anyone reads the Acknowledgements before starting a book? Bringing the explanation to the front would have helped. Oh well.). It says, "This is a work of fiction based on real events. The quantity of fiction grows throughout the book; whereas "Prussian Blue" contains only one fictional paragraph, I have taken greater liberties in the subsequent texts, while still trying to remain faithful to the scientific concepts discussed in each of them." He goes on into some details from there.

Anyway, while I didn't love every minute I was reading this, I'm glad I read it and especially enjoyed the mentions of Chile in the end (love that country). I have no idea how this will hold up in the tournament, but I'm not thrilled it's up against the Ozeki in the first round since I expect to enjoy that one.

Science and math are completely lost on me, and to some extent, so was this book. I mean, I read it in a day -- it's short -- and never felt bogged down, but all that totally incomprehensible math and physics just made me feel insecure and stupid. And I'm so puzzled by it as fiction, even after reading his afterword.

I will point out that it's the second book in the ToB this year, after In Concrete, which left me with mad respect for the translator.

I really enjoyed this book. I was very moved by some of the stories. It led me to want to learn more about some of the scientists in the book. You don't need to understand theoretical physics in order to follow the book, but it might increase your enjoyment if you know a little. The story about Schrodinger's Cat is mentioned in many fiction books (in both sci-fi and literary fiction), so this was a hook that led me to pay closer attention to the sections about Schrodinger and quantum theory. I was happy to learn the truth about the story. (Schrodinger proposed the story as a way to show the weakness of the theory, not as a way to teach it.) I also finally understand what "the singularity" means, and why it might scare people.

Three of the scientists had profound reactions to learning some (unstated) truths. These scenes were important to me, and I know that they will be retained in my memory longer than most of the other material. So I'm curious if these reactions were based on actual events, or if they were totally fabricated. I love learning about history through novels, but there is always the risk that I'll "learn" something that wasn't true at all. I'm usually on my guard when reading historical fiction involving real people.

As a few other people commented, the sexual scenes in the book sometimes felt out of place, particularly because the solitary acts were unlikely to be in any historical records. Many of the scenes were rather sad or unappealing, and perhaps the author saw that as a part of those character's lives. (At least I knew that most of those scenes were probably fictitious. Not that I'm in danger of sharing those tidbits at a party.)

Jan wrote: "This and The Sentence are the two I'm most eager to read."

I loved The Sentence. I hope you like it too. It is inventive, topical, thought provoking and fun to read. The literary references were particularly enjoyable to me. At the end of the book there are lists of all the books mentioned or recommended.

I'm new to this group so I'm just getting a feel of how things work. I really enjoyed both books. I found this book much easier to read than Ozeki's book, despite the Physics. Ozeki's book was more challenging in some ways (not just because of the length) but it moved me deeply. Ozeki is fast becoming one of my favorite authors.

NancyJ wrote: "I'm new to this group so I'm just getting a feel of how things work. ..."
Hi NancyJ, and welcome. Keep on sharing your ToB thoughts with us.

We have a separate discussion board for each of the 18 books in the ToB, along with a few more separate discussions for things like books we would like to see on the 2023 ToB longlist, our 2022 ToB brackets predictions, etc.

NancyJ wrote: "Jan wrote: "This and The Sentence are the two I'm most eager to read."

I loved The Sentence. I hope you like it too. It is inventive, topical, thought provoking and fun to read. The literary refer..."

Welcome to the group, Nancy J. Great to know you appreciated When We Cease to Understand the World!

I'm about halfway through The Sentence. It's not my favorite Erdrich so far but I love all the characters.

I was not smart enough to understand this book. I really liked the beginning but then for confused as to what was fiction and what was true and it got boring like I was reading a textbook. I am not very into math or science or even history for that matter though. Haha. Some parts were fascinating but I had to force myself to finish it and wasted time not wanting to pick it back up but then feeling too guilty to start another eBook.

I've been listening to The Sentence while lacking motivation to finish reading this (although I just did finally finish it) and I like it a lot better. Although I don't love that one either. Same with Matrix which I think I also listened to in between bouts of attempting to finish reading this one.

Overall this hasn't been a great TOB for me. Last year I really loved some books and really hated others so there were more ups and downs. This year is feel like most the books are somewhere between "meh" and "pretty good but not great" for me. This one would definitely be a "meh."

Maybe I'm just too picky or too distracted or not getting what makes these books so great. I'm feeling a bit frustrated and have been listening to easy fun reads in between TOB books, like romcoms and humorous women's fiction, to lighten the mood, whereas I used to think I preferred literary fiction.

(I did really enjoy Echo Wife but thought it more of a psychological thriller and was rather surprised it was a TOB pick. I liked it for its storytelling and concept way more than for its writing style or tone.)


Maybe it's just that most of these books are just so depressing?! Even my favorite so far, Echo Wife, was. Maybe the current state of reality in our world is so depressing to me that it's hard for me to "escape" into fiction that either is depressing or just feels more depressing to me at this time.

I’m about 80% done with this one, and I’m not loving it. The scientific details and personalities are fascinating. I have a chemical engineering degree, so I’ve studied many of these things and am enjoying revisiting the concepts and their origins. However, as the narrative becomes more and more fictionalized, I’m losing interest. Because the book is so firmly rooted in fact, it feels wrong to me to fictionalize the personal details, often in a way that seems embarrassing or unseemly. I don’t understand what the author is trying to do here. Perhaps he wants to demonstrate how these scientists were driven to mental instability and illness as a result of their great discoveries? I don’t know.

Gwendolyn wrote: "I’m about 80% done with this one, and I’m not loving it. The scientific details and personalities are fascinating. I have a chemical engineering degree, so I’ve studied many of these things and am ..."

I'm with you Gwendolyn - the stories should be exactly my jam (I was going down quantum physics rabbit holes the minute I had regular access to the internets and every advanced math or physics major I've known has had an existential crisis at some point) but a lot occurs to remind us that some of these guys' irrational behavior & breakdowns were pretty icky for the people (particularly women) around them. And everything underscored for me how much it is only males allowed to behave this way and still invited to the international shindigs. Any women with this kind of hygiene and/or erratic behavior would have been locked up in an asylum!

Amy wrote: "Gwendolyn wrote: ."

That being said, I did rather like the ending, even if we had to make it through Schrodinger being especially icky first (apparently based in fact).

Amy, I liked the ending too! It wasn’t quite enough to make me love the book, but it was an improvement over the middle section.

Just to be clear, most scientists are not driven mad by the passion of our work, or the cosmos, or whatever is supposed to be going on in this book. Even those of us who are really really smart mostly manage to socialize, wash ourselves, and be basically decent human beings. We also don't work, or discover things, alone.

All of which is to say, I was on board when I started but it turns out I was *not* waiting for the next great novel to extol the madness of genius. Or to drag the names of real people through some sort of litfic mud for some inexplicable reason.