The Book Club at LEDAS: Three-Body Problem, Feynman, Zarathustra, Monte Cristo

Over the winter we told you about our book club and published a list of 42 books that we read and discussed over the years. Today, as promised earlier, we are sharing our impressions from the last three meetings of the club.

The book "The Three-Body Problem" and the entire trilogy "Remembrance of Earth's Past" by the Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin were marked with our club's seal “Approved to be recommended for reading.”

Here is the list of our tips and notes:

• If you don't want to read the whole trilogy, please don't start reading the first book… or start reading it.
• Chinese science fiction exists.
• Trisolaran is not our comrade!
• Chinese translator is a very creative profession.
• Living on a flat Earth is entirely possible.
• There are different protagonists in novels… Not the most skilled, not the smartest.
• If you find yourself in the forest, try not to shine... at least not more than once.
• "Hard times produce strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times create weak people. Weak people create hard times" (c)
• When you get to the end, remember that there was a lot of interesting stuff before that.... or don't.

Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" made us think, sleep, and cheer. Many readers will find little in it. Far fewer will find much. If you want to read it, our book club recommends it! If you don't, we don't.

Zarathustra asked to share the following:

• The value of a human being is that he is a bridge, not a goal.
• Everyone wants equality, everyone is equal: whoever feels differently voluntarily goes to a madhouse.
• All life is a dispute about tastes and flavors!
• It is nobler to believe that you are wrong than to be right, especially if you are right.
• Sleeping well is no trifling matter: to get a good night's sleep, you have to be awake all day long.
• You have to be a sea to take in the muddy stream and not become unclean.
• If you want to climb high, use your own feet.

After reading the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman, one might assume that:

• It is never... it's never inappropriate to take a jab at the humanities.
• Scientists are human beings too! There are even those who don't live their lives without leaving these sterile laboratories.
• Even if your book is the most popular biography of a scientist, it doesn't stop a cult director from not mentioning you much in his movie about the first atomic bomb.
• Sometimes simple curiosity is enough to learn how to draw, crack safes or win a Nobel Prize.

Our next book is “The Count of Monte Cristo” (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas. We won't be surprised if discussing this book also brings us much joy, and you then get a brief summary of our perceptions and associations.