16. Steve Pinker. How the mind Works. hands down one of the best books read in 2010, i'll put the full review at http://canguro3.googlepages.com/
17, 18, 19. (audio) Millenium trilogy. The girl with the dragon tatoo; The girl who played with fire; the girl who kicked the hornest's nest. Stieg Larsson. Ok, if I'm going to read some best selling crime novel, the least I cna do is to stay away from american cliché. But the main reason why I decided to vdive into the Millenium trilogy is because i read Larssons' bio and I quite impressed with the guy, his fight against neo-nazis, bigotry, and corruption. The kind of guy I would be if I was a better person.
It is indeed refreshing to read a book that takes place in Sweeden. I can't help but notice that in american movies a cave man, a dark-ages priest, knights and extra-terrestial creatures, all feel tiresome californian, as that's the only character development they give them; instead, this novel takes you to a place geographically familiar, but with subtle different psyche that it feels truly alien.
The novel has a few flaws, we are constantly reminded of the same facts over and over, particulary on the third novel. Also, it goes into excrutiating detail about computer equipment, lunch details (do sweedes really have cheese sandwiches and cofee for a meal all of the time?) and dives into the background of seriously secondary characters... which I would usually appreciate on a literary novel, but this is a crime novel, so i'd appreciate trimming some of it.
The character of Lisbeth Salander is credible, incredible annoying in her non-comprommising atttitude, I guessed the asperger syndrome way before Blomkvist mentions it on the 3rd novel. Blomkvist's irrestibility to women is annoying only because of the jealousy it causes, but his cruzade against financial corruption makes him one of the few fiction heros that has the attributes to be a real life hero (sorry Batman).
While not the most stylish writter, Larsson's trilogy is quite entreteinining, it does give you the feeling of good defeating evil (evil being a moving target witht he common theme of man hating woman). and it reads much more easily that the next book I got my hands into, also called Millenium, but a very different kind...
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Lecturas Junio 2010
12. Elogio y refutacion del ingenio. Jose Antonio Marina.
Premio anagrama de ensayo 1992 es un libro ingenioso, pero poco esclarecedor. Lo ironico, es que en el prologo el autor se queja de la vieja filosofia, y dice que la nueva filosofia debe ser mas activa y estar al tanto de avances en linguistica, ciencias cognocitivas, biologia evolutiva... y despues procede a ignorar su propio consejo.
Tiene muchas referencias literarias, y es disfrutable como elucubracion, pero no es propositivo. Lo mas soprendente del libro es la pagina 19, donde mediante un cuestionario muestra que lo ingenioso es comunmente asociado con lo tramposo, deshonesto e improductivo, cosa que me parecio cierta y me llamo ucho la atencion.
Hay una cita de Sartre en la pagina 90, que bien se puede aplicar a la sensacion de vivir en Canada comparado con lugares donde la vida es mas azarosa:
"Ese 'puro hastio de vivir', comódo, indolente y abúlico, que es, como decia Sartre, el destino de los animales domésticos, presos de una realidad amortiguada, sin peligros y sin emociones"
En su defensa, estaba leyendo este libro a la par de Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, que incorpora todas las disciplinas que Marina prometió incorporar, y desarrolla teorias específicas.
13. The ascent of Money. Neil ferguson. (audio)
I wish he had spent more time on the specific about the history of money in early civilizations; if anyone knows of a good book about that, let me know.
The main reason to read the book, of course, is to understand the extent at which money controls the world. It is something so tangible and real that you wonder how conspiracy theories about powerful groups manipulating the destiny of the world manage to convince anyone with an IQ over 70. But there again, those read like a book of adventures, while the real deal reads more like a financial accounting textbook.
Some of the most interesting sections:
- Medicci's financial inovations.
- Raise of the house of Rotschild, the issue of the first goverment bonds, and his financial bets during the Napoleonic wars.
- The first IPO of stock open to the public the Dutch West company (Holland was a province of Netherlands). There were predecessors, but thiw was the first formal publicly traded company.
- US sessesion war determined by the lack of financial savvy, the south lost because their cotton bonds could not be redemable.
- Germany's post WWI depression product of fiscal irresponsability, rather than excessive levy of war compensation payments, as is most often stated.
- First bills, bank notes product from Louis XV France, first stock bubble predicted by Voltaire.
- Current financial bubbles eerily simmilar to the one in Loui XV's time.
14. The DaVinci Code (El código re-pinchi). Dan Brown. (audio)
So, having being warned against it by so may people, having read an excerpt myself, why did I read this? Well, is one of the main best-sellers of the decade, so I wanted to know why.
Now I know why, but is not for good reasons. Dan Brown sells a lot for the same reason McDonalds does: appeals to the lowest common denominator. His lack of subtlety, his wacking youon the head, as oppossed to suggesting, his rubbing your nose on every hint and clue, ensures no reader is left behind, no matter how thick they may be.
He achieves this by a couple of mehods: first, the narrator talks to the reader as if he was born yesterday: "DaVinci was a very important man. He was a paintor. He was gay". Secondly, the characters spend the whole time droping thei jaw, taking their hands to thei head and exclaiming "I can't believe this!!!" so the reader gets the clue that if these people, so smart, are surprised and shocjked, they should be surprised and shocked too. the plot itself is entretaining, if farfetched. No one in the world, pious or pagan, cares abour evidence of the true story of religios figures. If that was the case, the 1920's discovery of Gilgamesh would have driven people in hordes away from Judaism, Cristianism and Islam, when in fact no one even blinked.
So the fact that Jesus' wife and kids were a secret worth keeping, is... naive at best. But ok, once you go along with it, and assume it really matters if Jesus ever was on missionary, is a cool plot, you have secret societies, nice architectural and historic references. I didn't know the ethymology of 'heretic', or the history of the 0 meridien, so the book at least taught me 2 things. It even has some blows (not discrete at all, like everything in this book) to the Opus Dai, who have brainwashed some good people I knew in my youth, so I enjoyed the punches thrown at them.
Recommended to read? Mh, depends to whom. If you actually like books, I still recommend to go to Umberto Eco's first two novels whenever you are in the urge to read about secret societies. However, there is a large target audience for Dan Brown, who will gladly go through pages of total garbage without smelling it. In terms of trashy best-sellers, Brown is still a few notches above the ultimate garbage: Anne Rice.
BTW, last week I was having beers and wings with some friends, including a somewhat well known sci-fi author (to whom I'll refer just as 'the squid'), and he was pointing out that in the forums, half his fans say his characters have no depth, while the other half say exactly the oppossite. I know I was impolite, but I could not help pointing out that the average sci-fi reader is hardly the best critic to determine if a character is flat or not. To my surprise, instead of getting defensive, he tought about it and said that I had a point.
15. Proust and the Squid. Maryanne Wolf. (audio)
How ironic that I took a book about the way process of reading and the impact on the brain.. as an audiobook. A couple of years ago, I heard in the brainscience podcast a review of the book and an interview with the author, and I think by and large those covered all the important aspects of the book. Mainly, describing how early written systems emerged, how the brain wires purpose specific circuits when learning to read, how different circuits are used on different stages of processing information, and how these differ in readers of different writting systems, such as logo-graphic and... (crap! what was the other? syllabic?), well, think latin vs. chinese.
It was also very interesting to read that the myeina-zation of the axons on circuits related to reading might not be complete before age 6, thus trying to teach a kid to read earlier may be counterproductive, as they would develop workarounds that will hinder proeficiency later.
The author is biased towards people with dislexia like his son, and I think jumps too fast into the conclusion that dislexia = creativity because the right side of the brain is stronger, thus the person is dislexic. I agree there is something to be studied there, but the correlation seems far from proven.
Premio anagrama de ensayo 1992 es un libro ingenioso, pero poco esclarecedor. Lo ironico, es que en el prologo el autor se queja de la vieja filosofia, y dice que la nueva filosofia debe ser mas activa y estar al tanto de avances en linguistica, ciencias cognocitivas, biologia evolutiva... y despues procede a ignorar su propio consejo.
Tiene muchas referencias literarias, y es disfrutable como elucubracion, pero no es propositivo. Lo mas soprendente del libro es la pagina 19, donde mediante un cuestionario muestra que lo ingenioso es comunmente asociado con lo tramposo, deshonesto e improductivo, cosa que me parecio cierta y me llamo ucho la atencion.
Hay una cita de Sartre en la pagina 90, que bien se puede aplicar a la sensacion de vivir en Canada comparado con lugares donde la vida es mas azarosa:
"Ese 'puro hastio de vivir', comódo, indolente y abúlico, que es, como decia Sartre, el destino de los animales domésticos, presos de una realidad amortiguada, sin peligros y sin emociones"
En su defensa, estaba leyendo este libro a la par de Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, que incorpora todas las disciplinas que Marina prometió incorporar, y desarrolla teorias específicas.
13. The ascent of Money. Neil ferguson. (audio)
I wish he had spent more time on the specific about the history of money in early civilizations; if anyone knows of a good book about that, let me know.
The main reason to read the book, of course, is to understand the extent at which money controls the world. It is something so tangible and real that you wonder how conspiracy theories about powerful groups manipulating the destiny of the world manage to convince anyone with an IQ over 70. But there again, those read like a book of adventures, while the real deal reads more like a financial accounting textbook.
Some of the most interesting sections:
- Medicci's financial inovations.
- Raise of the house of Rotschild, the issue of the first goverment bonds, and his financial bets during the Napoleonic wars.
- The first IPO of stock open to the public the Dutch West company (Holland was a province of Netherlands). There were predecessors, but thiw was the first formal publicly traded company.
- US sessesion war determined by the lack of financial savvy, the south lost because their cotton bonds could not be redemable.
- Germany's post WWI depression product of fiscal irresponsability, rather than excessive levy of war compensation payments, as is most often stated.
- First bills, bank notes product from Louis XV France, first stock bubble predicted by Voltaire.
- Current financial bubbles eerily simmilar to the one in Loui XV's time.
14. The DaVinci Code (El código re-pinchi). Dan Brown. (audio)
So, having being warned against it by so may people, having read an excerpt myself, why did I read this? Well, is one of the main best-sellers of the decade, so I wanted to know why.
Now I know why, but is not for good reasons. Dan Brown sells a lot for the same reason McDonalds does: appeals to the lowest common denominator. His lack of subtlety, his wacking youon the head, as oppossed to suggesting, his rubbing your nose on every hint and clue, ensures no reader is left behind, no matter how thick they may be.
He achieves this by a couple of mehods: first, the narrator talks to the reader as if he was born yesterday: "DaVinci was a very important man. He was a paintor. He was gay". Secondly, the characters spend the whole time droping thei jaw, taking their hands to thei head and exclaiming "I can't believe this!!!" so the reader gets the clue that if these people, so smart, are surprised and shocjked, they should be surprised and shocked too. the plot itself is entretaining, if farfetched. No one in the world, pious or pagan, cares abour evidence of the true story of religios figures. If that was the case, the 1920's discovery of Gilgamesh would have driven people in hordes away from Judaism, Cristianism and Islam, when in fact no one even blinked.
So the fact that Jesus' wife and kids were a secret worth keeping, is... naive at best. But ok, once you go along with it, and assume it really matters if Jesus ever was on missionary, is a cool plot, you have secret societies, nice architectural and historic references. I didn't know the ethymology of 'heretic', or the history of the 0 meridien, so the book at least taught me 2 things. It even has some blows (not discrete at all, like everything in this book) to the Opus Dai, who have brainwashed some good people I knew in my youth, so I enjoyed the punches thrown at them.
Recommended to read? Mh, depends to whom. If you actually like books, I still recommend to go to Umberto Eco's first two novels whenever you are in the urge to read about secret societies. However, there is a large target audience for Dan Brown, who will gladly go through pages of total garbage without smelling it. In terms of trashy best-sellers, Brown is still a few notches above the ultimate garbage: Anne Rice.
BTW, last week I was having beers and wings with some friends, including a somewhat well known sci-fi author (to whom I'll refer just as 'the squid'), and he was pointing out that in the forums, half his fans say his characters have no depth, while the other half say exactly the oppossite. I know I was impolite, but I could not help pointing out that the average sci-fi reader is hardly the best critic to determine if a character is flat or not. To my surprise, instead of getting defensive, he tought about it and said that I had a point.
15. Proust and the Squid. Maryanne Wolf. (audio)
How ironic that I took a book about the way process of reading and the impact on the brain.. as an audiobook. A couple of years ago, I heard in the brainscience podcast a review of the book and an interview with the author, and I think by and large those covered all the important aspects of the book. Mainly, describing how early written systems emerged, how the brain wires purpose specific circuits when learning to read, how different circuits are used on different stages of processing information, and how these differ in readers of different writting systems, such as logo-graphic and... (crap! what was the other? syllabic?), well, think latin vs. chinese.
It was also very interesting to read that the myeina-zation of the axons on circuits related to reading might not be complete before age 6, thus trying to teach a kid to read earlier may be counterproductive, as they would develop workarounds that will hinder proeficiency later.
The author is biased towards people with dislexia like his son, and I think jumps too fast into the conclusion that dislexia = creativity because the right side of the brain is stronger, thus the person is dislexic. I agree there is something to be studied there, but the correlation seems far from proven.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Lecturas Enero - Mayo 2010
1,2 Hyperion, y La caída de Hyperion. Dan Simmons. Cada vez que leo un libro de ciencia ficción, es por recomendación de Leon, y esta vez me regalo estos dos luego de un desayuno sabrosísimo en providencia, durante mi visita a Guadalajara. La novela gano el premio Hugo, y he de coincidir con Leon que ni estructuralmente ni temáticamente es el estereotipo de ciencia ficción. Estructuralmente es una serie de narraciones anidadas, al estilo cuentos de Canterburry, lo cual es muy refrescante. Tematicamente hace un ambicioso incorporar leyendas del Tora, proyecciones la posicion política de los musulmanes en el futuro, una inteligencia artificial que es una multitud de personalidades individuales, la voz del poeta romantico John Keats (cuyo poema le da titulo al libro); y una fuerte carga esotérica a los fenómenos y personajes de Hyperion, con resnancias de cristianismo. Pero quizá lo mas interesante del par de libros es lo comfortable que esta el autor con imprecisiones y cabos sueltos, en un genero donde la precisión es la norma.
De sus multiples referencias, una de mis favoritos en que el tutor del poeta sea un tal Balthazar, de Alexandria, discreto homenaje a Lawrence Durrell.
Me gano la idea de que la sabiduría colectiva de una red de inteligencia artificial que incorpore el pensamiento y sentido común de todos los habitantes de una comunidad, sea la forma mas evolucionada de democracia. EL grupo es mayor que la suma de las partes.
3. (audio) Why do I love these people. Po Bronson. NY Times bestseller. ¿Qué nos une a los otros miembros de nuestra familia? ¿Cuál es el lazo con tios, primos, hemanros, padres, pareja, cuando hay abismos que separan? Po Bronson no intenta sacar conclusiones, ni dar moralejas, simplemente narra las historias, de la vida real de varias familias, y las visicitudes por las que han pasado. EL audiolibro no trae varias de las historias que el libro tiene. EL hecho que sean historias reales, de abuso, drogadicción divorcio, reencuentro, perdón, recuperar tiempo perdido, y encontrar prioridades, lo hacen un libro muy, muy calido y muy humano.
4 (audio) The Vinyl Cafe. Stuart McLean. Cuando llegue a Canada hace diez años, escuchar en el radio las historias del Vynil Cafe me hicieron sentir de un modo importante acogido, comfortable, todo un universo casero, reconfortante y familiar (en el sentido de relacion, no de reconocimiento), y mas de una vez pense que Stuart McLean mas que un cuentacuentos inspirado, era un novelista. Ahora me entero que Vinyl cafe comenzo como una novela, mi not-so-guilty pleasure de los Sabados por ma mañana.
5 The selected works of T.S. Spivet. Reif Larsen. Regalo de Victoria. Es curioso que en este par de años haya habido dos bestselleres contados dedse la perpectiva de un niño con sindrome de Asperger, ambos implicando un viaje y un projecto a escondidas de los padres. Pero este es mucho mas logrado que 'el curioso incidente del perro en la noche', por la carga dramatica de la relacion con el padre (genial, el diagrama de las conversaciones en la mesa de cena), la carga emocional del accidente del hermano y la escopeta y la manera de introducirlo oblicuamente, de perfil.
Pero por mucho, lo que pone a Reif Larsen en el mapa son precisamente, los mapas de T.S. Spivet (este libro nunca funcionaria como audiolibro), la manera que T.S. de traducir todo como un mapa, un diagrama y una estadistica es uno de los recursos narrativos mas ingeniosos que he visto en mucho tiempo, le permite proyectar la historia en cien dimensiones distintas sin perder el hilo central, ni sentir que esta sobreutilizando el recurso. Un libro hermoso.
6. (audio) Welcome to the Monkey House. Kurt Vonnegut. Un muy buen libro de historias, entre Mark Twain y Juan Jose Arreola (Confabulario). Tiene de todo: distopia egualitaria, donde todo mundo es reducido al minimo comun denominador; un militar que regresa al pueblo y humilla a la actriz coqueta; los dos timidos que se transfiguran al pisar escena; el telepata desarmamentista; un maestro de musica que rescata el rebelde irrescatable; y la distopia que le da titulo al libro, sobre la supresion del placer sexual. Divertido, e interesante ejemplo del contraste de valores de la epoca y la mentalidad progresista de Vonnegut.
7 (audio) The greatest show on earth. Richard Dawkins. El libro comienza diciendo lo triste que es tener que escribir un libro explicando porque la evolucion es un hecho, siendo que 40% de los norteamericanos, y similar porcentaje en UK niegan los mas fundementales hechos de la evolucion y lageologia (ubican la tierra en 6,000 años, para coincidir con el antiguo testamento), por no hablar de los paises musulmanes donde el fundamentalismo religioso ha practicamente desterrado a la ciencia en lo que a evolucion se refiere. Cuando escuche la introduccion, el panorama que pinta dawkins me parecio un tanto exagerado, apocaliptico. Pero cuando compañeros de la oficina vieron en audiolibro en el auto, y por primera vez en mi vida presencie una agitada discusion donde gente profesional y educada declaraba que la educacion era una religion basada en Fe mientras que el creacionismo se basa en Hechos, y dias mas tarde en multiples lobbys de hoteles en Egipto lei cantidad de folletos sobre la islam y la ciencia y las implicciones para los "no creyentes", mientras en la calle las unicas mujeres que se permitian tenian que ir cubiertas de pies a cabeza y acompañadas por un familiar... comparto el pesimismo de Dawkins: la humanidad va para atras, sumergiendose en fanatismo religioso cada vez peor. En tales condiciones,este libro me parece no solo necesario: indispensable.
Tristemente, la gete que mas lo necesita leer, no lo va a tocar, o lo va a malinterpretar. Dawkins mismo menciona como su libro mas conicido: "The selfish Gene" ha sido retorcido, tergiversado y ahora presentado por creacionistas como evidencia de que los cientificos admiten que "la evolucion no explica nada".
Pero en fin, el libro mismo, si bien esta dirigidompara gente que no sabe nada sobre ciencia, o el metodo cientifico mismo, tiene tanta informacion que seguro habra algo nuevo para casi cualquier lector. El primer capitulo, sobre selecciona artificial, las rosas, las lechugas, las zorras y los perros es claro y elegante, y deberia ser evidencia hasta para el fanatico mas persignado de que las especies cambian cuando solo ciertos individuos con ciertas caracteristicas se permiten reproducir. EL capitulo sobre carbono 14, y su correlacion con el sistema de contar los anillos en los arboles es una gran descripcion de un triunfo de la observacion y dedicacion hmana para entender el mundo. Tambien la decripcion del experimento, que lleva 30 años, sobre el cultivo de bacterias, un frasco nuevo al dia, en frascos de glucosa es maravillosa.
En fin, Dawkins es un faro en un mundo cuya mente se cierra cade vez mas a la busqueda imparcial del conocimiento, ojala este libro llegue a muchas manos.
8. The White Tiger. Aravind Adiga. Ganador del premio Man Booker del 2008. Un libro delicioso, irrverente, desmitificador sobre los dos mundos de la india "Luz y Obscuridad", "Light and Darkness". Me lo devore en un par de dias mientras viaaba por puebitos miserables en los Oasis desierto en Egipto que hacian eco a la miseria y marginalidad descrita en el libro (lo termine en el balcon del Hotel Mubarak, en el Osais de Siwa, administrado por militares). El libro describe el pozo sin fndo de la miseria, el servilismo, la corrupcion en India, el nulo valor de la vida humana, la nula esperanza en el futuro o el progreso... y lo hace divirtiendote con un maravilloso humor negro un poco a lo Junot diaz en "Oscar Wao". De esos libros que quieres alargar para no terminarlo.
Partes que me llamaron la atencion: la democracia y las elecciones; los hospitales publicos; la 'jaula de los pollos" como metafora de la inmovilidad de las clases en India; los choferes viviendo en els otano de los edificios de lujo y leyendo novelas de crimen, mientras que el narrador comenta que el verdadero peligro es cuando empiezan a leer a Ghandi...
New rule: books read in English, get reviewed in English
9. (audio) Netherland. Joseph O'Neill. I could never have guessed that I was going to read a book about 9/11 and about cricket... and that I would absolutely love it. Incredible well crafted, the metaphors are non one liners, but are fine threads that sew the paragraph together, showing up just briefly but then coming back to provide an uniform color and theme across the page. He has a really smooth way to leave one topic, and then coming back to the main narrative; like on the train, the childrens rhyme book that Chuck gave him, going to the memory of his son, then coming back to the scene of the train).
I loved the character of Chuck Ramkissoon, powerful, outrageous and credible, I really bonded with the narrator Hans van den Broek, and I found every bit of the story completely credible.
The only criticism I would make, is that Joseph O'Neill abuses a bit tome changes. Since the characters go back and forth from New York, to London, to Netherland, is hard to follow sometimes if he is talking about the time he was living in one city, and visitng the other, or the other way around.
While not a "literary" book as Mr. Hornby would say (one of the best delivered metaphors on the book is about lactose intolerance), it is a book that deserves close attention, since O'Neil seems to be always looking around and finding the interesting scene. Also, I'll admit that I'm at a point a good book about the problems of adult relationships can really get under my sking. And this wasn't a good book, it as a great one.
10. (audio). A Short History of nearly Everything. Bill Bryson.
The history of science is a fascinating topic, and no matter how much oevrlap there is with other books, tv shows or articles I've been reading, there is always something refreshing, there is always a reminder about facts that you knew, but you started to forget:
- electrons, charge repulsion, we don't really touch anything.
- shape of the universe, what happens when you reach the end?
- viruses are not alive
- why the center of the earth is hot?
- Yellowstone park as a crater
- cycle of CO2
11. Duelo por Miguel Pruneda. David Toscana. Mediocre. Mediocre el estilo, mediocre la narrativa, y sobre todo: mediocres los personajes. Me tiene cansado la literatura donde se intenta hacer le elegia o romanticismo de los derrotados. Las imagenes muy cansadas, las crisis de los personajes extraordinariamente sulsas, sus obsesiones totalmente idiotas. Solo dos palabras se salvan de este libro; Pruneda y Toscana, ambos nombres tienen buena sonoridad para personajes de ficcione, todo lo demas... debio haber sido silencio. Es raro que la recomendacion haya venido de quien vino.
De sus multiples referencias, una de mis favoritos en que el tutor del poeta sea un tal Balthazar, de Alexandria, discreto homenaje a Lawrence Durrell.
Me gano la idea de que la sabiduría colectiva de una red de inteligencia artificial que incorpore el pensamiento y sentido común de todos los habitantes de una comunidad, sea la forma mas evolucionada de democracia. EL grupo es mayor que la suma de las partes.
3. (audio) Why do I love these people. Po Bronson. NY Times bestseller. ¿Qué nos une a los otros miembros de nuestra familia? ¿Cuál es el lazo con tios, primos, hemanros, padres, pareja, cuando hay abismos que separan? Po Bronson no intenta sacar conclusiones, ni dar moralejas, simplemente narra las historias, de la vida real de varias familias, y las visicitudes por las que han pasado. EL audiolibro no trae varias de las historias que el libro tiene. EL hecho que sean historias reales, de abuso, drogadicción divorcio, reencuentro, perdón, recuperar tiempo perdido, y encontrar prioridades, lo hacen un libro muy, muy calido y muy humano.
4 (audio) The Vinyl Cafe. Stuart McLean. Cuando llegue a Canada hace diez años, escuchar en el radio las historias del Vynil Cafe me hicieron sentir de un modo importante acogido, comfortable, todo un universo casero, reconfortante y familiar (en el sentido de relacion, no de reconocimiento), y mas de una vez pense que Stuart McLean mas que un cuentacuentos inspirado, era un novelista. Ahora me entero que Vinyl cafe comenzo como una novela, mi not-so-guilty pleasure de los Sabados por ma mañana.
5 The selected works of T.S. Spivet. Reif Larsen. Regalo de Victoria. Es curioso que en este par de años haya habido dos bestselleres contados dedse la perpectiva de un niño con sindrome de Asperger, ambos implicando un viaje y un projecto a escondidas de los padres. Pero este es mucho mas logrado que 'el curioso incidente del perro en la noche', por la carga dramatica de la relacion con el padre (genial, el diagrama de las conversaciones en la mesa de cena), la carga emocional del accidente del hermano y la escopeta y la manera de introducirlo oblicuamente, de perfil.
Pero por mucho, lo que pone a Reif Larsen en el mapa son precisamente, los mapas de T.S. Spivet (este libro nunca funcionaria como audiolibro), la manera que T.S. de traducir todo como un mapa, un diagrama y una estadistica es uno de los recursos narrativos mas ingeniosos que he visto en mucho tiempo, le permite proyectar la historia en cien dimensiones distintas sin perder el hilo central, ni sentir que esta sobreutilizando el recurso. Un libro hermoso.
6. (audio) Welcome to the Monkey House. Kurt Vonnegut. Un muy buen libro de historias, entre Mark Twain y Juan Jose Arreola (Confabulario). Tiene de todo: distopia egualitaria, donde todo mundo es reducido al minimo comun denominador; un militar que regresa al pueblo y humilla a la actriz coqueta; los dos timidos que se transfiguran al pisar escena; el telepata desarmamentista; un maestro de musica que rescata el rebelde irrescatable; y la distopia que le da titulo al libro, sobre la supresion del placer sexual. Divertido, e interesante ejemplo del contraste de valores de la epoca y la mentalidad progresista de Vonnegut.
7 (audio) The greatest show on earth. Richard Dawkins. El libro comienza diciendo lo triste que es tener que escribir un libro explicando porque la evolucion es un hecho, siendo que 40% de los norteamericanos, y similar porcentaje en UK niegan los mas fundementales hechos de la evolucion y lageologia (ubican la tierra en 6,000 años, para coincidir con el antiguo testamento), por no hablar de los paises musulmanes donde el fundamentalismo religioso ha practicamente desterrado a la ciencia en lo que a evolucion se refiere. Cuando escuche la introduccion, el panorama que pinta dawkins me parecio un tanto exagerado, apocaliptico. Pero cuando compañeros de la oficina vieron en audiolibro en el auto, y por primera vez en mi vida presencie una agitada discusion donde gente profesional y educada declaraba que la educacion era una religion basada en Fe mientras que el creacionismo se basa en Hechos, y dias mas tarde en multiples lobbys de hoteles en Egipto lei cantidad de folletos sobre la islam y la ciencia y las implicciones para los "no creyentes", mientras en la calle las unicas mujeres que se permitian tenian que ir cubiertas de pies a cabeza y acompañadas por un familiar... comparto el pesimismo de Dawkins: la humanidad va para atras, sumergiendose en fanatismo religioso cada vez peor. En tales condiciones,este libro me parece no solo necesario: indispensable.
Tristemente, la gete que mas lo necesita leer, no lo va a tocar, o lo va a malinterpretar. Dawkins mismo menciona como su libro mas conicido: "The selfish Gene" ha sido retorcido, tergiversado y ahora presentado por creacionistas como evidencia de que los cientificos admiten que "la evolucion no explica nada".
Pero en fin, el libro mismo, si bien esta dirigidompara gente que no sabe nada sobre ciencia, o el metodo cientifico mismo, tiene tanta informacion que seguro habra algo nuevo para casi cualquier lector. El primer capitulo, sobre selecciona artificial, las rosas, las lechugas, las zorras y los perros es claro y elegante, y deberia ser evidencia hasta para el fanatico mas persignado de que las especies cambian cuando solo ciertos individuos con ciertas caracteristicas se permiten reproducir. EL capitulo sobre carbono 14, y su correlacion con el sistema de contar los anillos en los arboles es una gran descripcion de un triunfo de la observacion y dedicacion hmana para entender el mundo. Tambien la decripcion del experimento, que lleva 30 años, sobre el cultivo de bacterias, un frasco nuevo al dia, en frascos de glucosa es maravillosa.
En fin, Dawkins es un faro en un mundo cuya mente se cierra cade vez mas a la busqueda imparcial del conocimiento, ojala este libro llegue a muchas manos.
8. The White Tiger. Aravind Adiga. Ganador del premio Man Booker del 2008. Un libro delicioso, irrverente, desmitificador sobre los dos mundos de la india "Luz y Obscuridad", "Light and Darkness". Me lo devore en un par de dias mientras viaaba por puebitos miserables en los Oasis desierto en Egipto que hacian eco a la miseria y marginalidad descrita en el libro (lo termine en el balcon del Hotel Mubarak, en el Osais de Siwa, administrado por militares). El libro describe el pozo sin fndo de la miseria, el servilismo, la corrupcion en India, el nulo valor de la vida humana, la nula esperanza en el futuro o el progreso... y lo hace divirtiendote con un maravilloso humor negro un poco a lo Junot diaz en "Oscar Wao". De esos libros que quieres alargar para no terminarlo.
Partes que me llamaron la atencion: la democracia y las elecciones; los hospitales publicos; la 'jaula de los pollos" como metafora de la inmovilidad de las clases en India; los choferes viviendo en els otano de los edificios de lujo y leyendo novelas de crimen, mientras que el narrador comenta que el verdadero peligro es cuando empiezan a leer a Ghandi...
New rule: books read in English, get reviewed in English
9. (audio) Netherland. Joseph O'Neill. I could never have guessed that I was going to read a book about 9/11 and about cricket... and that I would absolutely love it. Incredible well crafted, the metaphors are non one liners, but are fine threads that sew the paragraph together, showing up just briefly but then coming back to provide an uniform color and theme across the page. He has a really smooth way to leave one topic, and then coming back to the main narrative; like on the train, the childrens rhyme book that Chuck gave him, going to the memory of his son, then coming back to the scene of the train).
I loved the character of Chuck Ramkissoon, powerful, outrageous and credible, I really bonded with the narrator Hans van den Broek, and I found every bit of the story completely credible.
The only criticism I would make, is that Joseph O'Neill abuses a bit tome changes. Since the characters go back and forth from New York, to London, to Netherland, is hard to follow sometimes if he is talking about the time he was living in one city, and visitng the other, or the other way around.
While not a "literary" book as Mr. Hornby would say (one of the best delivered metaphors on the book is about lactose intolerance), it is a book that deserves close attention, since O'Neil seems to be always looking around and finding the interesting scene. Also, I'll admit that I'm at a point a good book about the problems of adult relationships can really get under my sking. And this wasn't a good book, it as a great one.
10. (audio). A Short History of nearly Everything. Bill Bryson.
The history of science is a fascinating topic, and no matter how much oevrlap there is with other books, tv shows or articles I've been reading, there is always something refreshing, there is always a reminder about facts that you knew, but you started to forget:
- electrons, charge repulsion, we don't really touch anything.
- shape of the universe, what happens when you reach the end?
- viruses are not alive
- why the center of the earth is hot?
- Yellowstone park as a crater
- cycle of CO2
11. Duelo por Miguel Pruneda. David Toscana. Mediocre. Mediocre el estilo, mediocre la narrativa, y sobre todo: mediocres los personajes. Me tiene cansado la literatura donde se intenta hacer le elegia o romanticismo de los derrotados. Las imagenes muy cansadas, las crisis de los personajes extraordinariamente sulsas, sus obsesiones totalmente idiotas. Solo dos palabras se salvan de este libro; Pruneda y Toscana, ambos nombres tienen buena sonoridad para personajes de ficcione, todo lo demas... debio haber sido silencio. Es raro que la recomendacion haya venido de quien vino.
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