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.
