The book is a bit ore dry than the documentary -the documentary is a must see. The book may not appeal to a wide audience given the leve of detail he goes into listing crops, cattle and climate to sustain his thesis.
Jared Diamond deserves a lot of credit for two number of reasons:
1. He did asks the right question, why some cultures /nations prevail in the modern world while others didn't?
2. He takes a very creative and convincing way to go about answering that.
I was already fammiliar with his thesis because of the documentary, so in that sense the book didn't gave much new. But I have to say that when he talks about mankind going from nomad to sedentary, then to form villages, and eventually kingdoms, he does stop to observe that we all believe that this was the natural course of events, that humans were meant to do so and the path that leads to cities and civilization was natural. I got the same feeling that I got when looking at the buildings in Egypt, chaos is for granted, civilization isa miracle.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
11 - Man Booker prize finalist in 2011, a quiet gem of a book.
It starts telling the story of the characters when they are teenage boys at school, they are daring, pretentious and intellectually ambitious, dropping sentences like "phillosophycally self evident", and it reads as a restrained story of coming out of age in the 60's, nicely spread with culture and eager to get intimate with the oppossite sex. Then comes the relationship with the conflictive Veronica, which leaves a mark on the character, specially when she later starts going out with his best friend. Two suicides on the first part of the book.
Then, in one of the smoothest transitions I've read, Barnes pushes fast forward seamlessly 40 years, when the character is retired, divorced, a grandfather. He receives a letter from Veronica's mother. And this is where this book becomes brillient, by looking back at the story he just told, from a completely different angle, leading you to the plot twists with a gentle voice till the very end.
Really enjoyable read.
It starts telling the story of the characters when they are teenage boys at school, they are daring, pretentious and intellectually ambitious, dropping sentences like "phillosophycally self evident", and it reads as a restrained story of coming out of age in the 60's, nicely spread with culture and eager to get intimate with the oppossite sex. Then comes the relationship with the conflictive Veronica, which leaves a mark on the character, specially when she later starts going out with his best friend. Two suicides on the first part of the book.
Then, in one of the smoothest transitions I've read, Barnes pushes fast forward seamlessly 40 years, when the character is retired, divorced, a grandfather. He receives a letter from Veronica's mother. And this is where this book becomes brillient, by looking back at the story he just told, from a completely different angle, leading you to the plot twists with a gentle voice till the very end.
Really enjoyable read.
The plague of doves - Louise Erdrich
10. The best book I read in 2012. It was a 2009 Pullitzer Finalist.
The topic didn't seem very promising: the history of several characters in a first nations reserve in the 70's, but oh, boy was this book intense!
Each of the stories is engaging on itself, but the wordcrafting is superb, anecdotes of one character take another dimension when telling someone else's story later on the book. And the way it jumps from comedy, to drama, getting close to magic realism and horror at times it is very life like, those genres don't seem out of place, because life itself contains all those elements. I'd recommend this book to anyone.
Favourite scenes:
the little girl at religious school and the nun nicknamed godzilla; the tales form the grnadfather - the hanging; the sex driven preacher that gets struck by lightning; the faked kidnapping; the violin in the river and used to reform a thief; the psychology student reading Anais Nin and falling in love with a patient; the colonization of a patch of land during the winter.
The topic didn't seem very promising: the history of several characters in a first nations reserve in the 70's, but oh, boy was this book intense!
Each of the stories is engaging on itself, but the wordcrafting is superb, anecdotes of one character take another dimension when telling someone else's story later on the book. And the way it jumps from comedy, to drama, getting close to magic realism and horror at times it is very life like, those genres don't seem out of place, because life itself contains all those elements. I'd recommend this book to anyone.
Favourite scenes:
the little girl at religious school and the nun nicknamed godzilla; the tales form the grnadfather - the hanging; the sex driven preacher that gets struck by lightning; the faked kidnapping; the violin in the river and used to reform a thief; the psychology student reading Anais Nin and falling in love with a patient; the colonization of a patch of land during the winter.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
The museum of innocence. Orhan Pamuk
(audiobook) Because of the topic, not a book that I would recommend. While the book has some very interesting depictions of Istambul's society, 80% of the narrative is about the character's obsession with a girl called Fussan.
The first few chapters read like a love story, it starts on a beautiful tone when he describes one evening making love with Fussan in his apartment, noise of kids playing coming from an open window. "That was the happiest moment of my life" he says describing the moment when he penetrates her from behind, kisses her on the shoulder and she looses an earring.
So, he has a fiance (Sibelle) who is a cultivated, european style society woman, and he has this beautiful young lover. He he loves them both and for a while sounds like a man really in love. I entertained long monologues about his bliss... But then it gets to the obsessive part, and I cringed page after page, skipping some sections. Since I was so ready to sympathize with the character, it took me a while to turn against him. Part of me still has lingering doubts about Pamuk's intention: does the author believes that he is a man really in love with valid feelings and expectations? But part of me says it can't be true, the character is such a creepy, sickly obsessed looser that the author must have planned all along to make you cringe by first make you like him, and then (by telling the story from his perspective), and then slowly turns things around until you realize that you simply can not feel any sympathy for the guy. As an exercise on the author playing with the reader very successful, you feel suffocated by the character's obsession and feel compelled to shake him by the shoulders and slap him back into reason.
The parts where he describes Istanbul society, the obsession with virginity, the difference between the haves and have nots, the endless talks at cafes about making movies where really entertaining and I found many similarities with Guadalajara. Other than the creep factor, it was nice to hear the depictions of day to day life in the characters homes (like the chapter titled "sometimes". In the audiobook, I feel in love with the pronunciation of Beyoglu. Well written, I wouldn't have read it had I known what the topic was.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
What I talk about when I talk about running
(audiobook) Haruki Murakami. Memoir about Murakami's running and writing. whenever you put the book down, makes you feel you want to write, and run, and be calmer, unpretentious like Murakami. He us humble. Quite a contrast reading this just after Job's biography.
One of the biggest shockers for me is how little seriously does Murakami takes writting. I mean, he is obviously disciplined, and a hard worker, but he doesn't go about thinking he was born with a destiny or a mission in life. As he describes, one while watching a baseball game, he just realized he wanted to write something. no previous dreams of fame, no expectations. He just went and did it, with discipline and open nature, the same way he started training for marathons.
As a matter of fact, Murakami does seem to take life itself and his own persona very little seriously, which is something I wish I could do more.
He never tells you to go and run, but I dare you to read this book without going for it!
Steve Jobs. by Walter Isaacson
(audiobook) Worth reading for so many reasons. Mainly to see from the inside how one of the largest corporations ever was built. Also, it's fascinating to know about such personalities as Wozniac and Jobs before they were famous. His LSD use, India trips, hippie lifestyle is worth reading about.
The book has a lot of omissions and inaccuracies. Isaacson is clearly biased towards him (another possibility is not having done good research, but I doubt that), so anything Jobs ever did was "Revolutionary", "the first ever", "changed the industry", etc. Now, don't get me wrong, jobs clearly had a clearer vision and more success implementing it than many of his counterparts. He himself admitted to steal ideas, so Isaacson does him a disfavour by stating they Apple did things first that were really not done first, just more successfully. Also, by insisting page after page that he single handedly revolutionized several industries, willfully ignoring all the other industry players, is clear that he succumbed to Job's charm and couldn't be objective.
but probably the most intriguing aspect about the book, is the depiction of Job's personality itself. I don't recall ever reading a biography that made me dislike so much the person (and that include's Fouche), I can't believe how awful human being Jobs was. It really surprised me how impossible was to like the guy, even when I was totally prepared to like him. His biographer kept justifying him because 'he had the soul of an artist', but that can't justify his personality, there are really creative artist (Murakami comes to mind) that would abhor behaving the way jobs did. Art can't be a justification to behave like an idiot, for anyone.
The book has a lot of omissions and inaccuracies. Isaacson is clearly biased towards him (another possibility is not having done good research, but I doubt that), so anything Jobs ever did was "Revolutionary", "the first ever", "changed the industry", etc. Now, don't get me wrong, jobs clearly had a clearer vision and more success implementing it than many of his counterparts. He himself admitted to steal ideas, so Isaacson does him a disfavour by stating they Apple did things first that were really not done first, just more successfully. Also, by insisting page after page that he single handedly revolutionized several industries, willfully ignoring all the other industry players, is clear that he succumbed to Job's charm and couldn't be objective.
but probably the most intriguing aspect about the book, is the depiction of Job's personality itself. I don't recall ever reading a biography that made me dislike so much the person (and that include's Fouche), I can't believe how awful human being Jobs was. It really surprised me how impossible was to like the guy, even when I was totally prepared to like him. His biographer kept justifying him because 'he had the soul of an artist', but that can't justify his personality, there are really creative artist (Murakami comes to mind) that would abhor behaving the way jobs did. Art can't be a justification to behave like an idiot, for anyone.
Click: The magic of Instant connections.
By Ori and Ron Brafman. A not so good attempt to copy the success of books like 'Blink' or 'Freakonomics'. the authors go for the very same target market, using the same structure of real life examples, and then trying to come up with underlying principles. The examples are entertaining, but there are no eureka moments, no real value beyond the anecdotal.
Their 'discoveries' are along the lines of: "if you spend a lot of time with someone, like a co-worker, you are more like to establish a friendship or develop a relationship than with someone you don't spend time with". Really? Journalistic geniuses.
Their 'discoveries' are along the lines of: "if you spend a lot of time with someone, like a co-worker, you are more like to establish a friendship or develop a relationship than with someone you don't spend time with". Really? Journalistic geniuses.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Todo Nada. Brenda Lozano
(Así se llama, Todo Nada, sin conjunción) Magnífico estilo. Un libro literario, páginas para lectores atentos. Usa juegos de palabras, de estructuras, de situaciones, cambia constantemente de punto de vista narrativo y salta del pasado al futuro con agilidad sorprendente. Impresionante que lo haya escrito alguien de 23 años.
Fue recomendación de Juan Antonio, al prestármelo me dijo que un amigo la conoce y que al parecer ella tiene fama de arrogante insufrible, pero tanto me gustó y me intrigó el libro que busqué entrevistas con ella en internet, y digo que valdría la pena sufrirla.
En la entrevista dice que en lo cotidiano hay más tensión que en los grandes temas. Yo, que estaba evitando la ficción latinoamericana tras una sobredosis de novelas sobre personajes mediocres y perdedores, con éste libro redescubro que se puede hacer una buena novela sin buscar los grandes temas.
La narración pinta a un personaje de ésos "más grandes que la vida", que les dicen, su abuelo de 72 años, médico famoso a quien abandona su mujer, que vive sólo para la medicina, los libros, su amigo Óscar, y su nieta Emilia. Cuando lo abandona su mujer se decide dejar morir poco a poco de inanición. Se viste bien todas las noches para que la muerte lo encuentre elegante.
La otra parte, es la relación de ella con su novio. La cuenta con desenvoltura, pero sin desenfado. Con gran introspección, pero sin dramas y sin perder el contexto del resto de su realidad. Muy superior manera a contar una relación que el libro de Nothomb que acababa de terminar, que en común tienen ser mujeres jóvenes hablando de relaciones fallidas, pero en estilo la mexicana se la lleva entre las patas, como decimos los de acá.
Me llamó mucho la atención su actitud ante el ocio. Por ejemplo cuando no va a la universidad y se pregunta si se la hubiera pasado en una oficina contestando teléfonos y redactando correos, justificaría "el nacimiento de sus padres" o cuando viendo un documental sobre gorilas, se enoja con el narrador porque se clava con el tema de que el gorila "no hace nada más que estar sentado en una piedra diez horas" dice ella "¿si el primate fuese al banco, a la oficina, a una junta, el narrador se expresaría mejor de él?"
En fin, que amén de la desazón que me causan ciertos temas éstos días, el libro mejor escrito que he leído en lo que va del año, quizá en un rato mas largo.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Ni de Eva ni de Adán. Amelié Nothomb
Más que una novela, se lee como un diario de viaje. Un aspecto del libro se centra en el "romance moderno" entre ella y Rini, ella es la europea que está a gusto con él, pero no siente nada ni tiene reparo en decírselo. Él es el excéntrico japonés de gran nobleza que intenta durante dos años convencerla de que se casen. Esa parte del relato me resultó muy incómoda.
Pero hay otra parte, que es ver Japón través de los ojos de un extranjero, que me pareció bastante entretenida, tengo unas ganas terribles de regresar a allá. Me causó mucha risa el episodio cuando está en el cine viendo "Ben Hur" y en la escena del nacimiento de Cristo, cuando los magos ven la estrella moviéndose en el cielo, la gente del cine exclama entusiasmada "OVNI" con típica flema japonesa, nada les parece fuera de lugar.
El estilo es muy directo, sin nada de adornos, excepto cuando "siente mucho" por ejemplo el ascenso al Fuji, o la noche congelándose en la cabaña durante la tormenta de nieve. Ligero, sin demasiada pena ni gloria. Recomendación de Juan Antonio.
Pero hay otra parte, que es ver Japón través de los ojos de un extranjero, que me pareció bastante entretenida, tengo unas ganas terribles de regresar a allá. Me causó mucha risa el episodio cuando está en el cine viendo "Ben Hur" y en la escena del nacimiento de Cristo, cuando los magos ven la estrella moviéndose en el cielo, la gente del cine exclama entusiasmada "OVNI" con típica flema japonesa, nada les parece fuera de lugar.
El estilo es muy directo, sin nada de adornos, excepto cuando "siente mucho" por ejemplo el ascenso al Fuji, o la noche congelándose en la cabaña durante la tormenta de nieve. Ligero, sin demasiada pena ni gloria. Recomendación de Juan Antonio.
Monday, June 18, 2012
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Brian Green
Standing on the edge of the latest discoveries on string theory, quantum physics and cosmology, this books probes into an area that used to be mere speculation: parallel universes.
The result? Reality could be much stranger than any fiction in this world... and this universe. Fuelled by a series of Nova episodes (The elegant Universe, The Fabric of Cosmos), and a couple of books, 2012 re-sparked my always lingering interest in physics. This one answers (well, kind of) some of of most basic haunting questions: such as is the universe finite or infinite? what is the shape of it? I struggle wit the idea of limitless and yet finite on 3 dimensions (I'm ok with it on 2 and the ballon surface analogy).
I think I finally get the multiverse theory based on the inevitable repetition based on a finite (however large) arrangement of elements, if those rearrangements are infinite. And even just glancing at the implications you have to wonder:
Is living a multiverse the most significant or the most irrelevant discovery ever? I pondered this with Leon Marchebout on a terrace in Providencia, Guadalajara, and I concur that the answer is: both. Objectively, it can't have any effect in my life, or the life of my great, great, great grandchildren, or anyone I'll ever know. But we're subjective beings, and it does make a difference.
I, subjectively declare, that physicist's inference of Multiverse, is the most life altering concepts ever, and it just occurred in our lifetime.
Los rojos de ultramar. Jordi Soler
Recomendación de Juan Antonio sobre el exilio de los republicanos catalanes en la selva Veracruzana. La historia abarca varias décadas, nutrida de hechos históricos de la Guerra civil española, el destino de los exiliados en Francia (memorables escenas del campo de refugiados en la playa), el laborioso espionaje y contra espionaje de los nazis, los franceses y Franco contra los Mexicanos, los republicanos y el franceses simpatizantes de la republica. Interesantísimo el personaje del embajador Mexicano en Francia y sus esfuerzos para cumplir el objetivo de Lázaro Cárdenas de proteger a los republicanos y asilarlos en México. El embajador Rodríguez escribiendo carta tras carta todo el día mientras sostenía conversaciones por alguna razón se siente mucho más meritorio que escribir correos electrónicos incesantemente mientras se habla por teléfono.
Hay dos transformaciones interesantes, la de Arcadi, tras décadas de hablar por teléfono con su hermana y ver diapositivas en Veracruz de las Ramblas, regresa tras décadas de exilio para darse cuenta que aquella Barcelona y aquella hermana han sido reemplazadas por otra ciudad y otra persona con quienes ya no tiene nada que ver.
La otra transformación, interesantísima, muy bien desarrollada, es la de la hija de la criada, que se vuelve la criada de su hija, y que cuando tiene a su vez un hijo de un padre borracho y ausente, Arcadi intenta romper el ciclo tratando al niño como de la familia, mandándolo a la universidad, luego a estudiar de electricista cuando fracasa en esto, y solo abandonando la esperanza cuando repite el ciclo, volviéndose borracho y estando ausente de sus hijos... que se convierten en criados en casa de Arcadi.
No hay nada sobre la biografía de Jordi Soler a la mano en internet, difícil saber que tanto de la historia familiar está en la novela. Recomendable
Hay dos transformaciones interesantes, la de Arcadi, tras décadas de hablar por teléfono con su hermana y ver diapositivas en Veracruz de las Ramblas, regresa tras décadas de exilio para darse cuenta que aquella Barcelona y aquella hermana han sido reemplazadas por otra ciudad y otra persona con quienes ya no tiene nada que ver.
La otra transformación, interesantísima, muy bien desarrollada, es la de la hija de la criada, que se vuelve la criada de su hija, y que cuando tiene a su vez un hijo de un padre borracho y ausente, Arcadi intenta romper el ciclo tratando al niño como de la familia, mandándolo a la universidad, luego a estudiar de electricista cuando fracasa en esto, y solo abandonando la esperanza cuando repite el ciclo, volviéndose borracho y estando ausente de sus hijos... que se convierten en criados en casa de Arcadi.
No hay nada sobre la biografía de Jordi Soler a la mano en internet, difícil saber que tanto de la historia familiar está en la novela. Recomendable
Sunday, April 1, 2012
The 4% Universe. Richard Panek
(Audiolibro). I was expecting this to be a book describing dark matter/energy, and I got two surprises: The main one is tat this book is mostly about HOW and BY WHOM the most recent theories in Cosmology have been developed, a really candid, insider's look into competing teams of scientist and academics, with all the personality traits and politics that influence the scientific practice. The other one, is how surprisingly up to date the book is, it was published just last year. On the good side, I kind of recognized all of the topics, funny enough there was a reference to events in the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo that happened at the time I was working next door on the other institution founded by MikeL, RIM. On the bad side, I realized how much I don't understand of cosmology. I wish I had been reading it on paper, because as I was driving I sometimes tuned out of the plot about the different teams and their conflicts, and then he would describe a crucial aspect of the theory, which I couldn't quite catch...
Some ideas that caught my attention:
- In 50,000 years of civilization, our generation is the first to be able to answer some of the most fundamental questions about life, the universe and reality. Those formerly known as philosophical questions, now known simply as areas of scientific research.
- This knowledge is produced by a very, very small subset of our fellow citizens. All we know about the expansion of the universe, the nature of matter and energy, the age and size of the universe, was discovered by a group of people barely larger than the population of my high school. The most significant knowledge, created by so few.
- Some of the most amazing facts about the universe, can be described with extremely precise measurements, based just on creative experiment design, careful data collection and hard work at the lab.
- Why the sky is dark, since in every direction of the sky there is light coming to us form one of the billion starts of the billions of galaxies? Because the rate of expansion of the universe is such that the light from those stars will never reach us. we have only know this a few years.
- ...and of course, everything that we can detect, all we can see and measure, everything we used to call reality, is only the 4% of it. the other 94%, the part we can only infer, is the other 96%!
Some ideas that caught my attention:
- In 50,000 years of civilization, our generation is the first to be able to answer some of the most fundamental questions about life, the universe and reality. Those formerly known as philosophical questions, now known simply as areas of scientific research.
- This knowledge is produced by a very, very small subset of our fellow citizens. All we know about the expansion of the universe, the nature of matter and energy, the age and size of the universe, was discovered by a group of people barely larger than the population of my high school. The most significant knowledge, created by so few.
- Some of the most amazing facts about the universe, can be described with extremely precise measurements, based just on creative experiment design, careful data collection and hard work at the lab.
- Why the sky is dark, since in every direction of the sky there is light coming to us form one of the billion starts of the billions of galaxies? Because the rate of expansion of the universe is such that the light from those stars will never reach us. we have only know this a few years.
- ...and of course, everything that we can detect, all we can see and measure, everything we used to call reality, is only the 4% of it. the other 94%, the part we can only infer, is the other 96%!
Mezcala ¡Se querían llevar la isla!
Empecé el 2012 con éste buen libro editado por el congreso del estado de Jalisco, me lo regaló mi hermana Baby, que es una de las que editó el contenido, es la historia de la Isla de Mezcala, en el Lago de Chapala, que oficialmente nunca se rindió a los españoles y que resistió oleadas de ataques. La historia esta contada e ilustrada por los niños de Mezcala, muy interesante ver la perspectiva de los niños, tanto sobre su pueblo como la historia. Me llamó la atención que los niños pueden hablar sobre la presencia de la coca sin hacerlo dramático, simplemente como un problema más. Lo mejor sin duda, fue la niña que narra como Hidalgo va corriendo a la Iglesia a sonar las campanas para lanzar el ataque de la independencia, y las señoras del mercado se enojan porque paso corriendo y no las saludo... ¡eso es historia! Mucho orgullo de la participación de mi hermana en el proyecto.
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