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.

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.

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.