All Forms of Art

  I didn't expect Mostly Harmless to become one of my favorite books in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. By this point in the saga, Arthur Dent has traveled through space, encountered aliens, learned that Earth is not nearly as important as he once thought, and generally survived one absurd situation after another. Ford Prefect has disappeared and reappeared, Zaphod has been Zaphod, and the universe has continued to demonstrate that absolutely nothing works quite the way we expect it to. But Mostly Harmless feels different. It is still funny. Douglas Adams is still Douglas Adams, and there are plenty of ridiculous situations and wonderfully absurd observations. But there is also something more melancholic underneath it. The characters are changing. Arthur is changing. And, perhaps most importantly, the series itself seems to be asking what happens when we stop simply surviving absurdity and start trying to find our place within it. Arthur Dent Has Changed On...

  South of the Border, West of the Sun  was not at all one of my favorites.  After reading so many glowing reviews, I must confess I was genuinely disappointed.  That said, I didn’t stop reading. Not even once. And that, in itself, says a lot about Haruki Murakami as a writer. I didn’t enjoy the book until very close to the end, but Murakami’s prose kept pulling me forward. He has that rare ability to make you continue reading even when you feel, deep down, that the story might be going nowhere. Beautiful Writing, Distant Characters Murakami writes beautifully—there’s no denying that. His sentences flow effortlessly, scenes are carefully composed, and everything feels precise and intentional. But I felt no empathy for Hajime, the main character. I couldn’t identify with him, nor did I particularly care about what happened to him. And it’s hard to love a story when you don’t care about the people living inside it. This emotional distance reminded me, at times, of ...

  Jennifer Egan returns with The Candy House , a dazzling, interconnected novel that expands on the universe of A Visit from the Goon Squad . While not a direct sequel, this book explores the same themes of time, identity, and technology, offering a fresh yet familiar experience. A World Where Memories Are No Longer Private  At the heart of The Candy House is a revolutionary technology called "Own Your Unconscious," created by tech mogul Bix Bouton. This invention allows people to externalize and share their memories. This leads to profound ethical and existential questions.  Would you trade your privacy for perfect recollection?  What happens when memories are no longer personal? A Narrative as Experimental as Its Predecessor  Like A Visit from the Goon Squad , this novel unfolds in a non-linear, multi-perspective style.  Each chapter introduces new characters—some familiar, some new—who navigate the implications of Bix's technology in unique ways. Fro...

  The Long Emergency is a book by James Howard Kunstler that will open your eyes. It forces you to look directly at everything most of us seem to choose to ignore. It is not new. The Long Emergency is a book from 2006, but it is as fresh as it could be and an excellent alert for those who refuse to see what is right in front of their noses.  Its primary focus is the civilization we built based on cheap oil and how that's ending with the world reservations disappearing quickly.  Shocking data Kunstler is not trying to sugarcoat our situation, and some of the data can be very surprising for you - shocking.  Humans pollute and corrupt the planet. We destroy everything, and unless you work on the field, I assure you, you'll never think that the numbers could be this big. Why didn’t we act? Reading this after the COVID pandemic can make you feel some anger. It has been a while since the scientific community expected a pandemic that would destroy everything - not only ...

  The Lying Life of Adults shows us, once more, that the teenage years and growing up can be painful.  Giovanna is the main character of this story, and she is feeling all the fast changes adolescence demands in a deeply divided town. Before this situation, her body and her opinions and desires are changing fast. Perhaps, too fast. Parents aren’t perfect. It is usually in those teenage years that we realize our parents aren’t perfect. They are humans with all the flaws that that implies. Giovanna is no different. Her parents are not as she thought they were, and her perfect family isn’t perfect at all. Those adults, those references that she admires, hide things, lie, and do things that she considers wrong. They are like everybody else. They are not heroes. When we realize that our parents are not the superheroes we believed they were when we were very young children, it can hurt.   Why is it so important? Because when we realize they also can fail, with the destruc...

  Once more, Yuval Noah Harari raises questions about Mankind. But, this time, instead of looking back, he focuses on the future. Analyzing what's happening right now, he looks for answers. What does the state of our lives say about the future? What is it to come? Technology - will it make us Gods? Throughout history, human beings have always had three main goals: end famine, epidemics, and war. So now that we have (virtually) the solution for all of them, what are we going to do?  Even the most recent (and scary) COVID pandemic showed us that we have the technology to overcome it in a way that we never did. So, where do we go from here?  God? I'm god In our modern world, diseases kill more than war, but, despite that, they aren't a great concern anymore. This is because they aren't the result of God's wrath but instead of human incompetency. Death itself is no longer looked at the same way. We don't die because God demanded, but because someone made a mistake. ...

  Like the previous books from the saga, A Feast for Crows holds your attention from the very beginning.  The story is filled with strong characters. It avoids the cliche of damsels in distress and perfect shinny armor knights coming to save them. The characters are not stereotyped, and you can feel their anger, their fears, their love. You care about them (or you hate them). In either way, they look alive.  Reading the Books vs. Watching The Show No matter what you do, you cannot ignore the massively successful show produced by HBO. That brings a few issues. After watching the show, you cannot undo the image of the characters in your head. At least, not easily. I will always listen to the voice of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau whenever Jaime Lannister gives an order. The bitterness in Cersei’s remarks will always be Lena Headey ’s. Yet, reading is different and, once more, better. Richer in details and emotions, it makes a lot of difference to access the characters feelings a...

  I picked up this book at someone else’s library, and I started reading it because I was bored. After a couple of pages, I couldn’t stop. Sapiens is a fantastic reflection of humanity and its place in this world. It is an accessible history class, written in a compelling novel fashion. You can either agree with Harari or find it a little reductionist (thousands of years in a few pages can have that impact); you won’t be able to ignore it.  Are WE that special? For many years, we thought that we were special, near-divine. According to Harari, we are just another animal that happened to control the world for several reasons. It seems that a series of random events led us to this point. One of the most curious things I found in this book was that I thought human evolution was a sort of continuum line in which one single species evolved, step by step. Apparently, like with any other animals, different "kinds" of humans shared the world. At some point, all the others were go...

In the last book of the series, Lila and Lenú’s relationship remains the center of the novel. A new pregnancy for both of them brings the two women closer again until a tragedy hits them. Freedom from the heart Until the last book, Elena was too attached to Nino, but now he starts to lose his charm. His weaknesses can’t be ignored anymore. He doesn’t look so wonderfully intelligent when Elena starts to be able to see his arrogance. Sometimes, his rudeness towards other people. The spell was broken. Nino is not only selfish but shows a total lack of respect by Elena and other women around him. Slowly, he starts to remind her of his father, the man that abused Elena so many years ago. Elena is now a more mature woman, and maturity brought her some calm and objectiveness. Yet, was she ever happy? Is she now?  Back to the neighborhood and its problems While we were happy to see Elena with a better life and conquering her goals, we miss the complicated intrigues from the neighborhoo...

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay , (in its original “stori di chi fugge e di chi resta”) is the third book of Elena Ferrante’s saga, started with My Brilliant Friend .  In this Intermediate Time , Lenú leaves her neighborhood in Naples for a new life as a renowned author, mother, and wife.  Since the beginning, her marriage seems a bit empty to the reader. This relationship never fulfills her desires. So it comes as no surprise when she starts to think about Nino, her old passion, again. Maturity and Anguish Throughout this book, we can see a more mature and independent Elena. However, she continues to obsessively compare herself with Lila, the origin of many doubts and anguish. She still sees Naples as a source of violence, especially against women. Yet, even far from there, Naples is always present in her life, and she didn’t reach the happiness or freedom she expected by living in a different town. Her husband is distant, motherhood is complic...

The available time to read is, unfortunately, much less than I would like to. Yet, I try to read every day, even if I can only read a single page at a time.  This time, I chose something in my first language, written by a renowned author.   Fancy writing, poor content I’m not the biggest fan of Portuguese literature. You may find it odd. It would be expected that we would quickly identify with our country, culture, and language. Unfortunately, what I see in Portuguese literature most of the time is a whole lot of beautiful words and fancy sentences, with little ability to make us dream.  Beautifully arranged sentences and highly educated words seem more important than the story itself. It lacks the fantastic ability to transport us to other worlds, to make us live what we are reading, or to feel what the characters are feeling. Despite that, I try to stay up to date on what’s new or considered a ‘must-read.’ I must say, however, and with g...

In  The Story of a New Name , we continue to follow the story of Lenu and Lila, the two childhood friends from My Brilliant Friend .    Time passed for them, not a lot, but enough to widen the abyss between these two friends even further. Growing Up Hurts In this book, we feel like Lenu’s life doesn’t just revolve around Lila anymore, but that makes her feel lost and inappropriate.  This really caught my attention: she’s not the perfect hero we’re used to seeing or envisioning. In The Story of a New Name , we see a girl with an ever-growing sense of not belonging, which hurts her and almost hurts us, even though, rationally, this feeling was completely expected.  Not Here, Nor There Lenu no longer belongs to the misery and violence of her neighborhood, yet she’s still not a part of this new world she is now engulfed in. Her insecurities are glaring, and it almost hurts us readers who have been following each step of her journey to get here, k...

My Brilliant Friend is the first book in a series of four ( the second of which is already sitting on my bedside table) from an author who kept her identity in secret for many years. I had no idea of that, or even any hint of the story, when I started reading it. The book was a birthday gift from a person who seemed to really love it. Since I know she likes good literature, I started reading with confidence, and let me tell you: I was not disappointed! Childhood Friends The story is about two really different friends, living in a poor neighborhood near Naples. They grow up dealing with poverty, lack of education and money, violence surrounding them, and, like any other person, they have their own egos to deal with.  Throughout the book, we’ll see them deal with both forces that unite them and those that tear them apart. The atmosphere around them reflects a reality I had only heard about in my mother’s or grandmother’s stories, but I think that actually helped...

A book about parenting, sort of… When you become a parent, inevitably, you’ll probably read about it. You’ll say you don’t care about these books, and you’ll be filled with fear that you’re somehow doing something wrong. The way I interpreted it, at least, this one basically tells you to “Get over it!” Shaping or Letting Them Flower? Its title might seem odd, but it’s actually a pretty interesting theory about two ways of being a parent and caring for your children. The Gardener The gardener is the person who cares for their flowers, provides the best they can, and lets them flourish.  They do the best they can, but there are many factors interfering with their garden. They know they can’t control everything and do not expect a precise result or outcome at the end of their task. The Carpenter The  carpenter  is the new parenting model that most parents try to adopt when caring for their children, and Gopnik compares it to a carpenter who selects ...