Sunday, December 12, 2021

Jean Michel Guenassia, « Le club des incorrigibles optimistes »


Lu du 17 septembre au 25 novembre 2021

Mon vote :


J’essaie de me souvenir qui m’a recommandé Le club des incorrigibles optimistes, de Jean Michel Guenassia, que j’ai mis sur mon étagère « to-read » de GoodReads il y a longtemps (en 2014!) sans le spécifier, comme je fais d’habitude. Je pense quand même qu’il s’agit de Sc@p (dont l’excellente critique, en italien, peut être lue ici) et, si tel est le cas, je te remercie infiniment, mon ami, de m’avoir offert l’opportunité d’une lecture vraiment enrichissante!

Le roman a un double fil narratif : le chemin vers maturité du narrateur Michel Marini, (pendant une période de cinq ans, du 1959 au 1964), et les histoires fragmentées de quelques immigrants de l’Europe d’Est, qui avaient fui le communisme en abandonnant leurs familles, amis et souvent une maison confortable, pour une situation précaire, car leurs diplômes n’étant pas reconnus en France ils doivent souvent accepter des jobs journaliers mal payés.

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Luke Dittrich, “Patient H.M. A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets”

 – e-book


 Read from October 2nd to 24th 2021

My rating: 


 

 The first part of Luke Dittrich’s study-cum-(auto)biography-cum-history of lobotomy was interesting enough, although I was a little amused, a little put off of by what Steven Rose maliciously called, in his  Patient HM review – a botched lobotomythat changed science, a „rather florid American style”. Unfortunately, the last hundred pages or so seemed to me unjustifiably long and slightly boring.

The big plus, however, is that I’ve learned a lot of interesting things (and even remembered some I had forgotten, like the story of Herophilus and Erasistratus from Alexandria, who, around 300 B.C., were the first to perform human dissection, on dead, but also on some alive).

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Art Spiegelman, "Maus. A Survivor’s Tale

 

I : My Father bleeds History, New York 1986 ISBN 0-394-74723-2. – 160 p;

 
II And Here My Troubles Began, New York 1991, ISBN 0-679-72977-1 – 136 p.


Read from to September 9th to 17th to 24th 2021

My Rating 


 

I haven’t read many graphic books until now, even though my own daughter is a quite well-known cartoonist. But even a neophyte like me can recognize a masterpiece, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus is definitely one, with its amazing way of developing the distressing theme of the Holocaust using a mixture of tools from different arts.

In fact, this is what fascinated me most, the way narrative conventions, like timeline fractures, narrative voices, styles mixtures (either collages or insertions of panels from other author’s books), transgress not only the boundary between fiction and reality, as it happens in any memoir, but also the boundary between drawing and writing.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Kevin Dutton, "The Wisdom of Psychopaths"

 -e-book


Read from August 26th to September 8th 2021

My rating:


 

The title of Kevin Dutton’s book, The Wisdom of the Psychopaths seems ironically oxymoronic, until you read the preface that’s it, and learn that the essay is built on the idea that there is something good in every bad, even in psychopathy, for some of its attributes, like personal magnetism and a genius for disguise, used in moderation, of course, make it adaptive (not different, in a way, from anxiety, for it is known that anxious people can detect threats better than the rest of us, a very useful quality in an hostile or unknown environment):

Psychopathy is like sunlight. Overexposure can hasten one’s demise in grotesque, carcinogenic fashion. But regulated exposure at controlled and optimal levels can have a significant positive impact on well-being and quality of life.

The challenging thesis formulated, the author proceeds to prove it, gathering information from studies, experiments, books and personal observations, to build an image of psychopaths contrary to many stereotypes we have about them.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Julian Barnes, "Nothing to Be Frightened of"

  – ebook

Read from August 4th to September 1st 2021

My Rating:  

 

Part family memoir, part essay on death, Julian Barnes’ Nothing to Be Frightened of is a touching, but also an often humorous meditation on the most faithful companion of us all.

The book eclectically gathers different attitudes towards Death (and expectations beyond it), from curiosity and indifference to terror, of his family or of artists, in what he calls a pseudo-therapeutic effort to overcome his own fear.

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Jacques Bergier, „Cărțile blestemate”

-ebook


 Perioada lecturii: 6 – 9 august 2021

Votul meu : 


 

 Acuma nu știu dacă filmul Men in Black are vreo legătură cu oamenii în negru ai lui Jacques Bergier (Wikipedia nu prea mi-a fost de folos de data asta), dar tre’ să recunosc că de cîte ori am dat peste teoria existenței acestora în Cărțile blestemate mi-a fost greu s-o iau în serios, că-mi tot apărea Will Smith în fața ochilor.

Autorul, evreu de naționalitate franceză și poloneză, este o figură destul de interesantă, de altminteri: a fost inginer chimist, a făcut parte din Rezistență (fiind din acest motiv arestat, torturat și trimis în lagăr de Gestapou), a fost spion, ziarist și evident scriitor. Prin cartea sa Le Matin des magiciens (Dimineața magicienilor), prin revista „Planeta” și mai apoi prin intermediul mișcării „realismul fantastic” (curent de gîndire și cercetare autointitulat științific, al cărui obiect de studiu e constituit de domenii pe care știința oficială le exclude) a contribuit, mai ales în Franța, dar nu numai, la promovarea paranormalului și a teoriilor pseudo-științifice.

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Florian Illies, „1913. Vara secolului”

 – kindle.
Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts. Traducere din limba germană de Vasile V. Poenaru


 

Perioada lecturii: 6-26 iulie 2021

Votul meu: 


 

 

În timp ce citeam 1913. Vara secolului, m-am gîndit nu o dată ce mult mi-ar fi plăcut ca ideea lui Florian Illies, de a reînvia nu o epocă, ci, vorba poetului, „un anotimp, un an, un timp”, să-i fi venit și vreunui „cronicar” român, care să ne plimbe printr-un trecut mai mult sau mai puțin specific, punîndu-i și pe artiștii români în context, că nici ei nu-s lipsiți de pitoresc. Dar care ar fi anul cel mai potrivit pentru o felie din viața culturală română? 1813? 1876? 1921? 1925? 1943? Mi-e greu să aleg, pentru că ne-am obișnuit să gîndim trecutul în lungi perioade, automatism de care nici autorul nu e ferit, dacă ne luăm după titlu.

E firesc, așadar, să ne punem întrebarea dacă anul 1913 este cu adevărat definitoriu pentru secolul al XX-lea. Eu aș răspunde că nu, nu neapărat, deși se întîmplă lucruri multe și importante, dar că e în orice caz un an interesant, pe buza prăpastiei, o ultimă „vară” înaintea iernii lungi si grele care se apropie, și mai stă și sub semnul cifrei 13, pe care lumea a putut da vina ori de cîte ori s-a întîmplat ceva neplăcut, și contra căreia a găsit mijloace înduioșătoare de protecție (Gabriele D’Annunzio, de exemplu, oferindu-i unui prieten Martiriul Sfântului Sebastian, și-a datat dedicația „1912+1“, iar Arnold Schönberg, inventatorul dodecafonismului, acea „tehnică de bază a muzicii moderne, născută și din spaima creatorului ei față de ceea ce avea să vină. Nașterea raționalului din spiritul superstiției”, a evitat mereu atît măsura 13 cît și numărul de pagină 13 în compozițiile sale, iar cînd a realizat că titlul operei lui despre Moise și Aaron avea 13 litere, a tăiat al doilea „a“ din Aaron, schimbîndu-i numele în Moses und Aron. O paranteză în paranteză: născut pe data de 13 septembrie, se pare că lui Schönberg îi era teamă că va muri într-o zi de vineri, 13, în anul 1913, și chiar a murit pe data de 13, dar într-o sâmbătă, treizeci și opt de ani mai tîrziu.)

Thursday, June 24, 2021

Oliver Sacks, "The River of Consciousness"

 – e-book


 

Read from May 30th to June 16th 2021

My rating: 


 

I must confess The River of Consciousness, despite its Borgesian title, did not captivate me as much as other Oliver Sacks’ books. However, Sacks being Sacks, I learned a lot from this one, too (even slightly irrelevant facts I bet I won’t forget as easily as more important ones, like the fact that there are people with Tourette’s who can catch a fly on the wings because their have a different perception of speed).

One of the most intriguing essays is The Fallibility of Memory, with the doubt it rises about what we remember, that is, what we think we remember. It seems that our memories, especially our earliest ones, are rarely reliable because our mind often mingles stories we were told or read with what really happened to us. Actually, the psychologist and memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus has proved (by experimentally implanting false memories in her subjects’ minds) that the so-called recovered memories of traumatic experiences, memories that ruined lives and families, could have been, in some cases, insinuated or planted by others (perhaps a therapist, a teacher, a social worker, an investigator and so on), in the minds of highly suggestible persons (children, a teenagers, bipolars, etc.).

Monday, June 14, 2021

Jeremy Butterfield, "Damp Squid. The British Language Laid Bare"



Read from June 3rd to 7th 2021

My rating : 


 

Jeremy Butterfield’s Damp Squid would be nothing more than a Linguistic 101, if the disinhibited, casual approach did not make the book a funny reading for everyone, not only for would-be linguists.

The main objective of the essay is to convince grammar police and other language nerds that language is not a holy instrument to be carefully approached and used, but a live organism, forever growing and changing. Therefore, the author browses The Oxford Corpus (the 2006 edition, with over two billion words taken from contemporary English all over the world) in search of examples and statistics to illustrate it. If you didn’t know (I didn’t 😊), the Corpus (created in 1961 under the name of The Brown Corpus, which gathered then an impressive million words) is a collection of machine-readable different texts, organised in 40 domains (business, religion, sport, weblog etc.), each with its own subdomains.

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Daniel Defoe, „Jurnal din anul ciumei”

  – e-book


 

Perioada lecturii : 6 - 20 aprilie 2021

Votul meu : 



Recunosc că m-a interesat Jurnalul lui Defoe în primul rînd ca să compar reacția de acum a oamenilor în fața COVID-ului cu cea din 1665, în fața ciumei, pentru a vedea dacă s-a schimbat ceva în comportamentul omenesc după patru secole. Ei bine, nici măcar n-am fost prea dezamăgită să aflu că nici pe departe: e reconfortant într-un sens lejer masochist 😊 să te asiguri că omul rămîne înduioșător de consecvent în reacțiile sale, fie bagatelizînd primejdia, fie dînd vina pe alții pentru ceea ce i se întîmplă, fie recurgînd la interpretări care mai de care mai bizare ale evenimentelor.

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Pascal Bruckner, « Parias »

 – e-book

 


Lu du 15 février au 25 mars 2021

Mon vote : 


 

Ça fait tellement longtemps que l’écriture de Pascal Bruckner me fascine, plus d’un décennie, je pense, quand je l’ai découvert d’abord avec Lunes de fiel, qui m’est tombé je ne me souviens plus comment entre les mains, puis avec Les voleurs de beauté. Dès lors, l’auteur est devenu l’un de mes écrivains préférés et pourtant pour un temps je l’ai mis de côté et presque oublié.

Eh bien, Parias m’a rappelé toutes les raisons pour lesquelles je l’aime, car j’ai redécouvert dedans ses anti-héros ténébreux, ses descriptions en filigrane, ses incursions narratives en abîme de l’âme.

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Adrian Schiop, „Soldații. Poveste din Ferentari”

  Polirom, Iași 2017, 260 p., ISBN 978-973-46-7108-3.  



Perioada lecturii: 6 – 19 martie 2021

Votul meu: 


 

 

Ce bine scrie Adrian Schiop! Și cînd mă gîndesc că am Soldații în bibliotecă de vreo trei ani de zile, cadou de la un văr al meu foarte darnic (mi-amintesc că m-a așteptat atunci cu o sacoșă de cărți la aeroport și pe toate le-am luat cu mine înapoi în Canada), și că abia acum, nu știu de ce, i-a venit rîndul!

Pentru că nu știam mai nimic despre autor, am parcurs opera destul de candid, fără să am adică habar de sursa ei de inspirație. Abia după ce am citit recenzia  lui Florin Dumitrescu de pe bookaholic.ro, în care acesta ezită între a o numi roman autoficțional sau jurnal antropologic, am aflat că are substrat autobiografic și mi-am pus și eu întrebarea care ar fi cea mai potrivită încadrare în specie (pînă atunci o inclusesem în categoria destul de largă a narațiunii literare documentare). Rămîn totuşi la varianta „roman autoficțional” căci mi se pare mult prea cizelată din punct de vedere stilistic și compozițional ca să lase impresia notării grăbite, pe teren, a observațiilor.

Friday, March 12, 2021

Mary Beard, "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome"

  – kindle


 

Read from December 24th to March 4th 2021

My Rating: 


 

 

In the Epilogue of her SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard confesses that the book is the result of about fifty years of history researching, archaeological sites visiting, Latin language learning, Latin literature reading and books with Roman subject studying, because for her “the Romans are a subject not just of history and inquiry but also of imagination and fantasy, horror and fun.”

Ancient civilizations, she says, do not teach direct lessons, either military or political, and are not necessarily models to follow. However, we are supposed to learn a lot by simply engaging with their history, which is our own:

We do not want to follow Cicero’s example, but his clash with the bankrupt aristocrat, or popular revolutionary, with which I started this book still underlies our views of the rights of the citizen and still provides a language for political dissent: ‘Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?’ The idea of ‘desolation’ masquerading as ‘peace’, as Tacitus put into the mouths of Rome’s British enemies, still echoes in modern critiques of imperialism. And the lurid vices that are attributed to the most memorable Roman emperors have always raised the question of where autocratic excess ends and a reign of terror begins.

Friday, March 5, 2021

Lisa Smartt, "Words at the Threshold"

– e-book


 

Read from February 19th to March 4th 2021

My rating: 


 

 

 Maybe I wanted to read Lisa Smartt’s book, Words at the Threshold, because the agony has always been a painfully fascinating theme, with its thread of light under an otherwise firmly closed door, to take farther the metaphor in the title. Maybe because, like many others, I have always hoped to have an epiphany after hearing stories about it, in order to discover that death is nothing to be afraid of. Or maybe because apart from the fact that death is fascinating in its own terrifying way in any circumstances, it is when it robs you of a beloved that you need most to be reassured that it is only temporary, while desperately looking for explanations, for signs, for proof of another (better) world to alleviate your grief.

In such times, books like this one seem to help you cope. When my father died, I re-read Raymond A. Moody’s Life after Life for these exact reasons, somehow hoping to reconnect with my dad at another level. It did not happen, not in the way Lisa Smartt describes the reconnection with her own father, but it gave me peace, encouraging me to doubt the finality of death, to dream that sometime in the future...

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Mary Roach, “Stiff. The curious Lives of Human Cadavers”

  – e-book 

 


Read from February February 2nd to 18th 2021

My Rating : 


 The horizon of expectations induced by the title of Mary Roach’s book, Stiff. The curious Lives of Human Cadavers, is, without a doubt, fulfilled. In fact, the whole book is a very interesting and pretty original effort to encourage people to change their belief that cadavers are gruesome, eerie, disgusting or simply boring, by proving that they are in fact some sort of superheroes, working for the ‘betterment of humankind’, that is helping us to test, experiment and understand the human body: they were the first ‘victims’ of the guillotine, the first subjects of the new embalming techniques, the first passengers to wear a seat belt. Moreover, that there is nothing disrespectful in relating amusing stories about them, for a cadaver is not a person anymore, it is simply an object without much dignity left:

Being dead is absurd. It's the silliest situation you'll find yourself in. Your limbs are floppy and uncooperative. Your mouth hangs open. Being dead is unsightly and stinky and embarrassing, and there's not a damn thing to be done about it.

Friday, February 12, 2021

Mario Benedetti, "The Truce"

 –ebook


 

Read from to February 5th 2021

My rating: 



 

The Truce is the only (I think) Uruguayan book I have ever read, but what an introduction to the Uruguayan literature I’ve been offered! Moreover, I have learned (via Wikipedia , of course) that its author, Mario Benedetti, was a prominent member of the influential Generación del 45 and that he is considered one of the most important Latin American writers. A skilled translator (the first to translate Kafka), a mighty journalist, a brilliant novelist and poet, winner of a lot of international awards, he was nevertheless haunted by the same feeling of the worthlessness felt by many of his generation, as his last poem, dictated to his personal secretary just before dying, reveals:

My life has been like a fraud

My art has consisted

In this not being noticed too much

I've been as a levitator in my old age

The brown sheen of the tiles

Never came off my skin

Friday, January 29, 2021

Annie Bentoiu, „Timpul ce ni s-a dat”

 

 – ebook


 

Perioada lecturii: 12 - 22 ianuarie 2021

Votul meu: 


 

 

În excelentul său eseu, Castelul, biblioteca, pușcăria (datorită căruia am descoperit de fapt memoriile lui Annie Bentoiu, și nu numai), Dan C. Mihăilescu mărturisește că abia la lectura celui de-al doilea volum din Timpul ce ni s-a dat început să aprecieze stilul autoarei: în primul volum i se păruse, prin contrast cu cel al Aniței Nadriș (20 de ani în Siberia) sau al Adrianei Georgescu (La început a fost sfîrșitul), rece, lipsit de participare afectivă, pentru a-și da mai apoi seama că de fapt „lenta, voit nespectaculoasa acumulare a detaliilor ce pustiesc individualitatea și desfigurează (irepresibil și irecuperabil) ființa rațională” nu poate fi redată decît pe un ton a cărui principală calitate este „moderația, echilibrul, accentul nerevendicativ, oroarea de patetism”.

Ei bine, mie tocmai tonul acesta oarecum distant mi s-a părut interesant, văzînd în el o modalitate inedită, fără să fie totuşi discordantă, de abordare a ororilor instaurării comunismului. După Anița Nandriș, vocea obidit resemnată a țăranului român trimis în Siberia de regimul sovietic tocmai din vina de a fi țăran și român, sau Adriana Georgescu, vocea pătimaș indignată a politicianului patriot păcălit de un sistem care a schimbat toate regulile jocului, Annie Bentoiu reprezintă vocea critic analitică a intelectualilor, victime colaterale ale evenimentelor pe care le observă cu mirare sau neîncredere, încercînd uneori să găsească explicații sau justificări, dar de cele mai multe ori povestind fără patimă pentru a-i lăsa cititorului o imagine, ca să zic așa, obiectivă, a absurdului.

Friday, January 15, 2021

Oliver Sacks, "Hallucinations"

  – e-book

 

Read from January 4th to 13th 2021

My rating:


 

 In the Introduction of his Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks says that he conceived this book as “a sort of natural history or anthology of hallucinations”, and this is exactly what it is, a collection of first-hand testimonies from people whose common ground are hallucinations, either because of some medical condition (macular degeneration, migraine, epilepsy, narcolepsy, Parkinsonism etc.), or because of nightmares, shocks, use of some substances, or a combination of the two categories.

The author also hopes that the stories in this book “will help defuse the often cruel misunderstandings which surround the whole subject”, for although in many cultures hallucinations are a part of spiritual practices tried to be induced by meditation, drugs, or solitude, in modern Western culture, they are often stigmatized, considered either a sign of madness or of a grave illness of the brain.