I loved Dona Flor's passionate and exquisite love triangle! There is magical realism and a delicious mix of samba rythms, carnivals, tasty dishes and Afro-Brazilian rituals for deities. Dona Flor loses her first love, her pain and mourning are excruciating, but she rediscovers love and remarries, although her first husband never really leaves her...

This prose is so poetic, feelings of melancholy and sadness linger, but in the best sense possible.
In 1923 Virginia Woolf begins to right her novel about Clarissa Dalloway. In 1949 Laura Brown reads Virginia Woolf. In the 1990s Clarissa Vaughan is preparing a party for her former lover. Three women in three different timelines share a subtle connection which slowly reveals itself in key moments of their lives.

Like all fantasy literature trying to restore the reputation of the wicked witches in traditional tales, this book, too, is both attractive and confusing in terms of emotions it triggers. There is a conflict between the old witchcraft ways and christianity as a metaphor for the eternal clash between feminine and masculine energy.

It's good these ladies are allowed to voice their side of the story, it leaves the reader with a wider perspective.

Computer science professor Randy Pausch is asked to give a last lecture in his final months of terminal illness.
The most impressive topics in his lecture were not the common sense tips on how to achieve dreams, success in life etc., but how he handled the news of his diagnosis, organized the time left before his death in relation to his wife, his very young children, friends and even to himself and prepared for death with dignity and acceptance.

Such an engrossing blend of memoir and natural science, a reflection on the mysteries of this enigmatic creature that is the eel and on the mystery of life in general. It is eye-opening and moving. The father and son bond through fishing and share a deeper understanding of nature. The eels are on the brink of extinction and humanity has not yet succeeded to fully decipher their astonishing life cycle.

"In ancient Egypt, the eel was considered a mighty demon, an equal of the gods and a forbidden food. A creature moving effortlessly beneath the glittering surface of the holy Nile, slithering through the sediments of existence itself. Archaeologists have found mummified eels in tiny sarcophagi, laid to their eternal rest next to bronze statuettes of the gods."

I very much enjoyed the Native American backdrop and details, the bits of humor, the references to authors and books, the bookstore setting, but oh my, how boring most of this book was!
The almost chronicle of the 2020 pandemic and protests was completely disconnected from the storyline of the haunted bookstore and haunting past of Tookie and seemed to serve just to fill in the pages...

This book contains very exhaustive material on the natural history and mechanics of love and relationships in humans, with references to extensive research in neurosciences, psychology, sociology and biological personality: how did the love instinct evolve; how do we choose our partners; why are some more predisposed to adultery than others; to what extent do men and women resemble or not in terms of love; slow love, love and the Internet etc.

"Inside every person is an inherent capability to make it through any kind of difficulty. Everyone has the energy. But sometimes when the energy flows via our anxiety valve, the flow can be restricted. The greater the anxiety, the greater the strength needed to open the valve and release the energy. That strength is empowered by hope. You could say that hope is the power to believe in the future."

Happy World Book Day!

I love this concept of time travel to the past and future which cannot alter present events, but has healing powers that can change feelings and the perspective on the present.
I enjoyed the third installment and am now looking forward to read the fourth.

Before reading this beautiful biography, I hadn't even heard about Latife Hanim, the wife of general Atatürk, the famous founder of the Republic of Turkey. She was a charming and rich intellectual who studied in Western Europe, mastered eight languages, arts and music. She was indirectly engaged in politics, a passionate activist for the rights of Turkish women and aimed to see them achieve social and cultural progress as Western women did.

Global symbol, contemporary Chinese artist and human rights activist, Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood spent in exile with his convicted father, who was the nation's greatest poet, his youth in America and his return to China, where his life and art were impacted by the totalitarian regime.
With tremendous creativity and strong political convictions, he reminds the world it is crucial to protect the freedom of expression.

It took me some time to finish and I have barely scratched the first layer of this monumental and overwhelming "symphony of the evil". This must be a gem for lovers of philosophy and literature.
A genius losing his most precious gift, his mind, writes a final confession to the love of his life.
Such engaging prose, extremely vivid scenes and timelines stratching over 300 years alternate within the same piece of dialogue and interior monologue.

I can see no better way to celebrate finishing this book and being human in the spirit of this book, than with peanut butter and tea, and those who've read it will certainly understand why.

This is a light read but such a sweet and hilarious reminder of the beauty of being human and of all the great things the intricate human life has to offer.

Chunkster haul 📚

The writing is definitely beautiful but I didn't understand why two thirds of the book is used to build the portrait of Vic, a perfectly calculated, close to psychopath character who knows his wife inside out and senses her each and every move and feelings, to just break him at the end. It seems he resisted the pressure for ten years and then he just couldn't anymore...

Three families live in an elegant residential building. One member in each makes a heart-wrenching confession and paints a vivid and diverse image of Israeli society. I was most touched by the third story, so poignant and heartbreaking.

"The three floors of the psyche do not exist inside us at all! Absolutely not! They exist in the air between us and someone else, in the space between our mouths and the ears we are telling our story to."

“When a man speaks he's merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity.”

1920s' America vibes in this one and a lot of philosophy.
A young, rich and tormented couple leads a decadent and self-destroying life while awaiting a tremendous inheritance.

I had never read this classic before and was interested to see what this protagonist Julien Sorel designed by Stendhal, a visionary, ground-breaking author and creator of the psychological novel 200 years ago and who inspired several other novels over these last two centuries, was all about.

Wikipedia says "rouge et noir" was also a then-popular card game, an allusion to chance and luck, which determined Julien's fate.

I'm glad I've not skipped this 1000-page classic.
Indeed a novel of ideas!
Not related to objectivism or the author's philosophy in general, an idea has seemed to be haunting throughout the novel: brilliant new trends take time to be absorbed and acknowledged by the population, as the pace of the masses is not the same as the pace of a visionary, upright and uncompromising individual who eventually becomes the engine of innovation for society.

Hannah, Lissa and Cate, these three best friends that I first liked, then hated, then loved again, experience their mid-life trials and tribulations in that bleak space where pain is caused by the gap between desire and ambition, expectations and reality, in search for an answer to the ever tormenting question of what it takes to lead a meaningful life.

This little book is a gem for lovers of Paris and New York. It reduces the most typical aspects of each of the two cities to their very essence and matches them side by side in a powerful illustration and a few words.

The author is a graphic artist based in Paris. In the fall of 2010, during a long stay in New York, Vahram launched his first blog, Paris versus New York, a tally of two cities, which eventually led to this book.

This collection of 50 love letters, from famous artists and writers to politicians and royals, includes names such as Mozart, Michelangelo, Benjamin Franklin, Hemingway, Chagall, Balzac, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Ronald Reagan, Napoleon, G.B. Shaw and even Elvis Presley.

Reading these felt like witnessing some of the most intimate bits of their lives, with their sorrows and joys and feelings of passion, bliss, tenderness, anger and despair.

? From Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald:
"Without you, dearest dearest I couldn't see or hear or feel or think - or live - I love you so and I'm never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night."

? From Frida Khalo to Diego Rivera:
"My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours."

Enchanting, motivational, entertaining, inspiring!
The magic of creativity for a fulfilling life.

“Only when we're at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.”

I liked the references to her friendship with Ann Patchett and Brené Brown.

"Best of all, at the end of your creative adventure, you have a souvenir—something that you made, something to remind you forever of your brief but transformative encounter with inspiration."

The writing is not phenomenal, the storyline is predictable but still appealing. I appreciated the suspense built around the feeling of guilt with its burden getting heavier and heavier over the long-term and the realism in outlining how teenage cruelty and lack of judgement can produce life altering trauma.

This one was dense and intense! Although some of the topics have already been conveyed via SF shows over the last ten years, the book tends to address comprehensively some of the AI controversies and concerns.

Such complex questions raised on so many levels: how do we define consciousness, the future of human life with AI scenarios, AI reaching and exceeding human potential, superintelligence conquering the universe... food for thought.

"The principle which gives the thought the dynamic power to correlate with its object, and therefore to master every adverse human experience, is the law of attraction, which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle inherent in all things, in every system of philosophy, in every Religion and in every Science. There is no getting away from the law of love. (...) Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible."

I have postponed reading this one for so many years, if only I knew I wouldn't be able to put it down once I started it.
The story is overwhelming but so compelling, with beautiful prose soaked in magic realism; an imaginary family's saga spanning on more than a century in the fictional town of Macondo, where the ordinary blends with the extraordinary, and local myths mask true historical events, uncovering what is truly meaningful for humankind.

Interesting facts from genetics research on European populations.
In the 2-3% of the genome inherited from Neanderthals, gene variants were identified to predispose to depression, excessive blood coagulation, tobacco addiction, but also provide immune protection against viruses and bacterial infections.
80% of modern infections are of animal origin and have been passed to humans with the transition from hunting-gathering to agricultural societies

I think it was good to have this one among the reads I've started the year with. We all know tiny steps and small efforts lead to success and this book shows the way to use this mantra to build good habits and abandon bad habits. The connection between habits and identity was also a very interesting piece of information.

While I was familiar with the concept that illness is triggered by emotional wounds, I was shocked to find out about the magnitude of the physical damage that can be caused by psychogenic, psychosomatic disorder and to what extent this can destroy the patient's life if only the medical symptoms are treated and no attention is paid to the real source of the condition; most of the times this resides in an emotional trauma which should be dealt with.

I tremendously enjoyed this story. Hunters and gold seekers threaten to destroy the Amazon Rainforest by slaughtering endangered species and destroying the old way of life of the jungle and its indigenous people, the Shuar Indians. In his remote village, an old man feels trapped between ancient wisdom and civilization. He reads love stories to escape.
"No one can captivate the lighting and no one can take the other's heavens in a moment of grace."

The books seems to be a very extended version of the Netflix documentary; it reads like the confession of a man who feels like he never got the opportunity to tell his side of the story and of a child who never really properly healed from the trauma of his mother's death. He sounds like a sensitive person who tried to change a system which has operated by strict rules for hundreds of years instead of adjusting to it and maybe was right not to...

Although first published in 1997, I've never got to read this one. It also includes a postface to the 2003 edition. The book revolves around the idea that historical progress, development and domination of different populations over others was fueled by their geography and not their biology.

'Over the past 13,000 years the predominant trend in human society has been the replacement of smaller, less complex units by larger, more complex ones.'

Stirring and profoundly metaphoric way of conveying struggle with grief, failure and death in short stories populated by mystical Japanese folklore and pop culture characters.

"Place a flower in one hand and a weapon of your choosing in the other.
Go to the bathroom and stare into the mirror. Continue to stare with minimal blinking until you cannot recognize yourself.
Stare at a friend. Continue to stare until you cannot recognize your friend."

A wonderful collection of short stories first published in Danish in the 1950s portraying ordinary events of everyday life in a disturbingly realistic light and dealing with transgenerational perpetuation of failed marriage trauma, mother-child intimacy inaccessible to men, the illusion of love and happiness.
Despair seems to haunt most of the characters, while small details trigger an avalanche of familiar and terribly intense emotions.

"Sounds of the Winter

Sounds of the winter too,
Sunshine upon the mountains - many a distant strain
From cheery railroad train - from nearer field, barn, house,
The whispering air - even the mute crops, garner'd apples, corn,
Children's and women's tones - rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,
An old man's garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,
Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt."

Something that will be much needed after the holidays... ?

A stanza from "Sonnet to Sleep"

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom - pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! If so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the 'Amen', ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.

"A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case"

(An Old Man's Winter Night)

In 1960s' New York, young orphan M.S. Fogg is trying to cope with an existential crisis after his uncle and last known family member dies. Motivated back to life by his first love, he starts working for a disabled rich old man who introduces him to an unbelievable story spanning on three generations and hiding the key to uncovering the mysteries of his own existence. This author is such a great storyteller.

Tracing the itinerary of his great-grand uncle's fabulous collection of netsuke (small Japanese ivory and wood figurines), the author achieves a very dynamic and captivating fresca of the lives of his ancestors, the Ephrussis, a wealthy Jewish family rivaling the famous Rothschilds, spanning on three centuries, from Paris to Vienna, London, Tokyo and Odessa, throughout all major historical events and remarkable figures of the years 1871 to 2009.

Turms is the hero of a mystical odyssey between 520 and 450 BC on the shores of the Mediterranean sea. Haunted by a strange amnesia, he is in search of his own identity and discovers the holy city of the Etruscans and the reason why the gods had assigned to him a key mission.
Very well documented, dense but probably too long. This is definitely for those passionate about ancient history and the divine in Etruscan culture.

A beautiful novel dealing with race, identity and gender issues and past-related trauma. At age 16 two identical twins leave their small hometown and one of them, Estelle, abandons her sister in an attempt to erase her haunting past and live as a white person. Despite the sisters being separated by distance and the different worlds they each live in, their daughters' lives become interlaced and Estelle can no longer ignore her past and origins.

Oh my! I saw this on Facebook and had to share 🙈

I never imagined I would enjoy so much a novel focusing on the cruelty and contradictions of war. It is packed with all the ingredients to keep the reader glued until the end. The political and social issues are magnificently singled out by the superb writing and a blend of spy fiction and dark comedy. The narrator's duality (in ethnicity, education and loyalty) are an immense source of both internal and external conflict, strength and weakness.

I enjoyed this one more than 'The Song of Solomon'. I couldn't put it down. History has its extremely ugly parts, the atrocities are more terrifying than the ghost story itself, but the novel is a work of art. I enjoyed all of it, the spectacular writing, the character building, the alternating timelines which gradually revealed the tragedy concealed by the past and the magic realism used to unveil the magnitude of the drama.

"most important battles we fight are almost untranslatable to anyone else; and besides, you'll have your own seething weirs of tigerish waters to cross"

Short stories, I'd refer to as short confidences by young women looking for their place in this world, with their insecurities, doubts and pain.
Uncomfortable thoughts, disillusions and failed expectations which haunt us but we do not like to admit they are inevitably part of a woman's life.

Although dark and depressing, this novel does have its charm. In morbid and abundent detail, old Eileen portrays a different young Eileen, the product of a dysfunctional family, struggling to take care of her alcoholic father and keep her job at the boy's prison, a place of abuse and doom for the inmates, until an unexpected chance appears for her to make an audacious move and escape her ugly life.