Review: Down Under

Down Under by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An enjoyable and informative read. Admittedly, I had known very little about Australia before I started reading this book so the book served as a good introduction and hence my 4-stars rating rather than 3. In comparison with "Notes From a Small Island" that I read some years back, I think it's much better. Possibly because of my prior ignorance. Despite my initial predisposition, there were some interesting historical events from many perspectives; Burke and Wills disastrous yet celebrated expeditions in the desert, celebrated bushrangers like Ned Kelly, the outrageous atrocities committed against the natives and how it had never been a concern for a long time, the Stolen Generations, the Gold Rush, Lambing Flat riots and White Australia Policy, the unappreciated tales of the aviator Kingsford Smith, Whitlam's Labor government of 1972 and how it was dissolved. I'll let my favorite highlights speak for themselves. They range between facts and jokes, and I hope they can tell you something you didn't know or raise an eyebrow (in case you're not that knowledgeable about this part of the world), or at least put a smile on your face:

- Eighty per cent of all that lives in Australia, plant and animal, exists nowhere else. 

- Of the sites that qualify for World Heritage status, only thirteen satisfy all four of UNESCO’s criteria for listing, and of these thirteen special places, four – almost a third – are to be found in Australia. 

- The country has less than 1 per cent of the world’s population but more than 20 per cent of its slot machines. 

- In the early days a commercial flight from London involved, in addition to nerves of steel, forty-two refuelling stops, up to five changes of aircraft and a train journey through Italy because Mussolini wouldn’t allow flights through Italian air space. It took twelve days. 

- No other nation lost more men as a proportion of population in the First World War than Australia ... The casualty rate for its soldiers was 65 per cent. And all were volunteers.’ 

- The Simpson Desert, an area bigger than some European countries, was named in 19321 after a manufacturer of washing machines. 

- Until 1949 there was no such thing as Australian citizenship. People born in Australia were not in any technical sense Australians at all but Britons – as British as if they were from Cornwall or Scotland. 

- The historian Alan Moorehead once wrote: ‘Australians of my generation grew up in a world apart. Until we went abroad we had never seen a beautiful building, hardly ever heard a foreign language spoken, or been to a well-acted play, or eaten a reasonably sophisticated meal, or listened to a good orchestra.’ 

- One thing you won’t find much in Australian second-hand bookshops are 1950s or earlier editions of lots of books – The Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms, Animal Farm, Peyton Place, Another Country, Brave New World and hundreds and hundreds of others. The reason for this is simple: they were banned. Altogether, at its peak, 5,000 titles were forbidden to be imported into the country.

- I should just note that in an Australian context ‘hotel’ can signify many things: a hotel, a pub, a hotel and pub – that stand on nearly every corner.(Something I personally found strange on my first few days in Australia)

- You do rather come away with two interlinked impressions – that Australians love to argue for argument’s sake and that basically they would rather just leave everything as it is. 

- During national referendums the citizens of the Northern Territory are also required to vote, but the votes don’t actually count towards anything. (I still need to check if that's still the case) 

- Had La Pérouse [the commander of a French expedition journey that reached Australia] been just a little faster, he could have claimed Australia for France and saved the country 200 years of English cooking. 

- In 1859 ... Thomas Austin... made a big mistake. He imported twenty-four wild rabbits from England and released them into the bush for sport. Within a couple of years they had entirely overrun Austin’s property and were spreading into neighbouring districts. Fifty million years of isolation had left Australia without a single predator or parasite able even to recognize rabbits, much less dine off them, and so they proliferated amazingly. 

On Convict Transportation: 

By the late eighteenth century Britain’s statute books were plump with capital offences; you could be hanged for any of 200 acts, including, notably, ‘impersonating an Egyptian’. In such circumstances, transportation was quite a merciful alternative. When they couldn’t fool their masters the prisoners could often fool their fellows. For years there existed an illicit commerce in which newly arrived convicts were sold maps showing them how to walk to China. 

On Sydney: 

- As late as 1953, there were just 800 hotel rooms in Syndey, barely enough for one medium-sized convention, and not a thing to do in the evenings; even the bars closed at 6 p.m. 

- In 1923, when the city burghers decided to throw a bridge across the harbour, they determined to build not just any bridge, but the longest single-arch span ever constructed... It took longer to construct than expected – almost ten years. Just before it was completed, in 1932, the Bayonne Bridge in New York quietly opened and was found to be 25 inches – 0.121 per cent – longer. 

- Lachlan Macquarie, a Scotsman who was governor of the colony in the first part of the nineteenth century, and whose principal achievements were the building of the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains, the popularizing of Australia as a name (before him the whole country was indifferently referred to as either New South Wales or Botany Bay) and the world’s first nearly successful attempt to name every object on a continent after himself. 

On Sydney Opera House: 

- The whole project had been intended to last no more than six years and construction in the end dragged on for almost a decade and a half. The final cost came in at a weighty $ 102 million, fourteen times the original estimate. 

On Canberra: 

- ‘I reckon if you were going to rank things for how much pleasure they give – you know? – Canberra would come somewhere below breaking your arm.’ 

- Lake Burley Griffin contains an engineering wonder (the wonder being why they bothered) called the Captain Cook Memorial Jet. 

On Cricket: - It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect... It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players (more if they are moderately restless). It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning. 

- I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other. 

On Aborigines: 

- As recently as the early 1960s, as John Pilger notes, Queensland schools were using a textbook that likened Aborigines to ‘feral jungle creatures’. - In 1805, the acting judge-advocate for New South Wales... declared that Aborigines had not the discipline or mental capacity for courtroom proceedings; rather than plague the courts with their grievances, settlers were instructed to track down the offending natives and ‘inflict such punishment as they may merit’. 

On Alice Springs: 

- In 1954, when Alan Moorehead passed through, Alice’s only regular connection to the outside world was a weekly train from Adelaide. - Its arrival on Saturday evening was the biggest event in the life of the town. It brought mail, newspapers, new pictures for the cinema, long-awaited spare parts and whatever else couldn’t be acquired locally. Nearly the whole town turned out to see who got off and what was unloaded. 

On White Cliffs 

- ‘So when did you get electricity in White Cliffs?’ He thought for an instant. ‘Nineteen ninety-three.’ I thought I had misheard him. ‘When?’ ‘Just about five years ago. We have telly now, too,’ he added suddenly and enthusiastically. ‘Got that two years ago.’

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Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



The Unbearable Lightness of Being can serve as a perfect argument in making the case for why reading literature is worthwhile. With its immense richness, it can open one's understanding and appreciation of life to other dimensions. Heavy on philosophy and inner thoughts, interjections of characters' lives with side historical stories, old legends, and even classical music, the book is a profoundly absorbing and encompassing reading experience. A book about metaphors, burdens, lightness, vertigo, decisions, es muss sein's. About grand marches, bulrush baskets, bowler hats, half-buried crows, tombstones, misunderstanding, and whether or not the fifth repetition of human history would be less bloody.


Following the stories of four main characters against the backdrop of despotic Communist regime and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, that heavily influenced even the events that took place elsewhere, the narration jumps back and forth in time from the different perspectives of characters using the voice of an omniscient narrator who repeatedly broke the fourth wall and directly addressed the reader. The story progress is slow as the main emphasis and attraction here is on the characters' depth and the reflections and philosophy surrounding each turning point, driving the main story calmly towards an ending where weightless and acceptance conquered lightness and rebellion, and even though Kundera gives away the ending of the main story less than halfway through (if it can be called an ending, as every single human eventually dies), the book never fails to impress in any way afterwards.


Naturally, a reader can relate to one character and storyline more than the rest, but all of them were thoroughly convincing. And while the inner thoughts of characters were all intriguing, the disillusion of many characters against communism as well as the endless revolutionaries was remarkable for me. At some point, one of characters, Sabina, expresses an important idea:

She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand.

The narrator express a similar thought:

But the people who struggle against what we call totalitarian regimes cannot function with queries and doubts. They, too, need certainties and simple truths to make the multitudes understand, to provoke collective tears.

And I can't find in my recent memory a sadder, more poignant passage than this one, where peoples' lives after death are boiled down to a single statement or inscription that not just fails to describe them, but also misrepresents them altogether:

What remains of the dying population of Cambodia?
One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms.
What remains of Tomas?
An inscription reading: HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
What remains of Beethoven? A frown, an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning "Es muss sein!"
What remains of Franz?
An inscription reading: A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.
And so on and so forth.

A much recommended read, and for the first time I will be looking forward to the film adaptation. Adaptations of such huge works of literature are often disappointing, and the characters and sets are invariably different, even slightly, from what the reader pictured in mind, but I am interested in finding out how the filmmakers relayed the characters' inner thoughts, and looking forwards to the beautiful film locations in Prague and Geneva as well as the integration of Beethoven's symphony that weighed heavily over the entire book:
Beethoven- Op. 135 IV



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Review: Homage to Catalonia and Looking Back on the Spanish War

Homage to Catalonia and Looking Back on the Spanish War by George Orwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan”

Orwell's disillusioned account of his six months in Spain, when he volunteered to fight with the government forces during the Spanish civil war, a time when "the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple" before they seized to be, had Orwell’s salient captivating style of writing with the vivid descriptions of conditions at the front; fighting the cold and lice in the trenches during the long stationary warfare and the lack of food and ammunition, in addition to his eye-opening account of war propaganda, and partisan politics and inner-fight that plagued the Republican cause during that war.


Over the years, one of Orwell's traits for me as a thinker was his ability to bravely alter his views with new experiences, whenever they prove to be wrong or inaccurate, and what stood out for me in this book is how it drips with honesty and sincerity. Orwell is not ashamed of admitting his mistakes and misjudgements, he rather courageously highlights them. He even warns about his own partisanship in writing. It takes a lot of courage to do so and it makes it easier for the reader to unite with Orwell and see that world with his eyes. Because of that, as well as the superb writing style, I found the memoirs deeply informative and insightful, and successfully conveying the mood of those days; the surreal atmosphere in Barcelona in the early days (in a terrific first chapter), the unbelievable social equality between officers and privates in the classless militia system, how the cold was often worse than enemy, the telling little incidents at the front, the waning interest in the war in Barcelona few months later, and, superbly described, getting shot.


The Spanish civil war for me has been always fascinating and I've always felt it needed to be highlighted more, as a prequel to World war II and for representing almost all wars and struggles of the 20th century. We look back at this war with the advantage of hindsight, and some might be inclined to cynically criticise the simplicity of the raw emotions of that time but back then it was a true call to all idealists and poets to fight for a tangible cause for humanity, and even though 80 years have passed and humanity went a long way since then, it remains a lesson to dreamers and raw idealists out there, even though from personal experience, most people have to learn only through their own experiences even if they read all the books and memoirs in the world. The appendix is a must read for those who are not quite familiar with this part of history as it draws important lines to help understand what all those republican parties were about. It explains the difference between the different factions that formed the government forces and were dominated eventually by Communists supported by former USSR. Otherwise, it can be a quite intricate situation for the general reader to fathom.


Enjoying the book doesn't necessarily mean that one has to agree with all of Orwell’s views there. For instance, he was against what he called capitalist democracy remaining adamant that a working-class-run society is possible and worth fighting for, and he also found glamour in war despite all its atrocities. Many might not share the same views now, and even he, might have changed his views later on as he had done before. There is a risk of over-reading one of my favourite quotes in the book "It struck me that they were indistinguishable from ourselves", which might as well be a misquote out of context. I appreciated the book equally when reading it recently for the second time from a nearly opposite political standpoint from where I was when I first read it several years back, and I found that fascinating for such a heavily opinionated book like this one.


On a personal diversion, going back to my memories of the Egyptian uprising few years ago, some passages in particular resonated much more now than before. When Orwell says "How natural it all seemed then; how remote and improbable now!", or when he tells how in historic events physical details outweigh everything else and correct political analysis of the situation is often not made in the heat of these moments, while a statement like "the whole world was determined upon preventing revolution in Spain“ put a smile on my face; it seems a common attitude in all revolutionary movements.




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Review: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



A Tale of Two Reviews

After finishing the book, I looked up and searched deep in my memory to find if I ever read a book that I liked and enjoyed that much or if any of my previous reading experiences came even close to this one. Most, if not all, other fiction books would pale in comparison with this book. It can be argued that it has everything a reader would hope to find in a fiction work and I think I'll have a tough time picking the next fiction book to read where the narrative follows the ordinary well-trodden path that will probably feel boring now. One of the most solid 5-star rating I gave to a book.

It's a profound piece of work that can't be described without giving away the pleasure of experiencing it; maintaining the excitement and promise that comes with the expectation of the first sentence and prolonging them with such a skilful and creative way of writing, capturing the essence of reading pleasure along the way. A clever, thought-provoking, and witty book about books, reading, and writing. For most of the time, I would raise my head for few minutes every couple of sentences to think about what I read and link it to my past experiences and pleasures or conjure future stories, I thoroughly enjoyed savouring and chewing it slowly, and I think most readers would do, given the right mood and frame-of-mind.

I haven't seen many myself so I'm trying to look into other cases where second person narrative was used, but this one was almost perfect, and keeping its momentum for that long required such a mastery of the art that propels Calvino to the shortlist of top creative writers in modern age, though sometimes a reader might find it difficult to yield to the wit of the writer. I can't help but think as well about who Calvino is; is he Flannery, or is he Marana? Sometimes I think he got the best of both.

However, I can also understand this review, by another me, in a different place and time:

I think I will never fathom how on earth could a writer pull such a lazy stunt of literary nothingness; sometimes I have to raise my hands in the air and admit that some things are beyond me. A fiction where nothing happens but nonetheless carries on for 260 odd pages and some readers, somehow, manage to finish it. I wonder as well how can any reader keep going on with the type of lazy second person narrative that shows such a condescension and self-absorption.

Can't any writer fill pages and pages with something like:
"I can write a review or I may decide not to. If I write someone might read it and another one might skim through the lines and others decide to do without it altogether. You, reader, might love, like, hate, or loathe it, you might be reading it in the underground or sitting on a sofa or lying in a bed, on a computer, or phone, or .....", and so on inking pages and pages, wasting our time and adding to our frustration.

In addition to writing first chapters, playing around with contrasts and opposites here seems to be another obsession of the writer, but also an easy way of filling pages if the publishers keep ringing every day and you can't meet deadlines. It's easy; write something and its opposite then highlight the contrast and don't forget to add the deep contemplative touch.

Stay away from this experimental book, unless you have nothing better to do than wasting your time with a megalomaniac self-obsessed writer who thinks he's so smart when he sets everything to go in circles. I got the feeling at times that he wanted to capture the spirit of his character Marana and spoil the act of reading forever.

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Review: The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A brilliant novella, poignant and surreal, with many interpretations and comparisons to the modern human life with its feelings of alienation and estrangement.

A sensational first sentence, like that of his other novel 'The Trial', starts a terrific first chapter (out of three comprising the novella), where the protagonist deals with his predicament normally and with insistence on carrying on and going to work until he encounters the rejection and revulsion from others and starts to feel the shame and guilt.

It is a scary story as well. In a sense, anyone can be exposed to metamorphosis with different forms, severities, and abruptnesses. The simplest of which is what we all underwent, from being once children, then youths, men and women, and shortly elderlies, in addition to other life conditions and changes in views and personalities.

There are many ways to look at the story. On the first few pages it looked as if extreme working conditions with neglect to personal needs and diversions turn people, in a surreal way, into vermin and leads to their isolation. It can be thought of that the way the protagonist was treated was what turned him into a monster not the other way round. And unlike others, I can't find he family can be blamed either; it can be argued that it was merely an understanding problem because of the lack of communication. The different views and angles are a testimony to the brilliance of such timeless thought-provoking works.



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Review: Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



POLO: Perhaps this garden exists only in the shadow of your lowered eyelids, and we have never stopped: you, from raising dust on the fields of battle; and I, from bargaining for sacks of pepper in distant bazaars. But each time we half-close our eyes, in the midst of the din and the throng, we are allowed to withdraw here, dressed in silk kimonos, to ponder what we are seeing and living, to draw conclusions, to contemplate from the distance.
KUBLAI: Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars nicknamed Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; as they sift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them.
POLO: Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan's palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which outside.



That’s a taste of what you’ll find in the poetic descriptions of imagined cities by Marco Polo and his conversations with Kublai Khan.



Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing.



Perhaps the most eccentric book I’ve ever read to date, and certainly the most difficult to describe. I really found it challenging at times to go through till the end and at some pointI thought I'll never do it. To be honest that was because of the magical descriptions of some cities that forced me to re-read over and over again and I seemed never to progress, which, thinking about it now, might not have been necessarily a bad thing.



Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.
"Journeys to relive your past?" was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: "Journeys to recover your future?"
And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have."



I enjoyed it for most parts but maybe I'll appreciate it more in a different age, time, location, or state-of-mind. I generally blame the bustling London for my diminishing capability of tasting poetry and books of this nature, or probably I needed to find the substance Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, or rather Calvino, were smoking.



"And yet I have constructed in my mind a model city from which all possible cities can be deduced," Kublai said. "It contains everything corresponding to the norm. Since the cities that exist diverge in varying degree from the norm, I need only foresee the exceptions to the norm and calculate the most probable combinations."
"I have also thought of a model city from which I deduce all the others," Marco answered. "It is a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions. If such a city is the most improbable, by reducing the number of abnormal elements, we increase the probability that the city really exists. So I have only to subtract exceptions from my model, and in whatever direction I proceed, I will arrive at one of the cities which, always as an exception, exist. But I cannot force my operation beyond a certain limit: I would achieve cities too probable to be real."



I must say though that I found some city descriptions to be just ludicrous and too gaudy and tacky by any means and with any state of mind, of course one doesn't expect all the poems in a book to be up to the same level or to taste all of them equally, but at some point I had to say this is absolute nonsense; The emperor has no clothes and all that glistens is not gold. But some other cities were just brilliant; Mauralia, the metropolis, formerly provincial city, is one of them:

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.



Descriptions of cities at times were descriptions of human emotions and experiences. Each city gives the readers something to think about, and some will resonate with their experience.



Chloe, Eutropia were memorable, as well as Baucis, Leandra. I found the cities of the dead to be particularly intriguing, my favourite of which is Adelma:

I thought: "You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask."
The stevedores climbed the steps in a line, bent beneath demijohns and barrels; their faces were hidden by sackcloth hoods; "Now they will straighten up and I will recognise them," I thought, with impatience and fear. But I could not take my eyes off them; if I turned my gaze just a little toward the crowd that crammed those narrow streets, I was assailed by unexpected faces, reappearing from far away, staring at me as if demanding recognition, as if to recognise me, as if they had already recognised me. Perhaps, for each of them, I also resembled someone who was dead. I had barely arrived at Adelma and I was already one of them, I had gone over to their side, absorbed in that kaleidoscope of eyes, wrinkles, grimaces.
I thought: "Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead." And I also thought: "This means the beyond is not happy."




A recommended read for the dreamers and poetry fans out there , but like other works of similar nature, it definitely needs a contemplating mood and a quiet location away from the city; maybe in the country or in a park, under a tent in the middle of wilderness or lying on a beach. Otherwise, in a bus for instance, it will sound ridiculous (or more ridiculous than it really is if you don’t like it)



Cecilia the continuous city, Olinda the city that grows in concentric circles were special. Irene as well:

If you saw it, standing in its midst, it would be a different city; Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes.
For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is a city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.

Eusapia; another dead city

They say that this has not just now begun to happen: actually it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead.

Raissa, the unhappy city

Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.

Thekla:

If you ask "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer "So that it's destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."

Trude:

"You can resume your flight whenever you like," they said to me, "but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes."

And Perinthia; the city that was modelled following astronomer’s calculations:

Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.



I re-read the book trying to contain it entirely in my mind. Reading it quickly, I thought, might present a better view; since patterns and are better discerned at a distance. Then a third time to extract my favourite parts, and started to realize it’s not nearly as bad as I might thought at times, and that I will probably revisit it again in the future, perhaps then I will be able to find the meanings that eluded me, or I’ll learn how to imagine clothes to put on the emperor’s naked body.



Kublai asks Marco, "When you return to the West, will you repeat to your people the same tales you tell me?"
"I speak and speak," Marco says, "but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear."



And a perfect ending

He said: "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us."

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."



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Review: God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Hitchens' case against organized religion and the God hypothesis. It's his version of Dawkins' "The God Delusion", with more disdain and contempt for religion; all but no one here was spared the jarred blade of criticism, even the likes of Gandhi. Like the case with Dawkins' book, even though my viewpoint towards religion didn't change much, I nonetheless felt much more informed by the time I had finished the book, with its countless historic and philosophic references and citations that need pursuing. Staying with the inevitable comparison between the two books, they almost followed the same line that some chapters even had similar titles, which of course can be expected since both are dealing with the same matter and disparaging the same arguments, though for me "The God Delusion" was more distinct with its scientific eye-openers, while "God is not Great" focused more on history and politics.

On a personal note, I found the use of language here quite interesting. At some point I could confidently say that no adjective was used twice anywhere in the book. The richness of vocabulary used, despite being frustrating for me at times, was fascinating and entertaining in itself. I'd be glad if I referred to the dictionary only once per chapter on a second reading. I also found myself lost sometimes amidst references from all over the history timeline and from all over the world to prove or disprove a point, I felt in few chapters that the point could have been made clearer towards the end. Most of the chapters though had perfect punchlines and the book generally is full of splendid quotes.

A more detailed review and a number of quotes and excerpts should follow soon, hopefully, after a quick skim through the pages once again.



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Review: The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekhov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



After finishing this collection, I realised I've been reading it, on and off, for almost a year in between other readings. I also realised I read the book in all formats; paperback for few weeks until I had to return it to the library, ebook on computer, kindle edition on tablet, and on mobile. It accompanied me in different countries, seasons, and moods. I managed to enjoy these Russian tales over the weeks and months, and it was generally an entertaining as well as thought-provoking read overall.

By shear coincidence, my reading order started with "The House with the Mezzanine", "A Visit to Friends", "Ionych", and "The Lady with the Little Dog" which I, admittedly, thought were slightly monotonic, revolving around the same themes, locations, and characters; the idle Ivan Ivanichs/Dimitri Dimitrichs sipping tea with rich noble families in their drawing rooms, falling in love with the young tender slender daughter playing the piano, and discussing the meaning and purpose of life. Then came the trilogy "Man in a Case, Gooseberries, and About Love" with its special and memorable characters. The splendid "The Bishop", the incomplete story "Disturbing the Balance", and "The Bride" followed, I previously read numerous short stories that were probably inspired by the first, and I think the latter is one of the best in the collection and can be interpreted on different levels. The shocking and jarring depiction of the appalling conditions of the lower class in "Peasants", in addition to human cruelty in "In the ravine" came next. Then finally was the impressive and thought-provoking novella "My Life" with its protagonist's decision to desert the town life with it corrupt bureaucrats and pursue a manual labour life, describing the brutality and scornful side of peasant life as well, and discussing the social debates of that time. So, overall it was something like a panoramic view of the whole Russian society at that time starting from the rich noble families all the way to the lowest class, with the final novella to have both ends in the same story.

I was particularly fascinated throughout the whole collection by the realistic characters that you can understand their motives and relate to their feelings despite the time and distance from the 19th century Russia, in addition to the vivid descriptions and disconcerting endings. It has been indeed an interesting journey for a year with the stories of Chekhov who's among the few who influenced the very art of short story - now I recognize that many other short stories I read were inspired by his style, and I'd strongly recommend this collection though I don't know where it stands if compared with other collections of the same author.



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Review: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



As one of the reviews on the cover described it, "A Perfect Introduction to Science", which it is indeed. Another well-written book by Richard Dawkins, much lighter and simpler than most of his books, mainly targeting more general readers serving to find the magic in truth rather than myths, and to show how reality can be sometimes more entertaining than fiction.

For me, there was little new there but I thoroughly enjoyed the way it was written and the calm and patient approach to explaining scientific concepts. Each chapter discussed a scientific topic or phenomenon, it started with listing some of the legends that tried to explain this subject, then slowly discussing the scientific explanation of the phenomenon focusing on the beauty of the truth and how it can be more magical (not in the supernatural sense of the word) than the myths and fantasies created and passed on over generations.

This is an essential read to help increase basic science literacy. The light version of science here might appeal to the general reader who finds it difficult to read a science book. The introduction and final chapter can serve as an eye-opener for some readers, though you would normally think that a Richard Dawkins' reader will normally be already familiar with these ideas.



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Review: Football Against The Enemy

Football Against The Enemy by Simon Kuper

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A question I'm often asked from friends and acquaintances, specially with my other interests, is why I like football that much. One side is because it's involved with many things around us; in addition to strategies, chess-like tactics, and drama, it involves economy, specially nowadays, and more interestingly, politics; which is what the book discusses. The writer takes us for a journey from Eastern Europe to USA, from Latin America to Africa, to witness the interaction between football and politics, and how the love of football is used by governments and how it can affect, to a certain extent, political decisions and therefore, people's lives. This topic in particular is of great fascination to me, and something I always felt I could write about; witnessing a great-deal of it in Egypt myself, I have to say that at first I was slightly disappointed that I was beaten to it!

I really enjoyed some chapters of this book; the one about Helenio Herrera, and the African and Latin American stories, and to a lesser extent the Russian, Ukranian, and Scottish stories. The main obvious drawback of this book, however, is that it's fairly outdated. Written in the early 90's, the world, and the world of football in particular, is not the same now, except in Africa maybe. This affected some chapters and almost ruined them; like the chapters about Gazzamania and Barcelona.

Another source of nuisance for me was some incisive judgements made by the writer about the future, taking into consideration that most of them proved to be wrong such as the one regarding the future of the Dutch national team after the retirement of Gullit, Rijkaard, and Van Basten and the other one about the soon-to-be folding of FC Berlin, the club that belonged to the East-German Berlin before the unity, among others. Also, the book could have done, in my opinion, without a lot of the writer's unnecessary journey details, and condescending comments. I often found the humour not that funny actually.

One last remark, is about what he mentioned of the fascination of English people with football and how every man, at least, is a fan of a team. Probably it's the outdatedness, but from my personal experience in England, this is not true, at least in the places where I live and work! This makes me wonder if the Old Firm derby, for example, is the same now; its passion might have got diluted as well. Sadly I can't know for sure as Glasgow Rangers now, at the time of this writing, is in the third division for bankruptcy reasons.

All in all it's worth reading if you like football and have some interest in politics. It's essential at least to realise the connection between the two specially in the developing countries. I hope I can write one day, following the same line, on Egypt and middle-east football/politics connection.

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* Note: There was a mistake in P.100, when the writer says that Egypt was the first African country to play in the World Cup by simply showing up without any qualifications. This is not true, as Egypt qualified by beating Palestine/Israel 7-1 and 4-1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification). This mistake, which could've been easily avoided, casted doubts for me on the other facts mentioned elsewhere in the book, now all the dates and names have to be double-checked. This was quite disappointing and really unexpected at this level to be frank.



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Review: Life of Galileo

Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



"My object is not to establish that I was right but to find out if I am."

Galileo Galilei has been always one of my favorite historical characters, and a source of inspiration at times, specially whenever a debate concerning reason took place. I have to admit, however, that I hadn't read that much about him in depth, just some essays in books discussing the humanity's struggle for freedom and reason, as well as web references here and there. I kind of enjoyed referring to him and creating my own idea about his character and recantation; my own Galileo Galilei. Here Brecht sheds light on Galileo's story from a new perspective to me.

The play was quite entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time, and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. Several meanings can be read into the play; the need to doubt, the fight for reason, defying authorities, and science's moral obligation, where parallels can be easily drawn to today's world. The issue of Earth's rotation may be now settled (not for everyone, sadly) but Galileo's battle for reason hasn't ended since, the same struggle and debate take place almost everyday with different subjects; a struggle between reason and rigid ideas. The play's main concern in my opinion, however, is Galileo's recantation that, according to the writer, allowed science to deviate from its ideal path and lose connection with what's supposed to be its main aim, namely to lighten the burden of human existence. His recantation, in this view, merely helped deliver science to the arms of rulers and thus starting a new course for science that could lead eventually to the destruction of mankind.

Here you'll see science in its blooming youth
Also its first compromises with the truth (*)

The play brilliantly depicts the conflict between Galileo and the Church with splendid conversations with high-ranked church officials (the church here functions as authority in general), it also underpins the social aspect of the fight, which is consistent of course with Brecht's political views, between the ruling and the working classes. The penultimate scene presents Brecht's Galileo's conception of science for the people and emphasises the basic message of the play, where Galileo, imprisoned in his home by the inquisition, self-reproaches his human weakness that led to the decision to recant, refutes any suggestion of slyness in deceiving the authorities in order to proceed secretly with his research and finish his book "Discorsi", lectures about what science should be really about, and warns from a dark future ahead declaring that no achievement is valuable enough to make up for the damage caused by a betrayal of mankind.

The play doesn't idealise Galilei at all, on the contrary it blames him of wasting the opportunity to bring science to common people after he led science into social battle and abandoned it, and that by recanting and failing his supporters, he started the era where science would be a tool in the hands of rulers which eventually led to dropping that bomb that day in August, 1945. Brecht's play regards the atomic bomb as an end-product of Galileo's contribution to science and failure to contribute to society. The historical Galilei is quite controversial specially about what's behind his recantation, and some critics argue that the real Galileo was more speculative and less rational than Brecht's. I think I need to read more non-fictional history about him and some facts about the legal side of his trial as well.

According to the editor, this play is the most worked-over of all Brecht's plays. Its first version was written in German before the second world war and then it was re-written for the American stage emphasizing the message about the moral responsibility of science specially after the appalling results of the war. Then a third German version, an extended one, was written in the fifties for the East German stage. I've read the final one and then found myself reading the American version which was included in the appendix of the book edition I have got. the American one is much shorter and a bit lighter but quite entertaining as well. I recommend this play to everyone, I wanted to include in my review the quotes and scene's opening verses that I utterly enjoyed but then I would have included almost the whole book.

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Off-topic note:

After reading the play, I found myself returning to a couple of songs for the symphonic metal band "Haggard" that I some time ago during my university years and was quite interested in translating their italian and sometimes latin lyrics before the age of google translate (or at least I wasn't aware of at the time). The songs were of their album "Eppur Si Muove = And yet it moves". I find the album and specially the track "Per Aspera Ad Astra = A rough way to the stars" worth giving a listen.
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(*) from prologue to American production



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Review: The Trial

The Trial by Franz Kafka

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



What an interesting journey inside Kafka's absurd reverie; the existential tale that is, like great books, highly controversial and can be interpreted on many levels. The Kafkaesque surrealism and absurdity were quite gripping to say the least with their uncommon characters inside a bureaucratic totalitarian state in the modern industrial age. The novel is about the bleak tale of the protagonist, Josef K., who is caught in a labyrinth of incomprehensible circumstances after being prosecuted with a charge that he knows nothing about in a bureaucratic legal system that virtually no one knows for sure how it works. The story follows his futile efforts to prove his innocence and meanwhile we encounter the other secondary characters with their peculiar behaviour and surreal conversations. There are quite numerous interpretations for this nightmarish story; political, economical, and even religious explanations, for example, the trial might represent life itself, where we are under-arrest trying all the time to understand its meaning and escape our verdicts, the lawyer who claims to know the inner-workings of the court might represent religion in this sense and so on. The story also depicts the desperate life of the common people, and their fear, weakness, and inability which are by-products of the modern industrial age where fear of losing jobs controls peoples' lives.

Despite reading a lot about Kafka style's and for other writers who imitate this style and create similar worlds, this was my first encounter with any of his works and it surely won't be the last. Since I finished it days ago, I couldn't help spending hours and hours with the critical writings about this novel and the kafkian world in general.

I find it worth mentioning that the edition I read was Max Brod's one (Kafka's close friend who first published this incomplete novel after his death in contrary to what was stipulated in his will- to burn all his unpublished works), it came to my knowledge later that subsequent publications included six more chapters that Max Brod considered incomplete. In fact, arguably all the chapters in a sense are incomplete as they weren't revised by Kafka himself. There is also much dispute about the proper chapter sequence between scholars who studied in depth the character development, and some critics believe that it can’t be even described as a novel but should be rather treated as distinct unconnected chapters whose sequence can be left to the reader.

For me, the fact that the novel is incomplete, the different translations (as that of the final sentence), and the controversy about the proper sequence and the incomplete chapters, which brings to mind the controversy about old scriptures, played a part in my affection and fascination with the whole thing. I have a feeling that it will open the door to further and deeper readings of Kafka's legacy.



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Review: Animal Farm

Animal Farm by George Orwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



A timeless classic. It's always enjoyable to find out how the situation slowly moves in a circle to return to the same point where it started; how the animals don't feel but a slight change at a time that can only be noticed when we take a step back and look at the big picture, and how the great idols gradually devolved from "All animals are equal" to "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".

It's one of the books that probably everyone should read but probably not everyone would appreciate it the same; I read it once many years ago but appreciated it infintely more after the recent Egyptian uprising and the colossal media machine that efficiently played the role of "Squealer" in our novel afterwards, brainwashing normal poeple and exploiting their fear, gullibility and volatile memory that can be easily manipulated by all the devil advocates around. I've seen the story events almost take place before my eyes more than once since January 2011.

Orwell was thought by some to be, simply, opposing socialism. In fact, it was the exact opposite, he believed in it so deeply that he wanted to protect it from the form of communism that was hailed by many at that time (after WWII). I've read someone putting it this way, for Orwell, "Capitalism is the disease, socialism is the cure, but communism will kill the patient". He believed in democtratic socialism and classless society, abd these socialist ideals were betrayed by the Soviet Stalinism.

Like 1984, it can be applied to any totalitarian regime not specific to the Soviet one. Yes, it almost directly refers to Marx, Stalin and Trotsky, but manipulating history and betraying the noble causes are around us all the time. It's depressing though seeing how wickedness ended in triumph, seeing how things went with the character "Boxer", but it's still worth reading by everyone as a warning cry for nations to beware of the wolves, to stick with "Snowball", to know their enemies, and to keep their memories alive.



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