THE PRICE OF SALT is the famous lesbian love story by Patricia Highsmith, written under …
Review of 'The Price of Salt' on 'Goodreads'
5 stelle
For the longest time I snobbed Patricia Highsmith thinking of her as a thriller author, but this novel is outrageously well written. It's incredible that she managed to get this published in 1952, almost 20 years before "Maurice" by E.M. Forster.
The character development, the masterful way we're made to perceive how the feelings develop between the character when they're still so hard to identify clearly... I know exactly what she's talking about, and I still have no idea how she managed to put it into words so well.
Review of 'Come valutare la qualità del catalogo di una biblioteca' on 'Goodreads'
4 stelle
Guida essenziale a certi criteri di qualità minima dei cataloghi. Non mancano le frecciatine al catalogo SBN per la mancanza di normalizzazione dei dati, che ne penalizza l'usabilità.
Un libro que llamara profundamente la atencion de cuantos se interesen por los problemas politicos …
Review of 'Crises of the Republic' on 'Goodreads'
5 stelle
Hannah Arendt is spectacular in these four essays. After reading them, I keep going back to these concepts and I find we still have a huge need for them, for example when thinking about civil disobedience and the concepts of violence in the activism against the climate crisis.
Excellent work, but I'm not sure how enjoyable for someone who has not read the book. A good refresher if you have. It's also easy to realise how this screenplay would have been a nightmare for any film producer. Luchino Visconti might have been able to pull it off, but all those different highly visual scenes are a minefield.
I originally read this book in Thai Vegan Kitchen in Helsinki. It's ostensibly about communicating with carnists about veganism, but in reality I'd say it's a book about using direct non-violent communication in personal relations. You can find the same concepts in any book about attachment theory, but Melanie Joy presents it all in a more personal way. Useful also if you often find you have trouble communicating the importance of a belief of yours, for example (in my case) free software or privacy.
Dune is a 1965 epic science fiction novel by American author Frank Herbert, originally published …
Review of 'Dune' on 'Goodreads'
4 stelle
Obviously I've only started the book because I was captivated by the eye candy of the movie, but surprisingly I ended up reading it in one sitting because it was very captivating. There's something for everybody.
«Water is the least favourable condition for life on Arrakis. And remember that growth itself can produce unfavourable conditions unless treated with extreme care.»
Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive …
Review of 'The Phoenix Project' on 'Goodreads'
4 stelle
A very enjoyable read which opens a window on much of today's software development. The way Agile is deployed to solve every single problem in the world is an outrageous simplification, but that's what makes it fun.
Started to worry about just how hot our world is going to get, and whether …
Review of 'Heat' on 'Goodreads'
5 stelle
A classic, still very instructive. A few parts have not aged well, but most of it remains prescient. For example, Monbiot gave us a simple message: there's no way we can make fast travel environmentally sustainable, we just have to give it up: we can't replace the growth in air travel with an equal growth in trains going at 300+ km/h. Some people still don't get it, even in the environmental movement. And this is just one example which reminded me of this book the other day.
Family Sayings (Original title Lessico famigliare) is a novel by the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, …
Review of 'Lessico famigliare' on 'Goodreads'
4 stelle
Rileggere Lessico famigliare non è stata una delusione. Si può godere la pure bellezza linguistica, oppure assaporare l'immagine di una vita famigliare molto particolare eppure molto semplice, o ancora meravigliarsi della macrostoria di cui apprendiamo tramite questa microstoria, come l'episodio della fuga di Turati.
In the Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert …
Review of 'The clean coder' on 'Goodreads'
4 stelle
A good reference, mostly because it's so compact and well thought out. I've not managed to use it that much in practice, but it can be a good starting point for conversations or for self-improvement if you're confused about where you stand.
We live in an era in which offensive speech is on the rise. The emergence …
Review of 'Hate' on 'Goodreads'
4 stelle
Nadine Strossen is very convincing and uniquely experienced in the topic. Before coming up with your own definitions of online harassment or whatnot, check this book for the well-known pitfalls.
The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy is a 1982 book by …
Review of 'The Ecology of Freedom' on 'Goodreads'
5 stelle
Bookchin attempts to rewrite the history of humanity to prove that hierarchical structures aren't "natural" or "necessary". Paleosociology is inevitably hard and dubious, but Bookchin doesn't pretend to have the truth in his pocket. Every page challenges us to think differently and consider what we could do together as a society.
Bookchin is very aphorism-friendly so it would be easy to extract a myriad slogans. I've wondered about this passage on ecofascism: «To lecture society about its "insatiable" appetites, as our resource-conscious environmentalists are wont to do, is precisely what the modern consumer is not prepared to hear. And to impoverish society with contrived shortage, economic dislocations, and material deprivation is certain to shift the mystification of needs over to a more sinister social ethos, the mystification of scarcity. This ethos–already crystalllized into the "life-boat ethic", "triage", and a new bourgeois imagery of "claw-and-fang" called /survivalism/–marks the first steps towards …
Bookchin attempts to rewrite the history of humanity to prove that hierarchical structures aren't "natural" or "necessary". Paleosociology is inevitably hard and dubious, but Bookchin doesn't pretend to have the truth in his pocket. Every page challenges us to think differently and consider what we could do together as a society.
Bookchin is very aphorism-friendly so it would be easy to extract a myriad slogans. I've wondered about this passage on ecofascism: «To lecture society about its "insatiable" appetites, as our resource-conscious environmentalists are wont to do, is precisely what the modern consumer is not prepared to hear. And to impoverish society with contrived shortage, economic dislocations, and material deprivation is certain to shift the mystification of needs over to a more sinister social ethos, the mystification of scarcity. This ethos–already crystalllized into the "life-boat ethic", "triage", and a new bourgeois imagery of "claw-and-fang" called /survivalism/–marks the first steps towards ecofascism».
I love that he decries false rationalism in a way that's compatible with Popper's view of irrationalism including mysticism and romaticism: «The reconstruction of reason as an interpretation of the world must begin with a review of the modern premises of rationalism–its commitment to insight through opposition» etc. (chapter 11, p. 302). A standard Popper critique of dialectic could fit just as well in place of the next paragraph. Actually when I read this book I had not read "Open Society" yet; now some passages are clearer to me. So I can recommend reading some Popper before this book to get most of it (especially when Plato is mentioned).