Recensioni e Commenti

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.

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.»

Quite a useful reference to get a general sense of direction in the field.

This book has a good premise, but the execution is catastrophically bad. Pages upon pages of bad and unremarkable prose are spent trying to convince us that capitalism doesn't help produce happy relationships: thank you very much. I understand that this might still be news to some people in the USA, but this filler completely destroys the book. A good editor would probably have cut the book in half without losing any substance. If the filler is necessary to give some air of academic value, it could be in endnotes.

The good part of the book is what comes from the author's qualitative research, namely the interviews with people after their relationships ended. There's a lot one can identify with, but which is seldom talked about.

A captivating read. Patti Smith has so many good stories to tell!

Supremely important topic and I agree with Monbiot that we need a different way of communicating it, but in the end the proposals he makes are underwhelming and unsubstantiated.

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.

Noioso... non l'ho finito, non riuscivo a procedere a una velocità decente.

One of the best summaries of ancient philosophy I've ever read. Plato gets completely destroyed, and he deserves it.

From chapter 9: «Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from an intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach "back to nature" or "forward to a world of love and beauty"; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in makin it a hell–that hell which man alone prepares for its fellow-men.»

Personalmente l'ho trovato abbastanza ben scritto ma troppo melodrammatico per i miei gusti (per non parlare delle fastidiose intromissioni didascaliche pseudo-dissacranti del narratore): vista la lunghezza, ho preferito interrompere e passare a letture piú piacevoli.

Err:510

Back in 2004 I had great hopes for John Kerry, and his digital campaign was very innovative, so I was interested in seeing his take on the classic genre, "memoir to re-write history and raise the profile of one's late career". The book is well written, no doubt, but it remains a bit hard to reconcile the anti-Vietnam war beginnings with everything happened afterwards.

It was nevertheless very interesting to learn about a number of episodes in decades of behind the scenes. There are a few remarkable admissions.

Kropotkin is a classic, of course, but what I didn't expect is that this book is packed with data and and historical information about different land management structures which existed across Russia before a specific economic model was imposed on everybody. I wish Kropotkin had had the resources to conduct studies of the sort Elinor Ostrom did on Swiss pastures. Now so much has been lost forever.

Orribile: pesantissimo e noiosissimo. Lo leggerò un'altra volta, perché leggere qualcosa di D'Annunzio è obbligatorio.