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While observing exotic animal trainers for her acclaimed book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched, journalist Amy …
A funny and enjoyable read with some sound advice on relationships. There isn't much more than you won't have learnt already from the original essay on the NYT, but there's some nice filler.
In the Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert …
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.
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.
IN A LIFE filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of …
Very well written and enjoyable, much better than Barack Obama's books. A much more realistic point of view. I can't say I know much more than before though.
Family Sayings (Original title Lessico famigliare) is a novel by the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, …
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 this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City : the denizens …
A captivating read. Patti Smith has so many good stories to tell!
The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy is a 1982 book by …
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).
Started to worry about just how hot our world is going to get, and whether …
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.
L'argomento è interessante, i dodici straordinari; ma da quel poco che ho letto il libro mi sembra troppo agiografico e poco storico (del resto Boatti è un giornalista), insomma non molto profondo, una semplice somma di biografie. Non ho tempo per finirlo, e non credo che lo riprenderò in prestito.
Non ho mai deciso che cosa pensare di questo libro. È Virginia, però vista attraverso la lente del marito. Non so quanto aggiunga veramente ai diari pubblicati in seguito.
“There are two prices for this. Half…and half. One half is cash. The other is a deed. Do you understand?” …
Un romanzo sull'impossibilità per il narratore di scrivere un romanzo, per questioni stilistiche e narrative che emergono dalla storia e da tutti gli "inserti meta-narrativi" (mi invento il nome tecnico, vabbè, insomma qualcosa meta-qualcos'altro). Intelligente e divertente, ma leggendolo ho avuto la forte impressione che tale tecnica fosse già superata cinquant'anni fa, insomma non stupisce piú nessuno, e resta senza scopo una certa pesantezza linguistica che quindi non appaga molto. Comunque val la pena di leggerlo, anche perché è corto. Qualche citazione qui: it.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tommaso_Landolfi#La_biere_du_pecheur
Sostanzialmente una serie di definizioni. Probabilmente è inevitabile che sia interessante solo per gli specialisti.
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.
