Peppuzzo Netherlands

The idea is to have two unconnected stories develop in parallel; the two stories alternates themselves chapter by chapter. In this way the reader is not confronted with the superficiality of the plot, the ill-built characters, the temporal and spatial mistakes that otherwise would be evident in a single-story plot; around 3/4 of the book, the stories connect in the writer climax. This technique, apparently the only one thought in modern writer workshop, is actually borrowed from television, namely from soap operas. Reading Peter Robinson's Piece of my Heart is therefore equivalent to watch a couple of hours of a soap opera. With the only advantage that in the reader's head actors tend to act much better than on TV.

There are some writers that are absolute. Still we forget them, and we approach our forties becoming a much worse person than when were about thirty. Like Charles Bukowski, the most influential american writer of the last century. Thanks to a good friend of mine, I have been confronted with his autobiographical novel Ham on Rye. Chinaski grows, and fights his guts for the right of living his own life.

Lui is building a new ethics, a new set of moral values; a new way-of-living. A philosophy in which work is just a way to make beer taste better, love is an act for strangers, violence is a necessity and the skin is just a temporary canvas for ink dragons, studs pierce thongs with the only goal of forking them; in this way-of-living sex is liberated and therefore intense; so intense it makes you cry, so definite it makes you want to die; and who can tell a lover from a killer nowadays?

To follow his stories Pepe Carvalho often travels, but it is never like the travels of Bill Bryson. A book about travels is something you should never bring with you while travelling, so I did not. Bill tries to follow the pattern of a trip around Europe he did when he was younger. He succedes in following his impulsiveness, his love for big cities and capitals, his marvellous literary fantasy. The guy is fun, very fun. Sometimes he is so funny that it gets boring. The book is well written and gave me the feeling of what it means being a tourist. Most interesting part was to see how being tourist changed over the years - and reminds me on how being a tourist like Bryson is, is already past tense.

Because time is only the relationship between the way different things change.

Christophe is a kid, affected by the Syndrome of Asperger. And he is writing a book about a dog who was killed in the night. With his writing, Christophe is exploring the world of delict and mistery, and he is pushing himself over his boundaries. And the readers are reading the book Christophe wrote, and with it exploring the pure and innocent world of autism.

This novel, written by Mark Haddon, his simply terrific. Haddon is not an autist himself, but the writing is exceptional, as are all the diversion on mathematics, religion and ethic. The story is genuine, and twisting, since the reader cannot escape from forming a different opinions on facts than Christopher's own. This book is a must read.

Hide is a noun. And in it, the secret of a murder is hidden. Rebus fails to find it, since he sees too many things in Hide, the verb and the name, for instance. So, instead of trying to make connection between different events, Rebus has to separate the stories and simplify apperances. Rebus is older, without a woman, and does not listen any more to alternative rock, but only to some anonymous jazz. His alcoholism is genuine, but despites the age he is still the good guy seeking the truth in the corrupted city. Links between characters are as unrealistic as ridicolous, and the book gives enough clues for the reader to understand everything about page 100. The most erotic moment is the discovery of the picture of one of the characters, naked. If you would get some thoughts after reading that, please consult your shrink. But that's Edinburgh, not Vigata or Barcelona. If Rebus would have met, only once, with Pepe Carvalho, he would have seen what he missed in life.

Not to me.
At the age of 10 I decided that God does not exist. Since then, I have encountered no evidence of its existence, and discarded the question as irrelevant to me. Never illuded, never deluded.

Richard Dawkings thinks differently about it. For him, the existence of a super-natural God is highly improbable, and in his The God Delusion, he explains why. First he comfutes all the major arguments which have been used by theologician to demonstrate God's existence, one by one, in a hilarious spiral. Later in the book, it becomes more clear what is he fighting against, and that is religion - i.e. the system of beliefs based on beliefs.
The book is well written and enjoyable. The thesis are rigorous and compelling. A good book. It could help a lot of people, especially in these highly religious times.

There are some minor remarks - but those are for the scholars. For instance, I cannot understand and appreciate the anthropofic vision or assumption. Moreover, I hate the lack of phantasy of people imagining extra-terrestrial life. Life is a process whose output is highly impredictable, so I would guess that extra-terrestrial life would look as shocking different to us, as australia's wildlife looked to the first occidental sailors.

Finally, a godless life is a sinless one! Can you imagine what kind of impact that would have on your sexual life?

I read a book about a man reading a book. And the book he was reading was about a man who read a lot of books. Gregorius (the man reading the book) has lead the quiet and insignificant life that most of us will discover to have lived; his only eccentricity was his passion for classic books and translation ancient Greek and Hebrew. A strange episode brings him to read a book in Portuguese, a language he does not know. Therefore Gregorius is not just reading, as he needs first to undergo the effort of translation; Gregorius is basically giving to the book the attention that every writer would dream of. Prado, the man who has written the book, could not care less. Writing for Prado was just an observation tool, a mechanism and a ritual in order to give meaning to his own life. The relation between reader and writer is therefore sublime, as Prado is basically giving color to Gregorius' life, and Gregorius is apparently the only man on earth really knowing Prado. A good book, intense, well built. The characters are strong, and able to create links beyond space and time between them, by the process of writing and reading. However not an excellent book, I am afraid. To make his story plausible, Mercier (the author of the book), has to use well-known mechanisms (for instance all-live savings well invested to allow Gregorius to spend a large amount of time doing nothing, or the fact that every person was always willing to give Gregorius a good interview, or the omnipresence of chess-game); this failed attempt to plausibility is futile and unnecessary, and subtract energy to the book. However, the existential questions which are posed by this atheist preacher, the deep investigation of the human soul, let us forgive and forget those literary blunders and support us in our mid-life crisis.

This short novel by Karin Slaughter I got for FREE! at the book store when I bought my summer books. It’s the best book I have read during my holidays so far. It’s a mixture of thriller, romance, sex, humor, boredom and geniality. I recommend it to everyone who wants to smile a bit.

Martin is just misunderstood. Whatever he does, whatever he says, people get their own interpretation; and this gets towards embarrassing, frustrating, tragic, comic and thrilling events. The plot is based in a toilet cleaning product factory. Just wonderful to imagine what kind of stories have happened around your Cillit Bang!