"The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge (2008)

, 4 Oct 2014

Norman Doige, a well-respected psychiatrist and psychotherapist, has written one of the most impacting books you have read in the last years. So much so, that despite this being a book on Medicine, Medical Research and the Brain, has been read by million of people who came to it by worth of mouth.

The book is written in a very simple language, accessible to the lay, to people like you and me who are not medical professionals or know too well the intricacies of our brain or neurology. At the same time, the book is scientifically rigorous, with the expected footnotes and bibliography needed to be so. Moreover, Doidge has the rare virtue of being entertaining when writing about medical experimentation and about medical researchers. 

The book, in the first place, narrates the painful birth of neuroplasticity within the Medical world, showcasing the many different experiments and research projects that lead to the official recognition of this field by the Academia. It also exemplifies, to me, the dogmatism and rigidity of our modern scientific community, that rejects ideas that are scientifically sound and logic, even proven, beating up those who dare to propose them, until the evidences are so overwhelming that they have to recognise the obvious but without any apology. Secondly, and most importantly, you will find an explanation of what neuroplasticity is and how it works, and what means in practical terms for our health, for the treatment of brain damage and malformations, and for the understanding of what our brain is, and how mind and body are intricately related.

I spent the first 70-80 pages of the book saying WOW to myself, unable to put the book down. It is not just me. Most people who have read it, will tell you the same.

A book that anybody with a brain should read. So run and grab your copy.

Posted in , , , , , , | 0 comments

"Eucalyptus" by Murray Bail (1998)

Published by The Text Publishing Company in 1998, the book won the Miles Franklin Award in 1999, and the Commonwealth writers Prize in the same year. 

 Widower Cave Holland lives in an isolated farm In New South Wales with his daughter Helen. She is in marriageable age, but she doesn't seem to find a suitable suitor or even search for a husband. Cave comes with a solution to the problem: he will give the hand of his daughter to the first suitor who is able to name all the five hundred varieties of eucalyptus trees he has planted in his farm over the years. A gargantuan task that, however, will attract plenty of suitors from all over the world after the fame of her beauty spreads by worth of mouth. 

It sounds like a fairy tale, and the premise and structure purposely is, but this is not a children or ladies book. In fact, Eucalyptus is both the story of a courtship and a story about storytelling, storytellers and oral stories. It is also story about family ties, our connection with the land, the Australian land and landscape in particular, and the power of words over the soul. It is a story about individuality within commonality, too. 

Eucalyptus is very well written and structured, narrated with great simplicity, power and originality, very modern and timeless, very Australian and Universal. The novel is divided in chapters bearing the name of a variety of eucalyptus, whose characteristics and qualities are described as they are indeed related to the story and stories that will be told in the pages that covers. 

The story is set in an undated period that some reviews have set after WW2. However, when I was reading the book, I personally placed it at the end of the 19th century or beginning of the 20th, where marrying your single daughter would be relevant, establishing tests to suitors not rare, when suitors would travel hundreds of miles to get a woman, and collecting, classifying and experimenting with plants, or trying to grow them, was part of the hobbies and interests of yeomen. Still, the book is mostly timeless, and it is up to so and your imagination when you place the story. Isn't that cool?

This is an Australian modern classic novel that any Australian should read, not because it is Australian Literature, but because it is a terrific book, good lyric literature, full of  magic for grown-ups with a heart.

Posted in , , , | 0 comments

"The Portrait" by Willem Jan Otten (2009)

The Portrait was first published in Dutch in Holland in 2005, and was translated into English by David Colmer and published in the English-speaking world in 2009, after being critically awarded in Otten's native land and winning the Libris Prize. 

This is a tiny book that, however, offers an unforgettable experience, if you are into odd stories, literary experimentation and entertainment, all at once. 

The Portrait is the story of Felix Vincent, a prestigious painter who accepts to paint the portrait of the dead son of Valery Specht, a rich and dubious industrialist, just for the money. This is also the story of Felix's private life and his relationship with his wife, the story of the relationship between Felix and his newly-acquired giant white-Extra- Fine-Quadruple-Universal-Primed canvas, and the story of the canvas -who is actually the narrator of the story- on which the portrait is going to be painted. 

The literary language (at least the one reflected by the translation) is precise and matter of fact, without any flourish or narrative intricacy. However, the apparent simplicity of the language and composition are counteracted by the originality of the story, the precision of its tempo, and the depth and insight of its narrative voice. The result is a fascinating contemporary noir story that goes beyond the facts narrated in the story, and explores with fluidity subjects like artistic creation, personal intimacy and trust, social and intellectual pre-assumptions, and the world of Art. 

A priori, it could sound shocking that the canvas is the narrator of the story. However, Otten takes such an absurd poetic license to transcend the facts described in the story, and the canvas becomes a sort of universal consciousness, invisible observer and jury that, however, has a sense of humour.

The book gets more interesting and fascinating by the page, and, at the end, you will be lamenting that it was too short. Which is always a great sign.

Posted in , , , | 0 comments

"Rapt: Attention or the focused life" by Winifred Gallagher (2011)

Your life is a result of what you focus on and pay attention to. Your energy goes where your attention is. That is it! That is what this non-fiction book says. If you focus on love you get love, if you focus on work you get your work done and succeed at what you do at work, if you focus on a new project, invention, research or artistic project you will get there. And on and on and on, chapter after chapter saying the same, giving plenty of examples and blah blah blah just in case your brain is so small and damaged that you are not able to understand such a simple concept.

Do you really need to be reminded that your life is a result of what you focus on and that you need to focus on what you want to achieve to achieve it? Yes? Then, run and grab this book. No? Save your monies and purchase another one. 

Can anybody explain to me why the book has got so many good reviews? Who on earth decided that what could have been an interesting article needed to become a wordy book?  

A book full of hyper-focused platitude. Focus on another one!

Posted in , , , , | 0 comments

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach (2010)

When I was a child, when asked what I would like to be when I was a grown up, I would reply: An Astronaut! Did you not? Such a beautiful idea that of floating in the outer space, seeing the stars closer, having a look at the blueness of the Earth and even visiting other planets. Right?

However,  we do not think about the real challenges that astronauts face in space when we have whimsical dreams. After all, the Space has been part of our collective space/time-travel and 20th-21st centuries ultra frontier. Space travel has been romantically and stylishly portrayed in science-fiction movies and novels, but most of them do not show the nitty gritty reality of what space travel is, has been, or will be. And here comes Roach's book to our rescue, to enlighten us with a scientifically rigorous yet funny book, hilarious at times.  

How and what do astronauts eat? How they wash themselves? How do they urinate and defecate? Do they have or can have sex? How do they interact with each other in such confined environment? Does the inner ship smells? How do our bodies react to zero gravity and high radiation levels in space? Which were the challenges and secrets of the first historical space trips in USA and Russia? This, and much more, is answered by cheery Mary, who does not leave a question unanswered by using first-hand archival material and personal interviews with astronauts and space engineers from NASA, and the Russian and European Space agencies, and some bits coming from her own experiences at these agencies.

This is an amazing entertaining book, very easy to read, unpretentious and so very informative and rigorous. After reading it, you will not feel sorry for not being an astronaut, but you will bow to those men and women who go out there to expand our earthly rounded frontiers.

Posted in , , , | 0 comments

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)

Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and written by American-Dominican Junot Diaz, is a partially autobiographical novel that tells the story of the Cabrales, a family of Dominican immigrants in the USA. The story is non-linear and covers a time span that goes from 1944 to 1995. There is a part that follows the life of the Cabrales American children in the USA following a natural chronology and line of events, while another part tells the story of their parents and grandparents from the present to the past, in reverse order.

Diaz's narrative is fresh, powerful, captivating, humorous and extremely original. His characters are unforgettable, well drawn, multifaceted and realistic, warm and close as if they were real people you have known for years - perhaps because they are based on true people. Not a moment of boredom - guaranteed.

The book gets you hooked from the very beginning. It is its characters, the many stories told in it, its humanity and believability, the historical period that focus on the Dominican Republic, and the real portray of the challenges, sufferings and process of survival and adaptation of the Dominican Diaspora in the USA.

 The book is written mostly in English, but with a lot of Spanish paragraphs and phrasing, without any translation given (at least in the edition I used). Beyond the proper Spanish, you will also find the Spanglish used by modern generations of Latinos in the USA, which can be tricky to understand, too. You certainly need a good knowledge of both English and Spanish to read the book with easiness, and to get its vibe. The truth is that the book is very organic in its multilingualism, and that is because of it, and not despite it, that the book is believable and so very charming. At the same time, this is a very difficult book to translate into Spanish or into any other language, unless you provide translation footnotes, or even if you do. It is impossible to reproduce in reverse what the book says without losing content, style, freshness and believability, because the language used is embossed in the cultural and personal experiences of the characters. A good reason to learn Spanish or English!

The book contains footnotes explaining and detailing some of the historical background and figures mentioned in the story - the historical grip that makes the history understandable to those readers who, like me, are not familiar with the contemporary history of the Dominican Republic and with the Trujillato, i. e.  the dark terrible years of the Trujillo's dictatorship and the policies of repression and extermination carried out by his regime.  

The book deserves the hype and good reviews that has had in the past years. My only criticism is that the book is sometimes a bit soap-opera-ish, even thought the story does not linger on anything that is not accurate.  Its cinematicity must be the reason why the rights of the book were bought by the film industry to turn it into a movie.

Posted in , , , | 0 comments

Solar by Ian McEwan (2010)

I wanted to give another opportunity to McEwan after reading Saturday, which I did not enjoy and found over-praised. After all, McEwan is one of the most prestigious writers in the English-speaking world, and I thought he deserved it.

Solar is the story of a Nobel-Prize middle-aged physicist who is having a complete life meltdown. He is having a marriage crisis with his fifth wife, and, a professional level, he has no new ideas or research going on, lives on the glories of the past, but is put in charge of a new Research Institute devoted to Renewable Energies that need of new ideas. The anti-hero of the book is so real that reminded me of some real researchers I have found in my own academic life in the past. 

There is no doubt that McEwan's English is good and precise, and that he creates perfectly-delineated characters, as real as life itself, based on a meticulous research work. So much so that the characters, what they do, how they move, what they think, how they express themselves is completely convincing and realistic. His fictional characters do exist, also, because McEwan creates a realist fictional environment that envelopes his characters, drawn with the same surgical precision. 

Solar's narrative, however, and as a result is slow and frustrating, as the detail becomes a sea of tar you have to swim across to get to the point. Really annoying. In other words, McEwan's plot, initially interesting and original, becomes a succession of details. His characters are static, over-drawn in a way, as if they were wearing too much clothing and disappeared underneath it. On the contrary, the plot is a peremptory and unrealistic combination of events that seem not to make any sense, no matter the fact that this is, in a way, a comic book. If this was not enough, the end of the book is irresolute, imperfect, as if McEwan had got lost in his own microcosms and was not able to see the horizon and to put a bright closure to the story.

Solar has not clear chapters or sections, so reading the book becomes a pain, as the continuity is too... continuous? It reminded me of Saramago, who made an anti-art of this.

It took me ages to finish the book, just out of stubbornness more than out of pleasure, no matter the spark of some moments.

Posted in , , , | 0 comments

The Paradox of Choice. Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz (2004)

The premise of the book is fascinating - Having lots of choice and many options is not only bad, but it does not make people happier or their life easier. Too much choice becomes a burden in every aspect of our life, from choosing an item from a Restaurant menu, to selecting your health insurance, a pair of jeans, or the school for your kids, just  to mention a few things. Too much choice creates stress and dissatisfaction. 

Not only that. Schwartz explains with great simplicity why certain people are always happy with their choices and others are never so. This fact relates to two personality types: the maximiser (who thinks: "I want the best in life and I have to search and select it") and the good-enough-izer (who thinks: "I need this and I get something that is good enough for my needs"). Maximisers will be always stressed about selecting something, it will take them ages to select something, and when they select it, they will not be happy because anything better will come up, which will make them feel imperfect and anxious again. On the contrary, the other type people want to attend to their needs in a quick personalised way, even if something is not the best possible option. The roots of happiness, therefore, are not based on choice and money, but on knowing what you want and getting it.

Fascinating eh? Yes, totally. However, you don't need to buy the book. I have already explained to you the core of what the book says in two paragraphs. There is not more to it. Schwartz has taken an idea that was first proposed and discussed by the famous Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, and make it accessible to the masses, and meaningful to our post-modern society. Schwartz certainly succeeds at making the subject approachable to the masses by explaining, in a very simple way, when and how we choose, and how we approach choice from a vital and emotional point of view. However, writing page after page repeating himself at nauseam, and giving example after example after example... is, how to put it?, too much choice of examples... Ha! 

Posted in , , , | 0 comments

Malaysia - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture by Victor King (2008)

This is a very basic book for travellers that promotes respect for the culture/s of Malaysia and offers sound advice about how to behave in Malaysia to be respected by and respect the local people.

If you have been to South Asia before visiting Malaysia and reading this book, you will find that you know most of what it says, as the book mentions values, customs and ways of seeing life and relationships that are shared by most South-East Asia. Moreover, some of the advice is very common sense, as promotes behaviour that you will also promote, say, if you were visiting America and you were French, or vice versa: Good Manners and Respect no matter how awkward the other culture is to you. Still, I found some specific items of advice specific to Malaysia really spot on, e. g. how sensitive Malaysian are to criticism even if you are right in your complaint.

If Malaysia is the first South-Eastern country you visit, the book will be very useful to you, as there are a few cultural things that you need to learn if you are going to spend a few days in Malaysia re addressing people, dressing code, pointing, touching and behaving in general, and also business etiquette.

Malaysia is a very complex country, and depending on the area (and prominent religion) the dress code and traditions are more important/pressing than others, and some of the items of advice in the book might not apply. Still, better being conservative in your behaviour and following the book's advice to then relax, than the opposite.

It is a good buy, and very cheap.

Posted in , , , , , | 0 comments

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz (1987)

This is an old book that is still fresh to read in our modern globalised and humanly disconnected era.

This is a book to help you to stop self-sabotaging your personal and professional life, and channel your inner energy in the right direction. The advice is very simple, still powerful and useful. If you stop your inner critic, your inner devil's advocate, your inner negativity, you will approach your day and life more relaxed and ready to make the most of any social or professional situation. It builds self-confidence, too.

The author does not give magic recipes for success, but very grounded and common sense advice. This is not a miracle book, and does not support or justify whimsical nonsensical wishful thinking. It is matter of fact, entertaining and very useful. One of those few books that you actually want to highlight!

The book is written in a very approachable entertaining way, with summaries of the info at the end of each chapter, which will come handy after your first reading of the book to remind yourself of the main points discussed in each chapter.

To be honest, many of the super-duper books lately published on charisma, business success and self-help relate directly in content to this book, no matter the approach they take or if they quote this book or not.

Read it, re-read it, underline it, try to follow the author's advice so you can approach any challenge in your life with the best possible attitude. It will not make miracles, but it will help you to relax inside out, feel like a star, and create the best possible version of yourself.

Posted in , , , , | 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)