Daytripper by Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon, (2011)

, 15 Jun 2016


"I wanted to write about life, Jorge, and look at me now... All I write about is death.
Ahh, but you know all too welll that death is a part of life my friend.
You're right.. death is a part of life.
Yes
and so is family. " (p. 22-23)

Daytripper offers an harmonious symbiosis of graphic art, an interesting narrative and engaging story with enough surprises and elements of reflection to make it a winner. Two Brazilian artists are the creators of this beauty, twin brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba.

Daytripper is set in Brazil and tells the story of Brás de Oliva Domingos' life. He is a Brazilian journalist, working in the Obituaries section of a newspaper, an aspiring writer, son of the famous writer, and a man who wants to live life to the fullest. The novel presents his life in shuffled chapters that are not always chronological and some of them also have flashbacks to his past.. The chapters and ages are important events and life-changing experiences in Bras' life:
Chapter 1- presents us a 32y.o. Bras
Chapter 2 - ditto 21y.o.
Chapter 3- ditto 28y.o.
Chapter 4- ditto 41y.o. 
Chapter 5- ditto 11y.o.
Chapter 6-  ditto 33y.o. 
Chapter 7- ditto 38y.o.
Chapter 8-  ditto 47y.o.
Chapter 9- ditto in his 70s. 
Chapter 10- ditto 76y.o.

We are told of Bras' childhood and late years, his first kiss, his bad and good relationships, of his job and family life, of his dreams and angst, of his low and high moments and, most importantly, of his hunger for life, his quest to live his life in a way that fulfils him and helps him to be himself.

Each episode ends with the death of Bras and with a small obituary about him. There are many elements that make the novel different from other personal or family novels, but this is perhaps the one that intrigues readers the most, and the one that has generated more comments and analysis. 


I found Daytripper very engaging visually as it has a great variety of scenes and subjects, with full page images and different styles of vignettes, day-night images, interior-exterior scenes, urban and countryside landscapes, black and white characters, all of them beautifully drawn and lighted.  I cannot stress enough how much I loved the colouring. Dave Steward (a nine-time Eisner Award-winning colourist) did a sensational job and took the novel to the next level. The colours are always appropriate, beautiful and bright at times, dark and moody  others, neutral when necessary. They never overwhelm the narrative, or the drawn images but are an intrinsic part of it. The bucolic images of Bras' childhood are glorious and among my favourite. The lettering is by Sean Konot. The text boxes, text balloons and typography are very classic, elegant and functional. The novel has a great deal of dialogues and text but, despite this, it rarely looks overcrowded, so that is Konot's merit. All the artists have contributed to create a wonderful piece of Art.

Regarding the narrative, I always love non-linear structures. Episodes 1-5 aren't chronological, and the others are, and I thought  that the first five were more exciting to read. Like a piñata you have to approach blindfolded to get the candy. The conversations are real as life itself, the sort of conversations you would hear from real people, a bit pointless sometimes, a bit necessary others, a bit philosophical others, not always 'exciting', we don't always talk about super-duper things, do we?

The characters are well-rounded, believable, almost real. Although there are many characters in the book, Moon & Ba focused their energy on those who really matter,  Bras firstly, his father and his dear friend Jorge. The authors say at the end of the novel:
" Firmly based in reality, the most difficult thing wasn't trying t create a world that would look real  No, the hardest thing was creating a world that would feel real". 
Indeed,  the story feels real, lived, and the feeling is there, in the images and story we are presented with, but also in the way the story makes us feel, the way that transports us, or at least me, to our emotional realms. I cried at the end of the book, moved by the lyricism of the last images and the story told.



The main themes touched in the book are timeless and will touch anybody wanting to listen. Meditations on life are universal no matter the format, approach or the origin of those who do them. We are all flesh and bones basically. The only particularity in this approach is that death is used to do that meditation on life. Not death per se, but as a standpoint on which to look ahead and understand what life is and to ground us in life, the right-here-right-now. Some of the questions posed by the story are:
# What is death?
# Which moments in life make us die inside?
# Which moments in our lives make us want to die?
# If we died today, right today, how would our life look like to other people?
# If we died today and we could write our obituary ourselves, how would we see our own life?
# If we knew we were going to die in a precise time, would our way of living change?
# Are life dreams necessary to live life better?
# Do our night dream say something about who we are and how we live?
# When faced with death, do we realise what matters the most, and if so, why don't we focus on what matters the most in our current life?
"Death gives us a whole new perspective on living and everything else... everything else seems so minor and silly" (p. 94)
Daytripper is also a very Latino novel. Latino as in the Latino culture-s shared by Portuguese and Spanish speakers on both shores of the ocean. It presents us with very strong family ties, extended families, a love to communicate around food, and a natural presence of death in our daily life. However, there are elements in this novel that are very Brazilian, the racial mixing and social differences, some of them hinted in some of the conversations with Jorge, and especially the religious syncretism, the Candomblé and Umbanda, and that powerful mix of Catholic and Yoruba beliefs. Thus, the presence and cult of the goddess Iemanja is clearly shown and integrated in the story. Two of the most important dreams Bras has in the novel are, indeed, related to calls from Iemanja -- the goddess of the sea, the protector or love and family, the creator of life. Although it could be said that Daytripper is also very Latino in its Magic Realism I have to disagree with the story being part of that genre. 




There is a sort of tendency among reviewers to call Magic Realism to anything produced in Latin-America where the narrative is not straightforward, with oneiric and surreal elements are present. I won't lecture anybody on what Magic Realism is. You can easily get that by reading a classic novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude and learn it in the best way possible. However, even the entry in Wikipedia gives a good overview about the genre and summarises the differences between Magic Realism and other genres like surrealism, fantasy and imaginary realism among others I think it is great to keep it in mind to approach and better to understand this novel. I mention all of this because this Magic Realism is used in many reviews to explain why Bras dies in each chapter. In reality, if you re-read the book or just pay attention to the details the first time you read it things are not what they look like.  

****This section might contain spoilers*****
 There are many clues in the book, even before your finish it, that show that what is happening is not always real. Part of it is a metaphor, part a fragment  of the story told as a whole. Here some clues. Ask yourself:



1/ Once you finish the book, look at the text boxes' shape and lettering. Which text boxes in the book match those at the very end?
2/ Who do you think wrote the obituaries?
3/ Who is writing the book and seating in front of a typewriter?
4/ After reading the chapter The Dream, and learning what is happening to  Bras, ask yourself what in the book is similar to that chapter?
3/ At the end of each chapter ask yourself, if the death of Bras wasn't real, which events or circumstances  would make Bras, or any other person, "die"?
If you are lazy, my answers are at the bottom of this review.
**** end of spoilers****

***

The short introduction by Craig Thompson, the author of Blankets, is very cute and cool!


Although I enjoyed the novel enormously, I found that the gap between Bras' 40s and 70s is a bit too wide and empty of content that the novel is a bit unbalanced. I would have loved seeing Bras and his family getting progressively older, and reshuffling the chapters a bit more to add a few more layers and produce a rounder  story. Also, we are presented with bourgeois characters, with predictable lives, who might not thrill all readers.

***

Daytripper is a comic with capitals. For those who don´t like reading superheroes comics and want to find something more interesting this might be a good way to start. There are plenty of oneiric and surreal images in the book, many mysteries and things out of the ordinary. However, what has stayed with me is the message of the story, live life to the fullest, and make every second in your life count. We are the same, we long for the same things. We worry about the same stuff, family, job, relationships, food. We are born, we live we die. We cannot do anything about the first two, but we can live our lives in ways that fulfil us. Life is also full of failure, disappointment and dead ends and we have to accept that those are going to be there and are also part of life, as death is. 

 ***

 ****get spoiled :)****
Here are my answers
Bras says nearly the end of the book: "My name is Bras de Oliva Domingos. This is the story of my life." The typography used and the text boxes used in these pages are the same as those we see at the end of each chapter when Bras dies, so it is not just Brass writing the whole book of his life, he is the one writing the obituaries of those supposed deaths. In the chapter The Dream we are told .that he has been diagnosed with brain tumours, which are affecting the way his awakened and oniric life work, they seem to mix past and present, and overlapping things. If you see the book as a whole this is just the structure of the book, an overlapping of moments in Bras' life in which things that seem magic or fantastic are just a creation of his sick mind but most of them aren't so. I don't think Bras dies in each chapter at all. He dies or is killed inside, or rather, a part of him dies, which part?:  
chap, 1-he "dies" because he loses trust in people and in their goodness. 
chap. 2. he is dying to find love.
chap. 3-he dies when a relationship fails. Even more when he lets an opportunity pass by because he isn't ready to take a chance,.
chap. 4- he dies because his heart is broken after the death of his father.
chap. 5- he dies, but not in a negative way, when he loses his innocence and starts to leave childhood behind. 
chap. 6- he dies when he loses his best friend. 
chap. 7-he dies when his best friend betrays him. 
chap 8- he dies when he is away from the people he loves the most.
You can also interpret part of his biography as part of that mix of dream-reality that the tumours Bras have are producing in him when trying to write his own life and obituary. 
Life sometimes kills but not always makes you die :)).
The beauty of the story is that you might interpret it differently. That is always awesome.

Descender Vol. 2: Machine Moon (2016)

, 8 Jun 2016

Descender vol. 2, like the first instalment of this galactic saga, is a graphic novel with amazing visuals and an entertaining story. It is like one of those comfort-foods that you want to eat over and over again because, although it is not gourmet, original or new it tastes good, warms your belly and makes you feel good.

I'm always mesmerised by Nguyen watercolour and drawing mastery and artistry. I love his use of colour and the way he creates lights an shadows using positive/background space. I love how good he is a creating landscapes and characters that can be painted with great detail or just sketched and deconstructed but, visually, still fully there. That is the case of his long distance images and background crowd images; the more you look at them the more they look like blotches of colour, but they are masterly shaped to create the illusion of a full image. Like in Descender 1, Descender 2 has a cohesive colour palette, with colours and hues that are consistently used, some of them are there to depict the environment where the action is happening, but there is a preference for different hues of white, blue, pink and dark greys, with other bright colours popping up secondarily, like red and orange. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but a dark hue of pink is always in the image when Tim-21 experiences special moments in the story. Descender 2  story has more action than  Descender 1 so Nguyen plays more with the composition and layout of the vignettes to create dynamism and tension. Like in the previous volume, memories from the past are drawn in sepia tones with a superposition of scenes or developed scenes that have no vignettes; that is the way the mind and memory work -- as an amalgamation of images, words and feelings that are never square or structured. If you are into the Arts you will linger on each page, slowly sipping the watercolour work and Nguyen's artwork.


Once again the typography used in the book is very dynamic with different fonts being used to differentiate noise and ambience sounds, machine speech, robot speech, human speech, static signing, informative narration text and so on. This enhances the reading and makes the text more engaging and enjoyable.

As I mentioned for Descender 1, I love Lemire but I don't think Descender is his best work. Descender 2's narrative, character's depiction and dialogues  are still science-fiction déjà vu and cliches. Some characters are crowding the pages without contributing to anything and wasting a time and space that could be devoted to a more in-depth depiction and analysis of the main characters. Descender 2 is better at doing so than Descender 1, though, as there is a bit of more digging into who the characters are, albeit superficial and not deep enough to create round unique characters that don't remind you of anything you haven't seen or read before. Some of the characters that were a bit annoying, distracting and unnecessary in volume 1 are toned down and almost gone in volume 2, like Driller the Killer. However, we see others occupy that same annoying spot, like the funny-ugly predictable Blugger in volume 2.  Is he necessary to the story? Does he contribute to the story? To me, he doesn't, at least so far. The same happens with some of the dialogues, which are uninspired and a bit blah, and heard gazillion times in any other comic on planet earth. I found a bit ridiculous calling Effie the Queen in Between, jeez, I would have expected a bit of more creativity, a one word name that means just that...  


On the sunny side of things, the story seems to follow places that, a priori, we are lead to think that it would not happen. Like Andy popping up. We, or at least I, feared that Tim-21 quest would be met with disappointment, but Andy pops up in this volume and there is a great joy and intrigue. Andy is perhaps the most developed character in the story so far and I am intrigued about his motives. We get to meet some of the leading robots known as the harvesters, enter their mechanic moon, and get to know who they are, what they want and what they believe in. I enjoyed the mix of Huxley meets New Age beliefs that the leading robots have; there is a bit of gold buried there and I hope we dig it out in the next volume.  Although there aren't oneiric images in this volume, some of them are oneiric-like, especially those related to the fall into Planet Phages, and very lovely.  Finally, the story touches many interesting important themes: self-identity, individuality, race, alterity, ethical behaviour, what life is, what being human means, and what makes us connect. The more I read Descender, the more I see it as a quest for the ideal brotherly love and for connection, whatever form this might take and whomever is the being one connects with. The worlds in the Descender galaxy are multifaceted and interesting despite the flaws of the story.

The ending of this volume, although not a cliffhanger, gets me interested, and, once again, I will be buying the next volume hoping that the story follows unexpected paths, that we get some u-turns and surprises and that some characters have more depth, and being sure that Nguyen's artwork will keep me going no matter what.   


I read this book it on Comixology and the digital copy is fantastic. It makes you appreciate all the details of the artwork, and even the ruggedness and pores of the paper used for the paintings. One gets the impression of having the original in front of the eyes. I love that touchability of the images.


Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson (2001)

, 2 May 2016

Fascinating, entertaining, funny and intriguing, "Them" is a companion to the doco series The Secret Rulers of the World, which revolves around the the Bilderberg Group's nature, aims, members, activities and secret meetings. "Them" is also a portrait of extremists of all sorts and conspiracy-theory believers done by getting to know these people directly and personally via Ronson. "Them" is, above all, an exposé of how nonsensical beliefs morph and adjust in the mind of people and groups whose values and belief systems are, a priori, totally contrary, and on how delusion can create a sort of matrix that feels very real to those people who plug into it. Finally, this book is, at a more personal level, an exploration of the meaning of being a Jew, of who the Jews, the Jewish and the Zionists are according to people who are not Jews done by Ronson, a lapse Jew.

"Them" surprises, like many other Ronson's books, because presents the extremists from a very human point of view, with detachment and compassion at the same time. They are normal people after all, with families, beliefs, and a heart, people who live very normal lives, even though part of their normality is also extremism. They believe that we all, the others, are the real extremists and not them, and they are not happy to be called or considered extremists. As Ronson states, "I thought that perhaps an interesting way to look at our world would be to move into theirs and stand alongside them while they glared back at us."

Who are these persons? They are neo-nazis, anti-Jews, anti-Catholics, anti-blacks, anti-Christians. All these people share the conviction that power elites, the Bielderberg Group, orchestrated the 11/9 attacks, those in the World Trade Centre were part of the New World Order, "an internationalist Western conspiracy conducted by a tiny, secretive elite, whose ultimate aim is to destroy all opposition, implement a planetary takeover, and establish themselves as a World Government."

The people profiled in the book are:
1/ Omar Bakri Mohammed, the so-called Osama Bin Laden's man in the UK, a Muslim extremist who lived in UK from welfare, profited from free speech to preach Holy War on Britain, and was part of an active movement to support Islamic Extremism and Sharia Law anywhere, the UK included.

2/ Rachel Weaver's parents (Randy and Vicky), left the world and retired to an isolated cabin in a mountain area in Montana, because they believed that the world was being secretly ruled by a group of Zionist international bankers, "global elitists who wanted to establish a genocidal New World Order and implant microchips bearing the mark of Satan into everyone’s forehead."

3/ Jack McLamb lives and the small Christian community called Doves of the Valley. He is an ex-policeman, drummed out of the force after he created an organization called Police Against The New World Order.

4/ Big Jim Tucker works for an underground paper called the Spotlight, which supports neo-nazi  views and is obsessed with the activities of the Bilderberg group.

5/ David Icke, an ex-footballer turned sports commentator turned spiritual guru, who believes that the World Rulers are in fact body snatches of the Annunaki Lizards from the lower fourth dimension, whose aim is to dominate the world.

6/ Thom Robb, the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, lives with his family and an informal army of white supremacists in the Ozark Mountains, wants to create an independent state oblivious to the moral decadence of the USA. He believes that Hollywood is a crucial part of a global Zionist conspiracy and moral decadence.

7/ The movie director Tony Kaye halfway through the  editing of his début film, American History X. 

8/ Jeff Berry, the Imperial Wizard of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, one of Thom Robb’s chief rivals, a man famed for saying ‘nigger’ freely on television.

9/ The Ku Klux Klan historian Richard Bondira, who sells Klan merchandise on the Internet and advertises himself as the keeper of a Klan museum.

10/ The Aryan Nations group in Idaho.

11/ Dr Ian Paisley, the Northern Irish Protestant nationalist and independent evangelical pastor, obsessed anti-Catholic and anti-Papist. 

12/ Mary Moore, a local anti-Bohemian Grove activist.

***

Ronson does a great job at creating a profile of what the Bilderberg Group is according to the extremists, to then go directly to the very members of the group, one of the founders included, and provide their version of the group's reality.

So, who are the Bilderberg group according to the extremists?
> They rule the world from a secret room.
> Every year, in May or June, this global elite go to a secret summer camp north of San Francisco called Bohemian Grove, where they get together and do all types of debauchery, sexual perversion and the same people who belong to the Bilderberg Group belong to it. They’re witches and warlocks.
> They start the wars, and cause famines and chaos.
> They control the governments, the presidents, the candidates of the major parties and are setting up the one world order.
> We haven't heard of them because they own and control the Media.
> They have been ruling the world in secret since 1954, when Joseph Retinger, a Polish immigrant, created the BG, which was called this way because their first meeting took place in the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland.
> They are Zionist Jews or just Jews.
> They are Machiavellian Papists according to others.
> They meet annually in Bohemian Grove, in the logging town of Occidental, where they perform  ceremony called the owl-burning ceremony or cremation of care, with depraved satanic pagan  ceremonies.

Who are the BG according to the BG Members?
Ronson contacted dozens of Bilderberg members, who ignored him between 1999 ad 2000 when Denis Healey one of the founder members of the BG contacted Ronson. Thanks to this conversations we know how the BG operates, as described at length in chapter 12 How Things are Done. It is important to remark that 
> they rotundly deny that they  secretly rule the world, but Ronson's interviewees admit that International politics and affairs had been influenced by these sessions now and then.
> They are against Islamic Fundamentalism and other extremisms because they go against democracy.
> They don't consider themselves a secret group but a private group as they speak freely of anything and don't want journalists middling in and attacking something they don't know anything about.

***
I have never seen the documentaries, but the book stands alone well. "Them" is well-written, very well structured and "staged", and most of it has just a great cinematic feeling that makes the reading truly enjoyable. No wonder that the rights of the book were purchased to turn it into a movie. It feels like a movie but, sadly, all of what is mentioned in the book is real. Ronson does a great job at presenting the subject  in a very entertaining way, with very humorous real-life episodes, mixed with serious reflection and research (even adventure) journalism.

Like in other of his books, Ronson has the great virtue of keeping his English Phlegm burning even when people are talking badly about the Jews, and at keeping his Jewish origin as hidden as possible, or perhaps not openly displayed, and at getting the trust of people who, then, he exposes without any regret. Ronson wants to present to us who the extremists are and what they stand for. That is great. What I find somewhat unethical is his apparently willingness to make those same people believe that he is a sort of unbiased analyst, even a friend, when he is basically a journo writing a story.

I think the book can be easily used to study the concept of Alterity.

I found the chapter on Romania's Ceauceuscu very entertaining but way off subject despite the fact that Ronson says that "I had come to Romania because I imagined that an auction of Ceauescu’s belongings was a fitting microcosm of what I believed went on inside Bilderberg meetings." As a reader, I don't agree.

The story of Randy's Weaver is very sad and depressing, and I found great that Ronson delved into the deep trying to bring up to the public the version of the killing of the family in the family cabin.

The chapters Clearing of the Forest and The Secret Rulers of the World are utterly funny, in a weird sense, hilarious at times. Ronson describes himself, perhaps just for narrative purposes, as the naive Jon who gets into weird things by accident.Yet, he is able to make and answer important questions and to provide his honest personal view on different matters. I found that he is perhaps more honest with the reader than with the people he follows and interviews in this book, but this is just my impression.

 NOTES
> Shorter or Modified versions of some of the chapters appeared published elsewhere before publication in their final form in this book.
> The profiling and research on some of the extremists mentioned in the book began in 1995 and the book was first published in 2001,  and the first electronic edition in 2010. In that regard, many of the events mentioned in the book are no longer current and many of them have have had U-turns that aren't mentioned in the book. However, the book reads well and is still valid as an exploration of extremism and extremists. It would have been great adding an addenda mentioning some of those events, an update of what has happened to those characters since the book was written, something really easy to do in an electronic edition.

TYPOS
+ location 520 ‘Oh, give it tome!’
+ loc 2395 wasa mistake.
+ loc 2546 ‘who might want tomarry me?’
+  loc. 3486 to see a filmwhich may
+ All references to Ceauescu have the s replaced with the proper Romanian symbol, but they appear oversized and somewhat distorted in my phablet and a bit odd in my Kindle for PC.

A NOTE ON THE COVER
Ronson's book cover for the kindle edition is utterly cool, like most of his other Kindle editions. Great design and colouring and very humorous with Ronson's glasses and silhouette always un view. So 'catchy'! Kudos to the designer.

A great reading overall.

Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries by Jon Ronson (2012)

, 26 Mar 2016


Lost at Sea is a compilation of some of Ronson's pieces of research, published and/or documented for TV, modified, enlarged or updated for this book. Ronson explores different fringe subjects, situations and characters, and we get acquainted with ordinary people who are nothing but extraordinary, "weirdonary" I  might say.

Who is Ronson? Let him use his own words: "people from the provinces who were a bit awkward, and had strange vocal inflections, but might be able to see the world in a fresh, non-Oxbridge way" (loc. 869.) Although not Ronson's words, these by Ray Goslin apply perfectly to this book and the type of journalism Ronson does: "Journalism is storytelling. We wait around for the best bits ―the most engaging, extreme, colourful moments― and we stitch them together, ignoring the boring stuff turning real life into a narrative. Even so, there's shaping a story and there's making things up"

This compilation is organically structured in six parts, although some of the articles could also be included in several parts.
1/ The Things We're Willing To Believe revolves about the matter of faith, no matter is religious and accepted, just popular New-Age beliefs or Fringe Science. We get acquainted with the superstitions and pseudo-scientific beliefs that contestants in TV quiz shows have. We discover the new generation of sentient robots, Zeno, Aiko and the incredible Bina48, part of different engineering projects to create ciberconsciousness and emotional almost-human robots. Then we met a GP, Dr Munchies, who is at the core of a support group for supposedly highly evolved psychic telepathic "Indigo Children" usually  considered ADHD. One of my favourite articles in the book shows Ronson joining other agnostics for the Alpha Course, a 10-week course organised by celebrity pastor Nicky Gumbel in the Holy Trinity Brompton church to transform hardener believers into confirmed Christians. 

2/ Rebellious Lives has two articles on people who are supposed to be something but turned out to be much more or simply something different. This is the case of the broadcaster Ray Gosling who was arrested for falsely stating in front of the cameras that he had killed a former lover out of mercy a few years earlier. Or the case of the aggressive sexist racist rap duo Insane Clown Posse who turned out to be heartfelt Christians and were sending very-Christian palimpsest-sort-of messages through their lyrics.

3/ High-Flying Lives showcases some interesting sides of well-known artists. We accompany the pop singer Robbie Williams to an UFO convention, and visit and open the many boxes in Kubrik's English manor house, and talk to his widow about family matters.

4/ Everyday Difficulty shows apparently normal people who, all of the sudden, see themselves involved in dangerous situations. We visit the American town of North Pole to investigate why a group of teens living in a town that breathes Christmas were preparing a mass-shooting in their school. We attend the trial of a couple who won Who Wants to be a Millionaire apparently with a very simple but effective coughing signalling system. We witness the dirty tricks played by credit-card and loan companies, which  target poor people and neighbourhoods leading normal everyday families into mass debt, and how the use of data-sucking companies like Mosaic and Acorn are mapping who they are to target them (or not) in para-scam credit business. We also attend a convention of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and met the founder Richard Bandler and his business partner Paul McKenna, and experience first-person (through Ronson) what NLP does and dig into Bandler's not-so-well-known past.

Then we move to France, where English people are retiring trying to fulfil their French Fantasy dream and find that France is not a fantasy of theirs, like a couple who moved to a Provencal castle and the wife ended dead. From France to the UK, to the posh country town of Maesbrook to investigate why Christopher Foster (a British self-made millionaire, who had everything one might want in life) killed his whole family, pets included, set everything on fire and then he shot himself, and how other millionaires in the area aren't surprised

Faith taken to the last extreme is what Ronson explores in next chapter, which summarises the research he did for a doco on the sect called Jesus Christians, who decided to donate one of their kidneys as an act of love, and Ronson's interactions with some of the donors and with their leader, the Australian Dave McKay.  

5/ Stepping Over the Line, presents three cases in which the protagonists are doing something that isn't socially acceptable, dubious or plain illegal. We learn about the world of underground euthanasia, the fraudulent "visions" of the late psychic Sylvia Browne (America's most divisive psychic), and the paedophilia trial to Jonathan King.  

6/ This last part revolves about the subject of Justice. What is legal and not and why? Why is not legal to do chemical experiments at home when some of the major discoveries of our world were made in family garages? Is the USA system good enough for the poor and for the rich?  How do the poor and the rich see the tax system? Ronson takes then a Disney cruise to investigate the disappearance of the staff member Rebecca Coriam, and we learn about the many disappearances happening in International waters and how cruise companies seem to have a pact of silence. Finally, we go out late at night with some members of the Real-Life Superheroes Movement, like Phoenix Jones, to tackle night violence and prevent bad things from happening to good people.

There are common themes in most of the articles included in the book. Firstly, they deal with people whose beliefs and ways of being and behaving aren't mainstream, not always acceptable, illegal at times. They also deal with people who aren't always what they seem to be. Many of the articles revolve about Parascience and parapsychology subjects. 

***

Ronson is a good writer, creates a good atmosphere and is able to see the world with great compassion and proximity, even when he is examining people whose activities, opinions of preaching are very much contrary to his own views. He is very good at showcasing these characters and letting them shine (or not) without vilifying or mocking them unnecessarily; of course, at times, Ronson clearly states his liking or disliking of some people but he is not callous about anything or anybody. This is his virtue, and what allows him to enter situations and communicate with people who would, otherwise, be never able to present their side of the story. Ronson shows always respect and even empathy towards people who don't deserve it, perhaps because it is good for the job or perhaps because he is a good bloke, or both.

This is the first book I read by Ronson and I've really enjoyed it. I found all the stories engaging and well-narrated, although many of them are about subjects and people who have appeared on TV, in current affairs' research segments and aren't anything new. Others certainly are new, at least to me. At the same time, there isn't much depth, not many things to  keep you pondering. However, if you like current affairs and research journalism with a twist, you will enjoy the book. If you like weirdos, this is definitely for you.  

Not a Pulitzer sort of research, more a TV show sort of exploration of human nature a la Flight of the Concords minus the guitar. Humans are Weird. One of those books perfect for long flights.

TYPO
Barely any! I just noticed in  loc. 740:  George W Bush. The dot is missing from the W.


And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street by Dr Seuss (2003)

, 13 Feb 2016

I love Dr Seuss' books. I think they are not only good for children, but also for adults. They all teach important lessons, values, ethical behaviour, they are lay and universal, and they always ground me. Dr Seuss' books are about what life should be. Life is crazy (his crazy texts, unusual stories, and outrageous colours are just that), but it not just about what you see, it is about how you relate to people, how you see and relate to the world, and how you feel. 

"And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" is a book about the beauty of the ordinary and of savouring the small things in life. It is also a book about the importance of imagination and how imagination works. The story also captures how fables and legends were born centuries ago, how small things were put together to be turned into a unreal fantasy.

This story has aged well with regards to some points but not others, but it is more relevant than ever for modern kids. Originally written in 1937, it is obvious in 2016 that most small children in developed countries don't walk alone to/back school, not even with pals, they are driven to/from school by their  parents or accompanied by caretakers in school buses. Of course, there are countries where children walk Kms to go to school, so perhaps for those the story is as fresh as it was when it was written. On the other hand, the role of imagination in the education of children isn't as prominent  as it was 30-50 years ago -- nowadays there is an ubiquity of visual imagined worlds presented to kids  already masticated in TV programs and movies, too many kids aren't told or read stories before bed,  and too many are parked in front of TVs, tablets and smartphones numbing their imagination when they should be using it the most. 

This book can be a great conversation starter with your children, but it needs of your active involvement because the book is not straightforward. No matter whether your children love it or not, great lessons can be taught and many games can be played using  this story. Mostly, the book allows parents to explain how imagination and lying are similar and different at the same time, and why adults and children see the world differently. Here are some suggestions on how to use the book to squeeze its lessons and have fun at the same time:
> Play a game with you children and ask them to do the same the character, that is, to tell you something that caught their attention during the day and create a story about it that they will then tell you.
> Play the play game "lie or fantasy?" You tell something to your kid and ask him/er to tell you if that is a lie or a fantasy and why? Depending on the level of success in the reply, explain to them why telling a invented story and a lie of a story are two different things. 
> Ask you children if imagination is good and why.
> Ask your children, do you imagine things at times? Which sort of stories do you imagine?
> Ask your children, why do you think Marco imagines things the way he does? Does the story makes any sense to you?
> Ask you children anything else you come up with using the book.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition by Robert B. Cialdini (2006)

, 11 Feb 2016

I was finishing this book when one of my brothers played one of the tricks mentioned in the book without he knowing that it would not work on me. He had bought an antique book written by a distant relative of ours, and he thought it expensive, because it is expensive in the part of the world where he lives and because his partner wouldn't be happy about him expending so much money on this sort of thing. When I asked him about the price he told me something relatively high but after talking for another five minutes or so he told me that the price he had mentioned before wasn't real, it was quite cheaper. He added that he had done so the second figure would appear lower than it is in this way. The contrast principle. It made me giggle.
***

Cialdini's "Influence" is a classic of Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Behavioural Economics, and of Marketing and Business. It is, above all, a serious book of Psychology by a reputed psychologist. Originally published in the 1980s, this review is about the revised edition.  

This is a book about compliance and manipulation  in general. The book offers detailed answers to two main questions 1/ what are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? And 2/ which techniques most effectively use these factors to generate compliance?  Besides, there are many interesting, every-day sort of questions, that are posed and answered in the book. Just to mention a few:
  • Why should the voting of a Jury member be secret while the Jury is discussing a case?
  • Why does a commitment made in public or by writing have such a powerful effect on the person who makes it?
  • Why do we need to shout help and ask for specifics when we really need help? 
  • Why people commit more suicides after listening about suicides or disasters in the media?
  • Which factors cause a person to like another person? 
  • Why do some people associate themselves so closely to their sport team that if their team is consistently losing they feel as losers as well?
  • Which tricks do car sellers play to trick us to buy something right here right now? 
  • Why a TV commercial with a renowned actor playing a doctor selling pills has the same power as if he was a real doctor?
After studying all the tactics used by sales people, and the myriad techniques they use to manipulate, Cialdini came with six basic weapons of influence, each one governed by a psychological anchor or shortcut in human behaviour: 1/Consistency, 2/ reciprocation, 3/ social proof, 4/ authority, 5/ liking, and 6/ scarcity. Each of them is analysed in an individual chapter, where we are shown the psychological shortcut that produces automatic auto-pilot reactions that are used by manipulators, why these anchors sit comfortably in the human psyche from an Evolutionary Psychology and Sociology point of view, and in which precise ways they work, work better and can be enhanced or downplayed.  Examples from many lab tests, natural psychology tests, scientific bibliography and Cialdini's own personal life are used to explain these mechanisms with simplicity.

Cialdini wants normal people, no matter we are a seller or not, to understand how our psyche works, because the trickster can be tricked and our psyche works using mechanisms that can be exploited and manipulated easily against us by anybody, for good and for evil. This is not a book on how to use or manipulate people and isn't directed to marketers or sellers specifically. A good part of Cialdini's work was done by infiltrating training programs from sales people and Cialdini mostly address the majority of people who don't use compliance techniques. However, he doesn't hold a grudge, nor want us to, against "compliance practioners" as he calls them (sales operators, fund-raisers, charities street workers, recruiters, advertisers, real-estate and travel agents, among others) are just people using the knowledge of our psyche without lying or masquerading anything. When they do, Cialdini advices war:
 "I would urge forceful counterassault. There is an important qualification, however. Compliance professionals who play fairly by the rules of shortcut response are not to be considered the enemy; on the contrary, they are our allies in an efficient and adaptive process of exchange. The proper targets for counteraggression are only those individuals who falsify, counterfeit, or misrepresent the evidence that naturally cues our shortcut responses (...) The real treachery, and the thing we cannot tolerate, is any attempt to make their profit in a way that threatens the reliability of our shortcuts."
Sadly enough, the same sort of people and behaviours that Cialdini wanted us to counterassault are using the book as a 'Bible', so much so that "Influence" is, to this day, the number one business and marketing book out there. 

"Influence" is an useful book,  not only to be learn and be aware of the tricks that compliance professionals play on us, but also of the ways people use them in our private lives to get something from us even if it is just approval, lack of a reprimand, or just sex. Most importantly the section "How to say no" in each chapter tell us, exactly, what to do or how to recognise the manipulators, the psychological anchors discussed in the chapter, and how to respond and react so our decision is o-u-r decision.

The book reads well, in simple English and is very entertaining and easy to understand.You will certainly get a few aha! moments as you can put into perspective what happened while booking a time with your hairdresser, your beauty salon, dealing with a charity worker that stops you in the street with a compliment, while a shop attendant shows you different stuff, dealing with a travel agent, dealing with your Real Estate agent, or while certain TV ads that do not make sense rationally but do make sense, totally, to your subconscious.

My favourite chapters in the books are those on Consistency and Direct Deference, purely because I was way more aware of reciprocation, liking, authority and scarcity; however, many of the specifics on how and why they work are still fascinating. I also love Cialdini's comparison between tribal practices and hell-week practices in University fraternities and the military, and the Readers's Report section at the end of each chapter, which includes letters from readers describing how some of the things mentioned in the book were applied to them.

There are too many people including quotes in their books, but the ones Cialdini uses at the beginning of each chapter are spot on, as they summarise each chapter to perfection.
  
SOME CRITIQUE
>>>  Cialdini is a bit reiterative at times, goes for pages unnecessarily, and although I loved most of the examples that Cialdini  mentions, there are too many and he could have cut a few without the book losing interest or quality.  
>>> Probably because the book was written in the 1980s, some stuff is really well-known nowadays and doesn't need of long explanations, or won't surprise anybody. I would say that people with a basic degree of education would not be saying what what what?! when reading about the bystander factor, the halo effect and the good cop-bad cop dynamics, or that our titles are something that can be used to trick people and that people who don't have them will attach to those to get a bit of the spark.  
>>> The book has not aged well with regards to a few points:
1/ Some contextual facts that were common in the 80s are are no longer in use, or even legal in some parts of the world, like door-to-door sales. We live in the world of the Internet, online stores, publicity everywhere we look at, constant spam and marketing on networking sites, and the use of our private meta-data by corporations to sell us things or know what we want to buy. I would have loved seeing an analysis on how the shortcuts presented in this book have morphed to adjust to the needs of the online world and market, if some of these shortcuts are now more prominent than others, and if new shortcuts have been added to the six mentioned here. 
2/ The bibliography used and referenced is still mostly from  the 70s and 80s, with a few additions from the 90s. It would have been great adding a modern bibliography in a "further reading" sort of chapter when the book was revised.  
3/ The use of some vocabulary is no longer OK. Referring to primitive cultures is no longer acceptable or accepted without discussion and calling animals infrahumans it is  an anthropocentric adjective that doesn't connect with the reality of the environment and the planet we live in. I would call a shark or alligator a suprahuman!
4/ Some social practices have changed dramatically in the last decades, even though Cialdini thought that they would not as they have a function in the human psyche. Well, it seems no longer. For example the hell-week practices in Universities, which were in decline in my University before I entered mine and banned when I was in. They might be alive in the American Fraternity Societies, but there is something called Open University that works quite well, is everywhere and expanding, and people don't need to be part of a group or enter any building that often. The world is quite different nowadays more than people in the 80s would have imagined.  

***

RENDERING FOR KINDLE
The book has a word index at the end, but it is not linked in the Kindle edition of the book. The author advises using the search tool to find them. Well, Kindle's search tool is not the most accurate sensitive sort of search tool. Kindle books should be sold cheaper if indexes or features that were in the hard-copies are not available in the electronic edition.

***
This is a great reading overall, informative, entertaining and useful for our daily life, to notice things to stop us from buying something we don't want to buy right now or  just not to act in a way that feels is not you but we are being pushed into and is not in our best interest. Entertaining and eye-opening this might be a bible for manipulators, but also a bible to counter-attack  those who want to bend our will for their own benefit. We should learn about how influence works because automated stereotyped behaviour works better now than in the 80s, as the pace of modern life is faster and more stressful, and we have less time and energy to pause and think for a second to ask ourselves what we really want. This being the case, we can be manipulated more easily today than 30 years ago.  


Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez (2013)

, 7 Feb 2016

Julio's Day is actually a book about Julio's (family) Life. A charming BW time travel from the coming out of nothingness of Julio Reyes in 1900 to his passing into nothingness in the year 2000. Although set in America's South, most of the characters are Mexican or from Mexican origin and culture. This is a charming trip for the reader, with so many things happening in the life of Julio's family. There is love and hatred, dark secrets, innocence, innocence lost, gay repressed sex and explicit sex, treason, murder, madness, hilarious bizarre moments, joy and sadness. The only chronological anchors are the references to the wars that spanned the 20th century, changes in clothing and some social references that are easily associated with specific decades. There is also a visual anchoring in the depiction of the town's progressive industrialisation.

I know that the author and the book have been defined as within the Magic Realism genre. To me, there is little or nothing of Magic Realism in this book. I think MR is used too often to describe works that have some oddity about them and people cannot categorise. In this book there are episodes of mental alienation, trippy, but that is it. To me, this book connects more with Latin-American family-saga telenovelas than with anything else.  Hernández does a great job at infusing this family saga with enough charm, realism, and lack of 'Manichaeism' to get the story away of extreme non-believable characters. The story feels organic, alive, as it was real.  The characters feel also real. In fact, I have known people who were like those in this book. On the other hand the characters are just schetched because there are many and the period covered isis very  long.

One of the main elements of Mexican culture (and Hispanic/Spanish) culture is how death is understood, perceived and faced. This is especially valid for Mexicans in the period Hernández describes. However, it connects with stories and attitudes that were common in rural areas during my childhood even though I am not Mexican. There is a familiarity with death, a presence of death and of the dead in life, because death is part of life, not in a creepy morbid horror way, you show r-e-s-p-e-c-t- to death because it is another passage rite. That awareness of death also keeps people more grounded in life and there is less fear, less avoidance. This is perfectly captured in this book. I love the presence of the hill with the tombstone crosses, and how some of the death of the characters is depicted. 

This is a male dominated story with strong female characters performing traditional roles. This is how it was in rural areas in many parts of the world decades ago, and I think Hernández captures this with veracity. In this case, Renata summarises well the role that some women played, and the sort of life that those women had in that historical context. Just one example. Renata is strong and caring, but she often says "women need of no reasons", which sounds a bit like women are irrational. In that context, though, women used to say this sort of thing because they had proof of their reasons, or inner knowing, or they just knew, but didn't want to speak about it. Araceli's character is perhaps the most interesting in the whole book. I would have  loved that Hernández developed a bit more her character; she appears as a nun-ish good samaritan, but there much more juice about her that was not explored.

I found the male characters interesting and varied enough to make the story entertaining. Julio's character seems, in comparison, a secondary one  not the main one. He is always there, a sweet gentle man, mostly in the background. This has a narrative purpose, of course. There are very few scenes in which we seem him happy, and they always revolve around a person. We see him feeling, alive, in just one scene close to the end of the book. I cried at the end, out of sadness for the character, and because I know men like him in real life: people who live life without the courage of being true to who they are, lead a pleasant empty life that does not satisfy them inside, aim to the unattainable probably because it is a fantasy that  doesn't require of them doing something to create their life experience.  Living is not just existing. In that regard, Julio's Dayim shows just that. Julio has an existence of 100 years but he really lived for one day. A microperiod of real life between two big empty holes of nothingness separated by 100 years.  I liked the quote by Samuel Becket that Evenson's chose for his brief introduction: "one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?". Life is like a fleeting moment is another way of putting it.   

I have a mix of feelings about Hernández's visual style. I love his shadow silhouetted landscapes, and his long distance scenes, theyare superb: beautifully composed, lyric, and with enough pathos to be another character in the story. I love some of the facial expressions in children, and some shocking scenes with the WW1-veteran neighbour. Although I enjoyed the vignettes, I found some of the pages and vignettes too crowded and the depiction of some characters too "chunky".  



This is not a book for children.

How to be Happy by Eleanor Davis (2014)

, 2 Feb 2016

HTBH is an anthology of comic strips and stories published by Davis in different publications, drawn both in colour and black and white.  

How to be Happy sounds like the title of a motivational or self-help book but. as the author herself reveals in the foreword, this book is not a book on how to be happy. The cover certainly helps to convey the same idea.  Despite the stories being quite different in style an tone, the book has a few main themes. Most of the stories are very introspective, and revolve about people looking inside to get their suppressed emotions out, people struggling to feel, numbed people, depressed people, over-emotional people. One of the stories in the book provides us with what I think would have been a great title for the book: "No tears, no sorry. No sorry no joy". Also "Let the sorry out. Let the joy in". Those titles are way closer to what the stories in this anthology are  about. I think giving the book a title closer to what the vignettes are about would have been more honest, even if less marketable-savy.



Davis is an amazing versatile visual artist. The collection of strips in the book showcases her talent. Her images go from the very simple linear and sketchy, to the very painterly and detailed paintings, from the classic naturalistic drawings to the vectorial compositions, from the ezine-like comic strips to the surreal, from the slice of life to science fiction. Some of her stories transport us to Sendak-ish magic worlds that one would like to explore in long books. She is good with black and white, and even better when she uses colours and  sepias. Her colours are glorious.    

From a narrative point of view, Davis is able to create stories that focus on the inner world of her characters: their feelings, emotions and thoughts, their approach to life, the way they 'see' and 'feel' the world. Her narrative is concise, precise and poignant, introspective, but also expressive and full of humour. Some of the texts in the book are brilliant despite their brevity. I especially like the "Darling, I've realised I don't love you", "I used to be so unhappy" and the statue of the best self, but there are a few brilliant mini-texts in this book, some of them really philosophical and to ponder way after you finish the book.

I hated the story of the skinning of a fox, revolting to me, and the comic strips of the trip from Georgia to Los Angeles  and Mr Strong are  OK. 


This book was included in several lists of best graphic books of the 2015 I've come across. I think the inclusion is well deserved as this book showcases Davis' brilliance as both visual artist and story teller. Among other distinctions, the book has received: NPR's and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2014; Shortlist, Slate's 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year and 2015 Ignatz Award Winner: Outstanding Anthology or Collection.

I found the price for the Kindle/Comixology edition a bit too much, because this digital edition does not require of the use of paper, ink or manufacture. Besides, these stories were previously published pieces not new for the book. Finally, I have to pay for the downloading of the bulky file to my Internet provider. I love that artists make a living out of their talent, but digital books like this should be sold at a fairer price.