The Vegetarian: A Novel by Han Kang (2015)

, 30 Jun 2016

The Vegetarian (채식주의자) is a Korean novel, and the winner of the 2016's Man Booker International Prize.

This is a tree-part novella, each narrated by a different character. The main character is Yeon-hye, a young married woman who suffers a mental crisis and becomes a vegan in a country and family where veganism is almost unknown and not well-seen. Her crisis will affect all members of her family in unexpected ways, opening a box of Pandora that will varnish with emotional turmoil everyone it touches. The other two major characters are her sister In-hye, and her brother-in-law (an unnamed artist and In-hye's husband.)

The three parts are:
The Vegetarian = We are told the story of Yeon-hye through the eyes of her husband Mr Cheong, a dull pragmatic traditional businessman, who narrates the chapter in the 1st person. However, Yeon-hye's voice appears inserted in italics, narrated also in the first person, describing some of her dreams and childhood traumas.   
Mongolian Marks = We are told the story through Yeon-hye's brother-in-law, a talented audiovisual artist, now somewhat lethargic, who has an artistic epiphany after Yeon's crisis, and develops an artistic and erotic obsession with her after learning he has a Mongolian spot on her body. The story is narrated in the third person.
Flaming Trees = We are told the story through Yeon-hye's sister In-hye. The story is narrated in the third person with some intercalated visionary elements narrated in the first person. .In-hye tells us part of the missing story about Yeo-hye's traumatic childhood and about In-hye's inner life. In this process we see dream and reality, the past and present, the In and Yeon mix in ways that become less and less separated. 

The Vegetarian is Yeon-hye's vanishing act in three chapters as each part shows a progressive deterioration of Yeon-hye's body and state of mind, and her progressive transformation from a fleshy human into a light tree. The Vegetarian is also about ways of self-immolation: work on self-destruction, self-obliteration, and self-denial (Yeon, the artist and In respectively).   

Ω Ω Ω 

The Vegetarian is not an easy book to read, sad, tragic and depressing, but also artistic, erotic, lyric an poetic. The book has layer upon layer of meaning, and touches many different subjects that are organically intertwined.  
Ж Some of these subjects and themes are immediately obvious: 
~ The social and family structure in South Korea. 
~ The objectification of women.
~ The nature of desire.
~ Social and personal boundaries.  
~ The nature of artistic creation.
~ The effect of trauma and the suppression of emotions on the psyche.
~ The many facets of violence in our daily dealings.
Ж However, I see four major themes in the novel.
~ One is the seek for the real self, because that true self is what we really are, no matter we display it to the world or not. The true self is that voice in our speech, behaviour and actions that matches who we really are inside. That is the only way to true sanity. Yeon-hye's true self has been stepped on since her childhood, her inner voiced mute, so when it comes out it burst into rage and insanity.  
~ The second is reality as perception. Reality does not exist. Everything is subjective perception or view of the others, which is tarnished by our psychological projections. Besides, reality can be a dream and dream is always reality. All the characters say at certain point in the novel, that the other person is a stranger to them, or that they don't really know them, even though they are family. We can only know other people to a certain extent, even when we think we know them well. We are projecting all the time.
~ The third is mental illness. What is the line that separates sanity from insanity? Who is most insane, the insane person whose mind exteriorises the trauma, or the sane person who cannot deal with the trauma within their own sanity?
~ The fourth is Human Nature vs. Nature. In the book, the former is equalled to violence, suffering, lack of peace, and being stuck, while the latter is equalled to peace, fluidity, happiness,truthfulness and life as in Zen. In fact, the three characters develop a special relationship with Nature and feel it in powerful ways. Yeon-hye wants to be a tree, the artist wants to self-obliterate himself into nature through bodies covered by painted flowers, while In-hye sees trees and forest as beholders of the mysteries and answers she is still to discover. This links well with Korean culture and Korean connection with the forest, trees and mountains and with some ancestral animist believes that still permeate Korean culture.

Ω Ω Ω

The unbearable heaviness of being is an expression that comes to mind when I think of all the characters in this novel. The three main characters are masterfully composed, and we come to understand the three of them, to put ourselves in their shoes and see their view of the world and experience their inner pain. None of them oozes happiness.

I love the way the character of Yeong-hye is portrayed, like an ethereal ghost-like being even though there is little lightness about her. The depiction of her mental crisis and conversion to veganism is very real. I have come across many cases of real women in the 19th century, just to use an example, who developed food phobias and anorexia nervosa as a part of severe mental problems, some of them with deeply spiritual roots. There is something about the way you feed you body affects your soul, and vice versa, and this is masterly captured in the book.

I love the character of In-hye. I think she is a reflection of most of  us, we who endure life and don't live it to the fullest, we who mute our inner voice, we who please instead of enjoy, we who repress anger to show how civilise we are but really angrier than those who do the contrary. To me, the character of In-hye is the most insane of all even though she is sane in her mind.

It is very difficult, at least for me, to like the character of In-hye's artist husband as he appears as a selfish, self-centred, and self-absorbed prick. He, like Yeon-hue, wants to die, but in a different way. His art comes from his core, is created to feed his soul, and in this case to die, to be one with the Universe, with Nature, to become one with humans, animals and plants as he expressly says. It is not a surprise that the character mentions as a source of inspiration an untitled audiovisual work by the avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, which I think is self-obliteration

Ω Ω Ω

There is a heavy presence of oneiric elements and moments in the novel that I find remarkable:
  ‘I had a dream … and that’s why I don’t eat meat.’ (Locations 1079-1080).
In-hye has also dreams, as does her son, and her husband. Dreams are mentioned throughout the book, even at the very end.
‘I have dreams too, you know. Dreams … and I could let myself dissolve into them, let them take me over … but surely the dream isn’t all there is? We have to wake up at some point, don’t we? Because … because then …(Kindle Locations 2174-2176). 

The oneiric element works perfectly in the novel because, dreams are the messengers of the psyche, they are the bed where the soul rests, the mirror of the true self, that part of the human being that is honest and says to you how you feel even when your conscious mind doesn't want to accept it. Dreams are also a space where reality and non-reality mix in organic but mysterious ways. The dream is the seed of our hidden truth, of our moments of elation, despair and anguish. The dream is always emotional. We see our characters' frigid emotionality in their awaken life, but very emotional in their oneiric life and very connected to their inner truth trough dreams. We see their dreams speaking their inner truth.

However, the dream is not only an literary element here. There is a strong dream culture in South Korea, still alive nowadays. Jeremy Seligson says in his entry on traditional Korean Dreams that:
"In traditional Korea, clairvoyant and precognitive dreams have played a vital role in the individual's and family's life at every level of society"
and also, and relevant for this novel, 
"Once an event is foreseen in a dream, the dreamer takes steps to prepare for its arrival" (see Deirdre Barrett, D. & McNamara, P.. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams: The Evolution, Function, Nature, and Mysteries of Slumber. Greenwood, 2012, vol. 2, pps. 774-776.)

Ω Ω Ω

Regarding influences, we Westerners have a western-centric view of the world that we project all the time, especially with successful Asian artists. We tend to see the influence of any major Western artist on any successful Asian artist who becomes popular in the West, or a tendency to put in the same bag all those Asian artists who become popular in the West. In a way it is understandable. Those are the cultural anchors we have because, when it comes to South Korea, we don't have enough knowledge of the language and culture of the country to do differently. Besides, we are reading a translation and, no matter how good this is, this is never the same as reading a work in its original language. What can we say about the use of language, play of words, choice of words, sentence structure and on any other linguistic characteristic that is intrinsically linked to the literary value of any literary work? Some critics with too much space to talk nonsense have made connections between Han Kang's writing and Murakami, and found all sort of Western literary influences on this book.  Well, I don't see the connection with Murakami at all, mind you. The connection with Kafka's Metamorphosis could be made, albeit quite vaguely.

I also have my own projections, of course. Here my mental association. The second chapter and the erotic flower theme resonated with me and brought to mind a video that I saw many-many years ago, the scene of the copulating flowers in Pink Floyd's The Wall because, somewhat, I found there was a similar energy, the madness, and darkness . 




Han Kang has personally said in some interviews, that her work is indebted to Korean literature, that some of darkness and themes in her works are directly linked and indebted to her experience of the massacre in Gwanjiu in 1980, and that she writes from an Universal standpoint even though she is Korean. She is the daughter of a writer, grew up surrounded by books and artists, she says, but she doesn't really mention any major Western author as her major literary impromptu even when asked about this.  So, why keep insisting on the contrary?

Ω Ω Ω

The book spans out for only 160 pages. The story and narrative are brilliant, the language I don't know. I always prefer that to three volumes of epic adventures full of fluff that are populating the charts of best-sellers around the English-speaking world.

There are images powerfully lyric and visually artistic and cinematic in this book. One of my favourites is in the fist part, when Yeong-hye in the courtyard in the hospital with a bird in his hand.Almost like a modern painting. Or the image of In-hye reflected in the mirror with a bleeding eye, very surrealist. Others, on the contrary are very dramatic, shocking and horrific, like the dream with the dog. Those images will stay with you for a long time, tattooed onto your retina long after you finish the book.

Ω Ω Ω

The translation by Deborah Smith is good. Most of the book flows and that is the sort of experience we want as translators and readers to have when translating literary works.  However, as I reader, I thought that the first chapter needed of a better editing because, personally, I found it lacking in punctuation at times, some unnecessarily wording others, and the choice of some words over others a bit distracting, at least to me.

Ω Ω Ω

TWO  NOTES 
Ѫ The Vegetarian was originally published in 2007, compiling three novelettes previously published separately. However, the story, according to Hang herself, developed organically, but turned dark, from  a short story of hers "Fruits of my Woman" written in the year 2000:
The main characters are a man and woman, and one day when the man returns home from work, he sees that his wife has become a plant. So he moves her into a pot, waters her, and takes care of her. As the seasons change, the woman spits out her last hard seeds. As he takes the seeds out to the balcony, he wonders whether his wife will be able to bloom again in spring. Overall the story isn’t so dark, and is also magical, but after writing it, I wanted to write it again from a different perspective. So I thought for years about how to write it. From the very first page, The Vegetarian came out very dark and different. (in "Violence and Being Human: A Conversation with Han Kang" by Krys Lee (World Literature Today, January 2016).
 Ѫ The book was taken to the screen in 2009 under the direction of Woo-Seong Lim. The movie was also called The Vegetarian.

A TYPO
> I couldn’t get my head round it. (Locations 48-49).
> natural it was to not wear clothes. (Location 1220).

A WARNING
This word contains explicit violence, human and animal, and explicit sex scenes.
 
A QUERY
Why was the book called Vegetarian in English is the character becomes a vegan? Was the title in Korean the same? 

Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. (2015)

, 27 Jun 2016

"Reading the Comments" is an exploration of online comments, of their nature, their authors, what is good, bad and funny about them. Reagle shows how comments inform (reviews), serve to improve your own works or projects (via feedback), can be manipulative and serve to alienate people (through abuse and hatred), and shape how we see the world and ourselves (via quantification and social comparison). Reagle uses a humongous amount of data, using the main platforms generating comments:Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, fiction writers communities, and personal blogs.
The book poses and answers intriguing questions with a more or less degree of success:
> Why do people like disclosing info about themselves in their comments?
> Is society more narcissist today as a result of the Internet?
> Is anonymity the mother of all problems in abusive comments?
> Is fakery the exception or the norm in review?
> Who is writing false reviews and why? And what is being done to counteract it?
> Who are those creating sock-puppet accounts?
> Why do review sites benefit from your comments?
> How do Facebook and Google+ use your profile and contact list every time you rate a product?
> What is the difference between a comment and a review?
> What is the key to providing a good feedback that is useful to the author without hurting their feelings?
> Is a bullied person bullying a person as bully as the bully?
> Can good communities, in self-defence, morph into what they try to avoid?
> Do the gazillion comments processed during the day affect our ability to concentrate and our well-being?
> Is the pervasive rating and ranking of people and services dehumanising?

The book is divided in seven chapters:
1/ Comment, offers a contextualisation of comment, of what makes people comment, interact or to look for another place.
2/  Informed, is an introduction to reviews, ratings, unboxing videos and other informative commentary on the web.
3/Manipulation, is about the use of fake reviews and online fakery in general.These manipulators are fakers (those who deceptively praise their own works or pillory others), makers (those who do that for a fee), and the takers (those who avail themselves of such services).
4/ Improvement, deals with feedback: peer feedback, feedback in formal writing communities, and feedback in communities where the line between feedback and collaboration blurs.
5/ Alienated, describes online trolls and haters, bully battles and  misogyny, and tries to frame this "culture" with what we know about the effects of anonymity, deindividuation and depersonalization.
6/ Shaped, poses the question of how this infinite stream of information, status updates, and photos affects self-esteem and wellbeing and our view of ourselves.
7/ Bemused, focuses on the puzzling aspect of commenting as comments can be slapdash, confusing, amusing, revealing, and weird.

 I found this statement one of the most interesting in the book:
All forms of writing that have gone before are present on the Web— and at a very large scale. These types of comment existed before the twenty-first century, but never were they available in such great numbers or were they as easily accessible as they are today.
I love the historical contextualisation of commenting, and to learn that many attitudes we find online nowadays were very much alive in the past, and that well-known writers, philosophers and artists of the past were involved in actions or activities that are today found online. I found really good the section on feedback and the section on trolls very exhaustively informative. When you provide with historical antecedents for online behaviour that are rooted in morphed off-line behaviour, we can have a mini-epiphany because then, some behaviour and attitudes are not only contextualised but can be tackled in different ways. Reagle's analysis on quantification or rating, which are more relevant by the day in our times. was also really good.

I agree with Reagle about the search for intimate serendipity being one of the reasons why some people aren't in big social sites or social networks in general, they join when they are small and quit then when they become too big, too popular or the first scum appears, or they don't allow comments on their personal sites. That is my case, and that is great putting a name to what I do.

I really loved some of the comic strips from The Geek & Poke, a German nerdy comic-strip, reproduced in the book, which are really relevant for some of the matters discussed in it. I especially feel connected to the the one below, but this is precisely one of the comments I get most often from people I don´t know or have interaction with me, and the other one, that "the free gift" (above) use preached by corporations, major social networks and dot com start-up companies and geeks.


Reagle clearly mentions at the beginning that the book isn't about the future of online sites or of commenting online. This being the case, one of the most interesting and controversial aspects of commenting is hurdled over, which is very disappointing to me. In that regard, the book scratches the top layers of the subject, leaving many of the issues associated to commenting just described. Which is not bad if you want a comprehensive analysis of the subject without digging down.

Although I enjoyed the book, Reading the Comments is a bit a sum-up of things and research found in other works, and Reagle  does not always expresses his opinion on important matters; for example, how would he tackle some of the problems he describes? However, he does give his honest opinion other times, as when he says that he doesn't think anonymity is the problem for the state of the online world. In fact, some of the most abusive people I've come across online had their real photo and name displayed. I always appreciate solutions, or at least proposals on how to change things online, especially when an expert is writing. Reagle is, after all, an academic, an expert on communication and on the Internet so I expected more prognosis, diagnosis or  even personal involvement.

The book reads well as a course for students, where his students would learn about things and the teacher wouldn't always need to express his views upfront unless questioned. That is OK for a course, I expected more on bleeding matters: like sexist misogynist comments, the level of verbal aggression thriving online, why does trolling occur beyond those groups who made an entertaining of doing so? In that regard I found Sarah Jeon's book necessary to read after this, because she digs on the subject and provides readers with personal answers and solutions on how to turn things around. Both books complement each other quite well.

The book is wonderfully edited. I didn't notice any typo, the reference system and endnoting are flawless, something that, as a reader, I always appreciate.There is always a lot of work to get to that point, and you cannot take it for granted. I think the first chapter should be called Introduction, because that is what it is, and where the author mentions what he is going to do and describes the subjects discussed in each chapter.

The rendering for Kindle is excellent except for the index at the back, which isn't linked for Kindle, therefore, worthless. I always feel cheated when this happens.

IN SHORT
The book reads really well, is engaging, entertaining and digs on many aspects of the web that aren't well known to people who don't live on or research the Internet. Three and half stars rounding to 4. That is why the five-star-rating system sucks...

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (2015)

, 24 Jun 2016

"SYBPS" is a compassionate X-ray of shaming, shamers and shamees. Although the main focus is online and media shaming, other areas of life are also mentioned. SYBPS is Ronson's quest to learn how shaming works: why, who, and how, and how affects people. Ronson poses poignant questions to the reader and try to answer them by talking to people who experienced shaming first-hand. The questions are really good, intriguing and the answers worth pursuing:
~ Is modern shaming similar, better or worse than shaming in the 18th and 19th centuries?
~ How do we explain the shaming frenzy in our time?
~ Who is doing the shaming these days?
~ Who are those shamed and why?
~ Is shaming justified any time?
~ Does the online mob needs of constant drama?
~ What rush overpower us at times to turn us into a lynching mob?
~ What do we get out of vitriolic shaming?
~ Why do we dehumanise the people we hurt and shame?
~ Why is modern shaming so hardly and clearly misogynistic?
~ Did any of the shamees escaped unscathed?
~ If so, how do they did it? Was something they did? The way they behaved? The way they felt? Good luck? 
~ Does shaming only work if the shamee feels ashamed?
~ Is shamelessness something that some people just have or can be taught?
~ How long does it take for a shamee to be forgotten online?
~ Does shaming works outside the online world?

***

Shamed tells us the stories of shamed people (those who were destroyed by the shaming and those who weren't) and of some shamers: 
> (Publicly shamed and destroyed) Johah Lehrer, a young pop-science journalist and celebrity author who was exposed by a modest hard-working unknown Michael Moynihan for making up things in his books. After being exposed he apologised publicly in front of a giant screen with real-time twits to be further vilified, shamed and destroyed.
> (Publicly shamed  and destroyed) Justine Sacco who made a stupid joke on AIDS on Twitter before catching a holiday flight to South Africa. The joke went viral and she was vilified, abused and had received death and rape threats before landing. She lost her job.
> (Professional shamer) Ted Poe worked as a judge for 30 years in Houston (Texas) and was renowned for publicly shaming defendants and also for giving sentences in which public shaming was part of the redemption.
> (Publicly shamed and destroyed) Hank, a tech developer who made a sexist joke to his friend Alex when attending a national tech conference in Santa Clara in 2013. A female tech overheard him, took a photo of them, twitted it with their comment and complained about their conduct. Hank was fired and vilified by  women's right groups.
>
(Public shamer and publicly shamed and destroyed) Adria Richards, the tech developer who exposed Hank, suffered a backlash to her exposé and received death and rape threats, verbal abuse and personal stalking as a result. She was also fired.
> (Publicly shamed and unscathed) Oswald Mosley, a formula-1 chief was filmed in a sadomasochist session with several hookers, which was labelled "nazi orgy" and exposed to the public by News of the World. A trial followed and he was cleared, compensated for defamation, and became  more popular than ever.
>  (Publicly exposed and forgiven, almost)  Andrew Ferreira, a pastor of the Church of the Nazarene, and six other people were videotaped having sex in a covered-up brothel located in a Zumba studio. The Police investigation exposed the place, exposed them and brought them to Court, with the cameras looking at them. The exposé had repercussions in their private lives, but shaming was never part of it except for the only woman in the group. 
> (Publicly shamed and unscathed) Mike Daisey was caught lying by journo Rob Schmitz in a story about a trip to China where he had supposedly met some workers in a factory making Apple products. He was interviewed for This American Life, one of America’s most popular radio shows, and although he tried to divert the questions he ended the interview admitting his lies and saying sorry. After the shaming began he reacted strongly against his critics until those stopped bothering him and disappeared.
> (Publicly shamed and destroyed) Lindsey Stone and her friend Jamie were used to getting silly photos in front of public signs, one of them happened to be taken in front of a Silence and Respect sign in the Arlington Cemetery and posted on Facebook. The viral reaction got Lindsey, abused, threatened, fired from work, and into a deep depression.  

***

This is my favourite book by Ronson, purely because for the most part Ronson is able to transcend his doppelganger self, the one that looks like a character in his books, to focus way deeper this time into a subject that seems close to his heart.What is more, unlike other works of his, Ronson is not interviewing weirdos, extremists or people who live on the edge but normal people, and what matters the most if not even them, it is shaming. I admire Ronson's compassion and empathy and his ability to dig beyond the surface to show us people as human beings and individuals, not as objects. We see him the most compassionate in SYBPS and also the most openly honest about some issues and shamees. Yet, Ronson's dare devil is still here, like other times, his quest takes him to dangerous territories: the set of a porn movie for example (hilarious!) and  he joins a group go get to know information about shaming in the judicial system. 

***

 SYBPS is really an enjoyable, intriguing and fascinating read overall. There are a few parts that I found really interesting. Some of them are: 
1/ The historical antecedents on shaming used to contextualise the research on modern shaming.
2/ The discussion on the validity and limitations of the Philip Zimbardo's social experiment in Standford in 1971, which is endlessly mentioned in pop-psychology books, without further questioning, to explain group psychology.  
2/ I loved Ronson's reflections on the long-life effects of shaming on shamees, even when everybody has forgotten about them. Google will get them out on the front page of certain searches. The Right to Be Forgotten Law issued by the European Court, the work of online reputation management companies and, how important is to trick Google's algorithm  to get the job done show how much collateral damage brutal shaming does to  shamees.
3/ The hints about how shaming is an integral part of the judicial system. That stupefies me even more than online shaming, to be honest.
4/ The references to the psychiatrist James Gilligan work with dangerous killers and how shame is an intrinsicate part of the mutation of their personality into monsters.
5/ The epilogue, in which Ronson mentions the backlash he suffered because some of the things he says in the book were decontextualised and manipulated before it was published. 

***


Personally I hate the shaming that comes from the Media and online sites. After reading this book I have witnessed two popular cases of mob shaming, one for a "joke" and another for an abusive counter-attack to a troll insults. However, I think that shaming can be good if done in private. People can be nasty on purpose, they *are* nasty on purpose, they would bully you, make denigrating comments to you and "joke" about you to undermine your psyche, your soul and your self-esteem. I feel is *my* right to let them know close doors that this is abuse, that is disrespectful behaviour and that I will take professional or personal action next time they think it is OK to do so. No yelling or lynching is necessary. If they think is OK to continue with their attitude and behaviour, public shaming is justified to me. This is very different, to me, from public shaming, mob shaming, mob lynching and Twitter mobbing. I believe that legal punishments, like those by Ted Poe might work wonders, as did for some people, but might destroy others.

I am sick of people being nasty, offensive, racist, sexist and "-ist" in general and then excusing their behaviour because it was a "joke". There is not need to lynch those people, but they need to learn that those jokes are not really jokes but camouflaged verbal abuse, and, because many of them already know that is the case, that you won't tolerate them or stand it. Some domestic violence examples show how jokes, demeaning jokes, are normally used to denigrate partners and are at the beginning of the relationship.I don't want to lynch anybody, but I will shame anybody who does shameful things to me or people I love.

***

One of the main takes from the book to me are Ronson's queries about why some people don't feel ashamed or shamed. The cure for shaming is empathy, Ronson says.That is very true. I agree that if everybody had a bit of empathy, put themselves in other people's shoes, people would not do certain things, would not offend, use or abuse other people, and mobs would not form as easily. Yet,manipulators, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, and even borderlines do use other people's empathy as a tool against the empaths to use and abuse those very people. The cure for shaming is, Ronson adds, speaking up when you think a mob is lynching somebody for a bad joke. I agree. Mind, you will be lynched as well. Be ready and prepared. One my favourite recipes is given by Daisey, who refused to be shamed by his shamers despite doing something shameful:
"...The way we construct consciousness is to tell the story of ourselves to ourselves, the story of who we believe we are. I feel that a really public shaming or humiliation is a conflict between the person trying to write his own narrative and society trying to write a different narrative for the person. One story tries to overwrite the other. And so to survive you have to own your story. Or . . .’ Mike looked at me, ‘. . . you write a third story. You react to the narrative that’s been forced upon you.’ He paused. ‘You have to find a way to disrespect the other narrative,’ he said. ‘If you believe it, it will crush you.’ (Kindle Locations 2226-2231).

MIND.
Ronson is a journalist, not a novelist, so don't expect the book to be literary. Obvious, no?

NOTES
>  Jonah Lehrer, Justine Sacco, Lindsey Stone, Hank, Adria Richards, and Raquel had never  before spoken to a journalist about what had happened to them before this book.
> Ronson's interviews with Troy and Mercedes Haefer from 4chan appared published before in a column for the Guardian Weekend magazine as well as his story of how his son forced him  to re-enact being thrown into a lake.

TYPOS
Barely any. I noticed just two, which are the result of the conversion from printing format to digital format
> loc. 550 pointed outto me
> loc. 942 dehumaniz-ing them
 
COVER
Another great cover for the Kindle edition of the book! 

Am I small? 제가 작나요? English-Korean Bilingual Edition by Philipp Winterberg (Author, Translator), Nadja Wichmann (Illustrator), Joo Yeon Kang (Translator)

, 20 Jun 2016

Am I Small? is a book for little children and a good one. It shows that we are what we think we are plus how  other people see us. It shows how other people's view is affected by their perspective, by the point of view on which they stand compared to us. Finally, we are many things at the same time, tiny beings if seen from space, but giants if seen by a ladybug, everyone perspective is acceptable and has some truth to it. These are great lessons to be learned by a child. It is the basis for tolerance, self-acceptance, and non-dogmatism.

Nadja Wichmann's illustrations are lovely, bright and colourful and right to the point, with a hint of fanciness.

I don't know Korean, just started to read, so I cannot comment on the translation. For what other people say it is not good, so I am disappointed!

I bought the book on Kindle, and the digital edition is just fair. It works like some Google apps books I have not like a modern kindle illustrated or comic book. The book directly turns the phone/tablet into landscape settings, and although one can individuate text and some details using double tap on the screen, but some of the writing is so small that one would need the page to be f-u-l-l-y zoomable to move around and see things properly. The book needs to be adjusted to Kindle and/or Comixology properly. Otherwise, the book it is a bit useless in this format. I would recommend buying this on a hard copy.

Yet, this is less than 1$. So let it be. 

The Sculptor by Scott McCloud (2015)

, 19 Jun 2016

The Sculptor tells the story of David Smith, a young sculptor struggling in his personal life and in his professional life as an artist as he is short of money, has no family and, despite its undeniable talent, his work is not being shown or showcased by any important art gallery and this despite his best friend Olly being part of the Art Gallery network.. He is at breaking point when his deceased uncle Harry visits him  and offers him a solution to solve his struggle with Art, and the lovely cheery young actress Meg crosses paths with him.

The book is drawn in a beautiful evocative duotone in indigo blue hues that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also the perfect tone to create the mood that this story needs, a mix of blues song with an underlining and sometimes upfront sadness and personal stress, and also the magic of this indigo child, indigo child understood here as a gifted guy with supernatural abilities and enhanced ways of perception.

McCloud artwork is really that of a Master regarding use of colour, composition, framing and style.

McCloud depiction of New York urban area is absolutely glorious and masterful. He looks at the city as both as an insider and an outsider, because some of the images are really those that anybody visiting the Big Apple for the first time would take with them, the overwhelming but thrilling presence of concrete, steel and skyscrapers. On the other hand, MCloud knows the city and is also able to depict its more rural or parkland areas with freshness and a great bucolic feeling, which is used as an emotional counterpoint to the urban settings, where most of the story happens.

As an insider McCloud shows the New York of the New Yorkers, the ambience of the city, but also the city of the people. Every secondary or tertiary figure and passer-by character depicted in the streets is fully there, even those in the background. Their body language, clothing and attitude tell a story of who they are and we can look at them as individuals that happen to cross the vignette, not as mere accessories to the main character or the image. This is one of the reasons I love reading comics on digital format as the zooming allows us to do that easily, and fully be there within the image, and notice the tiniest scratch or detail.


There are a few surreal  images depicted in the book, many of them truly impacting and beautifully drawn. There is a strong presence of oneiric elements as well. I one of my previous reviews, I mentioned the fact that Magic Realism can be easily mixed up with fantasy and surrealism to describe Latin-American novels as deniable part of the genre. Here we have the contrary case, this is, to me, an undeniable Magic Realism work, even if North-American, and not many people are focusing on that. So, which elements are part of the Magic Realism genre in The Sculptor?
> Fantastical elements (levitation, premonitory dreams, etc.), TICK
> Real-word setting, TICK
> The story is told as is nothing extraordinary was taking place, magical events are accepted in the same plane as those that aren't, TICK
> Use of multiple planes of reality, in this case the oneiric and the awakened state, TICK
> Metafiction, that is, the narrator intentionally exposes themselves as the author of the story, TICK
> Heightened awareness of mystery, TICK
> Social critique, In this case about how the art market works, TICK

On  the other hand, there are important literary connections the reader will make at the beginning, or at least I did, that of the Faustian-like plot being the most important.

I thought that the narrative and characterisation of The Sculptor did not match the finesse of the artwork. Although I liked the overall plot and ending, some characters are a bit clichéd, like Olly and Finn.The character of Meg seemed me a bit non-believable, a good-Samaritan Lolita, but it turns out that the character hides some surprises and is based on MCloud's wife and on their own love story. Ouch! However David and Harry's characters are roundly profiled and created.

The beginning of the book was exhilarating, witty and interesting, then turned into a boring immature love story to gain momentum again and end brilliantly.  The book mixes dialogues that deal with what Art is and is not, how Art is produced, how Art is sold and marketed and what makes a successful artist. On the other hand we see how life and Art mix in intricate ways, how the artist's life and the artist' art feed each other, and how most talented artists would not make it.

The ending was genuine and the one that I wanted to see. Some rules can't be broken ever, some thing simple are that way, as the character personifying Death would say. And changing the end to please readers would have been an artistic betrayal to the author's own vision and the inner logic of the story.


Here an interview with McCloud about the book for those interested.

"Learn to Read Korean in 60 Minutes: The Ultimate Crash Course to Learning Hangul Through Psychological Associations" by Blake Miner, Yoo Jin Lee & Min Woo Park (2015)

THE GOODIES
+ The book is very cute, very simple to go through, and the associations to learn each vowel and consonant very useful.
+ The book is unpretentious, fun and right to the point.
+ The book does what it promises and you will be able to read basic words in Korean if not in 60 minutes, in 90 minutes, which is the time I used.
+ Very useful illustrations.
+ A cheapie.

THE NONOS
+ The use of Roman equivalents is a bit messed up mostly because the authors don't do something that would have been more helpful, i.e. to use the International Phonetic System, which is Universal. Mind, not all English speakers pronounce vowels and diphthongs the same.
+ I had some problems with the s and the j basically because the seashell used to associate the letter s looked more like the shape of the character of letter j.
+ I found that some of the diphthongs were not well explained, comparing to online free courses.
+ Some final consonants are mute but those or when this occurred is not mentioned. 
+ The pronunciation of some letters is inaccurate or incomplete.
+ This is a bait to get you to their online paid program to learn Korean.
You can find better stuff for free online,  for example
http://seemile.com
http://www.korean-course.com/index.en.php?page=alphabet01

I MISSED
I would have loved hearing the pronunciation of the words in Korean  by natives. Which would be really easy to do if the Kindle book had a link that got you online to a place where these words are pronounced or to a downloadable file. Other similar books on Korean have this feature.

Overall, a very cute useful book, that does what it promises, get you to recognise the hangeul alphabet and to read basic words. There are basic courses online, for free, with videos, done by Koreans, so that is always better. However, I found the association technique really helpful and that is the main virtue of this booklet.

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.