pickThis short novel made me think about so many different things: living with nature vs. controlling it, how even the kindest people can be irrational due to cultural rules and customs, how reading can offer an escape in the most unlikely places, how to make the best of the hand you were dealt...
Will spend some more time contemplating 🤔
#foodandlit
@Texreader @Catsandbooks
pickI tremendously enjoyed this story. Hunters and gold seekers threaten to destroy the Amazon Rainforest by slaughtering endangered species and destroying the old way of life of the jungle and its indigenous people, the Shuar Indians. In his remote village, an old man feels trapped between ancient wisdom and civilization. He reads love stories to escape.
"No one can captivate the lighting and no one can take the other's heavens in a moment of grace."
pickSepulveda brings us in the heart of the Amazonian forest in this very well written novella. In a little over 100 pages, we grow attached to this old man, Antonio José Bolivar, and we follow with attention his hunt for a feline, made mad by the reckless killing of her litter. Sepulveda denounces human stupidity, human hubris, while describing an untameable wilderness. 4.5 stars.
I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me - I have a lot of books. Join the fun if you want.
This is day 35
#BooksToRead #TBRPile
“It was the most important discovery of his whole life. He could read. He possessed the antidote to the deadly poison of old age. He could read. But he had nothing to read.”
pickThis brief novel was exceptionally well-crafted and ultimately deeply moving. An old man in a tiny jungle outpost in Ecuador must help identify a killer when a prospector turns up dead. As we gradually learn details of the old man's life, his pastime takes on a new and poignant depth of meaning.
Reading outside in 4 °C? No problem with #luissepulveda and snowmen socks
Il vecchio che leggeva romanzi d'amore | 
