Such a heart-warming novel on the pursuit of happiness and how we fail in love.
Cesare is 77, an age when each day alive is a gift, and he realizes it might be his last chance to do things he wouldn't have dared to before. He finds himself trapped between the struggle to restore his relationship with his children, to improve his personal life and the few long-lasting friendships, and the attempt to save a young neighbor from domestic violence.

It is quite challenging to read such a memoir; it requires time and patience and a certain state of mind, an openness to absorb the unfolding of a life in a different era, down to the tiniest detail.
“Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody.”

Briefly, the point is that in a culture centered on faking positivity and optimism, anxiety and depression spike, as people are not allowed to show and voice their pain and problems and accept that human sorrow is natural and inevitable.
I found this one rather boring and repetitive, maybe because I come from a culture where the role of a bittersweet state of mind is already acknowledged in overcoming pain and responding to grief with compassion.

Very eye-opening examination of codependency and the reasons why people develop this almost addiction to things, behaviors and other people, as a result of unsatisfied emotional needs and which affects so many of us. The book also recommends a recovery plan for those who intend to break the cycle and escape the labyrinth of codependency.

Great book!

“Individuals who are codependent “dance” so well with individuals who are narcissists because their pathological personalities or “dance styles” are complementary. In other words, they are perfectly matched partners. Their well-matched dance preferences bond them together in a resilient and lasting partnership, even if one or both partners are unhappy, resentful or angry.“

The prescription consists of seven really down to earth and easily applicable recommendations to keep a couple's connection alive, as the authors also say:
“Here's our hope for you, after this week: That you felt a little closer to your partner after including these practices in your day. That you two laughed together at some point. That you felt that warm glow of connection, the cha-ching! of coins dropping into the emotional bank account.“

In the 1960s, 18-year old Victor Chmara is afraid of something and is hiding in a small French town close to Switzerland where he pretends to be a count of Russian and Egyptian origin. In this place populated by strange characters, he meets Yvonne. The time spent with her continues to haunt him and years later he returns in an attempt to find her.

This psychological and metaphysical prose was published in the 1930s. It feels like a confession, where the outside world is perceived as too common, boring and useless and the narrator struggles to escape it by hiding in his inner world, where anxiety, unrest and morbid thoughts torture him.

"Was I capable of being happy in solitude? I didn‘t think so. Was I capable of being happy in general? That‘s the kind of question, I think, that is best not asked."

This is not the usual Murakami but I enjoyed it tremendously! Seven short stories about men and their experiences and relationships with women, that simply strike a chord.

Although the book's title is 'Ricky of the Tuft', it does not have much to do with Perrault's tale, or at least it has more than a modern and funny twist.

Déodat is an extremely intelligent and terribly ugly young man. Trémière is an otherwordly beautiful and discrete young lady. Their qualities make them both society outcasts. They are destined to meet.

I like her sarcastic style and exquisite approach on common philosophical themes with unusual and peculiar characters and circumstances.

Zoile and Astrolabe experience a love story so unique and disappointing that Zoile decides to comit suicide by highjacking an airplane to destroy the Eiffel Tour.

"To love a place, you have to see it from above. This must be why we imagine God above the Earth: otherwise how would he be able to love us?"

"Getting back the stories"

Such a sweet illustrated short story for kids and grown-ups with a game included. Redescovering the magic of telling and listening to stories reconnects us with a joyful life.

"I am writing about my father in the past tense, and I cannot believe I am writing about my father in the past tense."

"Grief is not gauzy; it is substantial, oppressive, a thing opaque. The weight is heaviest in the mornings, post-sleep: a leaden heart, a stubborn reality that refuses to budge. I will never see my father again. Never again. It feels as if I wake up only to sink and sink. "

I wish I read this one last year when I lost my father.

So much food for thought...

"Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision."

"Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love."

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism

The Intelligence of Matter

This one remains a fascinating book, a very scientific approach on the purpose of the human being in the intelligent order of the universe. Are we just an expression of evolution or are we necessary to the universe? I'll have to dive deeper into this one someday.

I enjoyed this one far more than I initially thought I would... such a fine sarcastic tone on contemporary society, such a realistic depiction of mid-life crisis with its swings between feeling hopelessly useless and the illusion of a new challenge, the harsh loneliness devouring those who realize they had experienced true happiness only after they lost it for the most stupid of reasons...

This is an old fashion not very suspenseful thriller built around the scheming maneuvers and complications caused on the London's art market by a rumor regarding the potential appearance of a new and uncatalogued Modigliani masterpiece. Nice story but without a very surprising ending.

This short novel is more like the confession of Jose, the wife of a young, rich and good looking man, struggling to survive through his obsessive jealousy and going to extreme lenghts to rebel against his possessivness. To me it sounded more like existential problems of really bored wealthy people unable to find a purpose in life. I liked the inner world building though.

A sweet love story. Pursuant to a terrible accident young doctor Lauren is not dead but finds herself in a peculiar and heartbreaking state where she acts like a ghost without actually being one. Arthur is the only one who can see her and talk to her. He soon grows motivated to save her.

Simply brilliant! So ingenious, informative, heart-breaking

"If we could see what green was doing, we'd never be lonely or bored. If we could understand green, we'd learn how to grow all the food we need in layers three deep, on a third of the ground we need right now, with plants that protected one another from pests and stress. If we knew what green wanted, we wouldn't have to choose between the Earth's interests and ours. They'd be the same!"

A good vacation read, this is the first installment in the author's audacious project of retelling the history of humanity, in which he combines his scientific, religious and philosophical research. Noam is a young leader in the Neolithic age when the Flood turns everything upside down and Noam becomes immortal. He travels through the ages in search of Noura, his lost love, and of the meaning of life.

"This Very Instant" - Young doctor Arthur Costello inherits an isolated property with a lighthouse. Once he enters the dungeon below the lighthouse he becomes a man like no other. There is a terrible and unbelievable truth that prevents him from loving the woman of his life. I loved the plot twist in the last part of the novel.

A poor European family attracted by the promises of a better life in French Indochina is hit by the abuses of colonial society and by the rigid social hierarchy preventing them from leading a better life. The sea wall against the Pacific, unable to stop the sea water from drowning their crops, is a metaphor for countless useless efforts to surpass their poor social condition.

This classic first published in 1886 is long, but it is precisely the abundance of details and extremely detailed descriptions that leave a profound mark on the reader and make it hard to forget.
The novel recounts the fictional tragic life of an original and genious artist misunderstood by the Parisian art world of the 19th century. It is said to actually reflect Zola's friendship with now famous painter Paul Cézanne.
(Photo: The Bathers, 1905)

Vacation stack ready 📚

This urban fantasy was just ok, not great.
Five New Yorkers have to combine their forces to protect the city in an interdimensional war and stop an ancient evil from tearing down the city.
It tackles various social issues, but I particularly enjoyed how it celebrated the city itself in its tremendous diversity.

Although published in 1903, this remains a very entertaining and easy to read collection of well written short stories and essays. Some are funny, some are tragic, but they all beautifully capture the human condition from both common and unexpected angles.

There is beautiful poetry concealed in this prose. Such a delightful blend of personal memoir and praise in honor of the animals and plants which hold a special place in the author's heart for their role in her life. The illustrations are equally evocative for each essay.

"Laughing eyes-my mom once observed after she first met him-to describe how his eyes shine at everything, how this man has a knack for making everyone around him feel pretty darn magnificent.
[...] this finally was a man who'd never flinch, never leave my side when things were messy, or if he was introduced to something new. This was a man who'd be happy when I bloomed."

Gellu Naum is a Romanian avant-garde writer and founder of the Romanian Surrealist group. This novel was published in 1985.
With stream of consciousness and hyperrealism, he achieves a beautiful and poetic philosophical prose, centered on Zenobia as the main character, his beloved wife and muse, "an incarnation of the Woman Spirit that alternately seduces him, sustains him, and scares him half to death."

I really tried, reached two thirds...but it is just extremely boring. I kept waiting in vain for something to happen to catch my attention, for some interesting feelings to be triggered...

It just felt like reading about a mix of elements from a lot of other novels and fairytales put together in a terribly long and distasteful porridge.

I loved Dona Flor's passionate and exquisite love triangle! There is magical realism and a delicious mix of samba rythms, carnivals, tasty dishes and Afro-Brazilian rituals for deities. Dona Flor loses her first love, her pain and mourning are excruciating, but she rediscovers love and remarries, although her first husband never really leaves her...

This prose is so poetic, feelings of melancholy and sadness linger, but in the best sense possible.
In 1923 Virginia Woolf begins to right her novel about Clarissa Dalloway. In 1949 Laura Brown reads Virginia Woolf. In the 1990s Clarissa Vaughan is preparing a party for her former lover. Three women in three different timelines share a subtle connection which slowly reveals itself in key moments of their lives.

Like all fantasy literature trying to restore the reputation of the wicked witches in traditional tales, this book, too, is both attractive and confusing in terms of emotions it triggers. There is a conflict between the old witchcraft ways and christianity as a metaphor for the eternal clash between feminine and masculine energy.

It's good these ladies are allowed to voice their side of the story, it leaves the reader with a wider perspective.

Computer science professor Randy Pausch is asked to give a last lecture in his final months of terminal illness.
The most impressive topics in his lecture were not the common sense tips on how to achieve dreams, success in life etc., but how he handled the news of his diagnosis, organized the time left before his death in relation to his wife, his very young children, friends and even to himself and prepared for death with dignity and acceptance.

Such an engrossing blend of memoir and natural science, a reflection on the mysteries of this enigmatic creature that is the eel and on the mystery of life in general. It is eye-opening and moving. The father and son bond through fishing and share a deeper understanding of nature. The eels are on the brink of extinction and humanity has not yet succeeded to fully decipher their astonishing life cycle.

"In ancient Egypt, the eel was considered a mighty demon, an equal of the gods and a forbidden food. A creature moving effortlessly beneath the glittering surface of the holy Nile, slithering through the sediments of existence itself. Archaeologists have found mummified eels in tiny sarcophagi, laid to their eternal rest next to bronze statuettes of the gods."

I very much enjoyed the Native American backdrop and details, the bits of humor, the references to authors and books, the bookstore setting, but oh my, how boring most of this book was!
The almost chronicle of the 2020 pandemic and protests was completely disconnected from the storyline of the haunted bookstore and haunting past of Tookie and seemed to serve just to fill in the pages...

This book contains very exhaustive material on the natural history and mechanics of love and relationships in humans, with references to extensive research in neurosciences, psychology, sociology and biological personality: how did the love instinct evolve; how do we choose our partners; why are some more predisposed to adultery than others; to what extent do men and women resemble or not in terms of love; slow love, love and the Internet etc.

"Inside every person is an inherent capability to make it through any kind of difficulty. Everyone has the energy. But sometimes when the energy flows via our anxiety valve, the flow can be restricted. The greater the anxiety, the greater the strength needed to open the valve and release the energy. That strength is empowered by hope. You could say that hope is the power to believe in the future."

Happy World Book Day!

I love this concept of time travel to the past and future which cannot alter present events, but has healing powers that can change feelings and the perspective on the present.
I enjoyed the third installment and am now looking forward to read the fourth.

Before reading this beautiful biography, I hadn't even heard about Latife Hanim, the wife of general Atatürk, the famous founder of the Republic of Turkey. She was a charming and rich intellectual who studied in Western Europe, mastered eight languages, arts and music. She was indirectly engaged in politics, a passionate activist for the rights of Turkish women and aimed to see them achieve social and cultural progress as Western women did.

Global symbol, contemporary Chinese artist and human rights activist, Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood spent in exile with his convicted father, who was the nation's greatest poet, his youth in America and his return to China, where his life and art were impacted by the totalitarian regime.
With tremendous creativity and strong political convictions, he reminds the world it is crucial to protect the freedom of expression.

It took me some time to finish and I have barely scratched the first layer of this monumental and overwhelming "symphony of the evil". This must be a gem for lovers of philosophy and literature.
A genius losing his most precious gift, his mind, writes a final confession to the love of his life.
Such engaging prose, extremely vivid scenes and timelines stratching over 300 years alternate within the same piece of dialogue and interior monologue.

I can see no better way to celebrate finishing this book and being human in the spirit of this book, than with peanut butter and tea, and those who've read it will certainly understand why.

This is a light read but such a sweet and hilarious reminder of the beauty of being human and of all the great things the intricate human life has to offer.

Chunkster haul 📚

The writing is definitely beautiful but I didn't understand why two thirds of the book is used to build the portrait of Vic, a perfectly calculated, close to psychopath character who knows his wife inside out and senses her each and every move and feelings, to just break him at the end. It seems he resisted the pressure for ten years and then he just couldn't anymore...

Three families live in an elegant residential building. One member in each makes a heart-wrenching confession and paints a vivid and diverse image of Israeli society. I was most touched by the third story, so poignant and heartbreaking.

"The three floors of the psyche do not exist inside us at all! Absolutely not! They exist in the air between us and someone else, in the space between our mouths and the ears we are telling our story to."