Beyond, above and below the text — the mistery of reading in "Proust and the Squid"

This will be only a short note and certainly the review of this fine book will have to wait till I have some more time during the incoming summer holidays...

But I wanted to tell you how amazing this book is. By recalling the Socrates objection against written form of knowledge and looking, from this perspective, on the current transformation of paper based to digital reading, Maryanne Wolf writes an incredible apology of deep reading. And about many more....

Just fantastic and must read for all interested in the current culture...

Backlog of reviews. II

My current backlog of reviews has the following titles:

• Rabbi Jehoshua Ozjasz Thon — „Sermons” (in my mother's tongue)
• Carlos Ruiz Zafón first novel „The Prince of Mist”
• John Ratey's „Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”
• Michael M. Lewis's „The New New Thing” 
• Amir D. Aczel's: „The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity” 

and the new titles I did not review yet:

• „Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely
• „The Essential Talmud” by Adin Steinsaltz

I'm also reading now (on my Kindle software):

• „Hitler's Willing Executioners” by Daniel Goldhagen
• „Hackers & Painters” by Paul Graham

and in paper:

• The english translation of „Kitab al Khazari” by philosopher and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi in the English translation by Rabbi Daniel Korobkin issued by Feldheim Publishers.

Hope I will be able to review them in the comming summer months :-)

Suspended time in Arkansas ...

I was completely mesmerized and enchanted by John Grisham „A Painted House”. On the surface it is a story narrated by 7-years-old Luke, living with his parents in deep poverty on a cotton farm in Arkansas.
The story itself is simple, and at the first glimpse quite ordinary — maybe because of its apparent plainness and commonness. But when you read it (or listen as I did) carefully, you start to notice some light coming from the background, the light that makes this novel absolutely extraordinary. Is it for the honest and modest depiction of the harsh life in rural America in fifties? For the relation of responsibility and hard work and freedom? For poetic description of the nature and life in Arkansas? For the finest narration?

Maybe.... But I find in the book something out-of-this-world, something that escapes naming it and confining to this or that aspect of Grisham narration. Perhaps I  must admit, that I do not really know what made me so deeply moved by this common story...

I will certainly continue with Grisham. It was my his first book.
You can find the typical summary of the book here.