Me Poupe!: 10 passos para nunca mais faltar dinheiro no seu bolso - Nathalia Arcuri (2018)

 

Um livro que deveria ser leitura obrigatória para o ENEM!

 

O Brasil é um país de endividados, segundo a Faculdade de Economia, Administração, Contabilidade e Atuária da USP, em 2023, 43% da população tem boletos que não conseguem pagar. Nesse livro, a Nathalia Acuri defende a ideia de que essa situação é decorrente principalmente da falta de educação financeira e apresenta soluções práticas para começar a organizar as contas pessoais.

Sem dúvidas, a educação financeira é mais importante que decorar o ciclo de Krebs ou a fórmula de Bhaskara, no entanto, ela não faz parte do currículo escolar, ainda que de forma eletiva, o que é uma pena. Crescemos assim na ignorância do financês e somos, portanto, facilmente ludibriados pelas instituições financeiras. O bombardeiro de publicidade incentivando o consumo, baixo poder de consumo, e um amplo acesso a financiamentos de toda foma compõem uma fórmula perversa para o endividamento.

O livro traz bons argumentos para construir uma mentalidade para otimização da economia doméstica. É bem didático, tem também tabelas e quadros para preencher. No entanto, algumas das dicas mais práticas de economia, tais como a tabela com as percentagens de gasto, são limitadas a um certo grupo de pessoas, àquelas que têm renda. Não posso fazer uma tabela com percentagens do salário para pagar contas se não tiver, obviamente, um salário. O que, segundo o IBGE de 2023, é realidade para 39% dos trabalhadores porque atuam no mercado informal.

Nathalia Arcuri tem uma história de sucesso com lições preciosas sobre economia doméstica. Isso é fato. Ainda que alguns acontecimentos tenham funcionado como um "atalho" para o sucesso, essa história continua gloriosa e necessária. O que se precisa ter em mente ao ler não só a história de sucesso da Nathalia, mas tantos outros testemunhos de sucesso, é que cada trajetória é composta por um conjunto único de eventos e o acaso deixa essa sequência ainda mais exclusiva. As pessoas tendem a tomar essas histórias como um passo-a-passo para o sucesso, mas se frustram porque alguns desses eventos não são reproduzíveis e isso pode ser usado como argumentos para não tentar. Por exemplo -alerta que vem spoiler- "ah, mas a Nathi ganhou o carro da tia, e eu não tenho uma tia rica para me dar um carro." Com argumento como esses, as pessoas invalidam o objetivo de ser compartilhar essas histórias de sucesso, elas devem ser tomadas como inspiração e não como um manual de instruções. A intenção é inspirar cada pessoa a fazer o seu próprio caminho que será único e incomparável. O importante é quebrar a inércia e começar o caminho. E esse chamado estilo "acorda para vida", a Nathalia faz bem e com muito bom humor.

Não somente um ótimo guia para quem quer começar a ter suas finanças em ordem e não sabe por onde começar, esse livro é um chamado necessário para a popularização da educação financeira. E quanto antes aprendermos sobre isso, melhor. Por que não ler Nathalia Acuri nas escolas?

 

Doei para uma amiga, mas não sei até hoje se ela recebeu ou leu.

The Cockroach - Ian McEwan (2019)

Brexit makes sense in here

------spoiler alert------

Before the pandemic, I had a weird habit: I used to get in book shops to check the list of best sellers, but just the shops I knew there was a list of English books. These lists were updated every week. I was used to checking the list, but do not buy any book. However, on the black Friday of 2019, all the books from the list were with a 20% reduction in price. I, as a good bargainer, checked which was the shortest book, and bought it. This book and a pack with six bottles of bio laundry softener for half price were my proud Black Friday acquisitions. I choose the shortest book because I wanted something I could go through in a couple of weeks...it took me six months! I guess because the book was not the most exciting I have read. Whenever I started to read, no matter where I was, I needed either to read several times the same paragraph or I slept. I am used to reading scientific papers that are by default the most boring literature ever, nevertheless, this book was even more painful than most of these papers!

To be honest, I can not tell what I did not like in the book, but I have two suggestions: the style and the lack of action. Maybe it was because of the style. Maybe I am just not used to a narrative on the British style -- J. K. Rowling is not an exception. I need to try more British authors to check this out. Also, I got the impression that the author uses a lot of passive voice and not many direct quotes from the characters. The lack of direct quotes makes it unclear to me who is talking/thinking in many moments. Maybe this is the reason why I had to read the same paragraph again and again -- maybe I have a reading disability I am not aware of. Another possibility is the plot, there is not much action on the story and maybe I am biased toward stories in which a lot is going on. This may explain why I loved the book with the summary of Brazilian history -- a lot happened in 520 years! The truth is that so far I can not identify the origin of my sleepiness when I was reading this book.

In summary, the story is about Jim Sams. He is a cockroach that one day wakes up as a man. This man is the prime minister of England. Jim dedicates himself to pass a controversial bill, the Reversalism. The Reversalism, as I understood, is the inversion of the economy, bought goods come with a currency that must be spent on work. People get paid for going shopping and they need to pay to work. He does political maneuvers that are also controversial to get the Parlament on his side and pass the bill. He tries to get international support of the American president Archie Tupper, known for his easy and impactfull tweets and the German chancellor, a skeptical woman that questions Jim's engagement with such a bill. Sound familiar, right? Yes, it is an explicit analogy to Brexit and, when I was awake, I found it hilarious! The story is indeed interesting, definitively this was not the reason why the book was not exciting to me.

Anyway, it is a well-thought story. Some of the analogies to reality were enlightening. For example, the Tupper's shallow but judgmental tweets: this is GOOD or that is BAD and how they influence worldwide politics. Or the lack of a reasonable explanation for Jim's attachment to the Reversalism bill which can be simply an ideological conviction without practical advantages -- wow, what a coincidence! Also, as a biologist, I loved the precision of how a cockroach life is described on biological terms. How they use pheromones to communicate, details about their feeding behavior and anatomy. This in-depth view into the life of a cockroach paved the way for interesting predictions of the biological struggles that a cockroach should have if it would, suddenly, become a human.

From the moments I could enjoy the book, I separated two of my favorites quotes:

When Jim was writing a letter to discredit his foreign secretary that conspired against the Reversalism:

"There was nothing more liberating than a closely knit sequence of lies. So this was why people became writers." Page 71. Fantastic!

When Jim, back to his cockroach form, talked to his cockroach community about their experience in human bodies:

"As you discovered, it is not easy to be Homo sapiens sapiens. Their desires are so often in contention with their intelligence." Page 99.

Although I would not recommend the book to my past self. The well-done analogy to political reality is worth reading. The take-home message I got it is that the only way Brexit would make some sense in practical terms it would be if Brexit supporters and Boris Johnson were cockroaches that came in human form with some hidden intentions to bring people to low sanitary conditions so that they could be back to their glory times.

I "kindly asked" a friend of mine that happened to be British to have the book and read it in the hope he could understand better that I and explain to me what I did not get.

A capital - Eça de Queiroz (1925)

Life is cruel and we die in the end

------spoiler alert------

I am glad I can read this classic in its original language. I came across this book during a layover in Lisbon. On the contrary to what happens in the bookstores of Germany where I restrict myself to the tinny English books section, in the bookstore of the airport, I had two hours to enjoy the pleasure to explore freely ALL books as available possibilities. It was such a big pleasure! I was checking the classics when I came across "A Capital" (English: "To the Capital") written by the Portuguese author José Maria de Eça de Queirós. I heard about Eça de Queiroz in school during Portuguese literature classes, but, unfortunately, never have I ever read one of his books till now.

The novel was written in the second half of the XIX century when realism was a strong literary movement. The narrative is focused on individuals and daily facts slightly seasoned with the right amount of romanticism. Eça described places and scenes with lyricism while conducting a crudely realistic plot. He wrote a story exactly the way I like: no fantasy, but stark reality! The main character Arthur Covelo is a dreamer. He grew up between books and under the strong influence of his father to become literate. He wished to be a famous poet. He went to university, but his studies were interrupted because he ran out of resources after his dad's death. He moved to the countryside to live on behalf of two old aunts. Nevertheless, his dream to be recognized by his literate talent did not die. Death knocked on his door again, but this time with fortunate news: his dead godfather left him a fat inheritance. He packed part of his money and two manuscripts he wrote to kill the stagnation and held to the capital to invest in his career.

This is a perfect scenario for a successful story. Nowadays, the way Arthur did not let the difficulties put him down would illustrate beautiful examples of success and perseverance used in a lecture of a lifestyle guru. However, the reality is cruel. To be deadly passionate about something is not always enough to succeed. Arthur failed in his intentions: he failed to become a famous writer, he also failed to be politically active, to have a circle of trustees and even to have a girlfriend. Arthur tried, but his attempts were unsuccessful and it was not his fault. In all of his attempts, he came across predatory people and he was not trained to cope with their malicious intentions. Sometimes he was so ridiculously naive that I got annoyed.

This is the story that lifestyle gurus won't tell; they keep on mentioning Steve Jobs or Arnold Schwarzenegger as examples of people that overcame the adversities and succeed. But for each Jobs how many Arthurs are there? Life is not always fair and perseverance does not always work. Sometimes to try harder and harder does not guarantee the achievement of a goal and to keep on trying just make the person even more broken. Arthur gave up and it was the wisest decision he could have taken. I find myself in Arthur when I compare his wishes and efforts to become a recognized poet with my attempts to get my Ph.D. done. Even with all my deepest dedication, I just get slammed back from the academy and I am not even close having all the same self-confidence that Arthur had. Should I give up as he did? I do not know yet. No doubts, it would also be a wise decision, but I am not that smart.

The end of the book is just beautiful, it put things into context. We get fucked all life long and we die in the end. At the end of the day, we are just a bunch of molecules that will be recycled by nature. On the last page, Eça found a poetic way to state this crude reality: he described an ordinary guy in the cemetery profiting from potatoes that grow better in the soil rich in nutrients from the corpses underneath, including Arthur's aunt.

The take-home message I got from the book was: life can be cruel and not all dreams are worth fighting for!



This is a posthumous book published about 20 years after Eça's death and edited by his son António Eça de Queirós. Anyways, whoever wrote this book did a good job

The book got sold on ebay.de in April 2020 in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. A great choice for the quarantine!

Psycho - Robert Bloch (1959)

A psychological thriller

------spoiler alert------

    The path I did until this book was quite unusual. I never watched the Hitchcock film, but rather the TV show ”Bates Motel” without even knowing that was related to the Hitchcock film and the book. I came across the TV show by scanning for some easy entertainment in a Sunday evening, after ”Tartort” indeed, and I had a positive surprise. First, because it led me to the book and second because it was just a beautifully well-done TV show. There are two seasons. On the first season, the plot of the TV show diverged from the book and showed the events preceding. The second season presented the events from the book. Anyway, I think the plot was not much of interest, for both the TV show and the book the most interesting things happen in the main character head, the Norman Bates.  He has a love-hate relationship with his mother Norma Bates and the conflicts developed upon are the highlight.

     Norman and Norma's relationship started from a point I could follow and comprehend, but smoothly it developed in a way that at a certain point I could not follow anymore and I could not notice this happening. This psychological twist happened both in the book and in the TV show. And in the TV show, it was longer and deeper than in the book, I would say that the essence of the book was perfectly captured and even enhanced in the TV show. Even though I am writing about the book (at least I should be writing about the book) I can not grab my enthusiasm about the TV show and the bias I had for watching the show prior to the book.

      Another aspect I loved in the book, maybe also under the bias of the TV show, was the description of the house Norman Bates lived, this sort of old houses with a sinister atmosphere. Most of the times in which something exciting happened was preceded by a precise description of the house that allowed me to picture myself in there and to feel the shiver of what was about to come. I can not tell if this facility in picturing the house came from the fact I already have the house in mind from the TV show, but the experience was just great anyway.

       However, the famous scene of the girl's murder in the bathroom was not in the house. It was placed in the Bates motel run by Norman and despite the fact it is a classic, I do not agree it is the most exciting moment. The most exciting scene, in my opinion, came after the bathroom scene when the sister of the girl murdered in the bathroom went to the house looking for her and found a surprise in the fruit cellar, I will not describe further to avoid a spoiler, but I can tell it is thrilling! By the way, the name of the girl killed in the bathroom is Mary Jane and in the TV show is played by Rihanna, it could not be better!

       In the version I read there was a glossary with translations to German of the unusual terms in English, I learned quite some words in both languages, but sometimes it was distracting. Also, there are pages and pages to describe the drama of Mary Jane’s life and I thought it was excessive details in a short book for a character that would be killed at first opportunity. Yet Norman Bates with his mind and his house makes the book totally worth reading. I am looking forward to reading the second one, but in Germany, I did not find the Psycho II in English for a fair price, not even second hand and online. I will keep on searching. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Bates Motel (2013/2017)- the Netflix series. Just amazing, I recommend a thousand times.

Psycho (1960) - the Alfred Hitchcock film. I never watched, shame on me!

Tatoart (1970/present) - German Crime TV show broadcasted every Sunday 20:15, really nice. Better than CSI.

"neat as pint" (Blitzsauber) - clean, clean, clean, something my house is never going to be. E.g.: "The Norma bedsheets were neat as pint."

"dingy" (schmuddelig) - the opposite of the previous expression. E.g.: "Norman Bates mind has dingy thoughts."

"since you were a little tyke" (kleines Kind) - when somebody just left the placenta. E.g.: "Norma loves Norman since he was a little tyke."

"for a song" (for ein Ei oder ein Apfel) - for no reason in this world. E.g.: "Norman does not leave Norma for a song."

"parlor" - just a fancy way to name the living room. E.g.: "Norman just entered the parlor."

P.S.: For the first time, I used an app to trace reading time. It is called Bookly. Annoying because I read on the way to work in short intervals of 45 min maximum and every time I started and ended I needed to turn on and off the app. But, the app is nice because one can enter quotes, pictures, words, thoughts and get out a lot of cool stats such as reading time or pages read per minute. Really cool for tablet readers and also for those that are patient enough for filling the app up with info, not my case. Anyway, I did it for the book Psycho and I got this interesting infographic:

  

King Solomon's ring - Konrad Lorentz (1952)

 

Seeing nature through Lorentz eyes

------spoiler alert------

Working in the place co-funded by Lorentz gave the motivation for this book. I wanted to understand his thoughts and why he is not a unanimity around here. Why so much concern? I did not find any of these answers, instead, I had a lot of fun! Through this book, I could see Lorentz as a classic engaged naturalist that dedicated laborious and extensive hours to observe the animal behavior. He described his interesting findings in a particularly fun way. My sympathy with his narrative might be biased because I am a deeply interested in animal behavior, the so-called ethology. I even adventured myself in the study of animal behavior several times in a frustrating attempt to understand the communication of birds. So I really appreciate Lorentz’s persistence and let's say a natural talent for doing it for pretty much any animal. For me, the book was super fun to read. It took ages to go through because it is short and I did not want it to end. I just rush it up in the last chapters in order to finish before the birthday of a good friend which I wanted to give the book as a gift. The book is separated in chapters quite independent or each other. Some are especially funny. Here the list of the chapters and I will try to summarize my impressions about each of them in one sentence:

1 - Instructions for people that want to transform their home into a zoo.

2 - For those that are too lazy for a zoo, instructions on how to keep an aquarium.

3 - Still about the aquarium and recommendations of fishes that can do more interesting things than swimming from one corner to the other.

4 - And by choosing the right fishes the aquarium can be so interesting to observe that one can watch a soap opera drama under water.

5 - How animals can be fun to observe and funny way to observe them including edgy situations that almost took Lorentz to a sanatorium.

6 - Animals that deserves pity based on their intelligence: which are the dumbest and the smartest ones. My favorite chapter and here my favorite quote:

"And now for the eagle! hate to shatter the fabulous illusions about this glorious bird, but I must adhere to the truth: all true birds of prey are, compared with passerines or parrots, extremelly stupid creatures." p. 72 

7 - List of animals one can buy, totally not applicable to nowadays rules.

8 - Animals has much less to say that we think.

9 - Water shrews can be insatiable and cruel.

10 - Better having a dog.

11 - But never jackdaws, they can scape easily.

12 - A fox can always give the other face, but humans (and doves) don’t. 

The book is also nicely illustrated with Lorentz drawings. I selected the funniest and the coolest.

1- Funniest. p 64. It illustrates Lorentz’s attempts to replace the mother mallard for the Mallard chicks. When he was trying to figure out the minimum requirements the Mallard chicks would have to take him as their mom he was caught on this weird action:

2 - Cooler. p. 187. When jackdaws perform instructional flights for young ones, they can move the tail side to side as a gestural indication to the young to follow them, just like a ”follow me” sign. I found it super clever and sweet at the same and the drawing so cool that maybe one day I turn it into a tattoo. So far I do not have any.

One might claim Lorentz is anthropomorphic in the way he describes things and sometimes he is and even recognize but try to work around. Impossible not to be. We will always see things through humanized perspective unless we turn into zebras then we will see the world like zebras. I am not supporting the anthropomorphism, I also think it is possible and we should learn how to minimize this unavoidable effect. But Lorentz anthropomorphism does not invalidate his findings, do not take his merit as a dedicated naturalist away and, the most important, give some fun to his narrative.

The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - Douglas Adams (1979)

Hilarious!

------spoiler alert------

I came across this book twice in my life, but just read in the second and I regret that I have not read in the first. In the first, I was still back home when I gave a nerdy book as a nerdy gift for a nerdy friend. The book looked too nerdy for me, I did not dare.  The second experience was more than 10 years later and it started with a cake. Two colleagues of the department were having their farewell and they brought a cake. In this cake was written the following cote:

 ”So long and thanks for all the fish.” p.156

But the word ”fish” was crossed and replaced by finch because we worked with birds and them with zebra finches. I ignored the message and went for the cake, it was d-e-l-i-c-i-u-s! Days later I was commenting how amazing the cake was during lunch in the department kitchen and the colleague that had made the cake was there and she wondered if somebody paid attention to the message of the cake. I did not even have tried, my focuses were on the content. Then we finally ask what did it mean? She explained that it was a quote from a book, a book we all should read. "It can be helpful for scientific writing", she said. Okay, I decided to go for it. I asked the name of the book, took note and look for it in "amazon.de". Until this point I did not know that the nerdy book I gave to my friend and the book I was ordering was the same, the title was in Portuguese when I gave the book to my friend and I did not know the title in English. At a certain point, by doing some research about the author on the internet I got to know it was the same and I felt shocked because I never imagined I would read the nerdy book one day. And know what? It is not nerdy. It is a really psychedelic, funny, but at the same, deep narrative.

The main character is Ford Prefect, I would not be surprised if there is a symbolic meaning in his name. He is the hitchhiker that is writing a travel guide about the galaxy. It can not be crazier! He got stacked on the earth for 15 years and managed to leave by the occasion of the earth demolition together with his dude Arthur Dent, an ordinary earth guy. Arthur is like Alice in the wonderland, he is exploring and discovering the galaxy with the same annoying naiveness. They meet the crazy trio: Zaphod Beeblebrox a crazy motherfucker, Trillian Astra a pretty girl pretty smart just like a girl can be and Marvin, the Paranoid Android, a ”personality” enhanced robot that looks like a satire of the human constant unsatisfaction. They gather together and the adventure starts. Talking like this it looks silly, but silly is everything the book is not. It is rather psychedelic, it seems that Douglas Adams was under heavy drugs when he wrote the book. The narrative is full of crazy and improbable turns, sometimes a bit too crazy for me, it gets on my nerves. Some crazy shit happens they get in trouble, then another crazy shit happens, they survive. Annoying, but hilarious.

The brilliance of the narrative is the deep thought dressed as silly jokes. Several times I got me laughing like hell and in the next second staring at the window thinking about human insignificance in the universe.

It might happen because we, humans, use to think about yourselves from an anthropocentric perspective. We are always proud of your unique brain folding capacity and its implication that actually was given by a simple change in a single gene (ARGAP11B, check the cool paper of Florio et al., 2015) with the same improbability that improbable things happen in the story. In my opinion, the problem is that this mutation and all the others that shape us are taken as a sign of superiority over the other living creatures such as we have deserved it or worked for it. I think this is rather a superficial and ignorant view because it ignores everything we do not know or we do not have the tools to fully understand. And Douglas recurrently breaks this idea in his narrative beautifully in such fine balance of fun, satire, and creativity. So well together like the ingredients of the cake that brought me to the book. 

To give you a bit of the taste of it, here three of my favorite quotes:

"One of the things Ford Prefect has always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually starting an repeating the very very obvious as It's a nice day or You're very tall (...). At first, Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior (...). If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working." p. 48

Ford and Arthur were one more time in trouble. Then Arthur said:

"'You know', said Arthur, ’It’s at times like this when I am trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die for asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ’ What did she tell you?’ ’ I don’t know, I did not listen.’” p.75

Marvin was left behind for a while, meantime he got bored:

”’That ship?’ said Ford in sudden excitement .’What happened to it? Do you know?’ ’It hated me because I talked to it.’ ’You talked to it?’, exclaimed Ford. ’What do you mean you talked to it?’ ’Simple! I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,’ Said Marvin. ’And what happened?’ Pressed  Ford. ’It committed suicide,” said Marvin (...)” p. 214

And the message of the cake? The highlight of the book! It was the message of the dolphins that knew about the demolition of the earth and prepared their departure, prior to their departure they left a message that was intelligible to humans. Intelligible also to such third-world country famine like I!

There is a movie I did not watch yet and I do not want to watch before I am done with the whole series of books.

Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer (2009)

 

Another vegetarian cry against factory farms

------spoiler alert------

I believed in the promise of a unbias survey about eating meat, for example, something like a historical approach that explores eating meat over the time in different civilizations or easily the meat culture in different countries nowadays. Sadly, I got disappointed for two reasons: (1) the book is focused in the present when much the author goes back some centuries, and (2) it is US-centered mentioning other countries almost exclusively in a comparative context. If I was interested in eating meat behavior nowadays in the US, it would be the right book. But even better if I had been interested in factory farming...oh yeees, it would be the perfect book! Factory farming seems a subconscious obsession of Safran and he almost filled the entire book with it:

" I've filled this book with an awful lot of facts because they are a necessary starting point." p. 263

A starting point of 263 pages. Impressive!

Let's overcome this and consider that I really wanted to know more about factory farming and I bought a factory farming book. It would not help to hold my disappointment back because I think Safran waste way too many pages to say what any PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) video is able to show with a bigger impact in 10 min. The description is prolix and the discussion upon is poor. I think the discussion is poor because it is based on a single argument: eating meat is intrinsically immoral. And the author just finds thousands of ways to dress the same argument with different words. The thing develops in a way that somewhere just after the middle of the book his speech even becomes apocalyptic:

"The earth will eventually shake off factory farming like a dog shakes off fleas; the only question is whether we will get shaken off along with." p. 264

I could not avoid painting the picture of people popping out of a frenetically shaking planet. Kinda funny!

Plus a few info that is out of date or unprecise. Two examples:

1 - Eating meat as the activity with biggest environmental impact:

"...no daily choices that we make has a greater impact to the environment." p. 74

A study made in 2017 by researchers from Lundy University calculated the greenhouse gases emission per year associated with individual actions and the one with the highest rank was having a child rather than having an omnivorous diet.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

2 - Avian flu is related to factory farming.

" We can also be sure that any talk of pandemic influenza today cannot ignore the fact that the most devastating disease event the world has ever known, and one of the greatest health threats before us today, has everything to do with the health of the world's farmed animals, birds most of all."  p. 127

The information can be didactically found in the flu's review of Ozawa and Kawaoka (2013) already in the first picture. Despite some theories that do the correlation between flu and factory farming, as Safran mention in the book. It is well accepted that the influenza viruses can have multiple hosts from aquatic mammals, migratory birds, domestic animals, yes, poultry and humans. The line between an epidemia and a pandemia is the movement of this hosts. Enclosed factory farming animals do not cross borders before their death. I do not want to advocate here in favor of the factory farming, just want to point out when the focus of the speech tends to go to imprecise data.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5605753/

Plus a temporal mismatch. The deadliest flu was in 1918, five years before the foundation of the first factory farming.

Okay, let's take the fact that is not meant to be a scientific book in consideration.

Then the author brings testimonies of different people: real farmers, businessman, PETA, all kind. Really cool! All different point of views within their own words. From all these testimonies, for me, as a biologist, the argument that made more sense was the speech of Bill Niman particularly this argument:

"...the norms of natural ecosystem hold boundless wisdom about economy, order, and stability. And meat eating is (and always has been) the norm in nature." p. 218

So true, the book could be summed up into this lines.

The book sells being vegetarian as the most coherent human choice, I partially agree. The part that I do not agree is having compassion as unquestionable reason graved in stone. We are animals just as the others, but compassion is intrinsically human. Did you ever see a starving animal skipping a meal for compassion? It might happen but I would say it is not the rule. Why should we be the only animal that was evolution led to an omnivorous position in the food chain to deliberate replace our position? And replace because of an abstract reason such as compassion is? I do believe in evolution and its wisdom most of the times, platypuses make me skeptical, and I think that the condition shaped by thousands of years might be somehow the best one.

The part I agree is that, indeed, factory farming needs to come to an end for a whole book of 300 pages of reasons. By the way, the book could be renamed: "hundreds of reasons why factory farm must end". Factory farming is run by a bunch of people just like the others, but with way too much power, they can pollute the environment without limit, treat animals as commodities, dictate prices for the market, make their own rules, it is unfair to the other people and it needs to come to an end.

The claim that one will break factory farming only by stop consumption is obviously not working. When one quit eating meat and says "look I did my part" the focus is on the wrong target and the responsibility falls on people without the power that factory farming headers have. At the end of the day, those that do not consume directly factory farming product are affected by the harm they do to the environment as well. As a victim, one must urge for policies that restrict their power rather than look to the side and judge bad your omnivorous dude that sometimes is eating just what he or she can afford. Advocate against things like factory farming is more urgent than ask everybody to go vegetarian. And to request the government to change the laws and complain about the companies all over seems a feasible start for a feasible way to end factory farming. It should be the same as when mining companies pollute, people just do not quite buying every subproduct and act as is everything going on the right track, people fight against, complaint, write emails, sign petitions, urge for politicians to do something about it, people do it actively, why not with factory farming?

Being vegetarian is a way broad issue that per pass cultural values and other things, it is not that straightforward. And being vegetarian itself do not make anybody free from responsibilities. As vegetarian one can rather feed another big powerful corporation that harms the environment as well, we do not know. Plus the food waste, pollution caused by food transportation, unfair working conditions in some manufacturers, and from my point of view the worse is the impact of monoculture on biodiversity. To be proactive and responsible for the origin of the food that goes to our plate is way more important than just being naive and think we are doing the right thing because we become vegetarian.

The classic argumentation is that by quitting eating meat people can instead feed on the grains that today serves to the enclosed farming animals, but the numbers do not match. The book says the actual grains production can easily feed 4 bi famine, the world population is close to 7 bi. In the end, we are way too many and feed all of us is more complex than we treat and the food problem is more heterogeneous than we think. I believe there is not an absolute solution better than regional ones and something like a step back in the direction of a diverse and less centralize process would be a good start. The solution for the food problem is too complex to be treated as manageable by the simply unified adoption of a certain diet.

 

Interesting expressions:

"...not a pie-in-the-sky idea." p. 210 (funny way to say crazy shit)
 "I wholeheartedly agree..." p. 215 (polite replacement for fucking)

E.g.: "This book is a pie-in-the-sky idea and I do wholeheartedly not care if people agree!"

I left the book available to a book swap and within hours it was requested.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1931)

WTF

------spoiler alert------

Reading this book was just like watching one episode of "Black Mirror": I could hear the crack of my skull ... man, so disturbing! But do you know what? I love disturbing books, movies, and series!

I would say "Brave new world" is disturbing because it disrupts concepts that are so deep inside that one might not even be aware of its existence. In order to exemplify what I mean, I will highlight four "what-the-fuck" moments of the book:

1) Capitalism in its maximum expression in a communist framework. Yes, it is possible! How? The government controls literally everything even the production of humans that, in this case, is entirely in vitro. It controls the casts of humans, their duties and how many individuals per cast should be produced. During infancy, the individuals are under strong conditioning of behavior and one thing all of them are conditioned for is consumption! Brilliant isn't it?! The individuals are prepared to live in a community without individuality: no parents, no relatives, no partners, that means, no monogamy or exclusive and possessive relationships. Then love is for the community and solitude is bad, but the lack of individualism does not necessarily imply in common goods, everybody consumes and everybody consumes a lot! Crazy, no!?

2) Ubiquitous happiness tames freedom. The book breaks the romantic view of happiness. Happiness is nothing but conformity. Conformity is nothing but satisfaction. Satisfaction is reachable by conditioning and conditioning tames the freedom. Easy peasy! There was a memorable quote from Mustapha Mond (one of the world controllers) about freedom in their society before the changes that resemble our western society:

"Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole." (page 3).

I think this is so true! In our society freedom and happiness hardly walk together. If so, not for everybody. Right?! Be free to make choices is nice but how far can we really make choices depending on the circumstances in which we are born? Really often we make unrealistic goals end up wanting what we can not have or what we cannot be and consequently unhappy. Like he said at another time:

"And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." (page 181).

3) Fair social stability undissociated from equality. Different casts with different duties but everybody conditioned to be happy with what they are. It is a paradoxical status in which there is not equality but it seems fair. Isn't it?

4) Science for a life without scientific education. Science has a contradictory status. Science is important for human production provides healthy life and good death for everyone. By the way, in the book, people are no longer afraid of death. However, scientific education is inexistent because people do not explore further than what they are conditioned for. Social stability was reached in a way that not only basic science but high art, music, religion and its variant have no reason for existence anymore. See the quote from Mustapha Mond:

"...you can't make tragedies without social instability." (page 180)

Pure true!  Social stability might be fair but it is boring.

The book has two extreme characters: John, the savage, that was born far from the "civilization" and Lenina the extremely conditioned civilized woman. I could not help myself of transporting me to the brave new world and when I did it I found myself in between: not like Lenina, neither like John. I recognized several advantages from social stability, but they have a heavy collateral effect. Would I live without science and art in order to leave a "perfect" social stability? Would you? Well, at least we would have some soma (a drug to get high without consequences)!

I watched the movie...bullshit! It changed the order of the things from the book to make it chronological and easier but destroyed the surprise effect. Super boring!

Brave New World - movie

Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell (2013)

Stupid kids in love

A friend offered the book to me with a warning about the silly content. I tried anyway and now I regret for such a waste of time! First, because love stories are not my taste. Second, because the characters and background could not be more stereotypical: a troubled girl with an Asian looking boy (by the way, he is into martial arts, it couldn't be more stereotypical) both meeting in the bus, hating each other at the first moment, but falling in love at the second. Eleanor and Park...ha! Surprise surprise!

Eleanor is the only reason why I finished the book, I felt sorry for her all the time. She had such a miserable life without asking for it. And, indeed, if you are a reader with the minimum of empathy, you would feel the same. She is the hook! While Park is an ordinary kid with ordinary family and ordinary thoughts, nothing further.

It made me remember how unrealistic, exaggerated, superficial and fragile the concept of love is when we are young and inexperienced (some people refuse to overcome this phase). What did I learn from that? Two new words for my English vocabulary: aisle and porch.

Youngs, 80ties, new wave, love, broken hearts and tragedy seems to be the formula for teenagers' books to become best sellers. After watching the movie "The fault in our stars" and the series "13 reasons why", "Eleanor and Park" looks like a déjà vu.

"aisle"

a passage between rows of seats in a building such as a church or theater, an airplane, or a train

i.e. "Here it comes the stupid kid though the aisle!"

"porch"

a covered shelter projecting in front of the entrance of a building.

i.e. "In the US one might have so much space to build a house that one can even build a porch in front of it"

The Game (Victor the Assassin #3) - Tom Wood (2013)

Bloody

I found this book digging for something in English in a box with books "zu verschenken" left by a good soul on the street. I did not make any idea what it was about if I should not read just due pure prejudice. I was never a big fan of action/spy stories until I met "Victor"! I got so into this book that for a couple of times I lost the train stop I should leave because I was reading. I carried the book everywhere to read in all free spots I had. Once I forgot the book in the gym, I am a really unregular visitant of the gym, but in the week I lost the book, I was there almost every day trying to retrieve it without success. So I bought the same book again just to know to end.

This book actually is the third one from a series that Tom Wood started to write in 2010. Since then he has been producing almost one book per year so now we have seven of them. All of them with Victor as the protagonist: the most motherfucker assassin of the world! Victor is cold as the German winter, so cold that at a certain point I hypothesized he was a kind of psychopath. I even asked Tom Wood in his profile in Goodreads if he thinks Victor is a psychopath and he gave enough arguments to think Victor is not. More than Victor's ability to kill is his capacity to predict and avoid to be killed. He is all the time expecting to be killed what gives him an amazing perception of what moves around him and if the scene he is in contains a threat. The way Victor does perceive threats is beautifully described. Indeed one of the highlights of the book.

The action scenes are another great point, so greatly done that I can feel the blood's smell! I have the impression that Tom Wood does not waste a line describing something that is not important for the whole picture of the scene. In my perspective, the description looks precise and succinct. The succinctness is what brings an amazing dynamic upon the narrative, a paragraph is never a waste of time. I particularly hate massive rich descriptions, for me they are dispensable. It was exactly the overdone details that make me quit reading "The Game of Thrones" in the first book not further than the third chapter. By the end of the third chapter, I was not able to remember the name of the characters in the first. It was exhausting, I felt mentally abused! This is definitively not the case of "The Game": no thrones and much more action!

The problem is that Victor is so good at what he does that it does not look real. Okay, the book is a fiction, but Victor is supposed to be human, no superpowers, right? Sometimes it looks like he has. The certainty that he is going to be alive in the end of the book breaks a bit of the suspense. Being sure that Victor is going to survive even when he is in a deep shitty trouble breaks the surprise effect. At this point, I just think: "okay, how is he going to escape this time?". Appart of the predictability, I can not get enough of Victor. I already bought the first book and the idea is going through all the seven of them as soon as possible! I am really looking forward writing about the other books!

Victor the assassin - more info

Das geheimnisvolle Spukhaus (Ich schenk dir eine Geschichte #21) - Henriette Wich (2017)

Yes, I read a book for kids and I am writing about it!

I am really proud anyhow because it was the first book completely in German I was able to read and understand in my life. At first, I tried "Das Perfum" from Patrick Susskind for two stupid reasons: his name was in the first lesson of my German book and my ignorance made me ask the teacher what "susskind" means wondering if it was an adjective for cute kids, absolutely embarrassing! I heard from the teacher that he was one world-known German writer and I did not know him, I heard about the movie that I also did not watch, shame on me. Later came the second discovery, he is still alive and living just on the other opposite side of the lake in the city I used to live Starnberg. Okay, I bought the book in its original version, hardcore German and tried... three pages later and the only thing I understood was: there was a man in Paris, not much, right? So I decided to put the level down and to start with a book for kids. I started with "Das geheimnisvolle Spukhaus" because the book was laying at home asking to be read. No expectations, good surprises! The narrative is straightforward, nothing to elucubrate about. However, Henriette Wich included a surprise element in the story: a real item of ancient history in the middle of the fantasy, totally unexpected. She convinced me by my enthusiasm with ancient history. At the end of the book, there was a note where to find the real Roman treasure mentioned in the story. Then, I not only enriched my German vocabulary, but also included a museum to visit in my to do list. I felt like I gained. Mannomann!

"Mannomann"

interjection! Innocent way to say "what the fuck"!

i.e. "Der Mann ist tot...Mannomann!"

More info about the book

The circle - Dave Eggers (2013)

A slow story with easy characters

------spoiler alert------

The circle is a book about an extreme future when privacy will no longer exist. The topic per si is interesting, but the venue where the story drives on is far too long. In the beginning, one can find several analogies with the Circle and Google on how they can create tools to provide a totally personalized virtual world. So far the thing is somehow worth to read. At a certain point, the chiefs of the company (Bailey and Stenton) turn into such evil that I had the impression that I was reading some sort of superhero bullshit (that I particularly hate) which the villain plans to dominate the world. Sorry for the spoiling, but they do complete their evil plan thanks to the easy thinking Mae (the most boring main character ever) that cannot question anything in any moment acting just like a pirate's parrot. The ongoing of the history is easily predictable with a what the fuck non-surprising end. The way it ends gives the impression that Eggers is planning a continuity, if so, please, not with Mae. If the 504 pages could be shorted into 54, then the book would have a chance of being truly exciting. The highlight of the book for me was learning the world jeopardized. I would watch the movie just to hear how to spell this word. Nevertheless, it was nice to read.

"jeopardize"

put (someone or something) into a situation in which there is a danger of loss, harm, or failure.

i.e. "This book jeopardized my day!"

I watched the movie. First, it is worse than the book. Second, Emma Watson did not spell the word "jeopardize". Disappointing!

The Circle - movie

A história do Brasil para quem tem pressa - Marcos Costa (2015)

O título já anuncia a brevidade da coisa, breve sim, mas não superficial. É curto e grosso!

Estudamos a história do Brasil de forma fragmentada na escola, parece que não há conexão entre os fatos, fica chato, mas nesse livro, não, é tudo rápido, interligado e em sequência, muito animado, bem mais excitante que The Game of Thrones! Ele explica a bagunça que impera no Brasil desde que essas terras foram apossadas pelos portugueses que sem planejamento logístico algum foram descarregando no Brasil as consequências de sua falta de visão. Imediatismo, corrupção, e uma série de burradas monumentais foram conduzindo esse país desde a colonização. A explicação para um país tão politicamente volúvel e imaturo está ai, entende-se o porquê de tanta incoerência política quando se conhece a história. Um país onde as decisões sempre foram conduzidas por interesses econômicos de uma minoria enquanto o povo é puro expectador de sua história não pode ter resultado em uma democracia que possa ser levada a sério. Não há um episódio sequer na história com plena participação popular, nenhum! Todas as grandes fatos históricos, tais como abolição da escravatura, independência, proclamação da república, foram arquitetados ora para atender interesses de elites inglesas, portuguesas ou locais. Após a leitura desse livro fica mais que claro que o Brasil sempre foi palco para articulação política com motivação econômica e o povo sempre platéia. Recomendadíssimo, mas aborrece e desestimula!