124 posts tagged with "in-English"

I have just finished my read-some-old-presents period. The last casualty has been this “All my friends are going to be strangers” by Larry McMurtry. McMurtry is, among other things, the winner of a Pulitzer prize and co-author of the screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain”. My uncle gave this book to me three years ago.

Even if I'm not as capable of a good review as malglam, here follows a brief opinion on the novel.

I found it difficult at the beginning to identify myself with the main character, or any of the other characters; the main reason being their exaggerated impulsiveness and ability to switch from love to anger and back. I'm very cerebral and sometimes take ages to make decisions; so reading about people who get married one week after meeting their partner for the first time or give away their car to a couple of hitchhikers, that tinged a bit the story with irreality. Characters that were being friendly the minute before, become suddenly crazy and start insulting or beating each other. Complete strangers seem open and generous as if they were good old friends of the main character's. There are surrealistic situations and dialogs, too; but I laughed with some of those.

“I have no real resistance to temptation, drunk or sober. […] I just don't have any moral coordination.”

“I had known all along that my brain was not going to win any fights ─ or impress any girls.”

Despite of this, I discovered that I was glad to read again about credible feelings of human beings in a realistic story. I had been missing that before. I had been lately going out with elves, spiders and psychokinetic teens. But this is a novel whose ingredients are writers, literature, friends, girlfriends, love, sex, loneliness and the search for happiness. And it's easy to read. So I got hooked.

Now the interesting thing is that by the middle of the book I started to feel empathetic with the main character, this young writer-to-be divided between his love for things (books, of course) and his love for people (women, no doubt), feeling utterly alone and more and more different from anyone he knows, without a clue about where he will be in a few days time, nor about how to find happiness.

“He had long ago concluded that I didn' lead a normal life.”

“All the furniture of my life had been changed around.”

“All the people I had things in common with were thousands of miles away.”

I liked the in crescendo that are the last chapters, and the end of the book, too. In general, I think I liked this book.

Reading others' presents before tackling the pila may let you discover books that otherwise you would had missed.

Thanks to the visit of my friends Helio & Puri last month, I went at last to Forbidden Planet, a shop (the shop) for scifi/fantasy/comic/manganime/figure/game-flavoured freaks in London :¬)

It's blissful, a nerdy paradise. Two pretty large floors full up with books, graphic novels, manga, magazines, figures, games and DVD's. Fortunately, photos are allowed (as long as you don't take any photo of the tills [?]) so here there are some images of the interior of the store.

I reassert my early appreciation about London: the best things it has are its parks and its bookshops.

Via Chewie's well-formed strings I discover “Even Stevphen”, the section that Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert have in “The Daily Show” (Comedy Central). It's a delightful exercise of intelligent humour in an elegant format.

I was just about to post their wonderful debate on medical marihuana, but I decided that this rational discussion about Islam vs. Christianity is even better.

BTW, Colbert is that one famous journalist that spoke for 24 minutes during the last White House Correspondents Dinner, corageously making so much fun of Bush and his administration. Chewie and I recommend not to miss that video, neither. (If you did read last month's “Wired”, you already know who he is).

Politics in Spain is dead boring. At least this is so when comparing with other countries.

I first realized this fact the year I lived in Italy. Italian politicians and parties are more diverse, brave and spontaneous than their Spanish counterparts. The ideological range is much wider, from the communists and radicals (Pannella, Bonino) to the nostalgic xenophobic neofascists (Bossi, Berlusconi). Not to mention the permanent inner fights in the leftish and Catholic parties (L'ulivo, La margherita, Prodi) and the fascinating tentacles of the Catholic Church. Many topics that in Spain are sort of taboo or understood ─civil war, gay rights, laicism vs. Catholicism, manipulation in the media─ are passionately discussed in Italy.

Now I find this George Galloway, a British MP that reminds me of Marco Pannella. Via my new flatmate I discovered this TV clip in which Galloway is interviewed in Sky News on the Lebanon vs. Israel crisis.

From Galloway's very first answer it's crystal clear that the interview is going to be anything but boring. This is a completely different point of view on international politics than the one the mainstream media show in their news. And Galloway puts forward his ideas in such a simple and passionate way that you can't but feel empathic with him. (And pity the newsreader who interviews him).

I also found a rough transcript of the debate.

Stimulating at the least, definitely you don't see these things in Spanish TV.