goodreads – Page 15 – Cubilone's Dimension

Review: Dale Carnegie’s Lifetime Plan for Success: How to Win Friends and Influence People & How to stop worrying and start living

Dale Carnegie’s Lifetime Plan for Success: How to Win Friends and Influence People & How to stop worrying and start living by Dale Carnegie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book’s title is so very easily misunderstandable. It’s sort of like all the conspiracy theory videos out there. People will catch a wiff of “global elite” or “federal reserve” and will turn their noses straight up in a matter of seconds. Conspiracy “sceptics” have poisoned so many wells, its a miracle that remote villages the world over haven’t yet been completely wiped out.

The reason its title is so misunderstandable is because, similarly to the alleged conspiracy theorists, it alludes to techniques and practices used in picking up women or something; devious hypocrisies of socially challenged, sad little people that practice their speech in front of mirrors and reduce human contact to rules and habits; strategists of human contact that know about as much of real bonding between people as a typical child knows about chickens from its early rearing on McNuggets.

In a nutshell:

Six Ways To Make People Like You

Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile.
Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other man’s interest.
Make people feel important, and do it sincerely.

Twelve Ways Of Winning People To Your Way Of Thinking

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Show respect for the other man’s opinions. Never tell a man he is wrong.
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Begin in a friendly way.
Get people saying “yes, yes” immediately.
Let other people do a great deal of talking.
Let other people feel that the idea is theirs.
Try honestly to see things from the other man’s point of view.
Be sympathetic with other people’s ideas and desires.
Appeal to the nobler motives.
Dramatize your ideas.
Throw down a challenge.

Nine Ways To Change People Without Giving Offense Or Arousing Resentment

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other man.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Let the other man save face.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.
Give people a fine reputation to live up to.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Make other people happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Mr. Dale Carnegie in his book that gave birth to the self-help genre is suggesting, simply put, that we care about others. That’s about it. A little active interest can go a long way, whether its for other people’s sense of pride, problems, aspirations or interests. If “How to Win Friends and Influence People” does something excellently in its quaint, ’30s American way of dealing with things, is to show how in our self-centredness we forget how much we like other people treating us since we so often refrain from doing it ourselves.

The awesome thing about the list above is that the book doesn’t suggest you do these things just to win others over and be likeable, it doesn’t tell you: “OK you loser, this is what people like so you better do it. Of COURSE I know you hate being kind and interested in others, you’re a self-obsessed bastard like all of us, time to quit acting like a loser and be a champion”. No. That’s the end, or course: improving the quality of your social life; but the means is being a better person in all honesty, someone who others would like to be with and share things with because, damn, it’d be worth it! What can ever be wrong with that? In fact, we see so little of the above these days that suspicion is immediately raised when people seem to be genuinely interested in others. What can I say? Let’s stick to being nice for a change and see what happens!

After reading this book I didn’t come out thinking that I knew how to better “make people like me”, “win people to my way of thinking” or “change people without giving offense”. I don’t even want to make people like me or win people over; I just want to be kind to others for the pure joy of it! In all actuality, I now feel that the titles above are there only to lure unsuspected people in and help them, by the end of the book, get over the limitations and close-mindedness of wanting to “change people over to their way of thinking”.

View all my reviews

Review: The Joyous Cosmology

The Joyous Cosmology by Alan Wilson Watts

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Seldom before have I read 30 pages of printed .pdf so tightly packed with meaning. A lot of it was profound, written in a time when psychedelic substances were a new unexplored area of the human experience. Research was being done on their medical and other properties (with Watts being sceptical about whether the proper environment for relative experimentation really was research laboratories and clinics). It was an innocent time, before the powers that be had really found out about what a gaping hole into their walls of modern vices their initial allowance of the use of LSD and mushrooms had blown.

“The active and the passive are two phases of the same act. A seed, floating in its white sunburst of down, drifts across the sky, sighing with the sound of a jet plane invisible above. I catch it by one hair between thumb and index finger, and am astonished to watch this little creature actually wriggling and pulling as if it were struggling to get away. Common sense tells me that it is the “intelligence” of the seed to have just such delicate antennae of silk that, in an environment of wind, it can move. Having such extensions, it moves itself with the wind. When it comes to it, is there any basic difference between putting up a sail and pulling an oar? If anything, the former is a more intelligent use of effort than the latter. True, the seed does not intend to move itself with the wind, but neither did I intendo to have arms and legs.”

Descriptions of powerful and deep insights only possible during a psychedelic trip are what the meat and potatoes of The Joyous Cosmology is. It’s a journey with the aid of these substances to planes of thought and existence impossible before to reach, far away from the egoistic mind and squarely in the consciousness behind the thinking mind. It’s a story of a temporarily selfless being experiencing the world.

It’s very hard to describe actually. I’m not at all sure if anything from this book stuck with me for good, but I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to, in the same way that powerful psychedelic trips are fleeting and strong cosmological realisations during them feel like dreams after the trip is over. Tim Leary warns in the foreword that this is a difficult book. Perhaps a couple of powerful entheogenic experiences are indeed the correct required “reading” for tackling it. The fact that the substances needed for having these experiences are almost ubiquitously illegal says much more about the laws, the lawmakers behind them and their intentions, than it does about the substances themselves.

View all my reviews

Review: Replay

Replay by Ken Grimwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I started replaying Majora’s Mask a few weeks ago and that was enough reason for me to start looking again for books, movies or other games with a similar central idea. Replay appears to be the original work of fiction which examined this particular kind of thought experiment this exhaustively. In Replay, it’s not three days or a single day like in Groundhog Day –which this book directly inspired; it’s 25 years.

The concept sounded very exciting — if you’re fan of this narrative gimmick like I am, of course. 25 years sounds like enough time for anyone to be able to do pretty much anything they want in and live comfortably. What could possibly go wrong with Jeff’s new life, what could possibly produce any kind of drama and make the book interesting? Well, let’s just say that long-term relationships, including families, don’t exactly thrive on such circumstances…

Every replay was a mystery and the possibilities were spreading out in front of me together with Jeff every time he returned to 1963. But I could not always identify with some of his choices or the way he opted to handle some matters, like

Spoiler

meeting his wife on the first replay or him being content with Judy but subsequently forgetting about her almost completely.

I also thought it was sloppy writing having all the sporting events conveniently turn out exactly the same way every time. In what kind of cause-effect comological system do teams of players play exactly the same way, the same horses come first 25 years in 25 years out? This story could have a lot of extra worth as a feast of alternate history but unfortunately it does not deliver anywhere close to what it could, apart fromthat little bit close to the end when

Spoiler

Jeff and Pamela go public. Now that I think about it, I don’t know how much different I would make every replay if I was writing this story. Too much difference between every time and the story loses its main antagonist (the repetition of time itself) and becomes boring, too little, ditto.

I gusss Ken Grimwood (great name for a writer, btw) wanted to have the best of both a clockwork and a quantum theory world.

Another of my qualms:

Spoiler

Pamela wasn’t the most likeable character. I even found her annoying at times, especially closer to the end, when she gets angry at Jeff for approaching her old self (and he rightly protests). It got me thinking, what do people love in another person? Their personality, the memories they have together? Would it ever be possible to compare and contrast the two? Would it be considered cheating going out with a version of your loved one that has no recollection of you, you know everything about them and the newer version catches you red-handed? Interesting questions, interesting questions.

You know what? Now I want to watch Star Sea. It would be my favourite movie ever. I bet I’d also be one of the geeks that liked Continuum.

View all my reviews

Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another work I enjoyed in Audiobook form, this one from LibriVox — Oscar Wilde comfortably belongs to the public domain, after all. Most of the voice actors were quite good, especially given the fact that most, if not all, of them were amateurs. As always, however, no measure of generalisation can capture the full spectrum of reality; some of the actors were bored with the text and were yawn-inspiring and others were very much into their role. By the end it was impossible for me to disconnect those actors’ voices from their respective characters!

So, what about The Importance of Being Earnest as a script, as a work by the great Oscar Wilde? It’s a fairly standard play. I mean that in the sense that everything falls into place by the end, it has a first, second and third act, all clearly defined. The characters are as delightfully unrealistic as they perfectly working symbols of late 19th century upper-class England. Even the surprises of the plot are carefully measured, predictably unpredictable. That said, it’s excellent insofar as standard, classic plays go. It’s rather a lot like anything perfect, be it a book, a film, a person or a work of culinary art: ultimately forgettable. The little quirks so common in contemporary, postmodern art add much-needed flavour to things. Some would say that lack of such quirks in any given work, especially by Oscar Wilde and others of his time and prestige, could count as proof of its timeless quality. I wouldn’t have any qualms with that opinion, even though for me the quirks are the soul of any piece of art.

Note: I still enjoyed it, laughed a lot with it and would attend a performance of it in a heartbeat.

View all my reviews

Review: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I… um… “enjoyed” The Power of Now in audiobook form — difficult choice of words here because “read” would be a lie and “listened to” would make it Power of Now sound like a song. I guess audiobooks need their own transitive verb now. Anyway.

Audiobooks have their strengths and weaknesses, obviously. I had the pleasure to enjoy the Power of Now as I was exploring a part of my city that had long been invitingly mysterious and still. The setting reinforced the listening and vice versa. The experience would have certainly been very different had I visually read the book in that jungle of reed. Those hours of exploration are now inseperably interwoven with the listening in my mind. I touched the Power of Now as described in the book while I was there; my attention was not in the past, nor in the future, it was squarely focused on my ears and eyes. I didn’t finish it during that exploration, however, and most of my subsequent listenings were rife with inattention. I thus have problems now remembering which parts I do not have any recollection of; I have no page to turn to. When you’re visually reading a book, the lack of memory is connected with an image related to the book — perhaps a page number or even the visual arrangement of the page, the shape of all the letters in tandem jumping out to create a subconscious bookmark. When aurally reading a book, this image is connected with the surroundings, especially if one listens to the book when using mass transit and all kinds of faces and other people are there to capture the attention and fantasy in ways reeds cannot.

Enough with describing the medium. The book in itself is very good. I did not find Tolle awfully didactic and the Q&As through which he chose to convey his teachings were satisfactory catalysts for bringing out what he wanted to say. Neither was I annoyed with his “recycling” of old teachings; essentially, that’s what religions have been doing anyway, repackaging old wisdom in different flavours. His message is more important and relevant now than it ever was, what with our lifestyle crisis and general existential confusion: 1) There is no past or future, only present. Giving in to dominance of the mind filters out true consciousness and presence (as in being in the moment wherever and whenever one is, not in the past and future) 2) People’s minds are imposters pretending to be their true selves and worrying about all sorts of things when there is no real reason for it.

What I found slighlty annoying was his insistence on quoting Jesus. Then again, my being annoyed with Jesus is only part of being disgusted by the church and naturally connecting hiw with it. That is however, as I understand it, a logical fallacy (I would like to mention at this point that discrediting the book because Oprah popularised it is comitting the very same fallacy). To do Tolle justice he does say that he’s not in that way supporting Christianity over other religions (he often quotes Buddha as well as other enlightened figures of the past), he’s merely putting Jesus’ words ouf ot the context of that religion and into the context of the shared meaning behind all religions, of course with added stress to Eastern philosophies which emphasise more strongly on those aspects than the –generally moralistic– monotheistic ones.

Now that I’m trying to sum up the actual contents of this book I’m finding it hard to describe, even though I think I did get the gist of it. If I knew how to accurately and meaningfully reproduce it I wouldn’t have felt the need to read it. I guess “true wisdom cannot be shared through words; it lies within and waits for the right wake up call”. Yep, it’s one of those…

View all my reviews

Review: Εκατό χρόνια μοναξιά

Εκατό χρόνια μοναξιά by Gabriel García Márquez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Λίγες φορές έχουμε την ευκαιρία στον χώρο της λογοτεχνίας ή της καλλιτεχνικής αφήγησης να παρατηρήσουμε την ιστορία μιας ολόκληρης οικογένειας αντί μόνο ενός χαρακτήρα. Στην περίπτωση του Εκατό Χρόνια Μοναξιά, δεν προκείται απλά για μια οικογένεια ως ένα σημείο στον χρόνο –«αυτοί είναι οι γονείς, αυτά είναι τα παιδιά, αυτό είναι το ευρύτερο σόι, ας βουτήξουμε στην δράση»– αλλά για μια οικογένεια της οποίας την ζωή και την ιστορία διαβάζουμε λες και ήταν ενός ανθρώπου, με την γέννηση του, την ακμή του, την παρακμή του, τις κακές συνήθειες και τις εμμονές του.

Οι Μπουενδία (Καλημέρηδες!) είναι μια καταραμένη οικογένεια σε έναν υπερρεαλιστικό κόσμο, με την έννοια του hyper-real και όχι του sur-real, αν και για να είμαι ειλικρινής πολλά από τα σουρεαλιστικά που κάνουν την εμφάνιση τους στο βιβλίο με κάνουν να αναρωτιέμαι για το ποια ακριβώς είναι η διαφορά. Συμπρωταγωνιστής αυτής της καταραμένης οικογένειας είναι το Μακόντο, το χωριό που ιδρύει ο πρώτος Χοσέ Αρκάδιο Μπουενδία και η γυναίκα του Ούρσουλα σε βάλτους της Λατινικής Αμερικής που δίνει την αίσθηση του πιο απομονωμένου μέρους του κόσμου.

Στο Μακόντο, η ζωή είναι περίπου όπως την ξέρουμε αλλά όχι ακριβώς. Οι άνθρωποι ερωτεύονται για όλη τους την ζωή, κλείνονται σε δωμάτια τα οποία η σκόνη δεν αγγίζει ποτέ, οι Άραβες πουλάνε ιπτάμενα χαλιά τα οποία είναι ένα καθημερινό και συνηθισμένο θέαμα. Όλα σε αυτόν τον κόσμο δίνουν την αίσθηση της αχαλίνωτης υπερβολής: αν ζήσεις πολύ, θα ζήσεις πάνω από 140 χρόνια. Το πάθος θα είναι ολοκληρωτικό και αδύνατο κανείς να του αντισταθεί και οι επιμιξίες αποτελούν μικρό εμπόδιο, οι βεντέτες θα κρατάνε μια ζωή ή και περισσότερο, οι φόνοι είναι τρομακτικά βίαιοι. Οι Τραγωδίες κάνουν την εμφάνιση τους μόνο με Τ κεφαλαίο. Στον κόσμο του Μακόντο, αν ξεράσεις μια πράσινη γλίτσα γεμάτη βδέλες δεν θα υπάρχει κανένας λόγος ανησυχίας. Οτιδήποτε το αφάνταστα φρικιαστικό μπορεί να πάρει πραγματική μορφή αλλά κανείς δεν θα του ρίξει δεύτερη ματιά, είναι άλλωστε όλοι συνηθισμένοι σε φαντάσματα, τέρατα, παιδιά με γουρουνίσιες ουρές. Είναι μια απολαυστικά ενισχυμένη έκδοση της πραγματικότητας η οποία παραμένει παραταύτα εξαιρετικά ρεαλιστική, όσο αντιφατικό και αν ακούγεται αυτό. Ακολουθεί το σκεπτικό του αν οι άνθρωποι πιστεύουν σε κάτι, αυτό αρκεί για να το κάνει πραγματικό. Ο Μάρκες παίρνει αυτή την ιδέα, την φέρνει χίλιες βόλτες κι εμείς είμαστε οι εκστατικοί επιβάτες.

Υπό αυτές τις συνθήκες, η ομώνυμη μοναξιά που χτυπάει την οικογένεια των Μπουενδία είναι πραγματικά ασφυκτική. Γιατί όπως όλα σε αυτό το βιβλίο, η χαζομάρα, η τρέλα και οι φοβίες παίρνουν και αυτές δραματικές διαστάσεις. Τέτοιες διαστάσεις που εμποδίζουν ή γεννάνε μεγάλους έρωτες, κρατάνε παιδιά κλεισμένα σε χρυσά κλουβιά σκαλισμένα με ασημένιους καθολικούς σταυρούς, διαστρευλώνουν και αφαιρούν από τον ιστό της πραγματικότητας μακελειά και πολέμους, σκοτώνουν την χαρά της ζωής. Οι Μπουενδία είναι μια δυστυχισμένη φάρα από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος της. Η τραγική της μοίρα κρύβει πολλές ειρωνίες της μοίρας. Μια εξ αυτών βρήκα ιδιαίτερα μεγάλη: τον ρόλο της Πιλάρ Τερνέρα στην διαιώνιση των Μπουενδία. Δεν θα γράψω τίποτα περισσότερο για να μην αποκαλύψω περισσότερα απ’όσα θα ήθελε να ξέρει κάποιος ο οποίος δεν έχει ακόμα διαβάσει το βιβλίο. Όπως λέει συχνά και η Ούρσουλα, εν μέρει συνένοχη του αναγνώστη, η τραγική ειρωνεία επαναλαμβάνεται και κάνει κύκλους σε αυτή την οικογένεια η οποία ποτέ δεν μαθαίνει από τα λάθη της και κάθε γενιά είναι γραφτό της να τα επαναλάβει. Πόση αλήθεια του κόσμου δεν κρύβεται σε αυτές τις γραμμές; Αυτό ακριβώς αντικατοπτρίζει και η επιλογή των ίδιων ονομάτων για τα παιδιά των Μπουενδία (πόσοι Αουρελιάνο πια!! Ήταν πραγματικά χρήσιμο το οικογενειακό δέντρο στην αρχή του βιβλίου και κατάφερνε να μην σποϊλεριάζει) η οποία στην αρχή είναι μεν κουραστική αλλά όσο προχωράει το βιβλίο αποκτάει ξεχωριστή σημασία. Η μοίρα των Μπουενδία μπορεί να μην αντικατοπτρίζεται πουθενά καλύτερα απ’ότι στο αρχοντικό τους και την κατάσταση του, την επέκταση και την φθορά με τις δεκαετίες.

Στα Εκατό Χρόνια Μοναξιά, η αλληγορία των Μπουενδία συναντά αυτόν τον υπέροχο υπερ-ρεαλισμό και μαζί δημιουργούν μια συναρπαστική ιστορία η οποία δεν χάνει από πουθενά. Η γενεαλογία των Μπουενδία και η ιστορία της μου κέντρισε το ενδιαφέρον για το τι σημαίνουν οι πρόγονοι και οι γενεαλογίες για τους ανθρώπους γενικότερα — ίσως έχει να κάνει και με το ότι έχω μικρή οικογένεια, καθόλου αδέρφια και ελάχιστους θείους/ες. Τα έξτρα στοιχεία όπως η ματιά στην παράδοση, στην θρησκευτική και «μεταφυσική», γιατί στο Μακόντο δεν υπάρχει μεταφυσική, μόνο φυσική, πίστη και στην ιστορία της Λατινικής Αμερικής, τουλάχιστον της πατρίδας του Μάρκες Κολομβίας, είναι το αλατοπίπερο της διήγησης. Προετοιμάζομαι ήδη να το διαβάσω και στα ισπανικά. Δεν με νοιάζει πόσο θα μου χρειαστεί: θα το καταφέρω!

View all my reviews

Review: The Human Evasion

The Human Evasion by Celia Elizabeth Green

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this book, Celia Green tries to deconstruct the term ‘sanity’. She argues that sanity is only an evasion taken on by people to avoid looking at reality and the whole spectrum of problems it brings with it, e.g. how little of the world we know or can, as humans, ever know; or the knowledge that our presence in the world is finite and therefore could be deemed as pointless, etc. In other words, sane people get used to dealing with problems concerning their relationships with other humans so as not to have to deal with reality and their finiteness. “Dealing with reality” is avoiding reality. Curiously, sane people do not seem to be aware of the fact and may insist that they are taking reality head-on while telling fellow humans more concerned with otherworldly or trans-human issues (in the sense of transendence, not transhumanism) that they are not dealing with reality.

An interesting book and one I that I wish to read again, if only because I feel that reading it off a screen somehow reduced my retention even if it is a short read. It is fully available on deoxy.org, which looks as if it has many other interesting articles, books and opinions that can go a long way in challenging the conceived sanity of most.

View all my reviews

Review: Mostly Harmless

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Imagine you’re Douglas Adams in 1992. You’ve relatively recently done Last Chance to See and have added “interest in wildlife and evolution” to your already unusually large toolbox of inspiration and influences. This new way of looking at the world has alarmed you about the state of things and has filled you with a reserved pessimism; not that your previous work can be said to have been optimistic — unless aloof nihilism can double for optimism, which is of course, by itself, a matter of some discussion. Perfectly not primed, you return to that same greatest achievement that made you famous 8 years after last leaving readers at an already sad cliffhanger (that’s all I can say for the end of “Thanks For All the Fish” — no, it doesn’t get better than that). What do you do then? Being a jerk at this point is an understandable, if not very bold, move. That is exactly what you go on to do.

Douglas Adams has said that the period in which he wrote Mostly Harmless was a bleak one for his personal life; one can certainly tell. Oh yes. In the world of H2G2 everything somehow worked out for our heroes, improbability always on their side no matter how fantastic, dangerous or humorously absurd (usually all three) the scenario. Let’s just say that, this time around, not even improbability itself is spared from all this bleakness.

Even if in subsequent itterations of the series the ending of H2G2 has been altered to be more cheerful or even expanded in the form of a sixth book by Eoin Colfer, the fact is that this was Douglas Adams last word on the matter before his death in 2001. I think it is shocking, of course I do. But it somehow still fits with Adams’ vision of his Universe. Aloof nihilism is still the ultimate universal force this part of the Whole Sort Of General Mish Mash; only this time, this same universal force works against everything the reader has come to expect or wish. Oh well. Same shit, different space-time continuum. At the same time, this bleakness serves to colour the humour black — and there’s no shortage of humour in this one either: in typical Adams fashion, the humour is funny because it rings true. To me, that’s what H2G2 is all about. Therefore I don’t think it’s any worse than book 4; to tell the truth I would place them together just a notch below the first three.

To put it all together in a nice little summary that may be able to say, in its brevity, more than all of the above: Mostly Harmless is just the opposite side of the coin that is H2G2, the first four books being the first side; still absurd, still funny, still clever, still making social critique, still eloquent. Only this time, it doesn’t give a Belgium.

View all my reviews

Review: 344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment

344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment by Stefan G. Bucher

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“The more honest you are with yourself as you go through the book, and the more notes you make in it, the more valuable it will become to you. That’s why this book is small, fexible, and doesn’t cost a lot of money. I want you to take it with you when you go to woek, keep it in your bag, and scribble into it as answers occur to you. Don’t keep this book clean! Mess it up! Write in it freely! Doodle! Put a rubber band around it, so that you can keep interesting articles and extra pages of notes in it. If you keep this book in mint condition, I’ve failed. Because a tattered, bust-up book-filled out and scribbled upon — means you’ve found out new things about yourself and you’re inspired to take action”.

I would heartily agree, Mr. Bucher. A tattered, note-filled book is an addition to every person’s fossil registry of personal story and evolution. It really is a crying shame this book does not inspire any of this. Unavoidably I must come to the heart-wrenching conclusion that you have failed.

First of all, how do you expect, no, demand from people to write on a book made entirely of glossy paper? Have you ever tried writing with a pencil on this material? I always hated my English textbooks for this very reason. Unless this is some indication that you want our answers to be set in Bic ink — hardly the point of the book as you must have planned it Mr. Bucher, I would entertain the thought — the selection of materials is the first poor design choice to come out of this book. I might have actually tried writing with a pen but the subconscious connections with English teachers with terrible Greek accents I so naively thought I had left far behind, ultimately overpowered me.

Then, what sort of questions are these? They gave me the feeling they were either too sterilised or trying too hard to be witty and/or innovative. Most of the book consists of questions that require you to either be extremely honest with yourself or have remarkable skills of self-knowledge to properly answer, mostly both: “What are you doing to sabotage yourself?”, “What are you going to be doing in the next 60 years?”, “Do you prefer your inner or your outer life?”, “How do you handle too much success?”, “How much can you whore yourself out?” etc. They’re insightful questions, but if I were in any position to actually be able to return equally insightful answers, I wouldn’t be interested in buying this book in the first place. If I could answer all these questions as easily as the book has this passive-aggressive aura about it that it’s really possible, I would already be everything I want, can, have or haven’t ever dreamed to be.

OK, let’s say that answering the questions would actually evolve me into such an Übermensch. The auxilliary questions meant to help you on every page, along with the whole flowchart thing going on that makes no sense and if I really followed it I would never even reach half of the questions (how can you have several arrows pointing towards a box in a flowchart, but no arrows pointing outwards and still have it be workable?), are not much better than the main questions themselves. I don’t know if designers use flowcharts –they probably do– but this book would definitely be enough to drive any programmer to insanity!

Some of the less ambitious questions pack some punch and made me think as well as laugh. This is the reason this is getting 2 stars instead of only 1.

This sterilised, efficient, perfectly creative –where creative is implied here to exclude anything that cannot be represented with flowcharts–, ideal model for Westerners, best displayed in cases such as this… It scares the hell out of me, man.

View all my reviews

Review: Σιντάρτα

Σιντάρτα by Έρμαν Έσσε

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Δεν ξέρω. Έχω καταλήξει ότι ο Έσσε δεν μου αρέσει. Δεν μπορώ όμως να προσδιορίσω τι είναι αυτό που δεν μου κάνει κλικ στην γραφή του. Είναι οι κεντρικοί χαρακτήρες οι οποίοι είναι drama queens αλλά ταυτόχρονα τελείως εξωπραγματικοί; Είναι οι περιγραφές; Είναι ο κατα κάποιον τρόπο ξιπασμός που αφήνει συχνά να υπονοηθεί μέσα από την γραφή του;

Η αναζήτηση του Σιντάρτα στο βιβλίο ξεκινάει περίεργα. Ήδη από μικρός είναι πολύ «ψαγμένος» και μυημένος. Κάνει διαλογισμούς, μπορεί να ζήσει σαν σαμάνος με φαινομενική ευκολία. Δεν μπορώ να καταλάβω πως ξαφνικά του σκάει ότι πρέπει να αναζητήσει την δική του αλήθεια και να μην ακολουθεί άλλες ιδέες, ακόμα κι αν αυτές είναι του Βούδα ή των Σαμάνων. Κι επίσης δεν μπορώ να καταλάβω πως επι πόσα, 20 χρόνια, είχε ξεχάσει όλα όσα είχε κάνει μικρός και είχε παραδοθεί στην ακολασία, τουλάχιστον όπως την αντιλαμβανόταν αυτός. Γενικότερα, η ιστορία του Σιντάρτα δεν μου έκανε κλικ. Παραήταν μπερδεμένος αλλά με την ψευδαίσθηση της αυτογνωσίας και αυτοπεποίθησης. Δεν μπορούσα να ταυτιστώ στο ελάχιστο.

Αυτά που μου έμειναν πάντως είναι η ανάγκη της προσωπικής αναζήτησης και της ανάγκης του να ακολουθεί κανείς την δική του αλήθεια. Αυτή ήταν η βασική διαφορά του Σιντάρτα με τον Γκοβίντα, ο οποίος δεν νομίζω πως ποτέ πραγματικά πίστεψε στον εαυτό του και την προσωπική του αλήθεια: πάντα έψαχνε για υποκατάστατα αυτής της αλήθειας έξωθεν. είτε αυτός ήταν ο Βούδας είτε ο Σιντάρτα. Όλοι είμαστε Γκοβίντα, όπως θα λέγαμε, όλοι είμαστε ανθρωπάκοι. Ανθρωπάκοι στον δρόμο της αυτοαναζήτησης, αυτοεκπλήρωσης και της φώτισης, ναι, αλλά ανθρωπάκοι.

Αυτά τα βασικά στοιχεία ίσως με κάνουν να ξαναδιαβάσω, ίσως, κάποτε, το βιβλίο αυτό.

View all my reviews