To overcome mediocrity, you have to find the right people. People who could actually achieve something through collaboration, who think beyond what they are responsible for on a daily basis.
I’ve received my copy a few days ago and just watched it now. The film gives a sense of Rams’ beliefs and values, connecting his work to the Ulm School of Design and the era he lived in. Through interviews with him and others, I discovered a quiet and private person, who is also opinionated and vocal about the way of design. I think it’s a great documentary, although I couldn’t help but wish it could expand a bit more on his role as Braun’s Design Director – the day to day of being the proxy between the design group and the rest of the company, the interactions among the members of the group, the design process itself, etc.
This book was the Reading Club assignment for November 2018.
William Maxwell published this book in 1937, and I’ve read it +80 years later. One of the things I liked about They came like swallowsis how the story builds on the use of simple words and ideas, how it doesn’t need complexity to give the scenes a sense of fear, warm, or excitement. It just describes what’s happening, it is honest and beautiful writing, it isn’t pretentious but real. Perhaps that’s why it aged well.
From the perspective of three males -husband and sons- we are told about the accounts of a middle-class family in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century – specifically in the Autumn of 1918, in the middle of the Spanish flu.
We’re introduced to the story from the perspective of the little Bunny, an 8-year old which comments on the adult world from his perspective. Then goes Robert, Bunny’s big brother, which I was prepared to hate after reading the first part – what I’ve got instead was a nuanced teen with his own struggles. Finally, the circle is closed with James, the father. Through the perspectives of these men at different stages in life, we learn what the author has to say about life, which is well captured by the title: swallows come and go, so does life.
This book has many angles a reader can enjoy: domestic realism, a historic account of the effects of Spanish flu at the beginning of the century, etc. One that I haven’t seen talked about is feminism and matriarchy. I believe you could read this as an homage to spouses and mothers of all times, but also as a plea for stopping offloading work to them, as for Elizabeth is the one that does the emotional labor, plans the future, and takes care of the house. I don’t think that was the intention of the writer, but the fact that she doesn’t get to say anything but through the voices of the loving men around her is just the perfect metaphor to channel that kind of message.
In November 2016, I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak. The past year, the change wasn’t noticeable yet, so I was hoping this year would.
This is the completely unscientific test I run: I visit TypeRacer and record races – I’m going to settle at 20 from now on. The texts aren’t the same from year to year, I just trust the random nature of TypeRacer to give me different kind of them: short, large, with tons of punctuation, with very few breaks, and so on.
It looks like I’ve already surpassed my previous baseline after two years using Dvorak – both in terms of speed and accuracy. I had been using QWERTY for about 15 years before switching, so that’s impressive. I guess I’m able to introduce bugs in my code faster!
In a more qualitative note, 2018 has been a year of consolidation. Unlike in 2017, I haven’t changed my input devices and my keyboard configuration has remained the same – that has probably helped my muscle memory to develop faster. I still don’t have a steady rhythm and there are some characters I struggle to type. The accuracy results are more meaningful to me than the speed, as that speaks about my finger health long-term, which was the main reason I was interested to give Dvorak a try.
This short story was, in 1974, the recipient of the Hugo and nominated for the Locus. I was intrigued by the title by a long time, but it was only after watching the documentary about Ursula K. Le Guin’s life and work that I learned that The dispossessed was how Ursula reacted to this question: where do the people who walk away from Omelas go? I was bound to read it.
It took me half an hour to finish it. I haven’t read yet any of the Earthsea stories but there is no magic or dragons in Omelas, so I’d guess this is more of a Hainish taste. Being already familiar with the plot, it lacked a climactic moment and the story didn’t spark any more thoughts than I had already given to the topic when I first learned about it. It’s probably wise to avoid related material about short-stories you want to read if you don’t want them to be spoiled, but the advice is particularly true for this one. I wish I hadn’t read anything about it.
I still liked how it’s built on simple language and a raw metaphor anyone can relate to. Reading it helped me to consolidate this idea of Ursula being not a novelist but an anthropologist who happens to be interested in fictional societies. Writing stories about non-existing societies was her way of researching a topic, live with the locals, and explaining to us what it was like living in that world.
The anthology I bought includes an intro commentary by the author about how she came up with the Omelas word which was also fun and humanizes the way I picture writers work.
This book was the Reading Club assignment for June 2018, the last before the summer hiatus.
This is a thriller that builds slowly. Rachel is the main character, she’s a depressed, mentally unstable, and alcoholic woman that can’t cope with having lost her husband to another woman. Megan is also lost and has her own difficulties to find anything that fills her in life. Anna is a housewife and mother whose life goals are fulfilled.
Like in a jigsaw, we’re presented with partial and unreliable information about what’s happening to each one of them, which helps to build and keep the narrative tension. Through the story, they face different facets of emotional dependency, abuse, or personal struggles with life. There are some scenes that I particularly liked it because they embody so well one of the themes that give shape to the zeitgeist of our era: Rachel, in her daily train trips to work, invents any kind of stories about the people she sees through the window; their lives are always happier and out of struggles. We know that’s not true, but she doesn’t have that information. This made me reflect on our interactions through the so-called social networks and how they can be so much detached from the real ourselves in so many ways.
At times, I was so dragged to the story, that I even found myself reading while walking to board a plane.
Hallo Berlin! 🇩🇪 I’m in the city to attend this week CSS and JS conferences. The line-up is fantastic, and I look forward to meeting all the folks there.
This book was the Reading Club assignment for May 2018.
Lately, I felt the urge to read fiction again, after a long time focused on tech and non-fiction. I was also looking to widen my perspectives and stay away from sci-fi for a bit. I found an English Reading Club ran by the neighborhood public library, and The kite runner was the first reading since I joined. Actually, a friend of mine had lent me the book many years ago, but I had forgotten most of it. It seems unfair that I did because the second read has left me very moved.
The book’s central character is Amir, born from a rich Pashtun merchant in the Kabul of the 60s. The first third of the book pivots on the relationships with his father and his Hazara servant during his teenage years. After the Saur revolution, the family flies to America and we are introduced to how was life like for Afghani immigrants, but also how our beloved character transitions to become an adult. The book’s third act goes back to Afghanistan, but to a different one, as it is set up after the Ismalic Jihad that ended up with the Taliban ruling the country.
Because I had already read the book I didn’t expect it to be able to generate so many emotions as I went through it. I was so wrong. In the beginning, I had some trouble to like it, and Hosseini’s way of expressing Amir feelings felt a bit pretending, but every time he focused on a particular plot, I felt engaged again. Certain scenes were a lot more disturbing than I remembered, to the point that I had to stop a couple of times, take fresh air, and make myself aware that I was living in a totally different reality than the books – that’s something I don’t experience in many books. Having to deal with my father’s death last year struck all kind of emotions and relived conversations as well – in a way, I think that helped the book to have more impact on me this second time, and reminds me that there are books that hold healing power if read at the proper time. Finally, I couldn’t help but think that the Amir and Hassan friendship is a metaphor for Afghanistan as a failed state during the many wars that beat the country in the 1974-2001 period. It seems to me as if Hosseini was trying to say that the country cannot be at peace until the Pashtuns and Hazaras are equals.
I’d say The kite runner is a book about guilt and redemption, a father-son relationship, and perhaps the main window to Afghanistan culture for most westerns. I think the book fares well in each of those.
